Out this week: All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung; Things to Make and Break by May-Lan Tan; Gone So Long by Andre Dubus III; Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips; Scribe by Alyson Hagy; A Dream Called Home by Reyna Grande; What If This Were Enough? by Heather Havrilesky; and Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister.
Tuesday New Release Day: Chung; Tan; Dubus III; Phillips; Hagy; Grande; Havrilesky; Traister
New Zadie Smith
Recommended reading: new fiction from Zadie Smith in the New Yorker, “Escape from New York.”
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Adonis Adapts Ancient Zuhayr Poem
Adonis, the great Syrian poet, has reproduced and adapted one of the ancient Muallaqat (The Suspended Odes) originally written by Zuhayr. The reproduction is hand-written on a scroll of paper, and then painted on, thereby “creating a new and contemporary interpretation of the text.”
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One Award To Rule Them All
Over at Book Riot, Jeff O’Neal’s asking readers to vote for their favorite literary award… based on the quality of each one’s backlist.
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Wounded
“Maybe I’m not outraged. I’m exhausted and open and exposed and a lot of other people are too because we are wounds that get picked at and picked at and picked at one day, there won’t be anything left to heal.” At The Rumpus, Roxane Gay writes on the sexism and racism of Seth MacFarlane’s Oscars jokes.
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Translation Troubles
At Words Without Borders, Scott Esposito examines the thorny issues of reviewing books in translation, when it may not be clear exactly who to blame or praise, the author or the translator.
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Goodbye to Naples
Recommended Reading: Year in Reading alumna Elissa Schappell interviews Elena Ferrante about feminism, friendship, and her latest Neapolitan novel. Pair with Cora Currier’s essay on reading Italy through Ferrante’s books.
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