Like many people, the novelist Garth Risk Hallberg was daunted by the size of the celebrated American writer Joyce Carol Oates’s body of work, which encompasses dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories. “I think what everyone feels with her is trepidation,” he said. “You think, What if I don’t like it? And then … Read more
.jpg "Jean Hanff Korelitz’s All-Time Favorite Sequels")
Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of nine novels, including “The Latecomer” and “You Should Have Known” (upon which “The Undoing,” the HBO series starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, is based). Her latest book, “The Sequel,” is a follow-up to her New York Times best-selling thriller “The Plot.” At once a compulsively readable literary … Read more
Years ago, a man who was then my fiancé gave me a mourning ring, inscribed with the name and dates of birth and death of a Frenchwoman who lived in the mid-eighteenth century. Strands of pale blonde hair are encased in its central setting, which is surrounded by tiny amethysts. I’d worn the ring with … Read more
This week, The New Yorker is announcing the longlists for the 2024 National Book Awards, beginning with Young People’s Literature and Translated Literature. Check back on Thursday and Friday for the Poetry, Fiction, and Nonfiction lists. Sign up for the Books & Fiction newsletter to receive each 2024 longlist. Young People’s Literature The titles on … Read more
Edna O’Brien, Ireland’s literary pride and outlaw who scandalized her native land with her debut novel, The Country Girls, before gaining international acclaim as a storyteller and iconoclast that found her welcomed everywhere from Dublin to the White House, has died. She was 93. O’Brien died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement by … Read more
Another of those novelists – Chen Wentong, better known by his pseudonym Liang Yusheng – is also having the centenary of his birth celebrated this year. The statue of Guo Jing at the Terminal 1 Arrivals Hall at Hong Kong International Airport. Photo: Instagram / @hongkongairport Few writers captured the spirit, philosophy and beauty of … Read more
There was a time when people were shamed for reading smutty books, whether for the steaminess factor or the misconception that romance wasn’t real literature. But now, thanks to the surging popularity of books by authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, readers are loudly and proudly embracing the genre — and even appear to be naming … Read more
Edmund White’s “Nocturnes for the King of Naples” opens with the most remarkable account of cruising I know. By cruising I mean a specifically gay male practice of organized promiscuity, a form of sexual sociality at once universal—existing, in remarkably similar forms, in rural American truck stops and among Roman ruins—and, as White chronicles it, … Read more
Over two decades ago, Michel Rabagliati first introduced his close friends and family to Paul — a teenage boy growing up in Montreal in the 1970s. Paul was Rabagliati’s creation: a comic that illustrated childhood, first loves, his first apartment and even divorce. The tender snapshots of daily life packed with cultural references and rich … Read more
Paul Auster, a prolific, prize-winning man of letters and filmmaker known for such inventive narratives and meta-narratives as The New York Trilogy and 4321, has died at age 77. Auster’s death was confirmed on May 1 by his literary representatives, the Carol Mann Agency, which did not immediately provide additional details. Auster had been diagnosed … Read more
