JHUMPA LAHIRI Whereabouts. Reviewed by Ann Skea
Pulitzer-winner Jhumpa Lahiri explores solitude and life choices in Whereabouts, her first novel since The Lowland in 2013. This is not a happy book, nor is it a conventional novel in the sense of fiction with a plot, or a storyline. Instead, its brief chapters offer...
VIET THANH NGUYEN The Sympathizer. Reviewed by Kurt Johnson
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel The Sympathizer shows the Vietnam war from a Vietnamese perspective, critiquing Hollywood’s renderings of the conflict in the process. When Ed Burns and Lynn Novick’s 17-hour documentary The Vietnam War...
ADAM JOHNSON Fortune Smiles. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
This is a collection to return to, to fully explore the ideas and themes and revel in the boldness of the writing. When I read The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize) I was convinced that I had been given an insight into the bizarre...
JANE SMILEY Some Luck. Reviewed by Robyne Young
Smiley returns to Iowa, the setting of her Pulitzer-Prize winning novel A Thousand Acres, in this first book of an epic new trilogy. It was chance that took the 19-year-old Jane Smiley to Iowa in 1972, and some further luck that gave her a place in the renowned Iowa...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on literary biography
I’ve been reading biographies of two writers I admire in part – Norman Mailer and George Orwell. Literary biography is something I enjoy and the best examples of it, such as Richard Ellmann on Oscar Wilde and Norman Sherry on Graham Greene, have given me enormous...JHUMPA LAHIRI The Lowland. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies delivers a compelling family story of secrets, love and duty. The Lowland is the story of two brothers and one woman, and a tragedy that reverberates down four generations. It is a tale of two countries; of...
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