2013 Man Booker Prize Longlist

Today they announced the longlist for this year’s Man Booker Prize. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton Harvest by Jim Crace The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris The Kills by Richard House The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Unexploded by Alison MacLeod … Read more

Daniel Alarcón: “Collectors”

Click here to read the abstract of the story on The New Yorker webpage (this week’s story is available only for subscribers). Daniel Alarcón’s “Collectors” was originally published in the July 29, 2013 issue of The New Yorker. Trevor The only thing I have by Alarcon was “Second Lives”, the piece published when he was listed as one … Read more

Julián Fuks: “The Dinner”

Julián Fuks’s “The Dinner” (“O Jantar”; tr. from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz) is the tenth story in Granta 121: The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists. For an overview of the issue and links to my reviews of its other stories, please click here. I’m of two minds about this piece. When I was just about finished … Read more

Nadifa Mohamed: “Filsan”

Nadifa Mohamed’s “Filsan” is the fifth story in Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. For an overview of the issue and links to my reviews of its other stories, please click here. “Filsan” is an excerpt from Nadifa Mohamed’s forthcoming novel, The Orchard of Lost Souls. You’ll perhaps notice it’s been a while since … Read more

Sherwood Anderson: “Nobody Knows”

This post is part of a series dedicated to Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories, from The Library of America. “Nobody Knows” comes from Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. For an introduction to this series and for links to the other posts, please click here. After several pieces where George Willard plays a part in someone else’s story, … Read more

Theodore Sturgeon: More Than Human

It’s been a while since I made any progress on the nine novels included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Classic Novels of the 1950s. I had a great time reading the first novel in the collection, The Space Merchants (my review here), but I was a bit disappointed in the way the plot took over all … Read more