-
Count of Monte Cristo Redux
While serving time in prison, bestselling author Jeffrey Archer reread Alexander Dumas’s classic novel of revenge, The Count of Monte Cristo, which became the springboard for A Prisoner of Birth (Reviews, Jan. 14). What new impressions did you gain from rereading The Count of Monte Cristo? Many years ago, I wrote a novel called Kane and Abel, and a critic was kind enough to compare it to ...
-
A Life of Comic Disappointment
In her first book, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Crosley, a publicist at Vintage, explores urban life in a collection of essays (Reviews, Nov. 26). Did your position in the book world make you think differently about publishing your first book? It's daunting, knowing how the burger gets made. Of course I secretly hope my book will transcend everything I know about how rough the publishing industr...
-
Children's Bookshelf Talks with Meg Cabot
The YA author talks about Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls, her first book for middle-grade readers.
-
Anything But Nice:PW Talks with Arnon Grunberg
Dutch literary wunderkind Arnon Grunberg’s bio reads like a gonzo Horatio Alger story: dropped out of school at 17, wrote a prize winning novel by age 23, followed that with a couple more prize-winners and rocked the Dutch literary establishment with a pseudonym scandal. His newest novel, The Jewish Messiah, is out from Penguin Press. It’s about the good-intentioned if deranged quest of young Xavier Radek, the grandson of a dead SS officer, who takes it upon himself to save the Jews. What could go wrong?
-
Talk to the Animals
Nim Chimpsky is Elizabeth Hess's recounting of the ill-fated attempt to teach a chimp American Sign Language—and the issues it raises about our treatment of animals. This experiment took place in the 1970s. Why has it taken so long for Nim's story to be told? This story was really swept under the rug.
-
Loving and Leaving L.A.
Like her first two books, Nina Revoyr's new novel, The Age of Dreaming, takes place in Los Angeles. This time she goes back to the riotous early years of film.
-
The Force of Literature
The Lebanese novelist follows the acclaimed Gate of the Sun with Yalo, tracking a soldier’s descent into criminality.
-
Running to Freedom
James McBride’s memoir, The Color of Water, has become a modern classic, and an adaptation of his WWII novel, The Miracle at St. Anna, is being filmed by Spike Lee. McBride’s latest novel, Song Yet Sung, takes readers back to America’s dark history.
-
Hajdu's Comic Turn
Growing up in Phillipsburg, N.J., David Hajdu (pronounced HAY-doo) drew a comic strip for his high school newspaper and soon began contributing illustrations to the newspaper in nearby Easton, Pa. His interest in cartooning continued in college during the 70s, and he entered New York University's film school with an eye toward animation.
-
Stage, Screen and now the Story
Filmmaker and performance and Web artist Miranda July conquers yet another genre—the short story. In your stories and in your film Me and You and Everyone We Know, many of your characters are sad, lonely, awkward and somewhat ill-prepared for the world. Why are you drawn to these kinds of characters? That's how I feel a lot of the time.
-
Doo Wop, the Music of the Streets
DJ Bruce Morrow—Cousin Brucie to listeners—sits in his decidedly 1950s West Village townhouse, a curvy, lighted jukebox in one corner, and a wax replica of a retro malt shop meal—fries, hamburger and milkshake—on a table. Morrow is tall and welcoming, and his voice resonates as if he's on the radio as he talks about his new book, Doo Wop: The Music, the Times, the Era.
-
The End of Easy?
On October 10, Little, Brown published Blonde Faith, Walter Mosley’s 10th and possibly final novel to feature Los Angeles investigator Easy Rawlins. Did you once say that the Easy Rawlins series would run five or perhaps seven books? I messed around with that—sometimes I said nine. What changed? There were more books to write—there was more to say.
-
PW talks with Dennis Kucinich
Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich added "author" to his list of credentials (senator, congressman, mayor, reporter, et al.) with the Phoenix Books release of The Courage to Survive, a stirring, lyrical memoir that details his working-class childhood in a large, struggling Cleveland family.
-
Real Life Is (Not) Boring
D’Souza’s Whiteman won the 2007 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, The Konkans, explores a contemporary Indian-American family struggling with the pride and pain of their Goan heritage. This feels like a very personal book.
-
He's for the Birds
Fourteen years ago, Jonathan Rosen was lunching in Manhattan when a fellow diner mentioned the impending migration of warblers through Central Park. “It was almost mystical in a way,” Rosen says, his curiosity piqued in a manner he still can't quite explain. “I just thought, my goodness, these wild animals are here in my backyard and maybe I can go out and find them.
-
With Liberty and Justice for Most
In Liberty of Conscience, University of Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues that the separation of church and state is the very foundation of American freedom—and that it’s being eroded by both the right and the left. Is Liberty of Conscience [Reviews, p. TK] your first book with Basic Books? Yes.
-
Dark, Drastic, Divided
Charlotte Bacon’s third novel, Split Estate, examines the after-effects of suicide on a woman’s family.
-
PW Talks with Kadir Nelson
Award-winning illustrator Kadir Nelson makes his authorial debut with We Are the Ship (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun), which tells the story of Negro League baseball.
-
Aimee Steinberger Talks About Japan Ai
Aimee Major Steingerger’s manga-influenced travel journal, Japan Ai: A Tall Girl's Adventure in Japan, uses drawings, comics and journal-like entries to recount a trip she took to Japan along with two friends. The book is published by Go! Comi.
-
The Crime of Being Different
In Black Sheep, Australian author Ben Peek envisions a grim world segregated along racial lines, where cultural mixing and questioning authority are both swiftly punished by the complete loss of one’s identity.
Browse archive by date:
