The act of being inspired by others is akin to collecting pebbles of experience, letting them escape into flowing consciousness and resurfacing them again in one’s writing.
“A great story casts a spell,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Vulnerables.” “It can enthrall you so completely that you not only forget that you’re stuck between two manspreaders in a noisy, crowded, smelly subway car but miss your stop.”
Like many who call Madrid home, Elena Medel was born elsewhere, but forged her identity in the Spanish capital. Here, she recommends books about this city that “refuses to be reduced to an ideal.”
This captivating adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, a collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, follows a man and his ailing mother during a civil war in South Africa.
In Gabrielle Korn’s debut novel, “Yours for the Taking,” a feminist cultural icon runs a lifesaving artificial habitat, but a secret, and controversial, agenda guides her project.
Naoise Dolan’s “The Happy Couple” follows 20-something Dubliners hurtling toward the altar, stubbornly clinging to their self-delusions that this is what they want.
Over the next six months, inmates in prisons around the country will be able to debate and vote on the winner of a new book award — the Inside Literary Prize.
Three new books describe far-flung societies — from the Native tribes of North America to the caliphates of Eurasia — that have made war and sustained their conquests.
Three new books describe far-flung societies — from the Native tribes of North America to the caliphates of Eurasia — that have made war and sustained their conquests.