In her debut novel, “King of the Armadillos,” Wendy Chin-Tanner explores immigration, illness and opportunity through the story of a teenage immigrant who is diagnosed with Hansen’s disease.
“When you become a writer, you inevitably lose your innocence as a reader,” says the Pulitzer-winning novelist, whose new book is “Somebody’s Fool.” “It’s like being given the underground tour of Disney World. Some of the magic dissipates.”
“Girls and Their Monsters,” by Audrey Clare Farley, recounts the tragic story of the Genain sisters, seeing the subjects at the crossroads of psychiatric and societal forces.
The writer Itamar Vieira Junior says that to “feel the intensity of life on the streets of Salvador” in Bahia, Brazil, a reader must start with Jorge Amado.
An entertainment journalist, he persuaded the publicity-shy director David Lean to let him write his story and died before seeing his final book, on Stephen Sondheim, published.
In “The Fourth Turning Is Here” and “End Times,” the historian Neil Howe and the social scientist Peter Turchin use generational analysis and Big Data to predict the crises to come.