Books & Literature

Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN reviews Etna the new novel by Paul Yoon, the narration was inspired by his dog Oscar.

Emily Wilson. In 2017, Wilson published her own translation of "The Odyssey," a task that took six years to complete and had quite an impact. Wilson was the first woman to translate "The Odyssey" into English, though that's not the first thing she'd want you to know about her work. Her translation was widely hailed in reviews for its vibrant language and faithfulness to the original Greek text attributed to the poet Homer. Her translation sold thousands of copies and was added to high school and college curricula across the country.

Leila Slimani. She's Moroccan, but spent much of her life in France. Her novel "I'll Take The Fire" concludes her trilogy of novels inspired by three generations of her family. It was just published in the U.S.

Catherine Coldstream entered a Carmelite monastery at age 24, and lived a life of prayer and obedience for 12 years. Her memoir is Cloistered: My Years as a Nun. Originally published March 20, 2024.

Clark was a baby in 1981 when her mother, a member of a radical left-wing group, acted as a getaway driver in the robbery of a Brink's truck. Her new novel is based on the years that followed.

The new literary thriller "Cloudthief," by Nathaniel Rich, is about the reaction against Big Tech. In the novel, a struggling eco-journalist and a brilliant young woman decide to rob a data center in Oklahoma. Our critic-at-large John Powers says Rich wraps a smart exploration of our data-dominated society inside an entertaining heist story.

Our guest today is actor and transgender activist Laverne Cox.

For our book critic, Maureen Corrigan, summer reading sometimes means catching up on the books she missed earlier in the year. Here's her short roundup of some spring books.

Satrapi's groundbreaking graphic novel Persepolis introduced readers to life in Iran during the Islamic revolution and the Iran/Iraq war. She died June 4. Originally broadcast June 2, 2003.

Rock critic KEN TUCKER reviews Kacey Musgrave's new album Middle of Nowhere and Jimmy McDonough’s biography of the 1970s-era singer Gary Stewart called I Am from the Honky Tonks.

O'Farrell's new novel is based on the story of her own great, great-grandfather, and tells the story of a father and son mapping 19th-century Ireland after the devastation of the Great Famine

Mary Beard taught classics for most of her life at Cambridge, but her career has also included popular TV shows and books that reach a wide audience. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says Beard's latest book, "Talking Classics," illuminates a lot about the ancient world and our own.

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor. Her new book is called "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, A Notorious Word, And Me."

Jesmyn Ward's new essay collection is called "On Witness And Respair."

Zayd Ayers Dohrn is the author of the new memoir "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, And Young: A Fugitive Family In The Revolutionary Underground."

Caputo, who died May 7, wrote the acclaimed 1977 memoir A Rumor of War, about leading a Marine platoon during the Vietnam war. He went on to a career in journalism. Originally broadcast in 2005.

Maureen Corrigan reviewed two novels by 'Pemi Aguda and Elizabeth Strout.

(1.) Scottish writer DOUGLAS STUART. His debut novel Shuggie Bain won the Booker Prize in 2020. His other novel is Young Mungo. His latest, John of John, is about a son dealing with the weight of his father’s expectations on a remote Scottish island. Both father and son are concealing their sexualities. (THIS INTERVIEW CONTINUES INTO THE SECOND HALF OF THE SHOW)

Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN recommends three new novels: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, American Fantasy by Emma Straub, and Enormous Wings by Laurie Frankel.

Tonya Mosley interviews Harvard professor NAMWALI SERPELL. Her new book, On Morrison, is a close reading of Toni Morrison's entire body of work, eleven novels, the criticism, plays, and poetry