Books & Literature

Ever since I was young, I've loved stories set in the far-flung reaches of the West's many empires — from the British Raj of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India to the surreal Vietnam of Apocalypse Now. And I still love them, though I now realize that they usually look at other cultures from the vantage point of outsiders, even intruders.

Gordon started out as a bebop prodigy in the '40s, and went on to star in the '86 film 'Round Midnight. Maxine Gordon captures her late husband's voice and music in the book Sophisticated Giant.

Take Meg Wolitzer's novel (now also a film) called The Wife, about a brazen case of literary ghostwriting, and cross it with Patricia Highsmith's classic Ripley stories, about a suave psychopath, and you've got something of the crooked charisma of John Boyne's new novel, A Ladder to the Sky.

Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel, The Shape Of The Ruins, centers on the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the years of violence that followed and the conspiracy theories surrounding his death.

"Let the people see what they did to my boy." Those were the words spoken by Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, after viewing the brutalized body of her son.

"Advice columnist" is not a role that is usually listed under Eleanor Roosevelt's long list of achievements, but for over 20 years she wrote a popular write-in column, first for Ladies Home Journal and then McCall's magazine.

Edugyan's latest novel, Washington Black, tells the story of a boy who escapes slavery and embarks on a voyage of scientific discovery. It has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.

Esi Edugyan's new novel, Washington Black, opens on wretched terrain: The year is 1830; the location is a sugar plantation in Barbados. Our narrator, an enslaved 11-year-old boy named George Washington Black — "Wash" for short — tells us that the old master has recently died.

Musician and writer Leonard Cohen died in 2016, leaving behind many unpublished poems and lyrics. His son Adam Cohen discusses The Flame, a collection of some of Leonard's final works.

Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN says Sarah Smarsh's new memoir Heartland is smart, nuanced and atmospheric.

Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita offers a compelling argument that Nabokov's 1955 novel had its roots in the 1948 abduction of 11-year-old Sally Horner — despite the author's claim to the contrary.

After writing biographies of Charles Dickens and Mary Wollstonecraft, Tomalin turned to memoir. Her new work tells of her conflicting desires to have children and to lead a meaningful working life.

There's life in the old road trip saga yet. That's just one of the many things that Gary Shteyngart's spectacular, sprawling new novel, Lake Success, affirms.

After years as a reporter, Avi Issacharoff co-created an action series about an elite unit of the Israeli military whose members work undercover in the West Bank. Fauda is now streaming on Netflix.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews the new apocalyptic novel 'Severance' by debut novelist Ling Ma.

Olga Tokarczuk's book won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. Critic John Powers says the hard-to-classify work is positively exploding with maps, remembrances, riffs, history and more.

The popular new film 'Crazy Rich Asians' is based on a novel by Kevin Kwan. We talk with him about how crazy rich he may or may not have been.

What I love most about Wilson's writing is that he'll start off with these goofy, almost sitcom-type contrived premises and from there create stories that knock you out with the force of their emotional truth. That distinctive sweet-tart flavor of Wilson's writing is triple-concentrated in his new short story collection, Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine.

R. O. Kwon's pensive debut novel, The Incendiaries, arrives just in time to stoke up "back-to-school" anxieties, especially those of entering college students and their nervous parents.

Bad things happen in Castle Rock, a new Hulu series based on King's fictional town. King spoke to Fresh Air in 1992, 2000 and 2013 about his career writing horror and his fear of losing his mind.