Literary Figures: Novelists

Critic at large John Powers says there's an explosion of literary talent coming from Mexico. He reviews two new novels by Mexican writers.

Enter Me

Cathleen Schine's new novel explores how one character's physical and mental decline ripples out to affect his whole family. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls it a mix of "fun and bad behavior."

A debut novel by Yaa Gyasi is one of this summer's most anticipated novels.

The suspense stories on Maureen Corrigan's early summer reading list roam from the beaches of Long Island to the Welsh coast, and from the mean streets of Chicago to the alleyways of Berlin.

Pamela Eren's incisive new book Eleven Hours features only two main characters and is an incisive novel about birth.

In Jennifer Haigh's new novel Heat & Light she examines what happens when fracking comes to a small Pennsylvania town. Maureen Corrigan describes the book as Haigh's "most ambitious - and compelling - novel yet."

At the age of 85, Edna O'Brien has just brought out one of her best and most ambitious novels yet. The Little Red Chairs is personal and political; charming and grotesque; a novel of manners and a novel of monsters.

A beautiful and harrowing novel about a young mother who is diagnosed with leukemia, which is based on the author's real life nightmare when his wife was diagnosed with the disease and died two and half years later.

The celebration of Philip Roth's career reaches its peak in a new documentary — Philip Roth Unmasked — that will screen on PBS next week as part of the American Masters series. There's no doubt that Roth is a master, and not just an American one, but the film tiptoes around the novelist's dark ferocity.