In 1949, when Danielle Steel was just a toddler, Theodor Adorno declared that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
It took her a while, but SIn 1949, when Danielle Steel was just a toddler, Theodor Adorno declared that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”
It took her a while, but Steel has proved Adorno’s point. Not that there’s anything poetic about her new Holocaust novel, “Only the Brave,” but using the Final Solution as the setting for a sentimental melodrama is profoundly unseemly. It’s not good for the Jews. It’s not good for anybody.
But the publicity machine grinds on.
Half a century ago, Steel published her first book, “Going Home,” and over the decades she’s become one of the best-selling novelists in the world, with more than a billion copies in print. Perhaps no other writer is so widely read and so rarely reviewed. It’s a confirmed blind spot in our critical landscape: Unlike music, movie and TV reviewers, book reviewers pride themselves on avoiding what most people are consuming. Sometimes, I feel guilty about this. At the moment, I feel grateful.
By my count, “Only the Brave” is Steel’s 152nd novel, but her publicist tells me, “It is closer to her 170th.” Apparently, the actual number can only be guessed at in the same way the total mass of dark matter in the universe is estimated by how it bends light. With some certainty, though, we can determine that “Only the Brave” is one of seven titles Steel plans to release this year, which means that she writes a book more often than most people clean their fridge.
In the months leading up to this week’s publication, Steel’s publicist reached out repeatedly to insist that I not mention the author is a 76-year-old romance novelist. As always, we’re never ashamed of the right things.
“Only the Brave” opens in Berlin in 1937 with one of the book’s typically perplexing observations: “Even at eighteen,” Steel writes, “Sophia Alexander knew that things in Germany had changed in the past four years since the Nazis had come to power.” Yes, nothing gets by our Sophia. Somehow, after Hitler established himself as a dictator, passed the Nuremberg Laws and remilitarized the Rhineland, this savvy young woman has managed to pick up a change in the air. That weird consummation of obviousness and obliviousness quickly becomes the novel’s prevailing tone. . . .
Six years have passed since Tommy Orange published his debut novel, “There There,” but the echoes of that story still reverberate in the minds of thosSix years have passed since Tommy Orange published his debut novel, “There There,” but the echoes of that story still reverberate in the minds of those who read it. A member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, Orange introduced a large cast of Indians in modern-day California and drew them to the Oakland Coliseum for a powwow that offered a chance for cultural celebration, commercial enterprise, spiritual reflection and, most notably, grand larceny.
With varying degrees of success, these characters struggle to carve out a livable haven amid the caustic crosscurrents of American racism and historical amnesia. By listening sympathetically and refusing to elide their challenges — or their mistakes — Orange demonstrates that Indians are not feathered Hollywood tropes or wooden icons of Old West mythology. His fiction explores the complex challenges faced by people struggling to understand their identity within a dominant culture determined to bleach and sentimentalize the past.
During one of many poignant moments in Orange’s new novel, “Wandering Stars,” an Indian woman goes to a public library in the late 1950s and asks “what novels are written by Indian people.” The librarian tells her “she doesn��t think there are any.” Sixty years later, an Indian boy wonders “why there weren’t any Native American superheroes.” His older brother laments that he and his family “weren’t connected to the tribe or to their language or with the knowledge that other people had about being....
The Canadian poet Anne Michaels publishes novels so deliberately that each one entrances readers of a new decade. Her debut novel, “Fugitive Pieces,” The Canadian poet Anne Michaels publishes novels so deliberately that each one entrances readers of a new decade. Her debut novel, “Fugitive Pieces,” which tells the story of a Polish Jew who escaped the Nazis, appeared in 1996 and won a host of awards including the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her second novel, “The Winter Vault,” about the construction of two civil engineering projects large enough to alter history, was published in 2009.
Michaels’s fans — an intense group that should be larger — will recognize the atmosphere of longing that pervades her gorgeous new novel, “Held.” It’s a story that explores the way intense intimacy manages to thrive in vernal pools of calm during eras of grief and tumult. Perhaps the word “romantic” has been too thoroughly attenuated to use in praise, but “Held” may be one of the most romantic books I’ve ever read.
It’s also one of the most poetic — not just in sentiment but in form. “Held” unfolds in short blocks. One is tempted to call them stanzas. Some are just a couple of lines; others extend for a few pages. Many of these sections demand bridging elisions, catching thematic echoes and restitching a. . . .
This spring marks a grim 40th anniversary. On April 17, 1984, after months of tension between Britain and Libya, an angry demonstration swelled outsidThis spring marks a grim 40th anniversary. On April 17, 1984, after months of tension between Britain and Libya, an angry demonstration swelled outside the Libyan Embassy in London. Outraged by Muammar Qaddafi’s murderous reign back home, dozens of Libyan students chanted slogans against the dictator. Suddenly, from the embassy’s windows, shots were fired into the crowd. A 25-year-old British police officer was killed, and 10 demonstrators were wounded.
That carnage burns through Hisham Matar’s meditative new novel, “My Friends.”
Matar, the son of Libyan parents, was too young to have been involved in the deadly 1984 protest, but he later settled in London, and much of his writing has explored the terror of living under the threat of Qaddafi, who once clawed after his opponents around the world. Matar’s first novel, “In the Country of Men,” which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is about a boy in Tripoli trying to fathom his family’s rising anxiety. His Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “The Return,” explores the political abduction and disappearance of his father.
In “My Friends,” a Libyan man named Khaled describes how he came to spend his adult life in England, pining for home. Part historical fiction, part cultural reflection, this is a story about the way exile calcifies the heart into an organ of brittle longing.
If Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song” were a horror novel, it wouldn’t feel nearly as terrifying. But his story about the modern-day ascent of fascism is so If Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song” were a horror novel, it wouldn’t feel nearly as terrifying. But his story about the modern-day ascent of fascism is so contaminated with plausibility that it’s impossible not to feel poisoned by swelling panic. I woke up three mornings in a row from nightmares Lynch had sown in the soil of my jittery brain.
“Prophet Song,” which won Britain’s Booker Prize on Sunday, describes how the fibers of political decay get caught in the lungs: the wracking cough of tyranny precedes the illness, the horrible death. But rather than survey the whole body of governmental putrefaction, Lynch focuses on the travails of one woman struggling to protect her family in Dublin.
Eilish Stack is a respected microbiologist, a mother and the wife of a union leader. After a long day of work, she craves only a spot of peace and renewal. But if you remember the first line of “1984” — “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” — you’ll hear the opening of “Prophet Song” as a sepulchral echo: “The night has come and she has not heard the knocking.”
That knocking in the nighttime, the implacable salutation of the KGB and security agents the world over, is the first in an uninterrupted series of perversions of. . . .
Fountain has published his next novel, “Devil Makes Three.” It’s a big, deeply humane political thriller that proves the flame of Graham Greene and JoFountain has published his next novel, “Devil Makes Three.” It’s a big, deeply humane political thriller that proves the flame of Graham Greene and John le Carré is still burning.
Informed by decades of travel to Haiti, “Devil Makes Three” takes place during those bloody months after the 1991 coup d’état sent newly elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile. Three decades may have dimmed many readers’ memories of that chaotic period when the world was fretting over the fate of Haiti’s fledgling democracy, but don’t let that intimidate you. Fountain deftly re-creates this geopolitical crisis without a hint of the lecturing tone that can make some works of historical fiction feel as lively as a 10th-grade textbook. Newsreel footage is spliced so seamlessly into the background of this multipronged story that you’ll barely register the shifts between fact and invention.
The scene opens in paradise, reflecting what Fountain calls Haiti’s “time-sodden beauty.” A handsome young man named Matt Amaker has come to Haiti with a modest inheritance and started a scuba business. His work partner, Alix, is the son of a wealthy local family. “Business was good, life was good and getting better all the time,” Matt thinks. “Haiti was becoming part of the world again, and here he was on the ground floor of the impending boom.” He’s tempted to imagine that the trouble in Port-au-Prince won’t affect. . . .
“The World and All That It Holds” would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God — or Aleksandar Hemon. But this Bosnian American author“The World and All That It Holds” would be an audacious title for a book by anybody except God — or Aleksandar Hemon. But this Bosnian American author will make you a believer.
Born in Sarajevo, Hemon has lived in the United States since the 1992 war decimated his homeland. Writing in English — his adopted language — he’s attracted an adoring critical following but not the popular audience he deserves. In 2004, he won a MacArthur “genius” grant, and his 2008 novel, “The Lazarus Project,” was a finalist for a National Book Award. The comparisons to Nabokov are not outlandish.
Hemon’s charismatic new novel wends its way across Europe and Asia during the first half of the 20th century, taking in the world and, yes, all that it holds. This is the story of humanity’s most cataclysmic era, but the perspective has been pulled away from historical headlines to embrace instead those ordinary souls unloosed from their disintegrating countries and sent to wander the globe.
That sounds awfully grim, I know, and there’s plenty of horror in these fiery pages, but the irrepressible voice of “The World and All That It Holds” glides along a cushion of poignancy buoyed by wry humor. From start to finish, no matter what else he’s up to, Hemon is telling a tale about the resilience of true love. . . .
“The Bird Tattoo” opens in 2014 with a scene that feels as shocking as anything Margaret Atwood imagines in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But this isn’t dyst“The Bird Tattoo” opens in 2014 with a scene that feels as shocking as anything Margaret Atwood imagines in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But this isn’t dystopian speculation; it’s historical realism. A wife and mother named Helen finds herself held in a repurposed school with more than 100 other kidnapped girls and women. They’ve all been photographed and displayed on an Islamic State website. In the evenings, guards freely beat and rape these captives they regard as merchandise. Suicides are just the cost of doing business, like spoilage in a grocery store.
“If she had not seen it with her own eyes,” Mikhail writes, “Helen would never have believed a market for selling women existed.”
It’s impossible not to recoil from such a story. Mikhail describes a sophisticated organization in Mosul that has normalized rape and pedophilia for the benefit of terrorists. Cut off from their families and friends, women and girls are bought and traded, routinely abused, rented out and even returned for a refund if they prove unsatisfactory.
One of the many things I admire about this novel is the way Mikhail refuses to....
The year 1989 has just ended when our dearly departed narrator introduces himself with a disappointing revelation:
“You wake up with the answer to the The year 1989 has just ended when our dearly departed narrator introduces himself with a disappointing revelation:
“You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse. That’s all the insight you’ll ever get. So you might as well go back to sleep.”
That voice — poking you in the face with its brash cynicism — belongs to the ghost of Maali Almeida, who was, until very recently, a reckless photojournalist, a chronic gambler and an unreliable boyfriend in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Initially, the afterlife feels like an LSD trip at a poorly staffed customer return center. But once Maali gets to the front of a queue, he learns that he’s dead. To prepare his spirit for eternity with The Light, he has one week — “seven moons.”
That makes a tight schedule for Maali and a breakneck pace for readers because this is a ghost with an attitude and a lot of unfinished business. For one, Maali isn’t sure how he died, and watching goons chop up his corpse with a cleaver doesn’t provide as much clarity as you might expect. After all, in life, Maali accepted photography gigs from anybody who would pay him — government officials, foreign journalists, human rights organizations, even (possible) spies. And he freely snapped pictures of things no one wanted him to see.
“They say the truth will set you free,” Maali notes, “though in Sri Lanka the truth can land you in a cage.” Knowing how dangerous his homeland is, Maali always prided himself on his discretion, a quality perfected as a closeted gay man in a violently homophobic society. But apparently, somebody wanted to guarantee his silence.
Now, reduced to airy thinness, Maali will find justice only if he can publish a secret cache of his most incendiary pictures, “photos that will bring down. . . .
James Patterson’s new thriller, “Blowback,” asks us to imagine what would happen if a narcissistic psychopath were elected to the White House.
AmericanJames Patterson’s new thriller, “Blowback,” asks us to imagine what would happen if a narcissistic psychopath were elected to the White House.
Americans could be forgiven for thinking they already have a pretty good idea of what that would be like.
But if “Blowback” is feedback on Donald Trump’s raging years in office, it’s only a glancing shot.
That figures. After all, Patterson has long maintained an indulgent détente with his friend and fellow Floridian. Unlike Stephen King, who regularly unleashes the hounds of hell upon Trump, Patterson has largely restricted himself to sighs of disappointment. Even in his two immensely popular presidential thrillers written with Bill Clinton, Patterson has avoided any harsh criticism of the Very Stable Genius.
That attitude of restraint paid off when Trump awarded Patterson a National Humanities Medal, the only one conferred on a novelist during Trump’s time in office. At a White House ceremony in 2019, the president told Patterson, “You’ve sold a lot more books than me, and I guess you’ve sold a lot more books than anyone but maybe one: the Bible.” It was a weird moment that inadvertently called attention to the fact that Trump, Patterson and God rely on other people to help write their books. . . .
Anthony Marra labors under the most benevolent curse that can befall a writer: When he was 28 years old, he published “A Constellation of Vital PhenomAnthony Marra labors under the most benevolent curse that can befall a writer: When he was 28 years old, he published “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” an astonishingly great debut novel. Manipulating time and tone with hypnotic effect, sweeping from tragic to absurd with majestic ease, Marra told the stories of folks caught in a war-torn Chechen village. “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena” won the inaugural John Leonard Prize for Best First Book from the National Book Critics Circle, and raves piled up around the novel like ticker tape.
Now, almost a decade later, Marra has published his second novel, a story set before and during World War II called “Mercury Pictures Presents.” The author’s fans, who include former president Barack Obama, will recognize his elegant resolution of tangled disasters, his heartbreaking poignancy, his eye for historical curiosities that exceed the parameters of fiction. But the emotional range here is narrower, the record of human cruelty more subtle. And if “Mercury Pictures Presents” doesn’t generate the impact of “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,” well, that’s an impossibly high standard. . . .
Last fall, Kalani Pickhart published a debut novel called “I Will Die in a Foreign Land.” To be honest — unknown author, tiny press, little publicity Last fall, Kalani Pickhart published a debut novel called “I Will Die in a Foreign Land.” To be honest — unknown author, tiny press, little publicity — I just set it aside. But through the intervention of some literary angel or my own laziness, the book kept hanging around the living room. Finally, I noticed it’s about the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that forced out President Yanukovych and served as a pretense for Vladimir Putin to steal Crimea.
Given the tragic relevance of that subject, this week I tore through “I Will Die in a Foreign Land.” It’s terrific. I’ve been following the alarming news about Putin’s machinations along the Ukrainian border, but nothing has given me such a profound impression of what Ukrainians have endured as this intensely moving novel.
The story follows the experiences of several characters whose lives intersect as the country’s political situation deteriorates. There’s a Ukrainian-American doctor struggling to treat injured protesters, an old KGB spy seeking forgiveness, a former mine worker and others — all of them freighted with grief and trying to stay alive amid the volatile conditions of the revolution. These episodes are frequently interspersed with folk songs, news reports and historical notes that flesh out the larger context. The effect — kaleidoscopic but never confusing — provides an intimate sense of a nation mourning, convulsing and somehow surviving.
Pickhart, who works at the Design School at Arizona State University, tells me, “I am deeply saddened that since I started writing this book in 2016, tensions have only escalated in Ukraine.” She’s alarmed that Putin’s politics reflect Stalin’s policy of Russification, which involves the “erasure of the Ukrainian people, their culture and their language.”
In 2020, during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly swore at an NPR reporter and scoffed, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” Reading Pickhart’s remarkable novel is one way to answer that question....more
Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has spoken out against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan so forcefully that no one would question her political courage. In Turkish novelist Elif Shafak has spoken out against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan so forcefully that no one would question her political courage. In her essays and interviews, she has decried her homeland’s alarming descent into authoritarianism, and in return both Shafak and her husband, the journalist Eyup Can, have been targets of Erdogan’s intimidation.
It’s both amazing and encouraging that such state-sponsored thuggery has done nothing to diminish Shafak’s artistic creativity nor her faith in the power of storytelling.
Her latest novel, “The Island of Missing Trees,” takes us to Cyprus, a land of “golden beaches, turquoise waters, lucid skies” and frightful conflict. In 1974, two teenagers — a Greek boy named Kostas and a Turkish girl named Defne — risk their parents’ condemnation by meeting secretly at night. Desperate to avoid the prying eyes of gossipy neighbors, Kostas and Defne find refuge in the backroom of a tavern owned by two men who understand what it’s like to pursue forbidden romance.
The tavern is called the Happy Fig, and it is, indeed, a. . . .
At the start of 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton resolved that she would not respond to Donald Trump’s insults.
Turns out she was just storing up her respoAt the start of 2016, Hillary Rodham Clinton resolved that she would not respond to Donald Trump’s insults.
Turns out she was just storing up her responses to unleash in her first novel.
There is no shortage of score-settling Washington memoirs, but this must be the first time a major presidential candidate has conducted a political assassination via a thriller. “State of Terror,” written with best-selling crime writer Louise Penny, is part entertainment, part roman à clef and all payback. Lightly cloaked in the guise of fiction, Clinton’s onetime opponent appears in these pages as careless, stupid, dangerous and traitorous.
I’m not complaining. The Thug-in-Chief deserves all the opprobrium he can carry in his sticky little hands, but this marks a striking contrast to the novel-writing partnership between Bill Clinton and James Patterson, who have largely avoided disparaging Trump. Their ridiculous but phenomenally successful thrillers — “The President Is Missing” (2018) and “The President’s Daughter” (2021) — stay comfortably ensconced in Bill’s macho fantasies of himself as a president/action-hero/savior. The men have comparatively little room — or stomach — for critiquing other administrations.
The Nasty Women are not nearly so timid. When “State of Terror” opens. . . .
Librarians and bookworms throughout time are the heroes of Anthony Doerr’s exceedingly busy new novel, “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Think of it as a triptych Librarians and bookworms throughout time are the heroes of Anthony Doerr’s exceedingly busy new novel, “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” Think of it as a triptych love letter to the millions of readers who made his previous novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “All the Light We Cannot See,” a phenomenal bestseller.
Once again, Doerr presents young people caught in the fires of war, but his stage this time around is far vaster than the plight of two children during World War II. “Cloud Cuckoo Land” struts across millennia. Wear comfortable shoes and remember to stay hydrated.
This is a big novel of people thinking big thoughts. The earliest action takes place in the mid-15th century when Omeir, an ostracized boy with a cleft palate, is conscripted into the Ottoman army and becomes a reluctant witness to one of history’s most consequential battles. The new sultan is marching on Constantinople with a set of mighty cannons that may allow him to breach the city’s ancient walls. (Spoiler alert: He does.) After cleaning army latrines, Omeir “wonders at the mystery of how one god can manage the thoughts and terrors of so many.”
Meanwhile, as preparation for that military assault grinds on, an orphan named Anna works at an embroidery house inside Constantinople. Like the young oxherd outside the city walls, she considers profound questions, too, like “How do men convince themselves that others must die so they might live?” Desperate to raise money to heal her sickly sister, Anna starts plucking ancient manuscripts from an abandoned priory at the edge of the city and selling them to well-heeled Italian book collectors. They work for a pre-Google nobleman who dreams of erecting “a library to. . . .
I’m not promising too much by claiming that Sarah Winman’s “Still Life” is a tonic for wanderlust and a cure for loneliness. It’s that rare, affectionI’m not promising too much by claiming that Sarah Winman’s “Still Life” is a tonic for wanderlust and a cure for loneliness. It’s that rare, affectionate novel that makes one feel grateful to have been carried along. Unfurling with no more hurry than a Saturday night among old friends, the story celebrates the myriad ways love is expressed and families are formed.
That may sound suspiciously sentimental, but the joys of “Still Life” are cured in a furnace of tragedy. The action begins in Italy during World War II. As bombs fall around them, a young British soldier named Ulysses runs across Miss Evelyn Skinner, a 64-year-old art historian. She’s been commissioned to help identify masterpieces hidden in the Tuscan hills to protect them from theft and destruction. When Ulysses questions the relevance of her work amid the human carnage of war, she’s ready: “Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgment. Captures forever that which is fleeting,” Evelyn says. “Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other.”
Ulysses, an unusually thoughtful and compassionate man, will never forget that lesson, but he has no reason to think he’ll ever see Evelyn again. The war, after all, is a great scrambler of human beings, a calamity as adept at forging relationships as breaking them apart. Indeed, the rest of “Still Life” — some 400 pages spread over several decades — takes place in the shadow of that common trauma of missing someone. . . .
On Sept. 2, 2015, the world woke to a photo of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi dead on a Turkish beach. The child and 11 other refugees of the Syrian civil war On Sept. 2, 2015, the world woke to a photo of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi dead on a Turkish beach. The child and 11 other refugees of the Syrian civil war had drowned in the Aegean Sea while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos.
For a moment, the international refugee crisis, which ensnares more than 80 million people, had a face too precious to ignore. The whole planet seemed united in revulsion and resolution. But then that moment passed, swallowed up once again by new waves of apathy, xenophobia and political cowardice.
Omar El Akkad, a journalist and fiction writer born in Egypt and raised in Qatar, won’t let us forget or fall back on resigned platitudes about the intractable nature of the refugee “problem.” His riveting new novel, “What Strange Paradise,” opens at sunrise on a small Mediterranean island. A storm has passed. “The beach is littered with the wreckage of the boat and the wreckage of its passengers,” El Akkad writes. “Dispossessed of nightfall’s temporary burial, the dead ferment indecency.”
The scene is impossibly peaceful, which makes it all the more horrific. Men in white contamination suits creep among the corpses, pocketing jewelry as they go. One of the shipwreck victims is a small boy whose head is pointed toward the waves, “his feet nestled into the warmer, lighter sand that remains dry.” But just as that description invokes the heartbreaking image of Alan Kurdi, this small boy opens his eyes. And runs. . . .
“The Sweetness of Water” — the latest Oprah Book Club pick — unfolds in Georgia during the murky twilight of the Civil War. Union soldiers have marche“The Sweetness of Water” — the latest Oprah Book Club pick — unfolds in Georgia during the murky twilight of the Civil War. Union soldiers have marched through the state telling enslaved Black people they’re free, but that freedom exists in the ruins of a White society seething with resentment, determined to maintain its superiority.
That this powerful book is Nathan Harris’s debut novel is remarkable; that he’s only 29 is miraculous. His prose is burnished with an antique patina that evokes the mid-19th century. And he explores this liminal moment in our history with extraordinary sensitivity to the range of responses from Black and White Americans contending with a revolutionary ideal of personhood.
The story opens in a fugue of mourning. George Walker is wandering through his 200-acre wood. A Northerner brought to Georgia decades ago as a child, George never developed any sympathy for the Southern cause. But the end of the War Between the States brings him no joy. He’s just received word that his only son, who enlisted with the Confederacy, was killed in the final weeks of battle. He reportedly died in. . . .
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