culture March 08, 2013

The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata

Several crocodiles make appearances in The Rainbow Troops. They are presented without much fanfare, as they pose just one of the everyday dangers of living poor in an Indonesian swamp. When a crocodile blocks his way, Lintang, the unlikely star of his ten-student, one-room schoolhouse, simply hacks a new route to class. He is well-trained in the art of making do—although just barely. When his bicycle chain snaps, he pawns his father's wedding ring to repair it. His classmates hope the chain will hold, since Lintang's family has nothing else to pawn, and the bike is his only means of transportation.

culture July 05, 2012

The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen

The year was 1911 and Sam Zemurray, a penniless Russian immigrant, was on his way to becoming an American business mogul. Zemurray had gained a modest foothold in the fruit business by selling "ripes"—bananas that arrived in the US too bruised and brown for the United Fruit Company to sell. Investing his profits, he bought a slice of land along the Cuyamel River in Honduras where he planned to grow and export his own fruit. After bribing his way to tax-free exports and exemption from import duties on equipment, Zemurray was poised to strike it rich, but he had a problem: the Honduran government

culture April 23, 2012

Almost Never by Daniel Sada

If you read only three novelists on Mexico — and you should read many more, but that’s your affair — choose Juan Rulfo, Roberto Bolaño and Daniel Sada. Rulfo cleared the way for magic realism with Pedro Páramo, published in 1955, a decade before the Boom. Bolaño, a Chilean whose great subject was Mexico, asserted that realism itself was magic enough to support a novel, and his gangs of visceral realists and killers bore him out. Meanwhile Sada, who died last year, reveled in wordplay and mimicry in his Joycean celebrations of Mexico’s cowboy north.

interviews September 08, 2011

Bookforum interviews Amy Waldman

Four years ago, Amy Waldman decided to take a break from her life as a reporter, She had just returned from a stint as the New York Times’s South Asia bureau chief and, along with her luggage, schlepped an idea home from abroad, This idea grew into her novel, The Submission, which was just published.

Four years ago, Amy Waldman decided to take a break from her life as a reporter. She had just returned from a stint as the New York Times’s South Asia bureau chief and, along with her luggage, schlepped an idea home from abroad. This idea grew into her novel, The Submission, which was just published. The book follows a competition to choose a memorial for the site of a 9/11-style attack in New York City. When a committee of artists, politicians, and family members choose “The Garden,” a design by Muslim-American architect Mohammad Khan, the media latches onto the story, heightening tensions in

Rachel Nolan