Hilary Mantel, the British author of seventeen books including Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, and The Mirror and the Light—which comprise her trilogy based on Thomas Cromwell’s life—has died at the age of seventy. In addition to her prize-winning historical fiction, Mantel wrote criticism and essays for the London Review of Books, contributing over fifty pieces since 1987. Today, the Review will unpaywall and share a selection of those writings. At his Substack, Leo Robson reflects on Mantel’s philosophy of historical fiction, her influences, and her friendship and collaboration with the

For The Guardian, Lucy Hughes-Hallett reviews Orhan Pamuk’s latest, Nights of Plague, which takes place during the end of the Ottoman Empire.  Hughes-Hallett observes: “ it is a novel about a community ravaged by an incurable disease. It talks—in many different voices—about enforced isolation and lockdown. It tracks the way an epidemic justifies authoritarian measures, providing another way for Pamuk to make a veiled comment on Turkey’s current regime.” 

Imani Perry’s new book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, is out now. In an essay in The

Yxta Maya Murray interviews Sandra Cisneros about her new book of poetry, Woman Without Shame, which is out now. After a wide-ranging conversation on poetry, her family, and her many awards, Murray asks Cisneros what her most significant relationship was. The poet mentions her dog, Camacho: “He loved me like no human being has ever loved me. Sometimes the great love of your life has four feet and a tail.” 

There is still time to get free tickets to Bookforum’s online event, “Sports Annotated,” a discussion of fandom, obsession, and loss with Miranda Popkey, Lindsay Zoladz, Ross Gay, and Thomas

For Vulture, Ryu Spaeth profiles Hua Hsu and argues that Hsu’s new coming-of-age memoir, Stay True, represents an evolution in Asian-American literature. While the book is largely an elegy to a college friend who was murdered after a party, it also depicts Hsu and his buddies just hanging out, with some highly comedic results: “The book has some very funny scenes of Hsu being embarrassed by his extremely basic friend, rolling up the car window so no one can hear Ken blasting ‘Crash Into Me’ on the stereo.”

In Harper’s Magazine, Charlotte Shane writes an essay on abortion and “the right to not

Jung Hae Chae has been awarded the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize for her book Pojangmacha People. The prize, which was created to “honor and encourage the art of literary nonfiction,” has in the past gone to writers such as Kevin Young, Leslie Jamison, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Lars Horn. In addition to giving Chae a $20,000 advance and a $2,000 stipend, Graywolf will publish the book, which, according to the publisher, “deeply explores the idea of matrilineal inheritance of ‘han’ in the Korean diaspora...[and] centers the lives of ‘ordinary’ Korean women...who take action as the makers of their

The National Book Award has announced its longlist for fiction and nonfiction. The finalists will be announced on October 4th. Eight of the ten nominated works of fiction were debuts.   

On September 30th, Bookforum will host a Brooklyn Bookfest event, “Sports Annotated,” based on our summer issue about sports and literature. The panel will feature poet Ross Gay, critic Lindsay Zoladz, and novelist Miranda Popkey in discussion with moderator Thomas Beller. You can get your free tickets to the online event here.

The US Verso Books union has ratified its contract after sixteen months of

Alexandra Kleeman profiles novelist Yiyun Li for the New York Times Magazine, and writes about Li’s latest novel, The Book of Goose, which will be published next week. Among the questions Kleeman poses is one borrowed from a character in Li’s 2019 novel Where Reasons End: “What do you do all day?” Over email, Li explains why she tries to stay “midthought” throughout the day: “I don’t think writing is the beginning of the thought, the beginning happens before we start typing the first word; and usually the thought doesn’t end when a story or a novel ends. The thought (several thoughts) still

In tribute to filmmaker and montage master Jean-Luc Godard, who died yesterday in Switzerland by assisted suicide, Leo Robson has “assembled some of my favourite statements made by and about the director over the past seventy years.” The Paris Review has shared a partial transcript from a 1979 conversation between Godard and the writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras. In a remembrance published online at n+1, Blair McClendon writes: “I never have much to say to giants. It was enough to know that he was out there—smoking a cigar, whining, planning—while I was elsewhere doing those same things,

Javier Marías has died at age seventy. The Spanish writer, best known for his Your Face Tomorrow trilogy, was the author of more than fifteen novels, including Thus Bad Begins, and The Infatuations.  In 2018, Marías said in an interview with Garth Risk Hallberg, “A professor goes to give his lesson after 40 years . . . and the teacher knows he will give a good lesson, or at least a decent one. And he will do it with ease. And the carpenter who’s been making tables for 40 years or whatever knows he will succeed with the next table. But a novelist doesn’t know that at all!”

On her Substack,

The New Yorker Festival tickets are now on sale. On Saturday, October 8, Andrew Solomon will talk with Rachel Aviv, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Hari Kunzru will talk with Parul Sehgal, and Elif Batuman and Gary Shteyngart will talk with Molly Fischer. On Sunday, October 9, Rachel Kushner and Ottessa Moshfegh will talk with Deborah Treisman. 

Emma Straub has been posting tributes to her father, the award-winning horror writer Peter Straub, who died last week. Among the photos here is a handwritten list of poets that Peter recommended when Emma opened her Brooklyn bookstore Books Are Magic:

Sarah Jones offers a remembrance of activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich, who died last week, at Intelligencer. Jones first encountered Ehrenreich’s work when her mother was reading Nickel and Dimed. “What astonished me early about Ehrenreich’s work wasn’t just that she, as an individual, cared about the working poor, but that she could get others to do the same. From my vantage as the daughter of a precarious family, it looked like Ehrenreich had performed a magic trick. With time, though, I came to understand something about how she managed it. Ehrenreich’s power as a social critic is a

For the New Statesman, Nick Burns reconsiders Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History on its thirtieth anniversary. Reflecting on its continuing appeal, Burns notes that “Tartt’s characters take the world of Waugh’s Brideshead as a model for their tastes, attire, manner of speaking, and The Secret History offers an invitation into a select society devoted to this kind of re-enactment.”   

The Root rounds up a list of books by Black authors to look forward to this month. Lit Hub suggests twenty-two novels to read this fall. 

Community Bookstore is hosting a virtual event with Merve Emre and