Reading in a plague year
On New Year’s Day 2020, 24 hours after an initial cluster of COVID-19 cases had been diagnosed in Wuhan, China, I was nose-deep in The Mirror & the Light, the magnificent doorstop conclusion to Dame Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, soaking up the pageantry and intrigue of Henry VIII’s court. Mantel cast a spell, and I was blissfully unaware of reports radiating outward from East Asia and then from Italy. Doomscrolling was future tense.
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M. Randal O’Wain’s stories limn the South’s inequities and anguished history
In his story collection Hallelujah Station, Memphis native M. Randal O’Wain explores lives we’ve pushed to the margins. There’s suffering aplenty, but there are also dashes of art — poets, Dutch Masters, David Lynch — to leaven the pain.
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Ayad Akhtar creates a powerful literary assemblage in Homeland Elegies
Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies is a dazzling, genre-busting book, a work of autofiction with the potential to shock us out of our complacency. Akhtar will discuss the book at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.
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Michael Ray Taylor talks about the wonders and wisdom found deep underground
Michael Ray Taylor’s Hidden Nature probes the daunting and delicate ecosystems of caves and the passion that drives those who seek a larger connection with the world. Taylor will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on August 16 and at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.
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Mohsin Hamid talks with Chapter 16 about his acclaimed literary bestseller, Exit West
Mohsin Hamid’s work conveys a deep moral questioning and a valiant effort to make sense of a world turned upside down. In this 2018 interview, Hamid answers questions from Chapter 16 about his literary influences and his fourth novel, Exit West.
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Jessica Pearce Rotondi explores her family’s grief in What We Inherit
The journalist Jessica Pearce Rotondi was 8 years old before she heard her mother speak the name of her uncle, Jack Pearce, who vanished when his plane was shot down over Laos in March 1972. In her propulsive memoir, What We Inherit, Rotondi probes her family’s agonized search for truth across three generations.
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