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Literary Nonfiction. Art. Fiction. Poetry. SELECTED TWEETS by Mira Gonzalez and Tao Lin, dating from 2008 to 2014, as well as extras such as illustrations of each other's tweets, short stories, essays, and a long poem. SHEILA HETI: How do you imagine people read Twitter? TAO LIN: On their phones I think mostly. I think I've read the most Twitter while laying in bed or on my back, or just laying in places, like in parks or in airports. Maybe not the most, but a lot. I've dropped my phone on my face many times. I think other people must too, but I rarely hear about this. SHEILA HETI: What do you think about before you tweet? You once told me that you tweet what makes you feel uncomfortable. So...
Named a Best Cookbook of the Year by Martha Stewart Living "Magnificent illustrations add spirit to recipes and heartfelt narratives. Plan to buy two copies—one for you and one for your best foodie friend." —Taste of Home This collection of intimate, illustrated essays by some of America’s most well–regarded literary writers explores how comfort food can help us cope with dark times—be it the loss of a parent, the loneliness of a move, or the pain of heartache. Lev Grossman explains how he survived on “sweet, sour, spicy, salty, unabashedly gluey” General Tso’s tofu after his divorce. Carmen Maria Machado describes her growing pains as she learned to feed and care for herself...
From the acclaimed author of Taipei, a bold portrait of a writer working to balance all his lives—artist, son, loner—as he spins the ordinary into something monumental. An engrossing, hopeful novel about life, fiction, and where the two blur together. In 2014, a novelist named Li leaves Manhattan to visit his parents in Taipei for ten weeks. He doesn't know it yet, but his life will begin to deepen and complexify on this trip. As he flies between these two worlds--year by year, over four years--he will flit in and out of optimism, despair, loneliness, sanity, bouts of chronic pain, and drafts of a new book. He will incite and temper arguments, uncover secrets about nature and history, an...
Imagine a world where the healthy choice is the only choice. 'Original and subversive.' Independent 'Life-affirming' Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said Lea Kirino is a 'Lifer,' who has the potential to live forever - if she does everything right. She has lived her life by religiously following the state directives that ensure she remains fit and healthy. She knows she wants to live forever, and she is going to green juice, yoga-cise and meditate her way to immortality. Yet, when a brush with death brings her face to face with a mysterious group who believe in everything the state has banned, memories of now-forbidden childhood pleasures resurge alongside ghosts of her past. As Lea's long-held beliefs begin to crack, she is forced to consider: What does it really mean to live? 'Addictive' Sun 'Fascinating' Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy 'An intriguing idea in which Heng takes a much-needed swipe at health fascism and our obsession with youth, beauty and superfoods' Mail on Sunday
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE A dazzling literary debut about three lives colliding in 80s downtown New York On the eve of 1980, downtown New York is the centre of the universe. Here are the artistes and the socialites, the dealers, collectors, bartenders, freaks, party-goers and hangers-on-all looking to make it in the big city, teetering on the brink of selling out, searching for something to save them. Among them is painter Raul Engales, in exile from Argentina's Dirty War and his own past. Fresh on the downtown scene and posing as an art student, he has just caught the eye of New York's most infamous art critic: James Bennett. James has synaesthesia, experi...
Presents a selection of the best works of short fiction of the past year from a variety of acclaimed sources.
Maxwell Smythe Brown IV is a smart-ass by design. To counter the ridicule his fancy name attracted, Brown the child became the point person in pranks, taunts, and mischief that kept him in hot water with teachers, principals, clerics and coaches. As he grew older, he added irreverence to mischievousness and his circle of victims and antagonists expanded to include military commanders, bosses and colleagues. When his clever speech and picaresque ways help him win the hand of a stunningly beautiful woman, it goes wrong; she’s dismally unsuited for marriage and makes his life miserable. There are occasional bright spots: his disregard for authority and convention helps him survive the Vietnam...
Fourteen years after their (mis)adventures in the US Max and Sally are comfortably settled in Geneva and both wondering if their lives of comfort and privilege don’t require they make a contribution. They find token employment with the CIA. This converts to an assignment to uncover the source of counterfeit drugs in Southeast Asia that are killing thousands. Unprepared, and overly zealous, their every effort seems to result in the death of a friend or acquaintance. The trail leads to remnants of the Khmers Rouges – the quintessence of evil – in western Cambodia. The battle is waged on elephant back, in a Thai brothel, in Cambodian minefields, and in Khmers Rouges strongholds. Sally is wounded and Max is forced to carry on alone. Obsessed with the existence of evil since childhood, Max discovers an unwelcome source of barbarity: within himself
At some point, maybe twenty minutes after he'd begun refreshing Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Gmail in a continuous cycle - with an ongoing, affectless, humorless realisation that his day 'was over' - he noticed with confusion, having thought it was early morning, that it was 4:46PM Taipei is an ode - or lament - to the way we live now. Following Paul from New York, where he comically navigates Manhattan's art and literary scenes, to Taipei, Taiwan, where he confronts his family's roots, we see one relationship fail, while another is born on the internet and blooms into an unexpected wedding in Las Vegas. From one of this generation's most talked-about and enigmatic writers comes a deeply personal and uncompromising novel about memory, love, and what it means to be alive.
In this tightly plotted yet mind-expanding debut novel, an unlikely detective, armed with only an umbrella and a singular handbook, must untangle a string of crimes committed in and through people's dreams. In an unnamed city always slick with rain, Charles Unwin is a humble file clerk working for a huge and imperious detective agency, and all he knows about solving mysteries comes from filing reports for the illustrious investigator Travis Sivart. When Sivart goes missing, and his supervisor turns up murdered, Unwin is suddenly promoted to detective, a rank for which he lacks both the skills and the stomach. His only guidance comes from his new assistant, who would be perfect if she weren't so sleepy, and from the pithy yet profound Manual of Detection. The Manual of Detection defies comparison; it is a brilliantly conceived, meticulously realised novel that will change what you think about how you think.