EarlyWord

It’s here!

The setting is changed from the book’s London location to New York (thus, no images of gin and tonics in a can. In fact, the main character Rachel’s heavy drinking is only hinted at), but Emily Blunt keeps her British accent.

The movie arrives in theaters on Oct. 7th.

It may be hard to imagine, but three short stories by a Nobel-winning Canadian writer known for her modesty, realism and subtle psychological insight, have been adapted into a film by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, known for his flamboyance, splashy story telling and occasional use of surrealism.

The movie Julieta, was recently announced as an Official Selection for the Cannes Competition. It premiered in Spain earlier this month where, according to Deadline it was well-received and described as “a brilliant adaptation that lets you know you’re in the hands of a master.”

Unfortunately, the Hollywood Reporter and Variety reviewers did not see it the that way.

Based on three short stories from Munro’s collection Runaway (PRH/Knopf), about a Vancouver woman named Juliet Henderson, Almodovar moves the setting to Madrid and changes the character’s name to Julieta Diaz.

It is set to open in the UK in August; no US release date or tie-in has been announced.

Another cross-cultural adaptation in the competition is Korean director Park Chan-wook’s modernized version of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith (PRH/Riverhead) titled Agassi (The Handmaiden). The director talks about the changes he made to the novel in an interview in Variety.

In less of a stretch, Steven Spielberg’s The BFG based on the novel by Roald Dahl will also be shown at the festival which runs May 11-22.

Although it’s been a contender for major literary awards, winning the ALA’s Andrew Carnegie Medal and was named a best book by most sources, The Sympathizer (Grove Press, April 2015), Viet Thanh Nguyen’s 2016 Pulitzer Prise-winning debut may not be that well-known to general readers (the Guardian‘s headline says it went “from overlooked to Pulitzer winner“). If you’re struggling to describe it to readers, the following reactions to the award announcement may help.

Calling the central character “a wickedly smart double-agent,” the Los Angeles Times, says the novel is “Part thriller, part political satire … sharp-edged fiction.”

The NYT echoes that almost exactly, calling it “Part satire, part espionage thriller and part historical novel,” while The Washington Post describes it as a “cerebral thriller.”

Bustle, which also offers a handy 9 Books To Read If You Loved The Sympathizer list, summaries the start of the novel in atmospheric prose that invites readers to dive in:

“The novel begins in Saigon, a city in complete chaos. Helicopter blades pound as quickly as the hearts of fearful villagers, and communist tanks are just about to roll in. Amidst the chaos, the General of the South Vietnamese army lists off the lucky few individuals who will make it aboard the last flights out of the country. His trusted Captain, the narrator of the novel, is one of the few.”

LitHub lures readers with:

“What begins casually turns murderous and then absurd as the unnamed narrator tries unsuccessfully to separate from his past. He winds up having to participate in assassinations to cover his tracks. He even takes a turn in Hollywood working on a film that sounds an awful lot like Apocalypse Now.”

LitHub goes on to pair the novel with a recent piece of criticism by Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies (Harvard UP, March 2016) to make the case for understanding the novel’s importance, saying:

“Put together, the two books perform an optic tilt about Vietnam and what America did there as profound as Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Toni Morrison’s Beloved were to the legacy of racism and slavery.”

In a good bit of timing, the novel was just release in trade paperback. On news of the award both editions zoomed up Amazon’s rankings: Trade pbk: Sales rank: 18 (was 10,077); Hardcover: Sales rank: 88 (was 23,191).

That’s the highest ranking the novel has reached to date by far, the previous high was #5,938. The Sympathizer was on the ABA IndieBound best seller list for six weeks (at a high of #24) and the L.A. Times best seller list for 2 weeks, but did not crack any other list.

Librarians identified its pleasures, however. It was selected as a 2016 Notable Books title by the RUSA Notable Books Council and then went on to win the Andrew Carnegie Medal.

UPDATE: More Surpises

The General Nonfiction medal did not go to the expected book, Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates (PRH/Spiegel & Grau), but to Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, by Joby Warrick (PRH/(Doubleday). Coates was named as a finalist.

The Award winner in Criticism caused some consternation, because it did not go to a newspaper writer but to Emily Nussbaum who writes about television for a magazine, the New Yorker. A change in the rules opened both that category and Feature Writing to magazines this year, reflecting the sad fact that newspapers have cut their arts coverage over the years. Thus, in a first, the New Yorker won its first Pulitzers and in two categories.

The Drama award went to a play with book connections, Hamilton. Although, given the acclaim it has arleady received, it was not a surprise, it is the first musical to win in many years.

The 2016 Pulitzer Prize Winners in the book categories are:

Fiction —  The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, April 2015)

History — Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, T.J. Stiles (PRH/Knopf)

Biography or Autobiography — Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, (Penguin Press)

Poetry — Ozone Journal, Peter Balakian, (U. Of Chicago Press)

General Nonfiction —  Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS (PRH/Doubleday; BOT)

In addition, Hamilton wins the Drama Award.

Once again, the criticism award does not go to book coverage, but to Emily Nussbaum, for television reviewing, in the New Yorker. The last time the award went to a book reviewer was in 2001, to Gail Caldwell who was then chief book critic for The Boston Globe.

Marking its one hundredth anniversary, the Pulitzer Prize Awards will be announced today at 3 p.m. ET.

The very first award for a fiction title went to the now largely forgotten His Family, by Ernest Poole (Macmillan), but that was followed by many titles that went on to become classics (winners in the category originally designated as Novels 1918 through 1947, are listed here; since 1948, it was designated as Fiction; winners are listed here).

In recent years, the Fiction Award has created best sellers (e.g.
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout), or added longevity to titles that were already best sellers (last year’s winner, All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr just passed it’s 100th week on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list).

In addition to Fiction, the other Pulitzer Prize book categories are:

History (1917-present)

Biography or Autobiography (1917-present)

Poetry (1922-present)

General Nonfiction (1962-present)

There is also an award for Criticism (1970-present), a wide-ranging category which includes film and book reviewing (the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani won in 1998), and even reviewing of automobiles.

A live stream of the awards announcements is below:

A new deal between Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way and Paramount Pictures brings renewed attention to the long-simmering film adaptation of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (RH/Crown, 2003). Deadline reports that the movie, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring the actor could be “DiCaprio’s next major project.”

As we observed last August, the adaptation has had a long gestation period. Tom Cruise acquired the rights, planning to star, in 2003 but nothing came of it and DiCaprio bought the rights in 2010. It was not until screenwriter Billy Ray (The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips) figured out a way to tell the book’s dual story that power players got behind the adaptation once again.

DiCaprio clearly likes book adaptations. His production company is currently at work on Live By Night, based on the Dennis Lehane novel and directed by Ben Affleck.

He has two other book adaptations in mind as well, Variety reports. One is based on the forthcoming YA post-apocalyptic novel Sandcastle Empire by debut author Kayla Olson, to be published by HarperTeen in the summer of 2017, according to the author’s website. Also in development is another long simmering project, a limited television series adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Charles Lindbergh.

A caution, however, as The Guardian reports, “Appian Way is a serial purchaser of rights to promising Hollywood projects, not all of which see the light of day.”

Downton writer Julian Fellowes isn’t the only one harking back to the retro form of serial publication (even if the technology fails).

Stephen King published his Bram Stoker award-winning novel The Green Mile in six serial paperback parts 20 years ago. The story recounted the magical powers of John Coffey, a death row inmate in Georgia.

Eventually, the series was together and issued as a single book and then adapted into a film starring Tom Hanks.

To mark the 20th anniversary of The Green Mile, King’s publisher, S&S/Scribner, is about to un-do that process and re-release the segments in serial form once again, this time as digital chapters.

Entertainment Weekly reports that “the first volume, The Two Dead Girls, is available now. The Mouse on the Mile will follow April 26, then Coffey’s Hands on May 10, The Bad Death of Eduard Delacroix on May 24, Night Journey on June 7, and Coffey on the Mile June 21.” OverDrive offers a sample of the first volume.

Two quite different titles arrive to remarkably similar fanfare next week. Each has been selected for Indie Next and/or LibraryReads, and has received advance media attention and great prepub reviews. Despite all this, both were excoriated by the daily NYT reviewers.

The titles covered here, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of April 18, 2016

Of the two, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample) is receiving the most advance attention. An update of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set in Cincinnati no less, it is the number one LibraryReads for April (see below), an Indie Next selection, People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” and is reviewed appreciatively by Entertainment Weekly. The author is featured on NPR’s  Weekend Edition Sunday and profiled in the New York Times, but the daily NYT‘s reviewer Michiko Kakutani rains all over it in an early and particularly savage review (“reads less like a homage or reimagining of Austen’s classic than a heavy-handed and deeply unfunny parody.”).

In terms of holds for books coming out next week, it’s currently neck and neck with Amanda Quick’s ‘Til Death Do Us Part (PRH/Berkley; OverDrive Sample), also a LibraryReads pick. Both are far behind the holds leader, David Baldacci’s Last Mile.(Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), his next thriller featuring detective Amos Decker after Memory Man.

The NYT‘s Janet Maslin does a hatchet job on another heavily anticipated novel, Maestra, L.S. Hilton (PRH/Putnam; BOT; OverDrive Sample), an Indie Next pick for April (see below). Marlin calls it “a pornographic shopathon travelogue thriller.” Entertainment Weekly gives it a more positive spin, saying it’s “a sensual, sweat-suffused thriller … engaging throughout, but [main character] Judith remains frustratingly distant, and that mires the novel in the realm of macabre wish fulfillment.”

Booklist ‘s starred review calls it “a gift for readers who delight in vengeful female protagonists.”

It is currently being adapted for Sony Pictures by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, described in a profile in the Wall Street Journal this week as “the new go-to voice for female-driven movie thrillers.”

It’s showing about half the number of holds as those for Eligible on similar ordering.

For readers who like twisty dark psychological thrillers, but with a bit less edge, take them to the new books shelves in YA for The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas (PRH/Delacorte; Listening Library), Bustle recommends it, because it “explores the nature of truth, childhood friendships, and the unreliability of memory in shocking ways. Fans of authors like Gillian Flynn and books like The Girl On The Train and Luckiest Girl Alive won’t be able to resist this YA thriller.”

People Magazine Picks

People magazines “Book of the Week” is Sittenfeld’s Eligible. The other two recommendations are:

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos (Macmillan/ FSG; Macmillan Audio) —  “This beautiful mediation on love and loss and art is as luminous as a Vermeer.” Also an Indie Next pick.

Girl About Town (S&S; Atheneum Books for Young Readers) — a classic whodunit by Dancer-director Shankman (Hairspray). People calls it a “Nostalgic gun.”

Also in the magazine is an excerpt of the bio, Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter by Barbara Leaming, (Macmillan; Macmillan Audio)

Peer Picks

Three of the ten April LibraryReads pick hits shelves this week.

The #1 pick is Eligible: A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Curtis Sittenfeld (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Leslie DeLooze, of Richmond Memorial Library, Batavia, NYLibraryReads introduces this next re-telling in the Austen Project:

“Love, sex, and relationships in contemporary Cincinnati provide an incisive social commentary set in the framework of Pride and Prejudice. Sittenfeld’s inclusion of a Bachelor-like reality show is a brilliant parallel to the scrutiny placed on characters in the neighborhood balls of Jane Austen’s novel, and readers will have no question about the crass nature of the younger Bennets, or the pride—and prejudice—of the heroine.”

Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of the “10 books you have to read in April,” saying: “Clear your afternoon and finish it in one gulp.” It is also an Indie Next pick for May and a GalleyChat favorite.

Sharon Layburn, of South Huntington Public Library, Huntington Station, NY calls the newest Amanda Quick novel, ‘Til Death Do Us Part (PRH/Berkley; OverDrive Sample) a “tour de force” in her inviting annotation:

“Gothic atmosphere meets tender romance in Quick’s latest Victorian era tour de force. Calista Langley asks crime novelist Trent Hastings for assistance in unmasking a twisted secret admirer that seems to have singled her out, and the two become tangled up in more than just an investigation. Quick perfectly balances setting, characters, plot, and relationship development–the end result being a story that will delight her legion of fans, as well as earn her new ones.”

A title sure to warm any librarian’s heart, The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts, Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster; HighBridge Audio) also hits shelves.

Marika Zemke, of Commerce Township Public Library, Commerce Township, MI offers this introduction:

“For centuries, Arabic manuscripts were collected by private households in Mali, particularly Timbuktu: gilded manuscripts painted with real gold, showing vibrantly colored illustrations of nature. These highly valued manuscripts were handed down within families who acted as caretakers. As radicalized Muslim leaders came into power, the manuscripts were seen as corruptions of true Islam, requiring intervention. History and adventure at its best.”

Three Indie Next May selections also hit shelves.

Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family, Diana Abu-Jaber (W. W. Norton & Company).

“Is it any wonder that memoir is the richest genre? The stories we live are far more fanciful, heartbreaking, and ridiculous than the ones we create with our imagination. We have no control over them. They unfold in spite of our best efforts in a clumsy, unsettled mess that becomes our life. In Life Without a Recipe, Abu-Jaber stops along the way to consider the terrain. She can’t control the events, but she controls the words with tight, perfect sentences. There’s a beauty and elegance to the prose that elevates this story of the author’s search for identity that results in a warm and wise delicacy to be savored.” —Terry Nebeker, One More Page, Arlington, VA

Entertainment Weekly lists it as one of the “10 books you have to read in April.”

Maestra, L.S. Hilton (PRH/G.P. Putnam’s Sons; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“Get ready to tear through this hedonistic and refreshingly sex-positive thriller that hits all the right notes. Hilton sets her amoral heroine, Judith, amidst the shallow elegance of the European art world. While Judith is deeply enamored with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, she is also a razor-sharp critic of bad taste and human softness, sniffing out and exploiting male weakness with gusto. She is utterly void of empathy, yet oddly sympathetic. I’ll be recommending this novel to everyone I know with a strong constitution and an appreciation for intensity!” —Seija Emerson, University Book Store, Seattle, WA

Mothering Sunday: A Romance, Graham Swift (PRH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample).

“A beautiful afternoon on Mothering Sunday — now known as Mother’s Day — in 1924 provides the backdrop for this exquisite tale of love, longing, and memory. Jane Fairchild, a house maid, has been the long-time lover to the heir-apparent at the estate next door. Their final cataclysmic afternoon together will alter the course of her destiny in ways that she never contemplated. Told in flashbacks by the nonagenarian Jane, this rare gem of a novella will haunt readers long after they turn the final pages. Superb!” —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN

It also made Entertainment Weekly‘s “10 books you have to read in April” listing: “‘Save some tissues for Graham Swift’s latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance.”

Tie-ins

Two tie-ins come out this week, another in support of what Marvel hopes will be a blockbuster movie and a different kind of big film, the next starring Tom Hanks.

Last week we wrote about the Junior novel tie-in for the superhero film Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War. This week sees a re-print of the graphic novel itself: Civil War Movie Edition, Mark Millar and illustrated by Steve McNiven (Hachette/Marvel).

Captain America: Civil War opens 5/6/16.

A Hologram for the King (MTI), Dave Eggers (PRH/Vintage; OverDrive Sample) also comes out this week, tying in to the April 22nd opening of the new Tom Hanks movie directed by Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), also starring Ben Whishaw, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury.

Eggers’s 2012 novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and tells the story of a down-on-his-luck American salesman who hopes a deal made in Saudi Arabia will change his fortunes.

For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.

To mark the second season of the Outlander TV show, Diana Gabaldon has released another Outlander novella (or short story, depending on your viewpoint), Virgins: An Outlander Novella (PRH/Dell, ISBN 9781101882528; Recorded Books), which arrives on the new USA Today best seller list at #10.

Previously published in the anthology Dangerous Women edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (Macmillan/Tor/Forge, December 2013; ISBN: 9780765332066), it is excerpted on Gabaldon’s website.

The story predates the events of Outlander and begins just after Jamie is flogged by Randall and escapes to France, where he joins a band of mercenaries that includes his great friend Ian Murray.

When the print collection was published, also featuring a Martin story from the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire, it earned a starred review from PW and the LA Times called it “a splendid cross-genre anthology” and is in many library collections.

Regardless of format, the strong debut on the USA Today best-seller list is another indicator of how well the STARZ series is doing and its ability to bring new readers to the books.

The Jungle Book continues to earn stellar reviews and is set to open to acclaim this week. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz sums up the general take:

“I saw the newest Disney version of The Jungle Book in the company of my enthralled 12-year old son, and there were moments when I envied him—but not too many, because the film is so surefooted in its effects, so precise and simple in its characterizations, and so clear about what it’s trying to say about the relationship between humanity and nature, that it made me feel about his age again, too. Maybe younger.”

Entertainment Weekly, Deadline, and USA TODAY all follow suit with The A.V. Club offering a rare dissent.

Today we focus on 3 movies of the adaptations arriving next week with tie-ins and big prospects (there are more, see our Upcoming Books to Movies and TV spreadsheet).

The Night Manager debuts on AMC (imported from the BBC) in a six-part miniseries that had already enjoyed gushing praise, so much so that fans are asking for a second season.

Promoting the the US release, stars Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie both say there will only be the one season.

The TV show is based on The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) by John le Carré (PRH/Ballantine Books) in which a former British solider goes undercover to investigate an arms dealer.

The series begins in the US on April 19. One indicator of its success is that, after its release in the UK, tourist business increased to Mallorca, a major setting of the show.

Hologram for the King have sneaked up on many with even the tie-in edition coming out just a week ahead of the film’s opening.

If you aren’t aware of it, you’re not out of the loop. There hasn’t been a great deal of press coverage yet, even though the trailer got attention and Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of “20 of 2016’s Most Anticipated Book-to-Movie Adaptations.”

The film is directed by Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas) and stars Tom Hanks, Ben Whishaw, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury. Based on Dave Eggers’s 2012 novel, a finalist for the National Book Award, it tells the story of a washed-out American salesman trying to change his fortunes with a deal out of Saudi Arabia.

The season six premiere of Game of Thrones airs on April 24th, finally putting an end to months of speculation over what is going to happen now that the TV series jumps ahead of  George R.R. Martin’s novels. As a result, there is no tie-in for this season, with Martin writing that the next book will “be done when it’s done.”

A new trailer was released this week, prompting the fan site Den of Geek to analyze the many promos to date.

Tickets to the Broadway show Hamilton are notoriously hard to get. Turns out the same is true for Hamilton in print form: Hamilton: The Revolution, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter (Hachette/Grand Central Publishing; Hachette Audio and Blackstone Audio).

Early demand for the tie-in was huge. It tops Amazon’s best-seller list as well as Barnes & Noble’s and now, as the Associated Press and USA TODAY report, it is sold out on Amazon with a third printing expected in 9 to 12 days.

It is so popular the book has its own hashtag, #hamiltome.

Grand Central Publishing spokesman Jimmy Franco says “Hamilton: The Revolution already is going into its third printing, for a planned total of 210,000 copies.”

As we noted, Hamilton is likely to be the first Broadway script to hit bestseller lists.  Published on Tuesday, it should hit the weekly lists next week (it’s already on Amazon’s list which is updated hourly).

Libraries we checked that own copies are seeing strong circ. and high holds with ratios of 5:1 and larger. Libraries with copies still on order are building very long holds lists as they wait.

Ron Chernow’s biography, Alexander Hamilton (PRH/Penguin, 2004), the inspiration for the musical, remains popular but is still in stock. It is currently #18 on the Amazon charts. In libraries it is showing strong circ. and respectable holds lists as well.

Another alternative is Hamilton: Vocal Selections (Hal Leonard;  978-1495057540), with words and music.

The HBO documentary, Love & Mercy, released last year, looked at the many painful aspects of the life of the co-founder of the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson.

Wilson was not involved in the making of the movie, but he called it “very factual.”

He is about to add more facts to the story, in a memoir titled I Am Brian Wilson (Perseus/Da Capo Press, October 11, 2016). The press release announcing the publication  date has been picked up by several news sources, including the New York Times.  A brief  excerpt of the book is on The Rolling Stone Web site.

If you had a tough time imagining Kevin Wilson’s quirky novel The Family Fang (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2011) as a movie, the trailer released this week gives hope that the adaptation might actually work.

Early reviews, based on a showing at the Toronto Internation Film Festival, are mostly positive, with an 80% positive rating from critics tracked on Rotten Tomatoes.

A GalleyChat favorite, the book was acquired by Nicole Kidman’s production company, Kidman stars, along with Jason Bateman, who also directs the project.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it has nothing to do with vampires, but with a quirky family of performance artists.

The film was acquired for distribution by Stars Digital. It will be shown in a limited number of  theaters on April 29, followed by a national rollout and simultaneous VOD release on May 6.

A tie-in has not been announced, but the paperback edition carries a “Now major motion picture” sticker,

The shortlist of six finalists for the 2016 Booker International Prize has been announced. A younger sibling to the more well-known Booker Prize for Fiction (that longlist will be announced in July), it has been given every two years since 2005 to authors who are not citizens of the Commonwealth, for an entire body of work in any language (past winners have included Canadian Alice Munro and US citizens Philip Roth and Lydia Davis).

Now that the main Booker Award is open to all writers in English, regardless of citizenship, the International Award has been changed to one for individual novels in English translation, recognizing not only the authors, but also the translators, a change that the Guardian notes, “should help raise the profile of translated books.”

The judges call this shortlist “exhilarating,” praising its diversity.

The finalist best-known in the US is Elena Ferrante for The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four, translated by Ann Goldstein (PRH/Europa Editions, Sept. 1, 2015; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample). All the titles in the author’s series have been best sellers here, with even the translator achieving celebrity status.

Also having received attention here is The Vegetarian, by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (PRH/Hogarth; Feb. 2, 2016; OverDrive Sample)

A profile of the author in the daily NYT Books section calls the novel, which was published ten years ago in South Korea,  a “mesmerizing mix of sex and violence.” The review in the NYT “Sunday Book Review” comes with the warning that nothing can “prepare a reader for the traumas of this Korean author’s translated debut in the Anglophone world.”

The winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature is also among the finalists, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk for A Strangeness in My Mind, translated by Ekin Oklap (PRH/Knopf, Oct. 20, 2015; BOT; OverDrive Sample)

Daily NYT reviewer Dwight Garner calls this a minor work, lacking the “the visceral and cerebral impact of Mr. Pamuk’s best novels.”

The other titles on the list are:
A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins (Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Sept. 13, 2016) — “Like John Williams’ Stoner or Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams, A Whole Life is a tender book about finding dignity and beauty in solitude. It looks at the moments, big and small, that make us what we are.” — from the description on the Booker site

The Four Books, Yan Lianke, translated by Carlos Rojas (Perseus/PGW/Legato/Grove Press, March 8, 2016; OverDrive Sample)– ” No other writer in today’s China has so consistently explored, dissected and mocked the past six and a half decades of Chinese communist rule.” — the Guardian

A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn (PRH/Archipelago, Dec. 15, 2015; OverDrive Sample) — “a wild patchwork of a novel that tells the story of Angola through Ludo, a woman who bricks herself into her apartment on the eve of Angolan independence. For the next 30 years she lives off vegetables and pigeons, and burns her furniture to stay warm. ” — from the description on the Booker site..

The winner of the Prize will be announced on May 16th.

Julian Fellowes appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition today to talk about his new project. Harking back to an old form, his book Belgravia will be released in installments, but using modern technology, it will be delivered via an app.

Unfortunately, there is a hitch. According to the Belgravia App Page on Facebook,

“Our nineteenth century story has been stalled by twenty-first century technology! … We are currently resolving an unexpected technical issue and the launch of Julian Fellowes’s BELGRAVIA app has been delayed.”

As we noted earlier, a hardcover edition of the full series, as well as an audio, is set for July.