Herzog by Saul Bellow (Penguin, $15). The dark grapplings one associates with Russian authors transported to America, where they become hilarious viewed through the lens of college politics and batty girlfriends instead of peasant uprisings. And there’s the remarkable Bellow sentence.
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (Vintage, $16). Tanizaki’s slow patience and his ability to do melodrama without being melodramatic (whereas I can only do melodrama by being melodramatic) makes me very jealous. The Makioka Sisters also has one of the most memorable last lines in literature: “Yukiko’s diarrhea persisted through the 26th, and was a problem on the train to Tokyo.”
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Voss by Patrick White (out of print). A quest to explore the Australian desert as a religious, a redemptive journey. White is called the Dostoyevsky of Australia, and it’s true his obsession with the subject of man nailed upon the cross is parallel. The intersection of this obsession with the colonial enterprise makes Voss a frightening book, still pertinent today.
Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (Grove, $11). Ghosts of the past never seem to be exorcised from Mexico—a country that seems to offer its citizens a constant horizon from which to depart to the surreal. The narrator begins to consider himself dead in his journey back to a feudal, ruthless Mexico, a deserted town populated by insistent phantoms.
A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul (Vintage, $14). Naipaul was the first fiction writer, I think, to draw the lines between Africa, Asia, Latin America—to capture the relationship of the entire post-colonial world with the West. This particular book, with its bleak portrayal of how big wars pervert even the remotest places, changed the way I wanted to write about India. Perhaps no story should be seen in isolation.
Shame by Salman Rushdie (Picador, $14). Another book that continues to be pertinent. There’s a scene in which the American ambassador in Pakistan is telling someone that, well, the States must support a military dictatorship in Pakistan because of the problem across the border in Afghanistan. Rushdie has his finger on the pulse of something vitally true to the past of this region, to the present, and if things continue along, the future.
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Nepal chooses toddler as its new ‘living goddess’Under the Radar Girls between two and four are typically chosen to live inside the temple as the Kumari – until puberty strikes
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October 5 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include half-truth hucksters, Capitol lockdown, and more
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Jaguar Land Rover’s cyber bailoutTalking Point Should the government do more to protect business from the ‘cyber shockwave’?
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Lou Berney’s 6 favorite books with powerful storytellingFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Dorothy B. Hughes, James McBride, and more
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Elizabeth Gilbert’s favorite books about women overcoming difficultiesFeature The author recommends works by Tove Jansson, Lauren Groff, and more
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Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
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Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is moreFeature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more
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Keith McNally's 6 favorite books that have ambitious charactersFeature The London-born restaurateur recommends works by Leo Tolstoy, John le Carré, and more
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Garrett Graff's 6 favorite books that shine new light on World War IIFeature The author recommends works by James D. Hornfischer, Craig L. Symonds, and more
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Helen Schulman's 6 favorite collections of short storiesFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Raymond Carver, James Baldwin, and more
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Beatriz Williams' 6 timeless books about history and human relationshipsFeature The best-selling author recommends works by Jane Austen, Zora Neale Hurston, and more
