Posts
 |
| Follow on Twitter as @GregoryCowles |
The venerable Spanish novelist Javier Marías, answering our By the Book questions this week, disavows the concept of a “national literature.” Readers who agree with him may take heart from the example of David Szalay, whose novel “Turbulence” tops our latest list of recommended titles: Szalay was born in Montreal, raised in Beirut and London, and now lives in Budapest, and his novel (set largely in airports and on airplanes) is just as global and deracinated as that background might lead you to expect. On the other hand there’s Campbell McGrath, a poet who is every bit an American writer, and whose substantial volume of new and selected work, “Nouns & Verbs,” closes out this week’s recommendations. In between we have a novel set in a small English village; an intellectual biography of the French mathematician André Weil and his sister, the philosopher Simone Weil; a close look at Greenland and its journey to the center of climate science; and a history of Theodore Roosevelt’s rise that’s also about the rise of American dominance in the 20th century.
Read more...
Source: New York Times
