New Directions paperback cover (2021) Palestinian author Adania Shibli's third novel, Minor Detail (2021), has been shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. Translated into English by Elizabeth Jaquette, the short novella concerns the murder and rape of an anonymous Arab woman by Israeli forces shortly after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The first half of... Continue Reading →
First edition hardcover from Harper Collins. As the esteemed screenwriter of such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Being John Malkovich (1999), Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel was bound to be devoured by readers and critics alike. Antkind, published in July 2020, centers around a failed film critic named B. Rosenberger Rosenberg,... Continue Reading →
Norton paperback edition. Filth, the 1998 novel by Scottish author Irvine Welsh, is the best satirical novel I've read since Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho. Rather than delving into the mind of a wealthy and psychotic businessman, Welsh places us within the mental confinements of one of Edinburgh's Finest, a detective named Bruce Robertson. Bruce's... Continue Reading →
"It was like that intensification of language where language itself obliterated, as if someone had typed a thousand sentences across the same line of gleaming white bond until nothing remained but a black mottled streak of carbon" (9). First American edition. I first discovered author Scott Bradfield through his YouTube series "Reading Great Books in... Continue Reading →
First edition hardcover. 1964. The year 1964 was chock-full of zany, experimental, low-stakes fiction writers like Richard Brautigan. A Confederate General from Big Sur chronicles a period in the life of its narrator, Jesse, and his relationship with Lee Mellon, a man who just swears up and down that he's the descendant of a Confederate... Continue Reading →
Valperga Literature Review 