Five new books out this week, and links to related content you won’t find anywhere else.
Michael Honig’s novel The Senility of Vladimir P is a satire starring an elderly, senescent Vladimir Putin in the near future. What’s the deal with Putin, anyway?
The nonfiction book American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst , by New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, traces the bizarre real life story of everyone’s favorite rich girl-turned-revolutionary. How did Patty Hearst’s trial force people to reconsider post-modern identity?
Lara Vapnyar‘s new novel Still Here views the absurdities of American life through the eyes of a Russian immigrant. Vapnyar, herself a Russian immigrant, wrote about learning to read in a foreign language for Columbia: a Journal of Literature and Art.
The essays in The Problem With Me: And Other Essays About Making Trouble in China Today have made author Han Han one of the most influential and provocative young writers in China. On Internet literature in contemporary China.
Jesmyn Ward edited the anthology The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, a collection of essays, memoirs, and poems about the question of race in the United States. You can read some Ward’s own fiction here at BOMB.
