Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-four novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."
The Ghost Writer is a 1979 novel by the American author Philip Roth. It is the first of Roth's novels narrated by Nathan Zuckerman, one of the author's putative fictional alter egos, and constitutes the first book in his Zuckerman Bound trilogy. The novel touches on themes common to many Roth works, including identity, the responsibilities of authors to their subjects, and the condition of Jews in America. Parts of the novel are a reprise of The Diary of Anne Frank.
Saturday (2005) is a novel by Ian McEwan. It is set in Fitzrovia, central London, on Saturday, 15 February 2003, as a large demonstration is taking place against the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq. The protagonist, Henry Perowne, a 48-year-old neurosurgeon, has planned a series of errands and pleasures, culminating in a family dinner in the evening. As he goes about his day, he ponders the meaning of the protest and the problems that inspired it; however, the day is disrupted by an encounter with a violent, troubled man.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Black Dogs is a 1992 novel by the British author Ian McEwan. It concerns the aftermath of the Nazi era in Europe, and how the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s affected those who once saw Communism as a way forward for society. The main characters travel to France, where they encounter disturbing residues of Nazism still at large in the French countryside. Critical reception was polarized.
Fugitive Pieces is a novel by Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels. The story is divided into two sections. The first centers around Jakob Beer, a Polish Holocaust survivor while the second involves a man named Ben, the son of two Holocaust survivors. It was first published in Canada in 1996 and was published in the United Kingdom the following year. Since the publication, the novel has won awards such as Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, Orange Prize for Fiction, Guardian Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize. For over two years the novel was on Canada's bestseller list, and it was translated into over 20 different languages.
The Godfather Returns is a novel written by author Mark Winegardner, published in 2004. It is the sequel to Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and The Sicilian (1984). The publisher, Random House, selected Winegardner to write a sequel after Puzo's death. As the original novel covered the years 1945 to 1955, and included significant backstory on Don Vito Corleone's life, Returns covers the years 1955 to 1962, and includes significant backstory on Michael Corleone's life prior to the first novel. It is the third book in The Godfather series of novels.
Falling Man is a novel by American writer Don DeLillo, published May 15, 2007. An excerpt from the novel appeared in short story form as "Still Life" in the April 9, 2007, issue of The New Yorker magazine.
Douglas Anthony Cooper is a Canadian novelist living in Rome. Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times wrote that his "elliptical narrative style recalls works by D. M. Thomas, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and Vladimir Nabokov."
Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing.
Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was a popular military blog from November 2007 to June 2008, before it was shut down by the writer's military chain of command. The author of the online journal, who went by the pseudonym of LT G, wrote about the front-line experiences in the Iraq War as a United States Army soldier. A scout platoon leader, LT G often incorporated the trials and tribulations of his platoon in his writings, offering a brash and brutally honest perspective of modern warfare. Kaboom was shut down, and subsequently deleted, after LT G made a post detailing his turning down of a promotion in an effort to stay with his soldiers.
Nora Okja Keller is a Korean American author. Her 1997 breakthrough work of fiction, Comfort Woman, and her second book (2002), Fox Girl, focus on multigenerational trauma resulting from Korean women's experiences as sex slaves, euphemistically called comfort women, for Japanese and American troops during World War II and the ongoing Korean War.
Matt Gallagher is an American author, former U.S. Army captain and veteran of the Iraq War. Gallagher has written on a variety of subjects, mainly contemporary war fiction and non-fiction. He first became known for his war memoir Kaboom (2010), which tells of his and his scout platoon's experiences during the Iraq War. He works as a writing instructor at Words After War, a literary nonprofit devoted to bringing veterans and civilians together to study conflict literature.
Dr. Howard Eugene Wasdin, D.C. was a former member of the United States Navy who served as a sailor in the Atlantic Fleet as well as a Navy SEAL. Following his honorable discharge, he co-wrote the autobiographical memoir SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, and its young adult version, I Am a SEAL Team Six Warrior: Memoirs of an American Soldier. Dr. Wasdin served in operation Desert Storm and was part of the operation to capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a Somali warlord. It was in the operation that Dr. Wasdin was shot three times and almost lost his right leg. After 12 years of service, he earned his Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) from Life University in Georgia and lived in Georgia where he operated a chiropractic clinic.
A Hologram for the King is a 2012 American novel written by Dave Eggers. In October 2012, the novel was announced as a finalist for the National Book Award.
Kevin Powers is an American fiction writer, poet, and Iraq War veteran.
The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories is a 2004 book by Christopher Booker containing a Jung-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning. Booker worked on the book for 34 years.
Dr Jenni Fagan is a Scottish novelist and poet. She has written several books including fiction novel The Panopticon, screenplays and several books of poetry. She was named Scottish writer of the year 2016 by The Glasgow Herald.
Seek My Face is a 2002 book by John Updike.
Fiskadoro is post-apocalyptic novel by Denis Johnson published in 1985 by Alfred A. Knopf.
