Joni Mitchell! Han Kang! Belle & Sebastian! 22 new books out today.
There’s much to say today and this week, particularly for those of you in the United States, as we brace ourselves for the turbulence and tumult of a grinningly authoritarian, grinningly small-minded and small-hearted regime taking control of America’s government. For many of us, this is a frightening, unsettling time.
But for now, I want to focus, instead, on something that hasn’t changed: the fact that there will always be new books to look forwards to. Amidst all the chaos, there are bright lights in book form, including work in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction from a number of beloved and respected names, as well as some striking names to watch for the future. I’ve selected twenty-two to turn your attention to, as we could all use some literary companionship right about now.
If you can, head into a physical bookstore, especially if you haven’t visited one in some time, or go, perhaps, to bookshop you’ve never stepped into before. Just being around so many tomes, including these new marvels below, can be a brief bit of healing in of itself, at least for a few moments. Take in the scents, the sounds, the curves of the aisles, the way shelves and selves are arranged.
And, if you can’t go to a bookstore, consider re-immersing yourself in your own collection for a bit, taking some moments to just sit and be with the books you’ve kept with you thus far. These little moments are important, especially when the world is too much.
Keep yourselves safe, Dear Readers. And let these literary lights show you a way through the murk.
*
Han Kang, We Do Not Part (trans. E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris)
(Hogarth Press)
“A disquietingly beautiful novel about the impossibility of waking up from the nightmare of history. Hang Kang’s prose, as delicate as footprints in the snow or a palimpsest of shadows, conjures up the specters haunting a nation, a family, a friendship. Unforgettable.”
–Hernan Diaz
Andrew Lipstein, Something Rotten
(FSG)
“[F]ascinating…tense….The revelations, when they come, are satisfying, and meaty considerations of ethics and truth round out the novel’s entertaining depiction of an American innocent abroad and his European Svengali. This razor-sharp morality tale is Lipstein’s best yet.”
–Publishers Weekly
Brian Leung, A Terrifying Brush with Optimism: New and Selected Stories
(Sarabande Books)
“A new collection of works from Lambda Literary Award and Asian American Literary Award winner Brian Leung. A Terrifying Brush of Optimism includes short stories, an essay, and a novel exploring what it means to keep one’s dignity in a contemporary world that seems so intent on stripping that away from us.”
–Book Riot
Henry Alford, I Dream of Joni: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell in 53 Snapshots
(Gallery Books)
“Henry Alford gathered everything there is to know about Joni Mitchell and then distilled it all into the most fascinating, entertaining, and significant stories. Like its subject, I Dream of Joni is artful and inventive. Alford leaps from decade to decade, backwards and forwards, making the reader a (happy) captive on a carousel of time. The result is exactly what a genius like Joni Mitchell deserves—a biography that feels unfettered and alive.”
–Nell Scovell
Thomas Dai, Take My Name But Say It Slow: Essays
(Norton)
“With a deep depth of heart and a meditative intelligence, Thomas Dai intricately charts a course through complex questions of identity, culture, history, and queerness. This is a book to savor and Thomas Dai is a writer to follow.”
–Alex Marzano-Lesenevich
Omo Moses, The White Peril: A Family Memoir
(Beacon Press)
“Intricately crafted, and a riveting read, this unputdownable whirlwind journeys through five generations of a Black family fighting for Black liberation, and a young man fighting to traverse the rocky distance between father and son…this moving memoir has achieved Omo’s stated goal—’to let poetry sit side by side, sit inside the story.’ Omo has granted us a glimpse into the psyche of young Black manhood, and a window into the mind of his father, the brilliant visionary, Robert P. Moses.”
–Lisa Delpit
Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Strange Beach: Poems
(Soft Skull)
“It’s hard to believe Oluwaseun Olayiwola’s Strange Beach is a debut collection. The poems in this gorgeous and deft book about the queer body, race, family and coming-of-age, seem to toggle between identities, between not knowing and wanting to know, between remaining on shore and being washed over….Strange Beach is intimate, capacious, present, and absent, and always consistently brilliant.”
–Victoria Chang
Latif Askia Ba, The Choreic Period: Poems
(Milkweed Editions)
“Latifa Askia Ba wields the period like a composer’s baton, creating rhythms that affect change at the somatic level. To read The Choreic Period is to breathe differently….Through the intense particularity of the syntax of the ever-humbling disability within and without language, The Choreic Period bears witness to the universal disability of beings locked within what it means to be human. The Choreic Period is a pulling—of stars from drains.”
–M. NourbeSe Philip
Caleb Femi, The Wickedest
(MCD)
“The Wickedest by the young British Nigerian poet-filmmaker Caleb Femi is a mesmerizing journey through the different moments of one night’s revelry. A heady mix of the formal and urbane, the sacred and mundane….The vivid pictures punctuating the book lend it a cinematic scope, immersing you in a unique cultural experience. The Wickedest is a hypnotic, experiential happening of a book—essential reading for all.”
–Roger Robinson
Erika Krouse, Save Me, Stranger: Stories
(Flatiron Books)
“Thought-provoking….[Krouse’s] fiction is as gripping as any unsolved mystery. She writes with bold, confident, literary strokes that shift between fast-paced plot points and quieter, often unsettling psychological moments, which all move toward a vision of something vital, transient, and worth chasing after…Each of the twelve stories has a wholeness and precision that showcase Krouse’s wonderful grasp of craftsmanship.”
–Library Journal
Mischa Berlinski, Mona Acts Out
(Liveright)
“Mischa Berlinski has written an instant-classic New York novel about theater, aging, sex and love, and the promise and price of life’s second acts.”
–Joshua Cohen
David Wright Faladé, The New Internationals
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
“Faladé draws out the psychological pressures faced by his characters…[and] unflinchingly portrays the messy legacy of colonialism and the implications of crossing the color line. This nuanced historical is worth a look.”
–Publishers Weekly
Markus Zusak, Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth): A Memoir
(Harper)
“Zusak’s garrulous style gives appropriate spotlight to his furry subjects (a few cats are involved too), celebrating their indomitable spirits in a convivial, all-but-exasperated tone. [His] innate humor jostles readers throughout, creating a wholly different page-turning experience from the epic nature of his fiction….Zusak mines for the truth the title intimates that those touched by a dog will all agree: we are changed for having known them.”
–Booklist
Bonny Reichert, How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
(Ballantine Books)
“Bonny Reichert’s stunning memoir is proof of the power of hope in the face of epigenetic sorrow, and how the human soul and spirit hew inexorably to healing, sustenance, and life. The need to sustain oneself and one’s loved ones is pervasive here, and Reichert’s ability to weave together a seamless story about food, love, and withering tragedy is masterful. I was captivated.”
–Elissa Altman
Kristen Martin, The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of Orphanhood
(Bold Type Books)
“A deeply compassionate, rigorously researched, and passionately argued exploration of the gap between the myths and realities of American orphanhood. This searing history left me outraged, enlightened, and full of deepened conviction that we need to keep peeling away our collective American mythologies in order to reckon with our hardest truths.”
–Leslie Jamison
John Sayles, To Save the Man
(Melville House)
“Set in 1890, the year of the Wounded Knee Massacre, John Sayles’s novel, To Save the Man, is a story of a culture taken. At the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, young Native Americans find themselves having to negotiate the demands of assimilation against the ways of life they’ve always known. A master storyteller, Sayles reminds us of the cost of history on the individual life. This blend of fact and invention makes for an unforgettable read.”
–Lee Martin
Tara Dorabji, Call Her Freedom
(Simon & Schuster)
“Call Her Freedom is a mythic tale of one woman’s family surviving inside another culture of massive, brutal power. The story parallels conflicts in Guatemala, Nazi Europe, and the Confederate South. Set in South Asia, its prose reads both dreamily faraway and realistically close—a beautiful strength that can only be attributed to Dorabji’s impeccable talent.”
–Dagoberto Gilb
Stuart Murdoch, Nobody’s Empire
(Harpervia)
“The frontman of Belle & Sebastian recreates his younger years here in wonderfully limpid prose that looks at music and art and life and gives an insight into his struggles with ME [myalgic encephalomyelitis].”
–The Scottish Herald
Tao Leigh Goffe, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, The Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis
(Doubleday Books)
“Dark Laboratory is stunning, brilliant and transformative. With a vast archive and a mighty pen, Tao Leigh Goffe tells the story of modernity and its discontents through the land, legacy, and people of the Caribbean. Upon reading this book, you will have a new understanding of the world.”
–Imani Perry
Josiah Osgood, Lawless Republic: The Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome
(Basic Books)
“The last bloody decades of the Roman Republic offer a veritable catalogue of crime. Josiah Osgood examines this rich material with the insight of a skilled historian and the keen scrutiny of a true crime detective. Even Cicero does not emerge unscathed. The result is a fresh look at one of history’s most compelling eras, more relevant to Americans today than ever before.”
–Steven Saylor
Richard Carwardine, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union
(Knopf)
“There is no greater interpreter of how religious thought and imagery shaped Abraham Lincoln’s statecraft than Richard Carwardine, who has now turned his attention to broader questions of how a clash of theological worldviews gave us what Lincoln called ‘a new birth of freedom.’ With grace and insight, Carwardine sheds new and important light on issues of perennial significance in America’s past—and present.”
–Jon Meacham
Edward Lee, Mary Sangiovanni, Strange Stones
(Clash Books)
“An immersive, visceral, and existentially terrifying tale injected with just the right amount of satire.”
–Booklist