Bookworm

The Nature of Blood (Knopf) In her latest novel, Caryl Phillips contrasts slavery and genocide in the lives of Jews and Africans over several centuries. A discussion about the parallel history of prejudice.

Guide (Grove). With an aesthetic reflective of hallucinogenic disorientation and the sensory overload of rock and roll, Dennis Cooper talks about the transformation of chaos into art.

Blessed Is the Fruit (Holt) Robert Antoni, the Caribbean novelist on place, aesthetics and gender, plus a spellbinding reading from his novel.

Anything We Love Can Be Saved: A Writer's Activism (Random House) The ever-provocative Alice Walker discusses the nature of a writer's social responsibilities.

Van Gogh's Bad Cafe (Morrow) Frederic Tuten, the author of Adventures of Chairman Mao on the Long March talks about his Pop Art novel of the sixties and the history of the Art novel through the nineties.

Plain Water (Knopf); Glass, Irony and God (New Directions) A truly intimate interview about the value of intelligence in the face of passion. Canadian poet Anne Carson has found a new boundary for poetry to explore.

Nuclear energy, nuclear family: does the metaphor of fission apply equally to both? Rick Moody on the disintegration of values and the reintegration of fiction.

The Passion Dream Book (Harper Collins) Whitney Otto, author of How to Make an American Quilt, discusses her new novel and the competing demands of family life and art.

Roads to Santiago (Harcourt, Brace) The European award-winning novelist Cees Nooteboom explores the metaphysics of travel...

The Gospel According to the Son (Random House) Norman Mailer reads "Lazarus Raised from the Dead" and discusses his version of The New Testament as told by Jesus himself.