New Books in Literature

“D.B. Jackson” is David B. Coe’s pen name for his new historical-fantasy series, The Thieftaker Chronicles. Thieftaker (Tor Books, 2012) centers on Ethan Kaille, a private detective and conjurer, as he investigates a murder in colonial Boston. David, who received a Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford University before embarking on a career as a novelist, weaves in plenty of period details and historical personages into an alternate Boston where conjuration is real, albeit suppressed by the authorities. David maintains a page of resources for those interested in his well-researched setting. He also is a co-founder of, and co-writer for, a blog dedicated to assisting aspiring speculative-fiction and fantasy authors with all aspects of the craft. Theiftaker has met with excellent reviews, so I wasn’t surprised to find that I enjoyed it a great deal. David proved a terrific interview subject. I contacted him on a whim, and he was very generous to agree despite the channel not even existing at the time. I was saddened to learn, however, that not only was there no actual conjuration in eighteenth-century Boston, but no thieftakers worked there either. Writing under his own name, David has published the LonTobyn Chronicle–a trilogy that received the Crawford Fantasy Award as the best work by a new author in fantasy–as well as the critically acclaimed Winds of the Forelands quintet and Blood of the Southlands trilogy. He has also written the novelization of director Ridley Scott’s movie, Robin Hood. David’s books have been translated into a dozen languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

I met Ken MacLeod when we participated in a sequence of “Science Fiction and International Orders” panels at the London School of Economics in the winter of 2011. Ken is an important figure in his own right, as well as someone who has contributed a great deal to the Speculative-Ficiton community through, among other things, cultivating the talents of other writers. He’s also an incredibly nice guy. All of these traits explain why he was one of the first people I approached about doing an interview for the channel, and the first to agree. As I hope comes through in the interview, I found The Night Sessions (Pyr, 2012) both fun to read and intellectually stimulating. It centers on DI Adam Ferguson as he investigates the murder of a priest in a near-future Edinburgh. Following the “Faith Wars” of the early twenty-first century the world has experienced a “Second Enlightenment” and aggressive secularism enjoys intellectual and political hegemony. But not every soul, whether organic or mechanical, is happy with this state of affairs…. Ken has an Honours and Masters degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the information-technology industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer, and in 2009 was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. He is the author of thirteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Intrusion (Orbit, 2012), and many articles and short stories. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In our very first fiction-book interview on New Books in Secularism, we chat with Alyson Miers, author of Charlinder’s Walk (CreateSpace, 2011). In this adventure secularism-themed novel, Miers introduces us to Charlinder, a curious and daring young man who lives in the year 2130. The world he lives in is vastly different from the one we know today. Due to a plague that swept the earth and killed most of its inhabitants in 2010, Charlinder lives in a time where modern technology is gone, communities are isolated from each other, and surviving winter is once again a struggle. Why the earth succumbed to such a devastating plague over 100 years because is a cause for tension in his village of Paleola. On one hand there are those called the Faithful, who argue that the plague was God’s punishment for the evil deeds of human beings, whereas the rest of their small population is skeptical. Worried about rising disagreements and what it means for his village – Charlinder sets out on a world trek to find out the truth, with very surprising consequences. It is difficult to put this book down once you start reading it, as Miers is very adept at transporting us into a world that is hard to imagine – a world without most of us in it. Miers’ blog is called The Monster’s Ink, and she is also on Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Historians are not supposed to make stuff up. If it happened, and can be proved to have happened, then it’s in; if it didn’t, or can’t be documented, then it’s out. This way of going about writing history is fine as far as it goes. It does, however, have a significant drawback: it limits the historian’s ability to tell the truth–not the truth of “facts,” but the truth of stories. Facts are facts; stories have meaning. Most history books are full of facts; yet many lack stories, and necessarily so. As a practicing historian, I can tell you this situation is very frustrating. We know that sometimes the facts are just not enough, but there is nothing we can do about it within the confines of our discipline. There are historians–if that’s what they are–who just can’t stand these restrictions. They want to tell historical stories, and they do. They write “historical fiction” and, as a rule, they get very little respect in the literary or academic worlds. I doubt most of them are bothered. Why should they be? Historical fiction is remarkably popular: thousands of titles appear each year and those titles are read by millions of readers. Who cares if literary journals and professional historians poo-poo historical fiction? People love it. Once in a great while, however, a book comes along whose truth is so powerful that even the literary critics and professors take notice. Francis Spufford’s Red Plenty: Industry! Progress! Abundance! Inside the Fifties Soviet Dream (Greywolf Press, 2012) is such a book. It contains more “truth” about the Soviet project than an entire library of “serious” novels and dry-as-dust histories. If I had to recommend one book on the Soviet Union to someone who wanted to understand it, Red Plenty would be it. Read it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this installment of Faculty Insight, produced in partnership with Harvard University Extension School, ThoughtCast speaks with the esteemed Harvard classicist Gregory Nagy about one of the earliest and greatest legends of all time: Homer’s epic story of the siege of Troy, called “The Iliad.” It’s a story of god-like heroes and blood-soaked battles; honor, pride, shame and defeat. In this interview, we dissect a key scene in “The Iliad,” where Hector and Achilles are about to meet in battle. Athena is also on hand, and she plays a crucial if underhanded role, with the grudging approval of her father, Zeus. And Nagy is the perfect guide to this classic tale. He’s the director of Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC, as well as the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard. We spoke in his office at Widener Library. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

If a mother raises her biologically male child as a daughter instead of a son, what would be the effects on the family, the community, the church? Indeed what would be the psychosocial, psychoemotional effects on the daughter once she discovers she’s a “he”? And what would all this reveal about the mother? What’s more, would the male-daughter’s brothers, father, friends come to agree with gender philosopher Judith Butler and accept the prevailing academic wisdom that gender and sex are social constructions, discourses that inform how we perform our lives? Or would they agree with some conservative Christian groups that a boy is a son. That’s how God made him, and that’s that! End of story. And what if the male-daughter is African American? What would race reveal about the social dynamics of gender in America? Novelist Daniel Black deftly explores the above questions and so much more in his lyrical new novel Perfect Peace (St. Martin’s Press, 2010). Not to give too much away, but Perfect is the name of the male-daughter; Peace is her family name. For seven years, she’s a girl. At age eight, she is told she’s a boy. What ensues disturbs the Peace family and the black Southern community where they live. Yet Perfect learns lessons that Daniel Black believes America as a whole must learn to face. There is never a dull moment in this intense interview. The discussion with Daniel Black is just as engaging as his fascinating novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

UPDATE: Nikky Finney’s Head Off and Split has been named a finalist for a National Book Award. Congratulations, Nikky, from the folks at New Books in African American Studies and the New Books Network!) Poet Nikky Finney’s new book Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011) has made an immediate splash, receiving well-deserved critical acclaim from the literary world and wide attention from the reading public. Although her book has only been out a few months, it has already been widely reviewed, with Finney featured on the cover of the prestigious literary journal Poets and Writers. Finney is among the who’s who of writers, a poet about whom Nikki Giovanni says, “We all, especially now, need.” And yet Finney is unpretentious, caring, and inspirational. All this is illustrated in her interview for New Books in African American Studies, where she discusses the autobiographical impulse behind the book’s title, pays homage to black womanhood, worries about black boys, and she speaks on her love of love, of life, of words, of laughter. Finney is deep. And while that description might seem trite, think metaphorically, think still waters. There is much to mine in both Head Off and Split and in this interview. Finney has a generous spirit, giving much of herself to the world. But don’t be fooled. She doesn’t give all away. She reserves a little for herself, hones her spirit, cultivates it, as any good writer would. Then she lays some aesthetics on it, on what she has kept for herself, and blesses us, the world, when we’re ready. That’s what she has done in her latest volume. Enjoy it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature