New Books in Literature

Today I talked to Kathleen Osberger about her book I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 (Oribis Books, 2023).In 1975, Kathleen Osberger, who’d just graduated from Notre Dame University, flew to Chile to teach in a Catholic school in Santiago. She was assigned to live with several religious women, and when she arrived, was told that they would sometimes shelter dissidents who were wanted by the secret police. This was after the CIA assisted coup that overthrew democratically elected president, Salvador Allende in 1973. Augusto Pinochet then ruled Chile as a dictator, clamping down on unrest, journalists, and critics. Those who tried tried to protect some of these dissidents from detention, torture, disappearance, and death were considered traitors and received the same punishment. Kathy Osberger learned all this, but she still wasn’t prepared when the secret police came with a warrant for her arrest, forced her into a car, and handed her a blindfold. They soon let her go, but everyone knew they’d come back, and she had to disappear.Kathleen Osberger earned her B.A. at the University of Notre Dame, an M.A. from Maryknoll School of Theology, and an A.M. from the University of Chicago–School of Social Work Administration. Her life was shaped by volunteer experiences when she lived in San Miguelito, Panamá; Santiago, Chile; Chimbote, Perú and the South Bronx. In 1987 she began a seventeen-year relationship with the Maryknoll Lay Missioners as an instructor in their orientation to mission program and in 1993 she joined the University of Chicago Hospitals—Department of Psychiatry. Her work as a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist has centered on the issues of trauma and torture.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In his debut novel, Hush Harbor (Hannover Square Press, 2023), Anise Vance takes readers inside a race revolution as a resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands. After the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray. Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group's pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival. Haunting, provocative, heart-pounding and tender, Hush Harbor presents a high-stakes world grounded on the thought-provoking premise: What would you sacrifice in the name of justice?Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic Books, 2020), is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, for some, a passing weekend affair.After weeks spent dodging RPGs, witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity, Saleh returns to civilian life in Tehran but finds it to be an unbearably dislocating experience. Pursued by his official handler from state security, opportunistic colleagues, and the woman who broke his heart, Saleh has reason to again flee from everyday life. Surrounded by men whose willingness to achieve martyrdom both fascinates and appalls him, Saleh struggles to make sense of himself and the turmoil in his midst.An unprecedented glimpse into "endless war" from a Middle Eastern perspective, Out of Mesopotamia follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers--from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O'Brien and Philip Caputo--but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving, humane, darkly funny, and resonantly true.AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Daniel Renfrew is a typical American sixteen-year-old. His main gripe when the story opens is that his dad insists on home schooling even though Daniel would much prefer attending the local high school with his friends. When we meet him, Daniel is at the local shopping mall, where a local cop is hassling him as a potential truant. After side-stepping that threat, Daniel returns home to find his dad under assault from a sword-carrying stranger. Dad tosses Daniel a strange device and orders him to say “the bedtime rhyme.”Against his better judgment, Daniel complies. Next thing he knows, he’s in a pine forest he doesn’t recognize and has no idea what to do next. He screams for assistance, which brings out a very grumpy helper who self-identifies as Sam. Only then does Daniel learn that he comes from a family of time-jumpers, and he’s landed in 1066. He’s stuck in the past, not knowing whether his dad is dead or alive. And although his eccentric education has included all kinds of “weird” skills like sword play and fire building, Daniel is far from prepared for life in the eleventh century.Daniel and Sam’s second adventure, The Celtic Deception, takes them to late Roman Britain, ca. 60 AD. The provincial governor has decided to make a stand against the Celts, especially the Druids—perceived as powerful sources of popular rebellion by the Roman army. The island now called Anglesey, off the coast of modern-day Wales, has become a sanctuary for Celts fleeing the invaders, so that becomes the governor’s target. Daniel and Sam must scramble to discover their mission, never mind fix it—all while trying to protect the people who have taken them in.Andrew Varga is the author of The Last Saxon King and The Celtic Deception, books 1 and 2 of the seven-part Jump in Time series, aimed at the Young Adult market.C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to Katherine Heiny about Games and Rituals: Stories (Knopf, 2023).The games and rituals performed by Heiny's characters range from mischievous to tender: In "Bridesmaid, Revisited," Marlee, suffering from a laundry and life crisis, wears a massive bridesmaid's dress to work. In "Twist and Shout," Erica's elderly father mistakes his four-thousand-dollar hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In "Turn Back, Turn Back," a bedtime story coupled with a receipt for a Starbucks babyccino reveal a struggling actor's deception. And in "561," Charlene pays the true price of infidelity and is forced to help her husband's ex-wife move out of the family home. ("It's like you're North Korea and South Korea . . . But would North Korea help South Korea move?")Katherine Heiny is the author of Early Morning Riser, Standard Deviation, and Single, Carefree Mellow, a previous collection of short stories. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and many other places. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and children.Recommended Books and Podcasts: Katherine Newman, We All Want Impossible Things Elif Batuman, Either/Or Elizabeth Crane, This Story Will Change Celebrity Memoir Book Club (Podcast) Cold Case Murder Mysteries (Podcast) My Dad Wrote a Porno (Podcast) Mission to Zyxx (Podcast) Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro as World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ravage & Son (Bellevue Literary Press, 2023) by Jerome Charyn is a novel set in the Lower East Side of New York City in the early years of the twentieth century when it was America’s most crime-ridden and decadent neighborhood. Featuring an alluring cast of heroes, misfits, and monsters, Ravage & Son is part Jekyll and Hyde, part crime noir, part mystery novel, and ultimately an instant classic – a cinematic kaleidoscope that captures both the intense beauty and utter debauchery of humanity in this bygone era.At the heart of the novel is the menacing Lionel Ravage, a heartbroken powerbroker hell bent on making the world pay for the loss of his soul mate, and his illegitimate son Ben, a poor boy educated at Harvard who becomes a downtown detective for the Kehilla, a quasi-police force slapped with the responsibility of cleaning up the Lower East Side’s layers of dirt and crime. The younger Ravage fights to protect, while his father yearns to burn it all to the ground. They share a deep wound and savage love that chains them together but is too agonizing to relive.Jerome Charyn’s brilliance is in capturing the violence festering behind closed doors and in the streets as forces large and small work in unity to suck the marrow out of the Jewish neighborhood and its inhabitants. The author’s magnificent sentence-by-sentence style is marked both by an intensity and sensitivity that makes the dark tale more human and humane. It is as if Charyn is at war with the past, fully committed to its darkness, but delivering a source of light through his unmatched voice, the essential narrative delivered in what he calls his “music.” With touches of magical realism and an aura of mysticism, Charyn turns the Lower East Side into a portal for looking at that era and our own.The author of more than 50 novels, biographies, histories, graphic novels, and collections, Charyn once proclaimed that his ultimate goal in writing novels has been “to make the reader cry...to break the reader’s heart.” With its stunning, unforgettable portrayal of the forces of light and darkness, Ravage & Son delivers on the author’s aim, presenting humanity in its fully formed depravity, but also capturing life’s poignancy.The interview focuses on Ravage & Son, but Charyn and I discuss other aspects of his renowned career, including discussion of writing style, research, literary influences, and more. Charyn is arguably the most famous writer most readers have never heard of, a bestseller in France and other parts of Europe, and a true “writer’s writer” who continues to publish acclaimed books while being lauded by major authors including Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Chabon, Don DeLillo, and a long list of others. He is a distinctive voice in American literary history.Bob Batchelor is an award-winning cultural historian and biographer. His latest books are Roadhouse Blues: Morrison, the Doors, and the Death Days of the Sixties and Stan Lee: A Life. Visit him on the web at www.bobbatchelor.com or email at bob@bobbatchelor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The characters in Nishanth Injam’s The Best Possible Experience (Pantheon, 2023), his debut short story collection, are like many in India or in Indian communities in the United States: Working hard and enduring hardships to try to get a better life for themselves. They don’t always succeed—and even those that do lose something along the way.That tension between hope and reality is at the core of many of Injam’s stories, whether it’s a recently migrated Indian family panicking that a white boy is coming to dinner, a college student trying and failing to get a visa, or a young son in Goa, increasingly frustrated with his tour bus driver father , prone to embellishment and exaggeration.Nishanth Injam received an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michi­gan. He is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar. His work has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, ZYZZYVA, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Best Debut Short Stories 2021, and The Best American Magazine Writing 2022.Today, Nishanth and I talk about why he pivoted from tech to creative writing, how his stories relate to the Indian experience, and the trials of Indians and Indian-Americans trying to improve their lives.You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Best Possible Experience. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Aparna Verma’s debut novel The Phoenix King (Orbit, 2023) takes place in the desert kingdom of Ravence as war brews on its borders and the king is set to step down. The story follows an assassin exiled but struggling to return home as well as both the king and the heir to the throne.In this interview, Verma describes the way her love of the desert shaped Ravence and how the duality of fire shaped its culture. She discusses Indian influences in science fiction, the many ways people are connected to faith, and the ways her work reimagines monarchy.The Phoenix King is so clearly a labor of love and it was so much fun to discuss with the author.A. E. Lanier is a short fiction writer and educator living in Central Texas. More about her work can be found at aelanier.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today I talked to CK Westbrook about The Judgment (4 Horsemen Publications, 2023), book 3 of "The Impact Series." Kate thought the world was finally safe from Rex and the powerful, terrifying others — but was it?Working together, Kate Stellute, Sinclair, Jo-Ellen, and Rex successfully implemented a risky plan to make space safer for everyone and everything. Kate hoped the others would accept the results and stay away. But when she learns the details of why Rex caused a global mass shooting, she realizes their plan may not have worked after all.Rex suggests a way to protect Kate and her loved ones if the others decide to destroy what is left of humankind, but can Kate trust the violent alien that has already killed millions of people? If she wants to prevent more violence, Kate will need a new plan and new allies if she is to find a way to save the human race from more extraterrestrial wrath.Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Ala Fox speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about her essay “Ramadan in Saint-Denis,” which appears in The Common’s most recent issue. Ala talks about weaving together the threads of her experiences living in Paris into an essay that explores a lot of questions but doesn’t try to answer them. The piece dives into the dynamics between neighborhoods, and between native Parisians and immigrant communities, and explores the possibility of creating and sustaining love across language barriers and distance. Ala also discusses why she was nervous about publishing the essay, and how it would be received in the Muslim community.Ala Fox is a Muslim American daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes in English, Python, memories, and JavaScript. When not coding, she writes about life and love online @alalafox. Her work has been published in Ruminate, Hunger Mountain, and MuslimMatters. She is passionate about racial equity and Oakland.­­Read Ala’s essay “Ramadan in Saint-Denis” in The Common here.Learn more about Ala here.The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Twitter @CommonMag.Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Putnam Books. Her stories appear in the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House Online, and Mississippi Review. She is a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature