'The Interview': Isabel Allende Understands How Fear Changes a Society
2 May - 42 minsAt 82, Isabel Allende is one of the world’s most beloved and best-selling Spanish-language authors. Her work has been translated into more than 40 languages, and 80 million copies of her books have been sold around the world. That’s a lot of books.
Allende’s newest novel, “My Name Is Emilia del Valle” is about a dark period in Chilean history: the 1891 Chilean civil war. Like so much of Allende’s work, it’s a story about women in tough spots who figure out a way through. Thematically, it’s not that far off from Allende’s own story. She was raised in Chile, but in 1973, when she was 31, raising two small children and working as a journalist, her life was upended forever. That year a military...
Series Episodes
Book Club: Let’s Talk About Adam Ross’s ‘Playworld’
Set in New York in the 1980s, Adam Ross’s new novel, “Playworld,” tells the story of a young actor named Griffin as he navigates the chaos of the city, of his family and of being a teenager. On this week’s episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “Playworld” with Book Review editors Dave Kim and Sadie Stein.
43 mins
25 April Finished
'The Great Gatsby' at 100
A century after “The Great Gatsby” was first published, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s slender novel about a mysterious, lovelorn millionaire living and dying in a Long Island mansion has become among the most widely read American fictions — and also among the most analyzed and interpreted. A.O. Scott joins host Gilbert Cruz this week to discuss Fitzgerald’s novel and its long afterlife.
31 mins
11 April Finished
Colum McCann on Undersea Cables and His New Novel "Twist"
In his new novel, “Twist,” the National Book Award-winning Irish writer Colum McCann tells the story of a journalist deep at sea in more ways then one: A man adrift, he accepts a magazine assignment to write about the crews who maintain and repair the undersea cables that transmit all of the world’s information. Naturally, the assignment becomes more treacherous and psychologically fraught than he had anticipated. On this week’s episode, McCann tells host Gilbert Cruz how he became interested in the topic of information cables and why the story resonated for him at multiple levels.
37 mins
4 April Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About "We Do Not Part," by Han Kang
The novel “We Do Not Part,” by the Nobel laureate Han Kang, involves a pet-sitting quest gone surreal: It follows a writer and documentarian whose hospitalized friend beseeches her to take care of her stranded pet parakeet on an island hundreds of miles away. When she arrives, the writer finds not only the bird but also an apparition of her friend, who has a devastating history to tell. On this week’s episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “We Do Not Part” with fellow Book Review editors Lauren Christensen and Emily Eakin.
49 mins
28 March Finished
