From THES, a review of The Historical Novel by Jerome de Groot. The Renunciation Artist: William Deresiewicz on The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy. At the dawn of the 1960s, the modest tradition of novels depicting men and women active in Marxist movements morphed abruptly from a comparatively marginal to a mainstream phenomenon. Mark Piggott explores why state-of-the-nation novels are in vogue but rarely win the big prizes. From NYRB, Tim Parks on the dull new global novel. Emily Williams on the translation gap: Why more foreign writers aren’t published in America. A review of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life by Gerald Martin. Daniel Balderston (Pittsburgh): Interpellation, Inversion, Identification: The Making of Sexual Diversity in Latin American Literature; and a review of Fictions of Totality: The Mexican Novel, 1968, and the National-Popular State by Ryan Long. From The Believer, a roundtable discussion with Daniel Alarcon, Eduardo Halfon, and Santiago Vaquera-Vasquez, prizewinning Latino novelists living in the US, on the implications of writing in Spanish, English, and elsewhere. A review of Manly Love: Romantic Friendship in American Fiction by Axel Nissen. Winter of his discontent: Before On the Road, Jack Kerouac drank, wrote, loved and lost in Detroit (and David L. Ulin on the fiftieth anniversary of On the Road). Is the Great American Novel destroying novelists? Masters of American literature: With the death of JD Salinger, a remarkable era in US literature came to its end. Does Salinger's Catcher in the Rye resonate with teenagers in the digital age? Coming of Age: An interview with Meg Rosoff on novels for young adults. From Amazon.com's "Omnivoracious", Heidi Broadhead on the YA Decade: No other genre (except maybe graphic novels) has grown and changed as much during the last decade as young adult fiction.
