Penguin has bought the rights to Jonathan Safran Foer’s next book, Escape from Children’s Hospital, which is a fictionalized account of a real explosion JSF experienced at a summer science camp when he was nine. The incident “left Safran Foer's best friend without skin on his face or hands,” and left the author “unscathed by inches.” The book will be released in early 2014.
They didn’t win the Pulitzer, but the three books nominated have seen a spike in their Amazon sales. Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams jumped from #990 to #98, Karen Russell’s Swamplandia went from #984 to #155, and The Pale King is now #561 (paperback) and #625 (hardcover).
Ted Hughes’s 92-year-old brother Gerald has written a memoir about their childhood in Yorkshire, England. The manuscript was “discovered” at the London book fair this week, when the poet’s daughter mentioned to a publisher that her uncle was putting the finishing touches on the book. "It's an evocative account of their childhood together,” publisher Jeremy Robson said of Ted and I, which will come out in the UK this fall. “Roaming the fields, fishing, shooting—all the material for Ted's later poems, and a good deal more."
Americans are dominating the shortlist for Britain’s Orange Prize—an annual award granted to a novel written by a woman in English. Of the six nominees, four—Cynthia Ozick, Ann Patchett, Madeline Miller, and Canadian Esi Edugyan—hail from this side of the Atlantic.
Jonathan Lethem “writes” a YouTube essay on Roosevelt, New Jersey, for The New Inquiry.
Knopf is pulling a 2666 and will release Haruki Murakami’s epic IQ84 as a three-book paperback set. You can see John Gall’s design (which we prefer over the Chip Kidd hardcover) here.
The Los Angeles Review of Books has just unveiled their new site, complete with new reviews, essays, and interviews by Maria Bustillos, Geoff Nicholson, and Mark McGurl.
Portland’s innovative Publication Studio, the brainchild of novelist Matthew Stadler and Patricia No, is in New York to showcase some of its latest titles, which include Kevin Killian’s Spreadeagle and STS’s Golden Brothers. (We also recommend Dodie Bellamy’s The Buddhist.) Their series of events starts tonight with a mixer at MoMA, continues on Friday at Printed Matter, and then, on Saturday, moves to a restaurant for a five-course meal.
