The following is a story by Mieko Kawakami from the new issue of Freeman’s. Mieko Kawakami is the author of the internationally bestselling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIMEs 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020. Heaven has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022. Her latest work translated into English is All the Lovers in the...
The following is from Erin Slaughter’s A Manual for How to Love Us. Slaughter is the author of two poetry collections: The Sorrow Festival and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun. She is editor and co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook press The Hunger, and holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University. Originally from Texas, she lives in...
The following is from Alexander Nemerov’s The Forest. Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University. His many books include Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York and Soulmaker: The Times of Lewis Hine. “Smoke and Burnt Pine” Nat Turner saw hieroglyphic characters on the leaves. Written in blood, they portrayed...
The following is from Leila Aboulela’s River Spirit. Aboulela is the first-ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Nominated three times for the Orange Prize (now the Women’s Prize for Fiction), she is the author of numerous novels, including The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her work has been...
The following is from Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood. Catton is the author of the international bestseller The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker Prize. Her debut novel, The Rehearsal, won the Betty Trask Award, was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. She is also the screenwriter of Emma, a 2020 feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel. Born in...
The following is from Roy Jacobsen’s Just a Mother, the fourth installment in his Barrøy Chronicles. Jacobsen is the author of more than fifteen novels and is a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature. The Unseen was a phenomenal bestseller in Norway and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award, and named a...
The following is from Priya Guns’ debut novelYour Driver Is Waiting. Guns is an actor and writer previously published in short story anthologies, gal-dem, Spring magazine, and anonymously in the Guardian. She is a Creative Writing graduate from Kingston University. If you’re going to be a driver, you’d better hide at least one weapon in your car. Especially if you’re a driver that looks...
The following is from Lorenza Pieri’s Lesser Islands. Pieri is an author, journalist, and translator. She grew up in Tuscany and spent long periods in Paris, Turin, and Rome, where she worked in publishing. She lived for eight years in Washington D.C., where she continued to write about politics and culture for a variety of outlets. Lesser Islands was the winner of numerous prizes and has...
The following is from Mirza Waheed’s Tell Her Everything. Waheed was born and brought up in Kashmir. His debut novel, The Collaborator, was an international bestseller, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the Shakti Bhatt Prize, and long listed for the Desmond Elliot Prize. It was also a Book of the Year for The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, Financial Times, Business Standard...
The following is from Alejandro Zambra’s The Private Lives of Trees. Zambra is the author of ten books, including Multiple Choice, Bonsai, and My Documents, a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, as well as a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship, he has published fiction and essays in The New Yorker, The New...