Bookworm

Sjón places classic epics side-by-side with Icelandic sagas of past centuries. We discuss how literature comes from literature and one story gives birth to the next.

We are never prepared to discover our parents are fallible; Simpson's protagonist investigates his parents' lives but most of what he uncovers he doesn't wish to know.

VanderMeer's trilogy chronicles expeditions orchestrated by a government agency called the Southern Reach into a dangerous landscape where reality and unreality blur.

For Jeff Jackson, starting a novel is an invocation. There's an idea that telling our stories is cathartic but sometimes what you've really done is turn up the volume.

Emma Donoghue found the San Francisco she uncovered while researching for her novel far more modern than the Dublin she grew up in a century later.

Lorrie Moore's darkly humorous stories follow middle-aged men and women in states of lonely desperation trapped by the absurdities of their everyday lives.

Dustin Long speaks of the disappointment his generation has grown to expect at having prepared for a  life that isn't there.

Love can become a false Eden. Michelle Huneven's protagonist retreats to the Sierras to write her dissertation but upon accepting a lover begins to dwell in their affair.

Irish author John Banville has written a new novel under his crime-fiction pseudonym, Benjamin Black, and in the guise of Raymond Chandler.