Bookworm

Tijuana Straits (Scribner)

The inventor of "surf-noir," Kem Nunn, describes how the evil of the world offers an opportunity for a writer of thrillers to structure a tale of redemption.

Country of Origin (Norton)

The Shadow of the Wind (Penguin)
Spaniard Carlos Ruiz Zafón discusses the way he utilizes "modern narrative technologies" to re-tool the traditional novel and create a work filled with history, terror and love--but also with uncertainty, deconstruction and despair.

The greatest living writer of prose in English explores his deepest influence: Rainer Maria Rilke. In this conversation, we witness the interpretation of two modern masters.

Rising Up and Rising Down (McSweeney's; abridged, Harper Collins)

William Vollmann's mammoth inquiry is a study of the history of violence, which fills seven large volumes...

However close Dan Chaon's characters come, they can't quite connect. Disconnection rules: in families, in dreams. Even fortunate coincidences subside into spiritless accidents...

Evidence of Things Unseen (Simon & Schuster)

Marianne Wiggins returned to live in America after many years in England. Having written two turbulent, disturbing books, her new one, set in American between the world wars, is a surprise...

Czeslaw Milosz, the great Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet, died in August. He was a great humanist who believed in the power of poetry to affect the world and whose own work left an imprint on his century.