Editor’s note: I’m interested in this book because it’s based on the historical reality of a Black kingdom in Appalachia; the book seems to connect people to a beautiful land where they can independently sustain themselves. “Picture a time when a kingdom existed inside the confines of the Carolinas—a time […]
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Dusk continues Arnott’s tradition of exploring myth, human relationships and the natural world. Set sometime in the early 19th-century, Dusk is a Western of a different sort: reflective and understated. It is marked by the twins’ relentless yet quiet struggle to prove they are unlike their parents, prove they are […]
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About the Book “Vividly imagined and deftly paced, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands asks us to reconsider our place within the natural world amid a backdrop of capitalism and empire. Brooks has penned an elegant novel that is at once thrilling and transcendent. Also, there is a really […]
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About the Book Renan Bernardo’s Different Kinds of Defiance (Android Press, March 2024) is a collection for the rebels at heart—for those who find courage where hope seems lost and for whom every act of resistance is an act of sheer will. From the sunbaked docks of a Rio de […]
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Pearce Oysters, a lush, evocative, finely-drawn debut novel set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearce family, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are all on the brink of collapse. Eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best, Pearce Oysters highlights the grit and beauty […]
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“Last House soars, sweeping us through the 1960s to the near future, and following the river of oil that influences American policy. But the novel’s great beating heart is the particularities of the lives of two captivating women–one bound by social mores, the other trying to dismantle them. The sublime […]
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Translated by her daughter, Sangeetha Sreenivasan, a fiercely individualistic novelist herself, Sarah Joseph’s Budhini powerfully invokes the wider bio-politics of our relentless modernization and the dangers of being indifferent to ecological realities. Read more at Penguin House India.
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“Time-bending, world-bending, heart-bending, Naniki is truly luminous … a lyrical spiritual Afro-Indigenous epic set in a climate ravaged Caribbean… two elemental beings, Amana and Skelele, must find their way across the present and the past if the world is to have a future. Kempadoo has outdone herself: this is what […]
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A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view, While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the […]
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A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community. Read more at Penguin Random House.
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Click here to return to the world eco-fiction series About the Book At once grounded in history and fantastically imaginative, Arif Anwar’s The Storm (Washington Square Press, 2021) “moves us deftly through time and across borders, beautifully illustrating the strange intersections we call fate, and reminding us how […]
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In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the […]
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Drawn richly from scientific and botanical ideas, Everything the Light Touches is a swirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban and rural life, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and “song and stone.” Pulsating at its center is the dichotomy […]
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From CultureFly: People often ask me about the inspiration for my novels. For Bellevue, my response is simple: green bans, strong women, and the Blue Mountains. Bellevue is about a feisty widow—one of the Battlers for Kelly’s Bush—who inherits a dilapidated old house near a mountain wilderness, and who confronts […]
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Heavy Weather: Tempestuous Tales of Stranger Climes: Since Odysseus’ curious crew first unleashed the bag of winds gifted him by Aeolus, the God of Winds, literature has been awash with tales of bad or strange weather. From the flood myths of Babylon, the Mahabharata and the Bible, to 20th century […]
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