Become a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter writes about the Middle Eastern writers finding refuge from the post-Arab Spring disillusionment and chaos in dystopian fiction, speaking with writers like Basma Abdel Aziz, author of The Queue, and Saleem Haddad, author of Guapa.
...moreThere have been an awful lot of girls in titles lately—The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, to name a few—writes Alexandra Alter in the New York Times. But popular, formulaic titles aside, some “girl” books worth a deeper look this season include The Girls, by Emma Cline, and Megan […]
...moreAt the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Curtis Sittenfield, author of a modern re-write of Pride and Prejudice, on why she decided to tackle the famous novel, and more: The novel has already proved polarizing among Austen fans. “Sadly disappointing, this book is just trying to cash in on the popularity of Austen’s characters,” one angry […]
...moreThe New York Times’s Alexandra Alter interviews “America’s foremost public intellectual” and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates on his newfound success and public hail—which he both appreciates and is ambivalent about, it seems: The best part of writing is really to educate yourself. I don’t want to be anybody’s expert. I came in to […]
...moreFor the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Salman Rushdie about his new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Their discussion covers the stylistic choices that went into the novel, as well as the role of mythology and polytheistic religions in Rushdie’s larger body of work: Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a […]
...moreFor the New York Times, Alexandra Alter explores how Truman Capote and Harper Lee’s childhood friendship influenced their work, and wonders if the famous duo’s careers would have developed differently if their relationship wasn’t “strained by bitterness and rivalry.”
...moreConsidering “the booming market for young adult novels,” Alexandra Alter writes for the New York Times about how non-fiction writers are re-working their titles “to make them palatable for younger readers.”
...more