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Okay, it’s a little late but I’m getting ready for the National Book Festival tomorrow (swing by at 11:15 to see me talk to Hari Kunzru and Katie Kitamura about balancing marriage, family and the writing life) so I’m a little panicky today! But my reward to myself for working on a Saturday will be a double shot of Reincarnation Blues and Sourdough, which I’m really looking forward to.

Big Boss Edith Chapin has had enough of novels for a while, so she’s picked up Gideon Rachman’s Easternization.

Friend of the Desk Colin Dwyer is keeping up with what he’s calling “DeLillopalooza,” so he’s got Ratner’s Star.

Our beloved and soon-departing Intern Sydnee (come back to us, Sydnee!) is very excited to’ve scored an advance copy of The Autobiography of Gucci Mane.

PCHH producer Jessica Reedy picked up Priestdaddy, because, as she says, “all the best memoirs are written by poets.”

And critic Annalisa Quinn is reading Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing – stay tuned for her review next week.

Have a good long weekend!

– Petra

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At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell out in paperback 8/8

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A beautifully crafted novel revealing the emotionally complex relationships between mothers and daughters, Minae Mizumura’s INHERITANCE FROM MOTHER is one not to miss. Translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter. 🇯🇵 #translatedtuesday #minaemizumura #inheritancefrommother (at Unabridged Bookstore)

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Four Suspenseful Thrillers for Summer

I read thrillers and crime fiction all year long. They cleanse my palate in the midst of some other heavy-duty reading from my book stack.

But crime fiction can also be the perfect companion for summer. So here are four suspenseful summertime thrillers you’ll want to devour — and share.

(Click on the title to purchase from Amazon) 

“Leona” by Jenny Rogneby - Mark it on your calendar: “Leona” comes out Aug. 1.   Now, I don’t know if those endless winter nights are getting to the Scandinavians, but they continue to brew up some downright disturbing scenarios. If you like Camilla Lackberg and Jo Nesbo, as I do, you need to read “Leona.”

Here’s the setup: A child, bruised and covered in blood, is sent into a Stockholm bank to rob it. She escapes with millions.

Leona Lindberg, the detective assigned to the case, has a beef with her boss, a personal life on the rocks and a love for high-stakes poker. She’s irascible, eccentric, dedicated and dangerous. (What’s not to love?)

And the author, Rogneby, is fascinating too. She is Ethiopian by birth but was raised in Sweden. She’s a pop-singer-turned-criminologist-turned-writer.

I’m hoping “Leona” isn’t the end: This would make one heck of a series.

“The Professionals” by Owen Laukkanen - Owen Laukkanen likes to bring his mayhem to Minnesota. He’s Canadian, but the American Midwest — and Minnesota, in particular — has been fertile ground for his fictional crime sprees.

Laukkanen likes the idea of reckless and roving criminals: His debut, “The Professionals,” features four college students who come up with a kidnapping scheme.

Investigators Kirk Stevens, of the Minnesota BCA, and Carla Windermere, a striking FBI agent on the rise, give chase.

From the beginning, there’s been some fun and steamy tension between the two, even though Stevens is happily married. Laukkanen says he wasn’t convinced when he started that he would keep both characters. Windermere was initially just a plot device to push the debut novel along. Four books later, she’s the reason I’ve read the whole series.

As for why this Canadian author plants all the mayhem in Minnesota? When he was plotting the criminal geography of “The Professionals,” the bad guys just happened to end up in the Twin Cities. (Hope they don’t run into all those bad guys John Sandford has been putting in our midst.)

“Rage Against the Dying” by Becky Masterman - When I read the prologue of “Rage Against the Dying,” I thought: “Becky Masterman, where have you been all my life?”

She’s that good.

The novel opens in the point of view of a predator, a technique I usually don’t go for. But it’s a savvy play on Masterman’s part because it gives us a deliciously skewed introduction to one of the savviest, sexiest and smartest sleuths I’ve encountered in a crime novel.

Brigid Quinn once brought down terrorists and unraveled a Thai sex slavery ring, but now she’s retired to Tucson, Ariz., in semi-disgrace after she shot an unarmed perp.

Pushing 60, she’s sporting a white ponytail and she’s newly married to a former Episcopalian priest-turned-professor. She believes she’s hiding her past and her cynicism from him. She’s not.

When a complicated serial-killer case that Brigid worked for years re-emerges, she slowly gets drawn back into the investigation.

Masterman’s plotting is convincing and her day job with a forensics press shows in the crime-solving science. But it’s Brigid’s originality and her smart mouth that made me immediately buy the next book in the series.

“Spook Street” by Mick Herron - I first heard about writer Mick Herron from Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl. She put Herron’s debut spy thriller “Slow Horses” on one of her “best of” lists. And when she speaks, I listen.

I’ve now read two books in Herron’s series. The newest, “Spook Street,” continues the thrill. And here’s why: It features a team of disgraced yet ambitious British spies, all led by an uncouth, cynical, profane jackal who nevertheless cares about queen and country. Throw in an intriguingly complex crime, and you have a juicy story. Added bonus: lots of authentic MI6 spy tradecraft and convincing crime-solving.

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New novel from “one of the most important writers in Japan today,” Minae Mizumura, Inheritance from Mother. Just out from Other Press.

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Minae Mizumura’s second novel to be translated in English, Inheritance from Mother, comes out May 2, and today we’re pleased to share the gorgeous cover with you. We spoke to Kathleen DiGrado, the talent behind the cover, who had this to say:

“The design process was intuitive for me, so it’s difficult to describe. I have had trouble several times in the past when the AIGA, GRAPHIS, or another of the design organizations asked me to do the same when winning an award; once I just wrote a haiku.

To be quite honest, I was sad when I designed this cover. My mother is Japanese, and she was recently diagnosed with dementia/early Alzheimer’s, so there are many parallels between my present situation and Mitsuki’s.

I wanted to hint at the design for Minae Mizumura’s previous work, A True Novel, so I was delighted to once again use the traditional Japanese crest frames from a wonderful book I have. I wanted it to look elegant but somewhat somber. It’s quite easy for cherry blossoms to come off as a cliché, but they really are an important part of Japanese culture, and certainly for the older generation. I thought if we could somehow simulate the blossoms and frames as if they were printed on rice paper, in an imperfect way, this would convey the inner complexities faced by the dutiful Japanese daughter. The gold foil stamp adds another layer of the glimmer of hope fading. Love, beauty, contempt, and longing…I hope the cover conveys at least some of those themes.”

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ELLE by Philippe Djian May 23, 2017

You saw the film starring Isabelle Huppert, now read the book on which it was based

Elle is a psychological thriller that recounts thirty days in the life of its heroine Michèle—powerfully portrayed by Isabelle Huppert in Paul Verhoeven’s award-winning film—where memory, sex, and death collide at every page.

A few weeks before Christmas, Michèle picks herself up from her living room floor. She has been raped. She has almost no recollection of her attacker but she senses his presence—he is never far away—and this uncanny feeling triggers a whirlwind of events and memories. She begins to fear she is losing her grip on a life already complicated by a demanding job, an ex-husband with a new girlfriend, a jealous lover, and a son trapped in a relationship with his girlfriend pregnant by another man.

Hardened by the consequences of her father’s violent past, Michèle—in her fifties, fiercely independent and unsentimental—refuses to be reduced to a victim. When her rapist begins taunting her with messages, she takes measures to protect herself until she discovers his identity…

Through the bitingly sarcastic and unflinchingly realist voice of its heroine, Elle paints a striking portrait of one woman’s experience that challenges our notions of masculinity and femininity, weakness and strength.

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Isabelle Huppert (x)

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One again, with feeling, me and the queen @isabelle.huppert 🍾💙 | (x)

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Isabelle Huppert in Elle | 2016 | Directed by Paul Verhoeven

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I wonder how far along the scale of moral degeneration Zweig would judge America to be in its current state.

George Prochnik, “When It’s Too Late to Stop Fascism, According to Stefan Zweig”

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'I have not only supported the Impressionists, I have translated them into literature,' Zola declared, thereby recognizing his debt to painters.

Anka Muhlstein, THE PEN AND THE BRUSH

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Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and UCLA Professor Emeritus Saul Friedländer returns to memoir to recount a tale of intellectual coming-of-age on three continents. In Where Memory Leads: My Life, a sequel to Friedländer’s poignant first memoir, Where Memory Comes, published forty years ago and recently reissued with a new introduction from Claire Messud, he bridges the gap between the ordeals of his childhood during the German Occupation of France and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. Reflecting on the wrenching events that induced him to devote sixteen years of his life to writing his masterpiece, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, Friedländer discusses this book and his life’s work with historian Steven J. Ross.

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Since the Arab Spring, Egypt has gone from democratic elections to the return of military rule. With a median age under 24 years, the country has left its youth feeling betrayed about the past and disillusioned about the present and future. World Policy Journal spoke with Rachel Aspden, author of Generation Revolution: On the Front Line Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East. Aspden discusses following a diverse group of young Egyptians as they grapple with their lives in a time of revolution and repression, as well as her experiences as a Western woman living in Egypt.

WORLD POLICY JOURNAL: In your book, you write about a diverse group of youth—before, during, and after the revolution in Egypt—and it seems no matter their background, the youth you spoke to were disillusioned with the status quo in the country. What do the think the major reason, or reasons, that galvanized this heterogeneous group of young people to act?

RACHEL ASPDEN: One of the things I talk about in the book is the generational shift that took place before the revolution. These young people's parents—whatever their circumstances really—had managed to reach an accommodation with the state, so the status quo kind of worked for them. There was this implicit deal with the state, whereby they would not get involved in politics and in return the state would make sure there was enough work, they could maintain a decent standard of living, and life could go on more or less as normal, as long they didn't cross those red lines or meddle in political matters. What started to happen in the 2000s was that deal started to break down in a very obvious way for young people. The population was growing and the state was no longer able to keep up, so unemployment became a massive issue. There were a lot of university graduates and there just weren't enough jobs to go around. Corruption was rampant and then there were day-to-day issues, like the failing infrastructure, which would mean that if you tried to go to a hospital you were going to have a horrible experience, if you wanted to get anywhere you were going to be sitting in traffic for hours and hours at a time, and you were going to be living in a very polluted environment.

These things started to mount up and at the same time people started to become more politically literate. I would trace that back to the protests over the second intifada in Palestine. That's really when this generation started to get politicized, and the universities were really the breeding ground for that dissent. So people stated to protest. Those protests carried on over the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and were brutally repressed by the government, and as the 2000s continued, people began to be much more aware of the impact of the tools of repression that the state was using. Police brutality was a really big issue and it started to spread, so that while some people could rationalize it before by saying this is only going to affect people who are political dissidents and religious extremists, it started to come closer and closer to these previously comfortable middle classes.

Another factor that was discussed in terms of the revolution was the spread of the internet through Egypt. This was actually a government policy that was driven by the president's son, Gamal Mubarak, who wanted to reinvent Egypt as a go-getting, hot new destination for foreign investment. He looked at the state of the infrastructure and thought, we've got to get the internet up and running here. A lot of money was pumped into that effort, but what he didn't foresee was that all these young people who suddenly got online were able to communicate with one another, inform themselves much more about the political situation, and start to gather in online spaces that were much more difficult to police than offline spaces. All of these factors came together and it was really the murder of a young man, Khaled Mohamed Saeed, in Alexandria in the summer of 2012 that concentrated people's minds. They thought if this can happen, if the police can just go into an internet cafe and kill a young guy, it could happen to any of us. All of the ground work that had been put in place—the increasing political literacy and the spread of the internet—came together and helped direct those feelings into protests in January 2011.