Author: stevenowad

Old Turkish proverb: “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a sultan; the palace becomes a circus.” Sounds about right, but this book, by a now-exiled Russian journalist, proves the saying wrong. When a clown enters the palace, the entire government becomes …

Dubus’ first novel tells the story of Leo, a teen coming of age in smalltown Massachusetts during the Vietnam war. For the first time in his life, Leo is having sex, falling in love, and feeling like an adult thanks to a real job building …

A decade before he wrote AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, Tracy Letts came up with this hyperbolic story about angst in a trailer park in the South. Chris, the play’s main character, gives us the flavor of the tale when he describes his home state of Texas …

Haven’t seen the movie, but the book tells an absorbing true story. Cea’s family leaves California in 1960s for the rugged wilderness of western Canada. The journey that follows takes her from a childhood spent in the bush to a First Nations reserve west of …

From our Obscure Works file, here’s a 40-year-old play that’s guaranteed to make you laugh like a Filipino ferret. Four movie people are stranded together in the Philippines during a typhoon. While the blockbuster movie’s insanely expensive sets sink into the mud, a writer, an …

A Kurdish asylum seeker flees Iran and boards a leaky boat chugging toward a better life in Australia. What follows are six years behind bars on Manus Island, Australia’s off-shore detention center north of Papua New Guinea. The conditions are harsh, the tropical weather is …

Here is some bite-sized post-apocalyptic fiction about a woman who might be the last living female on earth. A virus has decimated humankind while Faye Wills lay in a coma. After waking up in a corpse-filled stadium, she has to repair her body and mind …

Aging hiker Jeremy is keenly aware that the clock of life is ticking. To prepare for senescence, he finds soulful nourishment in lonesome backpacking trips through the mountains. One day he wanders off the beaten path and comes across a young couple who lead him …

Forget the movie with Brad Pitt. This isn’t that. The “Oral History of the Zombie War” is more like epistolary reportage, a series of interviews with frontline battlers of the undead after the war has ended. The detail and clear-sightedness of the first-person accounts make …

Before he wrote dense adult novels such as ATONEMENT and AMSTERDAM, Ian McEwan tried his hand at Roald Dahl-esque children’s fiction. The result is this slim volume of stories featuring 11-year-old Peter, who goes on seven fantastical journeys of the imagination. The stories deftly portray …