Author: stevenowad

Eggers’ first novel, published in 2002, is an ambitious literary road trip (with a few airplanes mixed in). Two young Chicagoans, Will and Hand, hatch a plan to travel around the world within seven days, giving away Will’s mini-fortune of $32,000 along the way. Why …

There’s nothing stunningly unique or groundbreaking about this novel, but it’s a great read anyway. The story is ho hum: A virus has spawned hordes of zombies, and a platoon of soldiers has to fight its way through New York to a research facility. This …

This literary thriller from France has the largest possible thematic aspirations. It asks the question, “What would you do if reality itself were destroyed?” Said destruction occurs during a Paris-to-New York flight, when a glitch in the space-time fabric shunts 240 passengers into a whole …

This novel received glowing reviews (including from the more literary outlets) and is lauded by King fans as one of his best—but it’s hard to see the appeal. Jake Epping is a high-school teacher in Maine. He discovers a portal to 1958, and after one …

Part reportage and part meditation, this book gives us a clear-eyed look at life in the trenches. The author shadows a platoon of foot soldiers over 15 months in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan. The resulting nuggets of observer wisdom are razor sharp (“The closer you …

Sticking with our recent focus on somber, war-related writing (thanks for ruining upbeat fiction for me, Putin), we present the 1979 novel about three people in a boarding house in post-war Brooklyn. Two of those people are scarred by the war, and the third is …

Probably the best-known Holocaust memoir, this 1960 account of the author’s time in two concentration camps is raw and terrifying. In 1944, Wiesel and his father are deported from their village in Transylvania to Auschwitz. What follows is the destruction of all human values and …

Thanks to Vladimir Putin, it’s hard to read and enjoy normal novels these days—and hard not to be political. Here’s a book that shows us what happens when totalitarianism takes root in Europe. These little-known stories are based on the Polish author’s experiences in Auschwitz …

The two youngest members of the Glass family are both actors. Franny is having a nervous breakdown and muttering a Catholic prayer like an earnest acolyte. Zooey, her big brother, is there to counsel her, but he isn’t helping. “We’re freaks, the two of us,” …

Inspired by last week’s BANANAFISH, we turn our attention to the Glass family chronicles: in particular, Seymour Glass, the oldest of seven precocious children of showbiz parents. What makes Seymour tick? Why would this brilliant, ridiculously educated polyglot choose to exit the world? He clearly …