News - Literary News

News - Literary News

THE FURROWS by Namwali Serpell continues to receive waves of critical acclaim in the lead-up to its publication. The book was featured on Vulture’s "57 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall," praised as a “gorgeous, surreal meditation on identity and mourning, one that squeezes the heartstrings and rarely relaxes its grip.” The Telegraph awarded the book 5 stars, with reviewer Cal Revely-Calder raving: “[THE FURROWS is] masterful: a blend of the self-knowing, sincere and spry…Serpell’s sentences are unhurried, yet detailed, smart and brisk – two cigarette-tips ‘kiss and smoulder’; life underwater is ‘the colour of shadow’ – while her narrative is coolly controlled.” Lastly, THE FURROWS was featured on most-anticipated lists from The New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, The Millions, and Ms. Magazine. Hogarth will publish the novel on September 27, 2022.

Elliot Ackerman’s THE FIFTH ACT continues to garner critical praise. The Diplomatic Courier raves: “Ackerman is one of the finest writers of his generation, having brilliantly penned literary reflections on war and meaning—a quality that carries through to his latest book. It is not often that I finish a book in one sitting, and even rarer that I put a book down and know it will stay with me long after I finish it. Ackerman’s THE FIFTH ACT does both. It is powerful, poignant, personal, and painful. His personal narrative of combat and how it stays with him today—especially during the effort to evacuate Afghans in the run-up to the collapse—is haunting and should be widely read.” Elsewhere, The Washington Review of Books deems the book a “painful, essential read from perhaps the only author who could’ve written it...He has a unique ability to center his and his comrades’ lived experience within the larger historical continuum.” Penguin Press published the book on August 9, 2022.

Danielle Steel’s latest novel, THE CHALLENGE, made its debut on The New York Times Bestsellers list for the week of September 4, 2022, appearing at #2 on Print Hardcover Fiction and #8 on Combined Print & E-Book Fiction. Delacorte Press published the book on August 16th, 2022.

THE FURROWS was featured on the AV Club’s roundup of September must-reads. Cat Auer writes: “Novelist Namwali Serpell follows her spectacular sci-fi/historical fiction THE OLD DRIFT with an undulating, enthralling tale of death and rebirth…An unexpected perspective and plot twist near the halfway point reinvigorate the story with fresh tension and direction, with Serpell utterly unafraid to fuse and forge genres, turning up the levels of suspense, mystery, and even romance.” Hogarth will publish the novel on September 27, 2022.

Rachel Aviv’s highly anticipated debut STRANGERS TO OURSELVES continues to be lauded ahead of its publication. BookPage featured the book on their Fall 2022 Preview, writing: “Rachel Aviv’s first book explores questions of self-knowledge and mental health, subjects she’s previously examined in her award-winning journalism for The New Yorker. STRANGERS TO OURSELVES offers sensitive case histories of people whose experiences of mental illness exceed the limits of psychiatric terminology, diagnosis and treatment—including the author’s own experience of being the youngest child in the U.S. to receive a diagnosis of anorexia. After being hospitalized for a failure to eat or drink, she met anorexic girls twice her age and learned to mimic their strategies for losing weight. But which came first: the diagnosis or her symptoms? This contradiction between psychiatric terminology and lived experience is the core issue driving Aviv’s book, which also examines Western psychiatry’s long history of ignoring the link between racial violence and mental illness. It’s a sharp, compassionate and necessary investigation, not to be missed.” STRANGERS TO OURSELVES was also featured on most-anticipated lists from Goodreads and Kirkus. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish the book on September 13, 2022.

Elliot Ackerman’s THE FIFTH ACT was featured in The Sunday Telegraph. Matthew Leeming writes: “Elliot Ackerman, a former US marine who served in Afghanistan for eight years and the author of some acclaimed novels, is interesting because he is both an intellectual and a man of action. In his new book, THE FIFTH ACT, he tells the story of the ‘clusterf---‘ unfolding as he holidays in Venice with his children. This conjunction of banality and evil is very striking.” Penguin Press published the book on August 9, 2022.

Namwali Serpell’s highly anticipated THE FURROWS is garnering amazing press and reviews ahead of its September release. Serpell was featured on the cover of Poets & Writers’ September issue, with an incredible profile on the author about her stellar literary and academic career. Renée H. Shea writes: “Namwali Serpell conjures the roiling nature of grief in a powerful narrative that explores memory, loss, and black identity without resting on what she calls the ‘meaningless platitude’ that art promotes empathy...Resisting knee-jerk empathy that is an end in itself and refusing to presume she has the answers to big questions of loss and injustice, Serpell offers that satisfying difficulty in THE FURROWS that unsettles readers as it draws them in. If it’s disquieting, all to the good.” GQ, Kirkus, and Goodreads also featured the novel on their must-read roundups. Hogarth will publish the novel on September 27, 2022.

BLACK DOG, the 62nd book in the Stone Barrington series, will make its debut on The New York Times Bestseller list for the week of August 21, 2022. It will debut at #15 on the Hardcover Fiction list, and #10 on the Combined Print & E-Book Fiction list. G.P. Putnam’s Sons published the book on August 2, 2022.

Tanaïs sat down with BOMB magazine for an in-depth discussion about their memoir, IN SENSORIUM. Interviewer Evan Nicole Brown raves: “On its face, IN SENSORIUM is a lyrical memoir about fragrances, their histories, and the resilience of the American Bangladeshi Muslim novelist and perfumer’s motherland. The book is ultimately a sundial—a totem of light and shadow that changes gradually the longer you look at it. IN SENSORIUM is a way of organizing time—the history of a people, a place, a family, a life—guided by scent and the essence of memory.” Harper published the book on February 22, 2022.

Tomi Obaro’s dazzling debut novel DELE WEDS DESTINY was highlighted by Amazon Books Editorial Director Sarah Gelman on CBS Mornings with Gayle King for a piece on Summer beach read recommendations. Gelman calls DELE WEDS DESTINY “beautiful” and “evocative.” Knopf published the book on June 28, 2022.