Alan Cheuse

Norman Mailer, one of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, may have compared himself to some of the heavyweights of modern literature. But Joyce Carol Oates is an entire sports complex, including the Olympic-sized pools and the locker rooms.

It's become a cliche to point out that ...

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer — now in his mid-80s— has been in the business for more than 60 years. So his first graphic novel, a darkly drawn confection in the noir tradition, called Kill My Mother, comes late in his career. I feel a certain kinship with him, because ...

Tasmanian-born novelist Richard Flanagan named his latest book after a spiritually intense travel journal by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, but this extraordinary new novel presents us with a story much more tumultuous than the great haiku writer's account of his wanderings. Flanagan has written a sort of Australian ...

Charles Cumming hooks NPR book reviewer Alan Cheuse with his latest spy novel, A Colder War.

Every literate nation should have the epics it deserves. The Indian subcontinent already has Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (among a few others), and now we can add to that illuminating company Kamila Shamsie's new novel, A God in Every Stone. Stretching from the ancient Persian Empire to the waning days ...

Amy Bloom's new novel Lucky Us takes readers across America in the 1940s, that special decade of wartime dislocation and post-war disruption — with side-trips to England and Germany — in the company of a pair of half-sisters as endearing and comically annoying as any you'll find in contemporary fiction.

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Alan Cheuse reviews A Replacement Life, Boris Fishman's humorous account of Holocaust survivors in today's New York.

Alan Cheuse reviews Angels Make Their Hope Here, by Breena Clarke.

Alan Cheuse reviews the first English-language version of Shooting Star, by Sergio Elizondo.

Alan Cheuse reviews The Expedition to the Boabab Tree. Originally written in Afrikaans by Wilma Stockenstrom, the short novel on slavery has been translated by Nobel-winning writer J.M. Coetzee.

Alan Cheuse reviews Warburg in Rome, a new book from James Carroll.

Alan Cheuse reviews Kalyan Ray's new novel, No Country. It's a family drama that crosses continents and time, from the U.S. to Ireland to India over 150 years.

Alan Cheuse picks three debut writers to send your mind globe-trotting this summer.

Vast numbers of Central American children are streaming into the U.S., overwhelming the agencies charged with their care. Outbreaks of chicken pox and scabies have been reported at some centers.

I suppose it's preaching to the converted to announce that David Ignatius has done it again. But here he is, having written yet another deeply engaging spy thriller, rooted at that point where the intricacies of the intelligence community and the everyday world of civilians converge. However, it's a reviewer's ...

Alan Cheuse reviews two new spy novels: David Igantius' The Director and Adam Brookes' Night Heron.

The famed writer of Westerns uses his first novel in five years to blow a few holes in the myths surrounding the shootout at the OK Corral. Reviewer Alan Cheuse calls it "a peach of a book."

Alan Cheuse reviews American Innovations, a new collection of short stories by Rivka Galchen.

A new study concludes the medical and justice system can do more to help rape survivors access medical care. Funding cuts often limit access to exams and keep test results from leading to prosecution.

No book I've read all year underscores the distinctions between the long form and the short story more than the award-winning story writer Anthony Doerr's new novel All the Light We Cannot See.

The book takes place in Europe — in three locations, mainly — Hitler's Germany, Paris, and the ...