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The complete Open Letters Monthly Archive.

Open Letters Monthly

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August 30, 2015

Book Review: The Automobile Club of Egypt

August 30, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

The celebrated author of "The Yacoubian Building" returns with another panoramic look at life in modern Egypt during a pivotal era

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August 30, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 29, 2015

Book Review: The Daughters

August 29, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In Adrienne Celt's remarkably rich debut novel, an opera singer is worried that the birth of her daughter has robbed her of her singing voice

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August 29, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 23, 2015

Book Review: Beirut, Beirut

August 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

Bloomsbury publishes a lovely new English-language translation of Sonallah Ibrahim's great novel about the Lebanese Civil War

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August 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 23, 2015

Book Review: The Casualties

August 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

You wouldn't bet on a little street in Edinburgh - or its eccentric inhabitants - surviving a series of world-battering catastrophes, but that's both the starting and the ending point of Nick Holdstock's fascinating first novel

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August 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 20, 2015

Book Review: Under Tiberius

August 20, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In a dusty Vatican archive, an ancient manuscript is found that could change the world. Or whatever.

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August 20, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 20, 2015

Book Review: No. 4 Imperial Lane

August 20, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

The woes of empire and the decline of the aristocracy form the backdrop for Jonathan Weisman's smart and moving debut novel, set in Thatcher's England.

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August 20, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 18, 2015

Book Review: Still Life Las Vegas

August 18, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In this funny and touching debut, a young man's search for his missing mother leads to unexpected discoveries amid the lights of Las Vegas

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August 18, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 17, 2015

Book Review: The Madagaskar Plan

August 17, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In an alternate history in which an undefeated Nazi Germany controls vast portions of Africa, a cast of old friends and enemies come together amid rumors of a devastating new kind of bomb ...

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August 17, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 02, 2015

Book Review: The Blooding

August 02, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

Matthew Hawkwood, James McGee's super-competent soldier-turned-spy, returns in another adventure, this time trapped in America during the War of 1812

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August 02, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
August 2015, fiction
August 01, 2015

Book Review: Brothers in Blood

August 01, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In the latest Roman historical novel from old pro Simon Scarrow, two heroic legionaries are chasing an infamous local warlord in Britannia - and facing treachery from within their own ranks

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August 01, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Ancient Rome, Fiction
August 2015, fiction, keeping up with the romans
July 31, 2015

Starship Captains Do It On Impulse (Unfortunately)

July 31, 2015/ Justin Hickey

In fan-favorite Ernest Cline's new book, a young man raised on video games and cheesy sci-fi movies finds that they just might be the key to Earth's salvation. But is the 80's nostalgia of Armada self-defeating?

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July 31, 2015/ Justin Hickey/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
August 2015, Book Review, fiction, Justin Hickey, literary criticism
July 31, 2015

The Edge of Sin

July 31, 2015/ Catherine Nichols

Robyn Cadwallader centers her debut novel on a young nun who volunteers to be walled away from all human contact for the rest of her life. Such women existed and, surprisingly, their lives were enormously full.

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July 31, 2015/ Catherine Nichols/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
August 2015, Book Review, fiction, literary criticism
July 31, 2015

Eileen Chang’s Changes: from Love in Redland to Naked Earth

July 31, 2015/ Yu-Yun Hsieh

Eileen Chang would never have written her hot-button anticommunist masterpiece Naked Earth without US Government encouragement and support. What should contemporary readers make of this?

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July 31, 2015/ Yu-Yun Hsieh/
Fiction, Literary Criticism, Arts & Life
August 2015, Book Review, fiction, literary criticism, translation
July 31, 2015

“A Reputable Outlaw”

July 31, 2015/ Jane Shmidt

Was the duel at twenty paces a cancer on civil society or a gesture of defiance and an expression of individuality? Touche: The Duel in Literature looks to provide the reader satisfaction on that question.

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July 31, 2015/ Jane Shmidt/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
August 2015, fiction, literary criticism
July 31, 2015

The Happy Misanthrope

July 31, 2015/ Y. Greyman

Milan Kundera's newest and possibly final novel returns to the ideas he's pursued across his career, including his "categorical disagreement with being." Y. Greyman reviews.

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July 31, 2015/ Y. Greyman/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
August 2015, fiction, literary criticism
July 31, 2015

The Truth of a Thing

July 31, 2015/ Rohan Maitzen

Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life emphasized the contingency of any single story. In contrast, her new novel focuses on one life lived to the full. But for better or for worse, Atkinson can’t resist the lure of metafiction…

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July 31, 2015/ Rohan Maitzen/
Fiction, Literary Criticism
Book Review, fiction, July 2015, literary criticism, rohan maitzen
July 25, 2015

Book Review: The Last Leaves Falling

July 25, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

A teenager in Kyoto tries to face the last months of his life as a samurai would - with a little help from his friends

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July 25, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction, Teen Fiction
fiction, July 2015
July 24, 2015

Book Review: The Meursault Investigation

July 24, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

The famous bloody encounter at the center of Albert Camus' novel The Stranger is re-imagined from a new perspective in Kamel Daoud's widely-praised debut

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July 24, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
fiction, July 2015
July 23, 2015

Book Review: The Black Coat

July 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

In the wake of Bangladesh's bloody Liberation War, a hapless nonentity suddenly finds himself impersonating a beloved national leader

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July 23, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
fiction, July 2015
July 10, 2015

Book Review: Pretty Is

July 10, 2015/ Steve Donoghue

Years ago, two young girls were abducted and held for two months by a mysterious stranger; in the present, in Maggie Mitchell's terrific debut novel, these women are now confronted with the suspicion that a part of their childhood ordeal is very much alive.

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July 10, 2015/ Steve Donoghue/
Fiction
fiction, July 2015
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