Alan Cheuse

Book Review: 'Submergence'

Alan Cheuse — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 20:38:00 +0000

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The writer J.M. Ledgard leads multiple lives. He's a journalist and covers East Africa for the Economist, but Ledgard is also a novelist.

Book Review: 'Where Tigers Are At Home'

Alan Cheuse — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. Our book reviewer, Alan Cheuse, has just traveled to Brazil and back in an 800-page novel. The book is called "Where Tigers Are At Home." It's by a French novelist named Jean-Marie Blas de Robles and it's just out in English. Here's Alan's review.

ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: A Frenchman named Von Wogau, a divorced and retired journalist, lives in a small town in the northeastern region of Brazil.

Under Ogawa's Macabre, Metafictional Spell

Alan Cheuse — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:20:00 +0000

It used to be a truism among critics of British poetry that Keats and most of his fellow Romantic poets worked in the shadow of John Milton. I'm not making a perfect analogy when I suggest that most contemporary Japanese writers seem to be working under the shadow of Haruki Murakami, but I hope it highlights the spirit of the situation.

You certainly get that feeling of being haunted by Murakami when you begin reading the "Eleven Dark Tales," as she calls them, in this story cycle by Yoko Ogawa. The situations seem made for Murakami's particular blend of the real and the fantastic.

A Wintry Mix: Alan Cheuse Selects The Season's Best

Alan Cheuse — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:48:00 +0000

It's that time of year again — the leaves have fallen, the dark comes early, the air brings with it a certain chill — and I've been piling up books on my reading table, books I've culled from the offerings of the past few months, which because of their essential lyric beauty and power stand as special gifts for you and yours.

They sometimes seem at odds, the lyrical impulse and the narrative impulse.

Book Review: 'Dear Life'

Alan Cheuse — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 21:40:00 +0000

Critic Alan Cheuse says Canadian short story writer Alice Munro's new collection, Dear Life: Stories, is both arresting and worth reading.