[{"id":276309,"date":"2026-08-31T05:10:01","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276309"},"modified":"2026-08-31T07:42:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T11:42:47","slug":"marlon-james-on-finally-writing-a-novel-that-draws-from-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/marlon-james-on-finally-writing-a-novel-that-draws-from-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Marlon James on (Finally) Writing a Novel That Draws From His Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Says a narrator in Marlon James\u2019s freshly Booker-nominated The Disappearers<\/em><\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve made such a terrible mess out of being a homo.\u201d<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s protagonists are all gay men in \u201880s and \u201890s Jamaica; each makes similar proclamations. \u201cBut the statement is unfair,\u201d says James from his home in Brooklyn. \u201cIt\u2019s a statement that I think battered people, bruised people would make. There\u2019s this idea of what a perfect homosexual is. Was he out enough? Did he sleep with enough people? Did he fight for rights?\u201d<\/p>\n

James has spent most of the last decade in the fantastical Dark Star Trilogy. The Disappearers<\/em>, set in the smothering Kingston of his childhood, is his most personal work. \u201cIt\u2019s not autofiction,\u201d he specifies, \u201cbut it\u2019s the first novel where I\u2019m drawing so much from my life. I know that\u2019s usually a debut novel for people. I had to wait six novels to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is revelatory. An unblinking portrait of gay joy and pain in a society that derides gayness at every turn. \u201cJesus, I don\u2019t think about it a lot but people want to kill us,\u201d writes 18-year-old Eddy Porteous in his journal, the book\u2019s opening segment. \u201cUs, I\u2019m a part of an us that people just want to beat to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

James attended what he describes as a \u201cpretty posh\u201d high school in Kingston. \u201cI was never physically bullied,\u201d he says of those days. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t need to be. Verbal bullying was enough. This pressure to conform. What does it mean when you\u2019re the class sissy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the prejudice in The Disappearers <\/em>is lifted straight from James\u2019s own boyhood, as when Eddy resists buying Prince\u2019s Lovesexy<\/em><\/a> because the album cover will tarnish his already sullied reputation. But James also interviewed dozens of queer Jamaicans while researching the book. Many of these stories come from them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s like when I wrote Brief History<\/em><\/a>,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn’t have to imagine much. The truth was stranger and wilder, more violent and more disturbing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inciting arc of The Disappearers <\/em>involves a six-man play staged by Havelock Titus, he of the \u201cterrible mess.\u201d The amateur, all-gay, multigenerational troupe is set to perform John Herbert\u2019s Fortune and Men\u2019s Eyes<\/em>, a 1967 production about homosexuality in prison. Havelock, who by dint of an Oxford education is more worldly than his players, plans to make a statement by putting on the show in Jamaica in 1988\u2014until a horrific act of violence interrupts rehearsals and scatterers the actors to the proverbial winds.<\/p>\n

While James didn\u2019t experience physical homophobic attacks, \u201cI knew about them, and all it did was send me further into the closet,\u201d he says. \u201cI was one of many who ran to the church, because the church was going to make me straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here lies the novel\u2019s autofictional divergence. Young Eddy Porteous, who spends his days \u201cblasting cum all over pictures of Michael Hutchence<\/a>,\u201d is swiftly embracing his homosexuality. And Jordan Brown, narrator of the novel\u2019s longest section, says, \u201cI\u2019ve always failed at appearing straight, not because I acted like a faggot but because I fucking hate straight people. Liking people who hate you is what the X-Men do. [\u2026] I could fuck a pretty man. I could let an ugly man fuck me. The thing is, both pretty and ugly are interesting in their own way. Straight people for the most part never grew up having to be a sexual anything, so they are just an ordinary form of nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not autofiction,\u201d he specifies, \u201cbut it\u2019s the first novel where I\u2019m drawing so much from my life. I know that\u2019s usually a debut novel for people. I had to wait six novels to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because each narrator inhabits a more advanced stage of sexual discovery, I ask James if they represent progressive facets of his own coming out. A particular age, say, or a frustration, or a relationship. No, says James, that\u2019s not quite right. Rather, given his flight to the church, \u201cPart of this book is a weird kind of FOMO for me. Even the bad stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

James didn\u2019t move to America on a permanent basis until 2007, when he began a 15-year teaching career at Macalester College. \u201cBut I was definitely escaping to New York quite a bit [before then],\u201d he says, \u201csometimes up to six months every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

James remembers living \u201cpretty dissociated lives\u201d during this time. \u201cIn America,\u201d he says, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be cruising or anything. I mean, I wouldn\u2019t have dared. But I would be putting on what you would call faggy clothes, almost as if I\u2019m impersonating a queer person, and walking around downtown New York and being myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Bronx, where he stayed with Jamaican relatives, James remained buttoned up. It was only when he crossed the Harlem River that he donned his Levi\u2019s Offender Jeans (named for their low-rise cut). \u201cI’m living this sort of bohemian queer life, but it was like Cinderella,\u201d he says. \u201cBy 9 or 10 p.m., I had to run back to the Barnes and Noble bookstore and change back into my normal people clothes. One of the reasons I moved to the Midwest, I think, was to go somewhere where family would never visit, somewhere I would never get the scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Minnesota isn\u2019t an option for the men in The Disappearers. <\/em>For the most part, neither is New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo faggot in Jamaica is living, we\u2019re not even existing,\u201d says Jordan. \u201cWe\u2019re just surviving. Some survive better than others, not just the ones who can pass, but the sissy who passes just enough that nobody asks him questions to his face.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 25-year-old \u201csometime prostitute,\u201d Jordan is the novel\u2019s vengeful Ahab, a bottomless vessel for James\u2019s\u2014 and, presumably, his interviewees\u2019\u2014rage. The actors are bewildered and alone after the attack. (Per James, \u201cbattered, bruised.\u201d) But Jordan\u2019s reaction is the strongest, especially when local media blames the victims instead of searching for the perpetrators.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think about it that deeply until I started researching lynching in the States,\u201d says James. \u201cNine times out of ten, the white witnesses say that people lynched themselves. It was \u2018Black-on-Black crime,\u2019 or \u2018They\u2019re so excitable.\u2019 I realized that in Jamaica, and in a lot of homophobic countries, they say, \u2018Their brains are not the same\u2019 or \u2018He was an abuser,\u2019 or \u2018He made a pass at somebody.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The parallel grew more defined with further research. \u201cIt was shocking to me,\u201d says James. \u201cThe language of bigotry really is the same, no matter what you hate. Bigotry is kind of unimaginative in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHanging, castrating,\u201d Jordan rants to Eddy, \u201cbeheading, burning, beating, what else? Stoning, bludgeoning, boiling, from before the dark ages until now they been killing us [\u2026] Sometimes I get so mad I wonder how one fucking body can hold all of it. So I go to the gym to get fitter and stronger. And every time I fuck a closet case I bite him in the ass or neck, or better yet\u2014give him a hickey that his wife can\u2019t mistake for anything else. Or I dare them to hit me so I can beat the shit out of them. So fucking mad at so many people I still think my head goin\u2019 explode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan\u2019s vitriol is a perfect match for James\u2019s talent. But when the anger finally ebbs\u2014and it does, not often, but it does\u2014The Disappearers<\/em> channels the love and humor that makes its characters tick.<\/p>\n

\u201cA therapist once asked me how I felt about being gay,\u201d says Jordan. \u201cI said to him okay, if you strip all the fuckery that God lay in my way ever since I started sucking dick and just focus on the fact of faggotry, how do I feel? You know what the answer was? I fucking love it. Maybe not love so much as fascinated by it. Enthralled? More like spellbound. Yeah, spellbound with being gay from when I was eight and didn\u2019t know what it meant or that it would have anything to do with sex since I also didn\u2019t know what the fuck sex was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its passages like this where James\u2019s own bildungsroman drifts, perhaps, into view. The love. The discontent. The \u201cFOMO.\u201d Driving a guileless Eddy around Kingston in the novel\u2019s early pages, a more experienced Jordan tells his passenger, \u201cYou do realize that there is a Jamaica underneath this Jamaica, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

James never received such mentorship from a gay friend. It wasn\u2019t available. \u201cI had one lesbian friend,\u201d he says, \u201cand it put a huge strain on our friendship. When she came out, I immediately started finding ways to distance myself.\u201d As a result, \u201cI spent most of the 80s in my bedroom listening to The Cure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing about being in a former British Colony,\u201d James explains, \u201cis that in some ways it never stops being a Victorian Society. We\u2019re obsessed with morality but have all these undergrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Disappearers, <\/em>James embraces a Jamaican subculture that he long held at arm\u2019s length. But signs point to improvement back home. A younger generation of queer Jamaicans is staying on the island rather than migrating, he says, which means that \u201cEvery kid in Jamaica now has a gay friend.\u201d This could make all the difference in the world. Especially when those kids grow up.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes it mean I’m going to hold my fianc\u00e9\u2019s hand and walk on a street in Jamaica?\u201d James asks. \u201cProbably not. But I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody does it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody really cares.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Says a narrator in Marlon James\u2019s freshly Booker-nominated The Disappearers, \u201cI\u2019ve made such a terrible mess out of being a homo.\u201d The novel\u2019s protagonists are all gay men in \u201880s and \u201890s Jamaica; each makes similar proclamations. \u201cBut the statement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19820,"featured_media":276321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,11,43072],"tags":[99011,763,124,6552,111929],"class_list":["post-276309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-fullwidth-slider","category-in-conversation","tag-eric-olson","tag-marlon-james","tag-profiles","tag-riverhead-books","tag-the-disappearers"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19SB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Untitled-design-2026-08-27T130249.469.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19820"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276044,"date":"2026-08-31T05:09:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276044"},"modified":"2026-08-30T21:06:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T01:06:48","slug":"fun-feminine-and-fundamental-in-defense-of-frivolity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/fun-feminine-and-fundamental-in-defense-of-frivolity\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun, Feminine and Fundamental: In Defense of Frivolity"},"content":{"rendered":"

It will be the Year of Perfect Skin, I told myself. I had arrived at my mid-forties, and the mirror suddenly gave me a face crosshatched with creases. I was Portrait of a Woman Aging. I was a cubist composition, something by Picasso. I was a strange collage of exhaustion. Mouth, eyes, along the Cupid\u2019s bow of my lips\u2014each one was crinkled like a piece of paper that had been balled up and then pressed flat again.<\/p>\n

I no longer looked twenty years younger. But, worse, my skin had broken out in a strange midlife puberty. Every morning, another pink spot on my cheek. Every night, another small mark of embarrassment written along my jaw.<\/p>\n

To begin the Year of Perfect Skin, I ordered creams and moisturizers, serums that arrived in glass ampules, oils I would measure out by the droplet. I learned to double-cleanse: first a balm that melted like butter, then a soapy liquid to wash all residue away. I ordered little disposable face towels from a company called Clean Skin Club, because immaculate skin was a society I wanted to join. I tapped something called essence into the fat of my cheekbones. My fingertips moved across my face the way they did across the keyboard of my laptop. I wanted glass skin, bouncy skin, skin slickened like the trail a snail leaves behind. Tap. Tap. I am revising myself, I said.<\/p>\n

It was January 2020. Soon there would be a global pandemic. I would learn how to distance socially. I wore a disposable mask to the grocery store and a pair of surgical gloves. Standing in the produce section among the bins of apples, I grasped each piece of fruit with my blue, latex hand. Beneath the protective layers, I could smell the fear in my sweat.<\/p>\n

Back home, I stood before the mirror\u2019s metallic scrutiny. Sometimes the mask left a welt around the perimeter of my mouth, a groove that briefly obscured my aging and acne.<\/p>\n

The frivolous is a splendid excuse. It allows us to partake in stead in the fun of gossip, to enjoy the delights of fashion and fragrance, to devour sugary cookies until our gluttony is sated, the soul fat as a full belly.<\/p>\n

What could I do in that year but insist on skin without flaws? What power did I have beyond leaning toward my own reflection and studying the lunar contours of a pore? If I stood close enough to the mirror, the world was reduced to my face. My skin became a whole topography. There was nothing beyond the landforms of forehead, nose, and chin.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Frivolity, meaning connected to the frivolous. That is, unimportant, undeserving of rigorous thought.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Frivolity is always intended as an insult. We deem certain lawsuits frivolous. Some entertainments. Some conversations. Frivolity is seldom a compliment we pay.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The word frivolity<\/em> wears a feathered boa. When uttered, it is coquettish. It opens with an unvoiced f<\/em>. It closes with what grammarians call a feminine ending, which seems to fizz like a pale splash of prosecco.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Feminine, because frivolity is stitched to gender. It is often tied to queerness and to color as well. Those who call an object \u201cfrivolous\u201d criticize the thing and, by extension, they also critique the person who loves the snippet of lace, the leather fringe down the length of a sleeve.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Feminine, because items deemed frivolous\u2014let\u2019s say a lipstick shaped like a sleek, red bullet of seduction\u2014are mostly marketed and sold to women. Men\u2019s passions are taken seriously. The games they play as children become their weekend hobbies as adults, even if now they only watch a ball being hurled back and forth from the marshmallow cushions of their living rooms. Men are permitted to be fans. They can wear jerseys that hang to their knees, baggy shirts in primary colors, without censure. And the game<\/em> (whatever that game might be) is never a frivolity.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

But a woman who buys a bottle of perfume must be condemned for spending money on a silly spritz of mimosa and patchouli. She is judged for wanting what women want. Purses and heels. A dress made of something silky called charmeuse, a French word that means a woman who charms, one who bewitches.<\/p>\n

And never mind that she has bought only what the market is selling. Never mind that she will be disparaged if her lips remain plain or her lashes lack the necessary coat of mascara, that caterpillar thickness. She should still be blamed for giving in to the allure of billboards ten feet tall with languorous models. Shame on her for wanting those vast cheekbones highlighted in gold, those great eyelids heavy with shadow the color of smoke.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In Ways of Seeing<\/em>, the art critic and writer John Berger examines the unkindness with which women are often viewed. The book considers the work of European artists, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance and into the twentieth century. Berger examines the moral judgements that are embedded in representations of women\u2019s bodies, their lovely faces:<\/p>\n

\n

The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity<\/em>, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.<\/p>\n

The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make a woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, as sight.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Berger shows us Hans Memling\u2019s Vanity<\/em>. The piece is oil on wood. Created around 1485, it\u2019s one third of a triptych. A woman stands naked, except for her sandals and the thin, gold circlet in her hair. She holds a mirror. The only thing reflected is her face staring back from the glass. Although she\u2019s positioned in a landscape dense with greenery, dogs, a thatched cottage in the distance, she sees nothing but herself. We are meant to hate her for the way she has fallen into her own reflection. But why should she not? Her breasts are pert. Her belly\u2019s curve implies fecundity. A cloud of auburn hair hangs past her waist, reaching almost mid-thigh. Her flesh is so pale she might as well be alabaster, carved and polished smooth.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In Georges de La Tour\u2019s The Penitent Magdalen<\/em>, the artist gives us another version of a woman. Painted circa 1640, she too sits before a mirror, this one rectangular, a frame placed within the frame of the painting. A gleaming skull is cushioned in her lap. Eyeless, it seems to gaze upward toward a candle that burns on the tabletop. The flame high and pale, voluptuous in its flickering, its image reflected in the glass.<\/p>\n

As is typical of La Tour, the scene is split between brown shadow and stretches of brightness. The woman\u2019s face glows with light. The V of her white blouse plunges almost to her navel but not immodestly. She has none of the seductive vanity of Memling\u2019s subject. This must be Mary Magdalen, reformed and healed, after her encounter with Christ. Although her skirt simmers red, some kind of heavy satin, she isn\u2019t presented as a figure of sexual pleasure. Her purity neuters her. Memento mori, such paintings instruct us: Remember death<\/em>. Magdalen confronts herself in the mirror, neither delighting in her own beauty nor regretting its imminent loss. She is appropriately humble (as the artist sees it). Her self-regard is forgiven because she confronts her flaws. She acknowledges the corruption of skin.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The Year of Perfect Skin, for instance, was more than an example of self-centeredness….It was my small was of insisting: This body is alive and permanent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Early on in George Eliot\u2019s great novel Middlemarch<\/em>, Dorothea Brooke agrees to her younger sister\u2019s request that they finally divide between them their dead mother\u2019s jewelry. Dorothea is serious, pious, and beautiful. She wants not only to be a good Christian but also to appear like one to others. She wants to be seen as fastidiously unadorned, dressed only in her devotion to God. But the jewelry box holds some very pretty stuff, including \u201ca necklace of purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with five brilliants in it.\u201d Although she is tempted, Dorothea gives the piece to her sister, Celia. \u201cA cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket,\u201d she intones.<\/p>\n

A few paragraphs later, the girls discover an emerald and diamond ring. Dorothea is captivated by its sparkle and hue. \u201cI suppose this is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St John,\u201d she muses. \u201cThey look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of them.\u201d There is a matching bracelet, and Dorothea can\u2019t resist it either. She decides to keep the two pieces, although the ornaments require that she \u201cjustify her delight in the colours by merging them in her mystic religious joy.\u201d Celia notices her sister\u2019s philosophical inconsistencies and asks if Dorothea will wear the jewelry around other people. It\u2019s a moment of unusual tension between them, the biddable younger girl gently pointing out the elder\u2019s hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

We are meant to love Dorothea. She stands at the center of the narrative. But Eliot wants us to understand too how the young woman will suffer for her performances of virtue. She will marry someone older\u2014Casaubon, a fussy and self-centered clergyman\u2014who makes her miserable, all because she believes him to be a scholar and imagines a romantic life in which she might help him pursue academic distinction, the couple bent over the yellowed pages of books and parsing dense passages together.<\/p>\n

In an essay titled \u201cIt Can Be Embarrassing to Love Dorothea,\u201d the novelist Pamela Erens reminds us:<\/p>\n

\n

Eliot makes it clear that Dorothea is no saint but rather a morally immature young woman. Her self-denials have roots in youthful arrogance and impetuousness\u2026.Dorothea doesn\u2019t recognize her bossiness and grandiosity. Her ideals of Christian humility and simplicity and service are genuine. But she is very young.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Instead of admiring her mother\u2019s jewels for the sake of their splendor, the girl must rationalize her love for faceted stones. The gems glitter with holiness, she assures herself, because she cannot yet accept frivolous beauties on their own terms. Eliot departs here from the moralizing messages of Memling and La Tour. As the novelist sees it, ornamentation is not vanity. Dorothea\u2019s abnegation is.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The great Renaissance essayist Michel de Montaigne begins \u201cOf Vanity\u201d by arguing that there\u2019s nothing vainer than to write about vanity itself. \u201cWhat the Divinity has so divinely told us about it ought to be carefully and continually meditated by people of understanding.\u201d Montaigne is alluding to Ecclesiastes 1:2. \u201cVanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.\u201d In the Christian tradition, these words are a grim warning of our transience, the vaporous substance of our lives. To be distracted by vanities (read: frivolities) is to forget that earthly pleasures have no lasting value. They are temporary dust. The body is a candle that glimmers briefly. Only the soul persists.<\/p>\n

But because Montaigne is subversive and a wit, he then devotes many pages to examining vanities, both his own and those of others. \u201cOf Vanity\u201d is as much a meditation on the experience of being a writer as it is a discussion of different forms of political rule. Then, just as it seems he has lost track of where he began, Montaigne returns to examining the matter:<\/p>\n

\n

This common attitude and habit of looking elsewhere than at ourselves has been very useful for our own business. We are an object that fills us with discontent; we see nothing in us but misery and vanity. In order not to dishearten us, Nature has very appropriately thrown the action of our vision outward. We go forward with the current, but to turn our course back toward ourselves is a painful movement: thus the sea grows troubled and turbulent when it is tossed back on itself. Look, says everyone, at the movement of the heavens, look at the public, look at that man\u2019s quarrel, at this man\u2019s pulse, at another man\u2019s will; in short, always look high or low, or to one side, or in front, or behind you.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re all implicated in what Montaigne says. Vanity is what\u2019s false or empty. Vanity is the fruitless. We share in Montaigne\u2019s metaphor of the sea and feel uneasy when we are forced to encounter ourselves in the blue waves of self-reflection. We will do anything to avoid such crashing, downing scrutiny. And this is where frivolity enders. The frivolous is a splendid excuse. It allows us to partake in stead in the fun of gossip, to enjoy the delights of fashion and fragrance, to devour sugary cookies until our gluttony is sated, the soul fat as a full belly.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Montaigne in \u201cWe taste nothing pure\u201d writes about the flaws of the human condition. He says we live in a state that makes it \u201cimpossible for things to come into our experience in their natural simplicity and purity.\u201d Whatever we delight in \u201chas an air of groaning and lament about it.\u201d And even the greatest joys have \u201cmore seriousness than gaiety.\u201d Later in the text, he observes that painters believe that the expressions formed by faces\u2014their creases and wrinkles\u2014must serve both for crying and for laughter.<\/p>\n

If I am to follow Montaigne\u2019s argument, then I might say the frivolous is always tinged with solemnity, a grey pigment. The Year of Perfect Skin, for instance, was more than an example of self-centeredness, more than an effort to turn my face translucent, luminous as a moonstone set in silver prongs. It was my small was of insisting: This body is alive and permanent<\/em>. The clearer my complexion became, the greater my distance from all the dying in that year.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Frivolity: A Defense<\/a> by Jehanne Dubrow. Copyright \u00a9 2026 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It will be the Year of Perfect Skin, I told myself. I had arrived at my mid-forties, and the mirror suddenly gave me a face crosshatched with creases. I was Portrait of a Woman Aging. I was a cubist composition,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10284,"featured_media":276080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43092],"tags":[6930,28790,8731,111902,57695],"class_list":["post-276044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-literary-criticism","category-newsandculture","tag-art-history","tag-columbia-university-press","tag-cultural-criticism","tag-frivolity-a-defense","tag-jehanne-dubrow","story-type-cultural-criticism"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Ok","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Emile_Vernon_-_A_Young_Lady_with_a_Mirror-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275978,"date":"2026-08-31T05:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275978"},"modified":"2026-08-30T21:20:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T01:20:28","slug":"what-does-beatlemania-have-to-teach-us-about-pop-culture-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/what-does-beatlemania-have-to-teach-us-about-pop-culture-today\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does Beatlemania Have to Teach Us About Pop Culture Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This conversation between two authors who happen to share the same name: BBC and Channel 4 broadcaster Samira Ahmed, whose\u00a0A Hard Day’s Night<\/i><\/a>\u00a0in Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics series just released this month in the US\/Canada, and Little, Brown’s bestselling author Samira Ahmed. They spoke about books and pop culture, The Beatles, and more.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Samira Ahmed, US:<\/strong> Your brilliant A Hard Days Night<\/i> that examines the impact of the Beatles\u2019 effervescent first film. Can you talk a little about what compelled you to write this book with this specific focus?<\/p>\n

Samira Ahmed, UK:<\/strong> My head has been full of the Beatles since I was 11 and discovered them through their films, which my big brother taped off BBC TV in 1979 onto our Betamax video. In 2023 I discovered the earliest complete concert recording of the band made by a student at a private boys\u2019 boarding school\u2014Stowe\u2014in 1963. And the way I told the story on my Radio 4 show Front Row of that concert\u2014its mix of class politics, social change, and the role of TV and audio technology\u2014really connected with listeners, who weren\u2019t necessarily Beatles fans. Who isn\u2019t fascinated by the 60s?<\/p>\n

So I thought this film deserves that kind of all-round viewing. Once you start looking you see there are black and Asian teenagers in the audience, the adult women around the Beatles capture how fast women\u2019s careers and freedoms are developing. How the film makes Britain look like the most exciting place to be in the world. Plus how delightful to realize that the film was created by immigrants\u2014mainly American born director Richard Lester. So all these ideas are fizzing through the book.<\/p>\n

Great artists still want to make the best work they can and with luck it connects with the human soul and lives long after its business imperative is forgotten.<\/p>\n

Of course America has its own unique relationship with the Fab Four. And like me, you were far too young to have ever known them before they broke up. So I wondered what your experiences of pop idols was, and how far as a writer of YA fiction, you feel the same energies run through young fans today?<\/p>\n

SA, US:<\/strong> The Beatles were big in my household, too! I would often catch my mom humming a Beatles songs while cooking. Of course, it wasn\u2019t until I was older that I understood how the power of pop culture was evidenced in that small moment, how \u201cAnd I Love Her,\u201d (one of my mom\u2019s faves from Hard Day\u2019s Night) travelled from England to India and found its way to my childhood kitchen in Batavia, Illinois in the 1970s, to this mirror moment with you.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting to think about pop culture as a Gen Xer\u2014we lived before the age of social media (a blessing, truly) and in the time when monocultural events wielded more power in the zeitgeist than they do now. I was one of the new wave (another British invasion!) and alternative rock kids so with the advent of MTV it felt like an incredible time to be alive. The subversive edge to a lot of that music bled into the rise of the Brat Pack\/teen movies and their soundtracks that defined so much of youth culture at that time\u2014Modern English was on the Valley Girl soundtrack, the Psychedelic Furs inspired the John Hughes screenplay for Pretty in Pink with their song of the same name. And, I\u2019ll go ahead and confess that between War and the Unforgettable Fire, I developed a hard crush on Bono\u2014yes, there were U2 posters on my bedroom walls.<\/p>\n

Art is singular, a creation of the artist, their history, the time they\u2019re living in, a collection of choices, one leading to the next.<\/p>\n

As a young adult writer, I\u2019ve had the privilege of meeting so many of my Gen Z readers whether during school visits or on book tours and I\u2019m amazed by their cultural awareness and also their nostalgia for a time they never lived in\u2014but in a way, that is also why you and I listen to the Beatles now even though we are too young (far too young!) to remember them.<\/p>\n

SA, UK:<\/strong> My mum\u2019s favorite Beatle was Ringo and my paternal Grandmother\u2019s was Paul; I love the idea of this sweet elderly widow from Hyderabad who didn\u2019t speak English having a favorite Beatle. And I am so delighted to think of the impact the Beatles had in introducing Western audiences to Indian culture. Knowing the Beatles loved Ravi Shankar made me appreciate my parents\u2019 culture more than I might have, growing up in Britain, where children of immigrants are often so desperate to fit in. But at least Britain had a historic connection to India, which made it easier. What was it like for you growing up in the US? I feel it\u2019s a subject you explore so beautifully in your books.<\/p>\n

SA, US:<\/strong> My mom\u2019s favorite Beatle was Paul, though she did note that George seemed to have the closest connection to India. I can\u2019t tell you how many times I heard about the Beatles learning to play sitar!<\/p>\n

We were the first Indian family to move to our small town\u2014my parents were interviewed for the newspaper, which completely blows my mind. In the 70s and 80s especially, there was a very strong push in America to assimilate. Urdu was my first language and when I started nursery school (age 3) in Batavia, I would write my name with English letters but from right to left like Urdu script. My teacher thought it was a learning disability until my mom explained to her that I was mixing my two languages and that it would likely resolve itself. Of course, the school strongly suggested to my parents that we only speak English in the home so I could \u201ccatch up\u201d with my peers. There was no sense of the benefit of speaking multiple languages. Of course, some of that shifted in the 90s and early aughts, but with America\u2019s swing to the far right, we\u2019re seeing another horrifying wave of xenophobia and a populist fear (stoked by politicians) of non-English language speakers and any element of culture deemed to be \u201csubversive\u201d or \u201canti-American\u201d or \u201cpornographic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In some ways, it seems quite similar to those political anxieties you mention regarding teen fandoms of the 60s. I\u2019m fascinated by the idea that fandom could be used as a force to divert teens from social activism.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s always important to interrogate the liminal space between art and commerce. In your research and your work, how have you seen that relationship change. I mean, A\u00a0Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/em> was produced to make money and to help sell an album, so how did it maintain the purity that we sometimes associate with the Beatles? Is it the same as, say, Taylor Swift putting out a movie of her Eras tour?<\/p>\n

SA, UK:<\/strong> It\u2019s one of the fascinating things I learned researching AHDN<\/em>\u2014the fact that as you say, it was a far better film than it needed to be. But isn\u2019t that true of so much art? It\u2019s commissioned for a patron\u2014whether it\u2019s the Borgias or the Pope or United Artists but great artists still want to make the best work they can and with luck it connects with the human soul and lives long after its business imperative is forgotten. That\u2019s a powerful thought.<\/p>\n

The biggest issue is control. The Beatles have still never got total control of their song copyrights. Taylor Swift has been through her own battles to regain control of her mastertapes, but ultimately triumphed. That\u2019s thrilling and I think it\u2019s great to see more artists do that. The principal of the Brit School, who taught Olivia Dean and Adele\u2014tells all budding musicians not to give their work away for free. And their success shows there is a way to still thrive. It may be harder but it\u2019s still possible.<\/p>\n

SA, UK:<\/strong> How is it for writers in the US? With all we\u2019re learning through court cases about how AI companies are ruthlessly feeding copyright material into their large language models it feels like there\u2019s a real backlash and a choice to be made about saying no or being swept along on a tide of AI slop.<\/p>\n

SA, US:<\/strong> In so many ways, AHDN<\/em> was ahead of its time, wasn\u2019t it? It captured a kind of effervescence that opened doors for other musicians and artists. Art is singular, a creation of the artist, their history, the time they\u2019re living in, a collection of choices, one leading to the next. One of the things I love most about writing is that every story is a conversation with the reader. That\u2019s why the Beatles can still speak to us today\u2014in a dialogue that is new again with every listener, songs that reach through time and remind us that we are not alone, that the butterfly-inducing feelings of first crushes are real, that nostalgia and regret are part of the human condition, that sadness and joy and longing and giddiness in love and curiosity connect us and give meaning to our wild and precious lives. There\u2019s no AI, no algorithm that can ever do that.<\/p>\n

SA, UK:<\/strong> We cover stories about AI and artists\/creatives every week on Front Row it feels. Baroness Beeban Kidron\u2014film director and Member of the House of Lords\u2014led an outstanding campaign to try to get politicians to understand why they needed to enforce regulation rather than allow big tech companies to grab everything for free. Sir Paul McCartney was among the figureheads of that campaign. I love that these established names understand what\u2019s at stake and continue to fight for fairness. But it\u2019s a really worrying time. I do take a lot of comfort in seeing how so many Gen Zs are embracing analogue and non-internet tech: reading physical books, texting on non-smart phones, playing vinyl records, choosing to seek out real world experiences away from screens. They were brought up within the bubble of the internet and they want out. As you say, it\u2019s the real emotional joy of falling in love with a band like the Beatles and their music, their personalities, that no AI will ever be able to replace.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Samira<\/b> <\/b>Ahmed<\/b>\u2014the British one\u2014is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster. She presents the BBC\u2019s flagship culture show Front Row on Radio 4 and Newswatch on BBC1, and co-hosts the vintage television podcast Through The Square Window. In 2023 Samira made headlines round the world when she uncovered the earliest complete concert recording by the Beatles in the UK\u2014at Stowe School in 1963. A Hard Day\u2019s Night<\/i> (BFI British Film Classics<\/i>) is her first book.<\/p>\n

Samira<\/b> <\/b>Ahmed<\/b>\u2014the American one\u2014is the bestselling and award-winning author of numerous titles for young people including, Love Hate <\/i>&<\/i> Other Filters<\/i>, Internment<\/i>, Hollow Fires<\/i>, This Book Won\u2019t Burn<\/i> and The Singular Life of Aria Patel<\/i>, as well as a Ms. Marvel comic book mini-series and the upcoming novel-in-verse, It Begins with the End<\/i>. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in various publications and anthologies including the New York Times<\/i>, Take the Mic<\/i>, Color Outside the Lines<\/i>, Vampires Never Get Old<\/i> and A Universe of Wishes<\/i>. Samira serves on the national board of Authors Against Book Bans. And when she\u2019s not writing, reading, or fighting censorship, you can find her on her quest for the perfect pastry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This conversation between two authors who happen to share the same name: BBC and Channel 4 broadcaster Samira Ahmed, whose\u00a0A Hard Day’s Night\u00a0in Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics series just released this month in the US\/Canada, and Little, Brown’s bestselling author<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31744,"featured_media":276043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,6,43072,43094],"tags":[50291,17836,8083,3512,50,2123,111888,14848,20047],"class_list":["post-275978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-features","category-in-conversation","category-music","tag-a-hard-days-night","tag-bands","tag-fandom","tag-interview","tag-interviews-2","tag-pop-culture","tag-samira-ahmed","tag-the-beatles","tag-writers-in-conversation","story-type-writers-in-conversation"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Ng","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Beatles-Parlophone-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276150,"date":"2026-08-31T05:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276150"},"modified":"2026-08-30T22:19:34","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T02:19:34","slug":"meet-pierre-peter-ortiz-undercover-spy-marine-and-resistance-fighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/meet-pierre-peter-ortiz-undercover-spy-marine-and-resistance-fighter\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Pierre \u201cPeter\u201d Ortiz, Undercover Spy, Marine and Resistance Fighter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard my grandfather\u2019s voice just once. It was on a 1949 episode of the NBC radio show This Is Your Life<\/i>, recounting his escape from occupied France after a German night fighter shot down the plane he was flying on a secret mission a month before D-Day. Some seventy years after World War II, I perched in a windowless corner of the UCLA Film & TV Library Archives, there on a tip from my uncle that my grandpa had shared a slice of his war story\u2014which he otherwise seldom spoke of\u2014on this popular mid-twentieth-century radio show a few years after the war.<\/p>\n

Patriotic marching band music came through my head phones and transported me to another era. Then came the deep, emphatic radio voice of the show\u2019s host, Ralph Edwards, who teed up the episode\u2019s guest of honor: The person-of-the-day whom my grandpa\u2014 along with a handful of others from the United States and France whose lives this hero had touched\u2014had been brought to the Hollywood studio to surprise and celebrate. This person was, Edwards announced, \u201ca Marine whose life has been packed with enough adventure, thrills, hair-raising escapes, raw courage, and excitement to make half a dozen movies.\u201d His name was Peter Julien Ortiz.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019d tracked down the This Is Your Life <\/i>recording to satisfy my curiosity about one Greatest Generation story. After listening to it on repeat and transcribing every word, I left taken with another thread: Who was this multilingual, Hollywood-handsome figure who had parachuted behind enemy lines with bags of cash and ammunition for the Maquis? Who was he at work training, between blowing up Wehrmacht railcars and eavesdropping on off-duty Nazis at pubs? How was this not already a Netflix series? In time, I was introduced to Nicholas Reynolds, a retired US Marine and Oxford-educated historian who knew of Ortiz, too, and together we set out to answer those questions and how this James Bondesque character came to know my grandpa.<\/p>\n

It would be a risky journey. But this mysterious Marine major had more than language skills and contacts; he emanated confidence and know-how.<\/p>\n

In 1932, a well-to-do American, Peter Ortiz, joined the French Foreign Legion when he was 18-years-old. Ortiz, who was also the son of the founder of Conde Nast\u2019s Paris Vogue<\/i>, went on to fight the Germans for the Legion in France, and after being captured by the Germans and escaping, he returned to the US and promptly joined the US Marines. His combat expertise, fluency in French, and abilities in Arabic, German, and Spanish made him an ideal special operations recruit for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) where he served behind enemy lines in wartime France, blowing up Nazi railyards and training Resistance fighters. Ortiz would emerge from World War II with more combat medals than any other member of America’s first spy agency,<\/p>\n

In France, he also saved the life of my grandfather, Murray Simon, a 23-year-old 2nd Lt. and pilot of a B-24 Liberator that had been shot down near the French Alps. After bailing out of the doomed aircraft, Simon found himself alone hiding in a shallow ditch by a road. A New-York-born Jew and the youngest son of Russian immigrants, he spoke English, Yiddish, and a smattering of German\u2014but not a word of French. In the daylight he spotted an elderly man accompanied by a slightly younger man. They were walking with purpose and stopped right in front of him. His ditch wasn\u2019t much of a hiding place. \u201cWill you hide me?\u201d the pilot attempted, in halting French spelled out phonetically on his Army-issued language card. The younger man, amused at the stranded pilot\u2019s butchered attempt at French, shot back, in English, \u201cDo not be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He was Jacques Madjar, a Bulgarian-born Jew and physician who sneaked Simon into the home he shared with his pregnant wife and nine-month-old baby girl. He eventually got Simon out of town and handed him off to a Resistance network that smuggled him into Valence. There, Simon posed for a photo for a forged identity card. He was now Maurice Simon, a deaf and mute Frenchman. Simon\u2019s French helpers assured him that an American agent called Jean-Pierre\u2014or JP\u2014would be arriving in Valence very soon. They told him JP was a Marine major. They claimed he had killed a German with his bare hands and that he was, at that moment, helping another American pilot whose Mustang had been shot down. JP would be returning any day now, and he would know how to help.<\/p>\n

A series of missed connections had Simon wondering if the mysterious American agent being referred to as \u201cJean-Pierre,\u201d \u201cJP,\u201d and \u201cChambellan\u201d was really coming. Word finally came that JP was back in town. JP was Peter Ortiz. He and Simon chatted, exchanging stories. Before the war, Simon had dropped out of high school to support his widowed mother. He worked as a dental technician and then, looking for a more exciting life, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1940. He finagled his way from being a private in the infantry to a second lieutenant in the Air Corps. In late 1943, he volunteered for the Carpetbagger Project, an OSS-led aerial supply program that was as secret as it was dangerous. Carpetbagger crews flew solo, low-level night missions in specially-adapted B-24 bombers, dropping supplies and agents to Resistance fighters in German-occupied Europe. Ortiz was pleased to learn that the USAAF was now in the moonlit drop business, formerly a preserve of the RAF.<\/p>\n

By now, Ortiz had a blueprint for aiding downed airmen: lead them to reliable guides and trust them to take it from there. This time, since Ortiz had been recalled to London, he and Simon could make their way out of France together. He was open with the pilot that the Gestapo had a growing price on his head and that he was easily identifiable. It would be a risky journey. But this mysterious Marine major had more than language skills and contacts; he emanated confidence and know-how. Simon accepted Ortiz\u2019s invitation to join him.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When Ortiz appeared in a large, official-looking car\u2014like the ones the Gestapo drove, but with a Frenchman at the wheel\u2014Simon did a double take. It was one of several staff cars Ortiz had stolen. Simon got into the Gestapo vehicle\u2014an impossibly strange place for an American flier whose military dog tag was engraved with an \u201cH\u201d for \u201cHebrew.\u201d As he rode with Ortiz and their driver through the center of town, enemy soldiers waved at them, clearly mistaking Ortiz for one of their own. Ortiz waved back. After dusk they reached Lyon. Ortiz took Simon to an apartment he had the keys to, one of three he used in the area. He told Simon to stay put and went out on business. Simon noticed Ortiz was wearing parts of his Marine Corps uniform and carrying a paratrooper knife. Always in motion, Ortiz shuttled in and out of the apartment over the next few days, writing reports in code, meeting with trade-union comrades. A young woman introduced as Louisette cooked them lunch. Helping plan their next move, Louisette bought Ortiz and Simon two first-class train tickets each, to two different stations beyond their destination. If challenged on the train, Ortiz said, Simon was to stick by his side. They would try to evade the Germans together.<\/p>\n

At the station in Lyon, Ortiz and Simon found their train was running late. They passed the time in a caf\u00e9 and noticed two men at the next table chatting with each other in a mix of French and German. They did not appear to notice the two Americans. Ortiz wore a jacket zipped over his uniform, while Simon hoped to look casual with a laundry bag. Judging from their clothes and accents, Ortiz was all but sure that the men were Gestapo. He eased Simon out of the caf\u00e9. It was better to walk the platforms, leave the station, and come back in. It came time to board their train\u2014the moment of maximum risk. No one stopped them.<\/p>\n

Ortiz vowed to interrogate and, if necessary, kill any traitors who thwarted him and Simon.<\/p>\n

For almost two days, Ortiz and Simon rode the rails, traveling south and west to Carcassonne. They went on to the foothills of the Pyrenees. Lucienne, a mountain girl charmed by Ortiz, eased their passage by bribing the right gendarme<\/i>. Ortiz navigated their way among Russian escapees, Polish fugitives, and tobacco smugglers, all wanting to get to neutral Spain over the mountains. Some of the Poles planned to take three days to make the crossing. Ortiz said that was too long. He wanted to move faster\u2014and not in a cluster with men he did not know. Was there a whiff of treachery among this crew, someone who might betray them to the Germans? Ortiz vowed to interrogate and, if necessary, kill any traitors who thwarted him and Simon.<\/p>\n

With the smugglers and the guides, two professions that overlapped, it was more carrot than stick. Tough, mercenary, willing to get a man over the mountains if the price was right, the guides set their own terms and schedule. But as hard as it would be to hurry them along, Ortiz knew it would be harder to get to the other side without them. Signposts were few and far between. The trails for humans looked more like goat paths.<\/p>\n

At four o-clock in the morning on May 18, Ortiz and Simon reached a shelter outside the French hamlet of Artigues. They walked two more hours to another shelter. The hardest part was ahead of them: the hike up to Andorra, the tiny neutral principality in the mountains between France and Spain. Together they climbed and climbed, making their way over dirt and scree, around boulders and up slabs of rock. Forest gave way to scrub brush and grass, a complement to the snow-covered peaks in the distance. The wind was harsh, and the air thin at eight thousand feet. Trekkers died of exhaustion and exposure. Simon forced himself to keep up with Ortiz, taking Benzedrine tablets from his survival kit and rationing out a few remaining bits of chocolate.<\/p>\n

At two o\u2019clock in the morning on May 19, they crossed into Andorra. Simon calculated they had been walking for twenty-four of the last twenty-nine hours. They had covered more than forty miles at a punishing pace.\u00a0 It felt luxurious to spend a night in a hotel before taking a taxi to the Spanish border and hiding in the hills until dark. They entered Spain at one o\u2019clock on the morning of May 21 but could not rest until they connected with a trusted courier from Barcelona. They needed to avoid the Spanish police. Patrolling in pairs and marked by their black patent leather tricorn hats, the Guardia Civil <\/i>sometimes forced refugees back into France but more often threw them into spartan jails until the British or the American consul sent for them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ortiz and Simon found their courier before the police noticed them. Within three days, they reached the\u00a0British consulate in Barcelona. Consular officials confirmed their identities and at last the two evaders were safe. They went on to Madrid, where they chanced on a young Pole they had met before starting their climb. The boy told them that Ortiz\u2019s suspicions about a fellow trekker had been well founded; upon crossing into Spain, one of the other Poles had been unmasked as a Gestapo spy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A week later, Ortiz and Simon set foot on Gibraltar, the two-and-a-half-square-mile British territory at the southern tip of Spain and the mouth of the Mediterranean. Its most prominent feature was the Rock, a small mountain honeycombed with thirty-four miles of tunnels that housed some sixteen thousand British servicemen as well as an American liaison office. There, Simon signed an agreement never to divulge any information about his escape from France.<\/p>\n

Below the Rock was a seaport and an airstrip with regular military flights to London. By June 2, Ortiz and Simon were back in England. They parted ways, each returning to his command. The first member of his crew to escape from France, Simon telegrammed his mother: \u201cI am well and safe. No need for worry. Write to my old address.\u201d<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Adapted from <\/em>Ortiz\u2019s War: The Allies\u2019 Secret Weapon Against the Nazis<\/a> by Col. Nicholas Reynolds, USMCR (Ret) and Katie S. Sanders, Murray Simon\u2019s granddaughter. Copyright \u00a9 2026. Available from Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard my grandfather\u2019s voice just once. It was on a 1949 episode of the NBC radio show This Is Your Life, recounting his escape from occupied France after a German night fighter shot down the plane he was flying<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31812,"featured_media":276388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,43101,43103,43092],"tags":[12167,6564,56926,111977,111972,111971,6405,5132],"class_list":["post-276150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-history","category-memoir","category-newsandculture","tag-europe","tag-harper","tag-harpercollins-publishers","tag-katie-s-sanders","tag-nicholas-reynolds","tag-ortizs-war-the-allies-secret-weapon-against-the-nazis","tag-spies","tag-world-war-ii","story-type-world-war-ii"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Q2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/peter-ortiz.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":275672,"date":"2026-08-31T04:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=275672"},"modified":"2026-08-30T22:20:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T02:20:56","slug":"body-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/body-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Body Language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nanette and Josie finished praying and walked toward the bus stop. Josie pulled out her phone. She wanted to show Nanette a group she’d found on Instagram: @NunsAgainstGuns.<\/p>\n

“This one is fire,” Josie said.<\/p>\n

Nanette looked at a photo of Roman Catholic sisters at a rally. Women in their seventies wearing matching orange T-shirts and carrying signs that read “DISARM HATE.”<\/p>\n

Nanette could see the goodness in the women, still marching in the streets in their seventies. Josie was eager for the ministry part of their vocation. For Josie, the challenge of being a novice would be staying close to the convent. Josie wanted to get out and help. <\/em>Josie said, “I want to be a nun so I can work for the Lord all my days.”<\/p>\n

Nanette’s reasons were personal, selfish. She’d said to Sister Phoebe Catherine: “I have known God was calling me to this life for many years. I need to understand why.”<\/p>\n

But, “We can help you try to understand that” is what Sister Phoebe Catherine said. At the end of their first conversation, Nanette had stood and seen she’d perspired right through the navy-blue wool trousers she’d been wearing, and there were two outlines of butt cheeks on the chair cushion, so great had been her release.<\/p>\n

There was no bench at the bus stop. Nanette was restless. She wished they’d chosen to take the bicycles, even if it did look like rain. She was hot. She fanned her legs with the skirt of her habit. They were in the chaotic weather patterns of a midwestern late spring, where any day might be ninety degrees or fifty.<\/p>\n

The bus arrived. They put on face masks.<\/p>\n

The road was uneven, and the bus made juddering sounds that were distinctly: Mother, Mother, Mother.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

“If it happens and I don’t seem to know it,” Barbara had said to Nanette, five years ago, “then you have to tell me. You have to say, ‘Mom, you have Alzheimer’s and now you need to do what you planned.’ I’ll know what to do. Don’t be afraid of telling me, that’s the important part.”<\/p>\n

They’d had this conversation in her mother’s car, in the parking lot of the memory care facility where her mother’s sister was living. It had been a hard visit; Aunt Frances was combative. Nanette could remember her mother’s profile, her jaw, her voice, along with the smell of the new Dodge, which was still off-gassing plastics and adhesives.<\/p>\n

She had wondered if the conversation itself was a sign of something wrong. It wasn’t like her mother to delegate responsibility. The week before, there’d been an odd moment when it seemed as if Barbara had forgotten Nanette lived in Chicago. Nanette had told herself her mom had gotten distracted, or simply misspoke. And yet, she’d almost seen it\u2013a moment when her mother’s thoughts had simply stopped. Nanette had pictured an empty cooking pot, polished stainless steel, ringing hollow. Later, she would read about the “plaques and tangles” of Alzheimer’s, clumps of protein that were thought to disrupt smooth signaling.<\/p>\n

She still thought of dementia as a sudden tip into a shiny, empty pot.<\/p>\n

“Promise me,” her mother had said. “Sometimes you hear people say, ‘Oh, stick me in a home and forget about me’ or ‘Oh, put me on an ice floe and shove me out to sea.’ If you hear people talk about ice floes, it’s because they don’t mean it. They don’t have a plan. I have a plan. I mean it.”<\/p>\n

Nanette had promised.<\/p>\n

What could she have said? “Mom, I think it’s coming for you.<\/p>\n

I think it might already be here.”<\/p>\n

Nanette would talk to her mother tonight. Her mother never liked to talk for long these days, but they could chat a little and Nanette could tell her that she loved her.<\/p>\n

It was out of her hands.<\/p>\n

She didn’t know if Sloane and Laurel had similar conversations with her mother. It was possible they were all keeping her mother’s secret, separately. Sloane, or Laurel, might have told her mother, “It’s time.”<\/p>\n

It was possible her mother had realized it herself.<\/p>\n

And Sloane would arrive in Indiana and find their mother dead.<\/p>\n

“We’re here,” said Josie.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Two not-yet nuns walk into a gun range.<\/p>\n

The range was a long, low, single-story brick building, with a large parking lot and an American flag by the entrance. Inside, the atmosphere was not immediately different from a place where you might rent camping gear or sports equipment. The weapons were displayed in glass cases, with branded merchandise and various gun-related accessories arrayed on a pegboard behind them. The clerk behind the counter mistook them as latecomers for the Guns & Gals League, already on the range.<\/p>\n

Josie chose a 9mm Glock from the case. They were read a list of rules. Taking video with a cell phone was permitted, but not with a gun in your hand. Maximum of two people in a stall at a time. Pregnant women should not enter the gun range; the noise and the lead exposure could damage the fetus. They were offered their choice of target\u2013a bull’s-eye or the figure of a person. Josie chose the bull’s-eye. “You ladies,” the clerk kept saying.<\/p>\n

He gave them large protective headphones, safety goggles, a tray with the gun and ammunition, and the Guns & Gals discount, as a courtesy.<\/p>\n

The shooting range itself was not unlike a very clean and high-tech bowling alley, each lane divided by a short partition. Even with the thick headphones, the sound seemed unbearable, unsustainable.<\/p>\n

Nanette could see the gals of Guns & Gals at the end of the range, clustered at the back of the stalls, watching whoever was shooting. A large group, all ages. A tiny Indian woman in a sari gestured with excitement to a tall girl with tattooed sleeves. They were both smiling, these potential killers. But of course everyone was a potential killer, whether they were holding a gun or not.<\/p>\n

There was a kind of console table, or altar, at the head of their lane.<\/p>\n

“Do you want me to explain anything?” Josie pitched her voice under the cacophony in a low shout and put down their tray. “My dad believes every woman should know how to load a gun.”<\/p>\n

Nanette didn’t know if her dad, who was now retired and wrote short stories, mostly set in fourteenth-century France, had ever loaded a gun. Ifhe had general opinions about what contemporary women should know how to do, he hadn’t shared them. Her mother had quite a long list of skills every woman should have. Change a tire, rewire a lamp, understand how investments work, be able to do at least basic sewing and seamstress jobs, have a three-course-dinner recipe perfected, clean a gutter, cut your own hair. Guns were not on the list, but watching Josie load bullets into some kind of device that slid into the Glock, Nanette could see knowing how to safely load and unload a gun as something Barbara might approve of, in the interest of preparedness. Her mom was not someone who flinched.<\/p>\n

It was a saying: “You really dodged a bullet.”<\/p>\n

Her mother had not told her what her plan was. It would not be a gun. Drowning? Something quiet no one would have to clean up.<\/p>\n

It was out of her hands.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Nanette had spoken to Sloane and Laurel on a video chat. She gathered that her two sisters had been conferring with each other and had decided to “loop her in.” Nanette was used to being the odd one out. She was the late arrival, the one who hadn’t grown up with their father around or gone to the fancy private school in Ohio. Her very name didn’t match. (Sloane <\/em>and Laurel <\/em>were chosen by their father, and Nanette <\/em>had been their mother’s idea. “I just always liked that name.”)<\/p>\n

Laurel seemed distracted, on the call. Sloane had kept making prayer hands. Sloane wore rings on every finger, so every time she pressed them together there was a heavy clink, which Nanette heard quite clearly through her headphones.<\/p>\n

Josie was now explaining her plan. Nanette would film her firing at the target, then Josie would put the gun down and turn and speak her truth. It would be necessary to add captions, Nanette thought, because of the noise.<\/p>\n

Her mother might have changed her mind. God might have changed her mother’s mind. Her mother was in God’s hands.<\/p>\n

Nanette did a test video, so Josie could see how she looked in the frame. To get all ofJosie in, Nanette needed to back up out of the lane. Nanette was now intensely aware of her heartbeat. She had gotten hot again. She took off her hoodie. In front of her, Josie fired several rounds at the target.<\/p>\n

Nanette heard her mother’s voice, so clear underneath the sound of bullets. “I mean it, Nanette.”<\/p>\n

Her mother didn’t lie, and she never flinched.<\/p>\n

Josie made some adjustment to the gun\u2013the safety?\u2013and placed it carefully down on what Nanette was still thinking of as the altar. Josie turned to face her phone, which Nanette was hold-ing steadily, somehow.<\/p>\n

Nanette could only catch a few words of whatever Josie was saying. “That’s the last time”\u2013 “not here to judge” \u2013 ”I’ve been learning” \u2013 “leading cause of death” \u2013 “children” \u2013 “Black children” \u2013 “murders” \u2013 “my own choice” \u2013 “my freedom” \u2013 “God’s will.”<\/p>\n

This was language. And yet. Was there any agreement about what these words meant?<\/p>\n

Josie finished speaking and took the phone from Nanette’s hand. She asked a question, which Nanette thought she answered, but maybe not.<\/p>\n

Something was happening. A curious sensation of lightness was flooding Nanette’s body, as if all the contents of her body, the muscles and bones and tendons, were dissolving.<\/p>\n

She had felt like this once before. Sixteen years ago. God had spoken to her on that day, and told her what she should do with her life. She had resisted God’s call, then, and for far too long.<\/p>\n

God was coming again.<\/p>\n

There was panic in this, yes. And relief.<\/p>\n

“I have to pray,” Nanette said. (Maybe said?) “I’m sorry. I have to pray.”<\/p>\n

She had to listen. God was coming and there was so much noise, and she had to listen. The Presence was coming into her. Nanette was so grateful. She was going to be instructed. This time she wouldn’t wait sixteen years. She was prepared now, she<\/p>\n

knew how to pray, she could meet God halfway.<\/p>\n

The Presence was in her body, moving her. There was rubber matting on the floor. Nanette could feel it pressing into her knees, then her hands, then her forehead. Her arms moved outward. Nanette heard a voice above her. Voices. There were so many women here.<\/p>\n

Was she praying? Was this prayer? God was reaching for Nanette and God was below and above and inside her.<\/p>\n

God was speaking to her, but not with words. God had accuracy. God’s message was deep inside her, a profound certainty, as real as her heartbeat. Every part of her body understood this certainty. It moved through her, like her own blood.<\/p>\n

Go home and help <\/em>your <\/em>mother die.<\/em><\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

From <\/em>Body Language<\/a>: A Novel by Meg Howrey. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Meg Howrey.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nanette and Josie finished praying and walked toward the bus stop. Josie pulled out her phone. She wanted to show Nanette a group she’d found on Instagram: @NunsAgainstGuns. “This one is fire,” Josie said. Nanette looked at a photo of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":275673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25508,3,43074,43076,26764],"tags":[52027,27476],"class_list":["post-275672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-fiction","category-excerpts","category-fictionandpoetry","category-from-the-novel","category-novels","tag-body-language","tag-meg-howrey","story-type-daily-fiction"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19Ik","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/body-language.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276142,"date":"2026-08-31T04:02:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T08:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276142"},"modified":"2026-08-30T21:04:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T01:04:54","slug":"adam-johnson-muriel-spark-bardic-rivalry-and-25-more-books-out-in-paperback-this-september","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/adam-johnson-muriel-spark-bardic-rivalry-and-25-more-books-out-in-paperback-this-september\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Johnson, Muriel Spark, bardic rivalry… and 25 more books out in paperback this September."},"content":{"rendered":"

September is here, and with it comes a bevy of new books. Below, you’ll find twenty-five delightful reads to consider, each in a fresh paperback edition, including debuts, sophomore releases, rich translations, and new works from established authors. You’ll find new fiction from Adam Johnson, Megha Majumdar, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Gish Jen, Walter Mosley, and many others, as well as wide-ranging nonfiction covering everything from Muriel Spark to the Beatles to the Bard’s legendary rivalry with Christoper Marlowe, and much, much more.<\/p>\n

Stay safe, as always, and I hope you’ll add these to your to-be-read piles.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Adam Johnson,\u00a0The Wayfinder<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“An epic that feels less created than unearthed….Johnson\u2019s dizzying attention to the mercurial crosscurrents of conquest recalls . . . Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s The Books of Jacob<\/i>. His bold melding of magic and psychological realism casts a spell as captivating as Marlon James\u2019s\u00a0Black Leopard, Red Wolf<\/i>. Yet\u00a0The Wayfinder<\/i> is sui generis\u2014a tapestry of South Pacific myth, archetypal quest, political allegory, environmental jeremiad and feminist revision that feels both ancient and impossibly relevant.”
\n\u2013The Washington Post<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bad<\/p>\n

Gish Jen,\u00a0Bad Bad Girl<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Vintage)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Trigger warning for any daughter who has ever had a fraught relationship with their mother:\u00a0Bad Bad Girl\u00a0<\/i>may prompt a flood of feelings not felt since adolescence….A heart-piercingly personal work that also imparts universal truths about the immigrant experience\u2014and what it is to be a daughter, a mother and a woman….Suffused with love and a desire to finally understand….How rich this book is, and how humane….A marvel.”
\n\u2013Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Megha Majumdar,\u00a0A Guardian and a Thief<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Vintage)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Luminous….Majumdar conjures a city at once deteriorating and resilient, where markets sell seaweed and synthetic fish, and the city\u2019s ‘remaining benevolent billionaire’ lives on a heavily guarded man-made island in a widening river….There\u2019s no clear-cut villain here, just people attempting to survive and protect their own. Majumdar proves once again that she is a master of the moral dilemma.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Electric<\/p>\n

Frances Wilson, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel<\/em><\/a>
\n(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A\u00a0brilliant literary critic and chronicler\u00a0turns her\u00a0sharp-eyed attention\u00a0to the life and works of Muriel Spark, a writer of odd and compelling genius herself. Sure to be\u00a0one of the most compelling biographies of the year, if not decade.”
\n\u2013Kate Tuttle<\/p>\n

\"Dark<\/p>\n

Stephen Greenblatt, Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Norton)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In this thrilling and twisty tale, Greenblatt focuses on Christopher Marlowe, the shoemaker’s son famed for provocative plays like Doctor Faustus<\/em>. With a denouement as propulsive as that of any spy novel, he brilliantly captures sixteenth-century England.”
\n\u2013The New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Bird<\/p>\n

Adam Nicolson, Bird School: A Beginner in the Woods<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In this revelatory narrative, Ondaatje Prize winner Nicolson shares his experience observing birds near his home in Sussex . . . Nicolson is especially good at illuminating what goes unseen (or unheard)….He also draws attention to the ways human activity, like intensive farming, has caused bird populations to plummet in recent decades. This is a beautiful love letter to the avian world.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gray<\/p>\n

Walter Mosley, Gray Dawn<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Little Brown)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Mosley’s moving author’s note implores readers to see this work as a reminder of the ongoing toxicity of segregation, lynchings, and generations of casual hatred. In Mosley’s masterful hands, this is a portal to Los Angeles streets and their vastly different worlds, communities born of disadvantage, and mysteries that highlight universal truths.”
\n\u2013Booklist<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Karl Ove Knausgaard, The School of Night<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Penguin Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“There is nothing in contemporary publishing to remotely compare to Knausgaard’s Morning Star series. Knausgaard…has unleashed something entirely new, an antic and almost dangerously immersive reading experience that will completely take over your life. There is something obliterative about its intensity….The first of the series set in London, and the first to follow a single character throughout, The School of Night<\/i> is by turns bleak, funny and horrifying, but never less than utterly captivating.”
\n\u2013Martin McInnes<\/p>\n

\"Ripeness<\/p>\n

Sarah Moss,\u00a0Ripeness<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Tender and rueful,\u00a0Ripeness\u00a0<\/i>is a tale of being a foreigner that moves between 1960s Italy and 2020s Ireland, finding pain and bliss in both. Working at the height of her mature powers, Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence.”
\n\u2013Emma Donoghue<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

Ian Leslie, John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs<\/em><\/a>
\n(Celadon Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Of all the creative partnerships of the past century, none seems more resonant or permanent than that of the two Liverpool boys who met as teenagers, collaborated for a dozen years, and altered the world’s expectations of what popular art can accomplish. Ian Leslie’s new book is the best study of that friendship, from improbable beginning to melancholy end\u2014and of all the songs produced between\u2014that we have ever had.”
\n\u2014Adam Gopnik<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

Hu Anyan,\u00a0I Deliver Parcels in Beijing<\/a> <\/em>(Trans. Jack Hargreaves)
\n<\/em>(Astra House)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A striking first-person account of being working-class in China and surviving in the gig economy,\u00a0I Deliver Parcels in Beijing\u00a0<\/i>is a rare and urgent book for our times. The author\u2019s experiences, shared by countless others all over the world, reveal the shadows beneath China\u2019s economic miracle….His chronicles capture the quotidian tedium of precarious living, and glimmer with grit, hope and humor. The rhythm and style of Hu\u2019s plain prose are masterfully rendered into English through Jack Hargreaves\u2019s translation. To read I Deliver Parcels in Beijing\u00a0<\/i>is not just to empathize with the struggles of one man, but to interrogate the structural causes and imagine alternatives to exploitation.”
\n\u2013Yangyang Cheng<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Charlotte Beradt,\u00a0The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation<\/a> <\/em>(Trans. Damion Searls)
\n<\/em>(Princeton University Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“An unprecedented record of how the Nazi regime extended its grip beyond the public sphere into the innermost recesses of private existence, polluting the sanctity of sleep itself….The Third Reich of Dreams<\/i> endures as a distinctive and unsettling portrait of life under dictatorship.”
\n\u2013Times Literary Supplement<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Mia Couto,\u00a0The Cartographer of Absences <\/em><\/a>(Trans. David Brookshaw)
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“In its temporally fragmented structure and use of found documents, Mia Couto\u2019s newly translated novel feels like a new direction for him. It\u2019s also an intensely powerful work about revolution, compromise, and long-buried secrets\u2014one that both explores Mozambique\u2019s troubled colonial history and raises big questions about ideals and sacrifice. A haunting, compelling book.”
\n\u2013Tobias Carroll<\/p>\n

\"Trip<\/p>\n

Amie Barrodale,\u00a0Trip<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Amie Barrodale\u2019s funny, sad, heretical debut novel,\u00a0Trip…<\/i>is a magnificent and lovable work\u2014both page-turning and coolly visionary….It takes an audacious novel to remind you that not only can reading fiction feel like a psychedelic experience, but that you don\u2019t even have to be dead to roam in a bardo of mutual creation. That volatile, metaphysical space between an author\u2019s mind and a reader\u2019s is there for the experiencing on this earthly plane.”
\n\u2013Bookforum<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Amity<\/p>\n

Nathan Harris,\u00a0Amity<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Little Brown)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A smartly imagined western with a different sort of hero….Harris\u2019 latest is a rejoinder to Cormac McCarthy\u2019s\u00a0Blood Meridian\u00a0<\/i>(1985), with plenty of bloodshed and a villain who\u2019s Holden and Glanton all rolled up into one…To top off a skillfully constructed plot, Harris has a gift for vivid imagery…and period language….A memorable, impeccably written tale that engages the reader, with its twists and turns, from beginning to end.”
\n\u2013Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

Tim Berners-Lee,\u00a0This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Part memoir, part manifesto, Berners-Lee\u2019s chirpy book\u00a0This Is for Everyone<\/i> is both an engaging history of the origins and evolution of the web and an ingenious road map for how we can reclaim control over our digital lives. His big idea, which has now become his latest personal obsession, is to restore data sovereignty to every individual by redesigning the web…the seventy-year-old Berners-Lee is still fighting to preserve the web\u2019s original promise, which, he argues, has been despoiled by malign users, rapacious corporations and authoritarian governments.”
\n\u2013John Thornhill<\/p>\n

\"Gilded<\/p>\n

Jacob Silverman, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley<\/em><\/a>
\n(Bloomsbury Continuum)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Tech reporter Silverman’ssharp and ominous\u00a0account delves into the radicalizing worldviews of Silicon Valley billionaires in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s reelection, and warns of a fusion of corporate and state power through which tech titans seek to enact undemocratic agendas. It’s\u00a0an essential unmasking of the growing extremism among America’s wealthy.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sex<\/p>\n

Agust\u00edn Fuentes, Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Princeton University Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Reproductive anatomy is more variable than commonly understood, according to this eye-opening study….The raft of research convincingly debunks the idea that sex anatomy has much consequence on behavior, character, or cognitive ability…and the illuminating discussions of animal biology demonstrate the profound diversity of sex expression in nature…. [Sex Is a Spectrum\u00a0<\/i>is] a resounding refutation of the idea that there’s anything natural about the gender binary.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Muscle<\/p>\n

Jordan Castro,\u00a0Muscle Man<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Catapult)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Muscle Man<\/i> is a triumph. It\u2019s like reading Walter Benjamin or Thomas Bernhard on creatine powder and gym memes. Jordan Castro is an outrageously gifted novelist who has given us a truly original fable of the contemporary moment. Everything in this novel is feral and brilliant, and dizzyingly funny. Castro is one-of-one, and this book is pure heat.”
\n\u2013Brandon Taylor<\/p>\n

\"Gabriele<\/p>\n

Anne Berest, Claire Berest,\u00a0Gabri\u00eble <\/em><\/a>(Trans. Tina Kover)
\n(Europa Editions)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The Berest sisters follow up Anne’s\u202fThe Postcard<\/i>\u202fwith a colorful portrait of their great-grandmother Gabri\u00eble Buffet-Picabia. With lyrical prose, the Berests blend historical context with more intimate insights, such as their attempt to understand why the Picabias were cold to their children. Readers with an affinity for early 20th-century art will especially enjoy this.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Heather Aimee,\u00a0The Irish Goodbye<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Holt)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The Irish Goodbye<\/i> has it all: a lovable cast of complex characters; forbidden affairs; a stately, crumbling beach house; a doomed sailboat; long-suppressed family secrets; and one pressure-cooker of a holiday weekend. Above all, this finely-crafted novel explores what it means to be a family, and what we owe each other and ourselves.”
\n\u2013Amy Shearn<\/p>\n

\"Enshittification<\/p>\n

Cory Doctorow,\u00a0Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Picador)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The steady decline of the technology you use every day isn\u2019t just in your imagination\u2015and in\u00a0Enshittification<\/i>, Cory Doctorow explains how we got here. Witty, incisive, and urgently relevant, this book reveals how we can reclaim our digital lives from the forces that have degraded them.”
\n\u2013Molly White<\/p>\n

\"Memory<\/p>\n

Ciara Greene, Gillian Murphy,\u00a0Memory Lane: The Perfectly Imperfect Ways We Remember<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Princeton University Press)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“There is no shortage of books on memory, from self-help guides for the anxiously aging to scholarly works of history. Memory Lane<\/i> is distinctive for taking the standpoint of applied cognitive psychology. Emphasizing how memory functions in everyday life, Greene and Murphy explore the processes of memory and the influences that shape them….Memory Lane<\/i> offers an informative and readable account of how the apparent weaknesses of human memory may be strengths in disguise.”
\n\u2013The Conversation<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Playing<\/p>\n

Zuzan \u0158\u00edhov\u00e1, Playing Wolf <\/em><\/a>(Trans. Alex Zucker)
\n(Catapult)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A gripping and cinematic English-language debut that blends elements of folk horror, psychological thrillers, and the story of\u00a0Little Red Riding Hood<\/i> to stunning effect . . . \u0158\u00edhov\u00e1 is also a poet, and it shows in the lyrical and atmospheric language of the novel, impressively translated by Alex Zucker. It is a dark beauty, a brutal and violent novel, but one that ensnares.”
\n\u2013BookRiot<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Boy<\/p>\n

Sam Sussman,\u00a0Boy from the North Country<\/a>
\n<\/em>(Penguin Books)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“A man convinced he could be Bob Dylan\u2019s son returns home to care for his ailing mother in Sussman\u2019s gorgeous autobiographical debut. At the novel\u2019s heart, though, is Sussman\u2019s intense portrait of a mother and son\u2019s emotional bond. It\u2019s a stunner.”
\n\u2013Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

September is here, and with it comes a bevy of new books. Below, you’ll find twenty-five delightful reads to consider, each in a fresh paperback edition, including debuts, sophomore releases, rich translations, and new works from established authors. You’ll find<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":950,"featured_media":276269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43069,43070,43135,43646],"tags":[105947,3842,34448,112014,17245,105121,106068,105261,105240,41018,112036,6296,21237,31054,105497,105759,20791,105902,112037,2490,112016,112012,106303,106305,101923,65035,29625,101924,79406,469,11388,112038,37589,105225,47795,4745,105465,105180,105239,19477,102568,105576,112013,107645,102233,105954,105211,69275,112015,11912,112045],"class_list":["post-276142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-craftandcriticism","category-literary-criticism","category-readinglists","category-the-hub","tag-a-guardian-and-a-thief","tag-adam-johnson","tag-adam-nicolson","tag-agustin-fuentes","tag-amie-barrodale","tag-amity","tag-bad-bad-girl","tag-bird-school-a-beginner-in-the-wood","tag-boy-from-the-north-country","tag-charlotte-beradt","tag-ciara-greene","tag-cory-doctorow","tag-damion-searls","tag-david-brookshaw","tag-electric-spark-the-enigma-of-dame-muriel","tag-enshittification-why-everything-suddenly-got-worse-and-what-to-do-about-it","tag-frances-wilson","tag-gilded-rage-elon-musk-and-the-radicalization-of-silicon-valley","tag-gillian-murphy","tag-gish-jen","tag-gray-dawn","tag-heather-aimee","tag-hu-anyan","tag-i-deliver-parcels-in-beijing","tag-ian-leslie","tag-jack-hargreaves","tag-jacob-silverman","tag-john-and-paul-a-love-story-in-songs","tag-jordan-castro","tag-karl-ove-knausgaard","tag-megha-majumdar","tag-memory-lane-the-perfectly-imperfect-ways-we-remember","tag-mia-couto","tag-muscle-man","tag-nathan-harris","tag-paperbacks","tag-playing-wolf","tag-ripeness","tag-sam-sussman","tag-sarah-moss","tag-sex-is-a-spectrum-the-biological-limit-of-the-binary","tag-the-cartographer-of-absences","tag-the-irish-goodbye","tag-the-school-of-night","tag-the-third-reich-of-dreams-the-nightmares-of-a-nation","tag-the-wayfinder","tag-this-is-for-everyone-the-unfinished-story-of-the-world-wide-web","tag-tim-berners-lee","tag-trip","tag-walter-mosley","tag-zuzan-rihova","story-type-paperbacks"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-19PU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/i-deliver-parcels-in-beijing.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/950"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":276357,"date":"2026-08-29T06:30:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T10:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=276357"},"modified":"2026-08-28T13:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T17:23:55","slug":"lit-hub-weekly-august-24-28-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/lit-hub-weekly-august-24-28-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Lit Hub Weekly: August 24 – 28, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":" TODAY: In 1922, John Edward Williams is born. <\/span><\/span>\n