Lit Hub Daily: July 27, 2020

• Joe Sacco contemplates a future in which we will one day honor the veterans of the “ Great Pandemic Wars.” | Lit Hub
• Nicholson Baker details his quest for documents that could resolve a Cold War mystery. | Lit Hub History
• Melissa Faliveno on belonging, Anne LaBastille, and moving to the deep woods to be alone and write. | Lit Hub
• “There will be a time when we can get back to reading in public spaces with our past freedom.” Nick Ripatrazone on the pleasures of a private self made public. | Lit Hub
• “The delivery of moral force through a beautiful, sublime combination of thought and emotion.” Anthony Rudel on the Broadway adaptation of Cry, the Beloved Country. | Lit Hub
• Byron Lane on what it was like to be Carrie Fisher’s assistant, and finding the stakes of a story. | Lit Hub Memoir
• Giovanni’s Room, The House of Mirth, The Little Engine That Could, and more rapid-fire book recs from Sarah Gerard. | Book Marks
• Nearly 20 years after its publication, Mahmoud Trawri’s novel Maymouna is regarded as one of the most significant works of fiction about the history of Black Saudis. | Al-Fanar Media
• The deputy mayor of Paris, Christophe Gerard, has resigned after protestors decried his links to Gabriel Matzneff, an author under investigation for the rape of minors. | France 24
• “We live in an artificial hierarchy, an infrastructure that was created and is not natural.” Isabel Wilkerson on her new book, Caste. | TIME
• Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish-Iranian refugee and writer who spent years detained on Manus Island, has been granted asylum in New Zealand. | The New York Times
• “Living through the urgency of this moment, I’ve found that writing that part of the historical record required something more of me.” Anissa Gray on writing about 1967 Detroit as history repeats itself. | The Cut
• These five books feature out pansexual main characters. | Book Riot
• Author Robert Hellenga, whose style revealed “a melange of the mundane and the magical,” has died at 78. | Chicago Sun-Times

Also on Lit Hub: Tracing contemporary food policies back to the Enlightenment • Queens in-between: 6 revelatory books on drag • Read an excerpt from David Goodwillie’s new novel Kings County.