Lit Hub Daily: March 7, 2017

TODAY: In 1989, The United Kingdom and Iran break diplomatic relations over the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwā on Salman Rushdie for his “blasphemous” book, The Satanic Verses.

• Jami Attenberg talks literary break-ups, credit card debt, and epic book tours. | Literary Hub
• Another Neapolitan: Jhumpa Lahiri on translating Domenico Starnone. | Literary Hub
• How to make a unicorn… and other lost facts of animalkind, courtesy Elena Passarello. | Literary Hub
• What we can (and can’t) learn from historical fiction: Scott Esposito on John Williams’ Augustus. | Literary Hub
• On the doctor who made addicts of the Nazis. | Literary Hub
• Three poems: Layli Long Soldier, speaking truth to state obfuscation. | Literary Hub
• The finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award have been announced: Viet Dinh, Louise Erdrich, Garth Greenwell, Imbolo Mbue, and Sunil Yapa. | The Washington Post
• Anthony Lane on reading Jane Austen’s never-finished final novel, the “bright and breezy” Sandition. | The New Yorker
• The 2017 National Book Award judges, including Jacqueline Woodson, Jeff Chang, and Gregory Pardlo, have been announced. | National Book Foundation
• “I imagine heartlessness—or at least ruthlessness—is a quality Didion would want us to bring to her work.” Lauren Oyler on South and West and Didion-mania. | Broadly
• From Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind to Alien Mind, a reading list for anyone who wants to believe. | Entropy
• The beauty of it was utterly foreign to me: Cara Hoffman remembers encountering Giorgio de Chirico’s painting Mystery and Melancholy for the first time. | The Paris Review
• “Rather / than apologizing / I’m doing / well.” A new poem by Eileen Myles. | The Lifted Brow
• Jeff VanderMeer , Claudia Grey, and more: five big sci-fi and fantasy books to tackle this spring. | Omnivoracious

Also on Lit Hub: RIP, Paula Fox: remembering a wonderful writer · Five Books Making News: refugees and religious conversions · Read from Annie Hartnett’s debut novel, Rabbit Cake.

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