LitHub Daily: December 1, 2015

TODAY: In 1987, the great James Baldwin dies. 

• Molly Crabapple on life as a Tumbleweed in Paris’s Shakespeare and Co. | Literary Hub
• Welcome to December!! Anticipating the thousands of year-end lists to follow, the most notable, underrated, and best fiction books of 2015. | The New York Times, The Slate Book Review, BuzzFeed Books
• “How is it possible to feel exiled from a language that isn’t mine?” Jhumpa Lahiri on navigating languages and learning Italian. | The New Yorker
• A review of Tucker Max’s latest book, which could be more accurately subtitled “Baby Man No Understand Woman But Want Sex-Candy Now.” | Bookforum
• Anti-behind-the-music and a hymn to female wandering: Reading the rock memoirs of Chrissie Hynde and Carrie Brownstein. | Los Angeles Review of Books
• A Saudi court has sentenced Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh to death for apostasy; sign a petition to protest the sentence here. | PEN Center USA
• In which Isaac Fitzgerald does not sell cocaine, is the world’s worst sushi chef, runs from and returns to New York City. | BuzzFeed Books
• Something of a sea change: On translating vs. “versioning,” the Maltese literary scene, and the poetry of Adrian Grima. | The Quietus
• “Milk it until it’s dead,” and other thoughts on posthumous publishing. | The Boston Globe

Also on Literary Hub: The Center for Fiction first novel prize finalists on what book made them the writer they are today · Five books making news this week: Paris, prizes, and posthumous releases · From Michael Bible’s novel Sophia, about a wayward minister in love with a parishioner

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