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grainy, aerial photograph of the skyline of Los Angeles - smog hovers over the city and the clouds are low in the sky

Literary Boroughs #13: Los Angeles, California

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The series will run on our blog…

cover of The Neruda Case by Roberto Ampuero

The Neruda Case

The Neruda Case Roberto Ampuero Riverhead, June 2012 352 pages $26.95 Pablo Neruda has a problem: he’s ancient and dying of cancer, but he yearns for an ex-lover who may—or may not—have given birth to a long-lost daughter. As he faces death (“the old woman with the scythe”) he enlists Cayetano Brulé, a hapless exiled…

photof of the writer Tracy Bermeo

Literary Boroughs #12: Verona, New Jersey

The Literary Boroughs series will explore little-known and well-known literary communities across the country and world and show that while literary culture can exist online without regard to geographic location, it also continues to thrive locally. Posts are by no means exhaustive and we encourage our readers to contribute in the comment section. The series will run on our blog…

cover of Narcopolis

Narcopolis

Narcopolis Jeet Thayil Penguin Press, April 2012 304 pages $25.95 It’s dangerous to look for the reincarnation of a classic novel in contemporary literature.  Like a monk seeking the next in the line of a particular lama, I placed the various relics of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano before first time novelist Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis,…

the cover of An Individual History

Dear Dr. Poetry

An Individual History Michael Collier W. W. Norton & Co., July 2012 80 pages $25.95 Dear Dr. Poetry, My father died when I was very young and I don’t remember him much. My mom told me that he died doing what he loved—rescuing children from burning buildings. But I recently found out that he worked…