New Books in Literature

By: Marshall Poe
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  • Summary

  • Interviews with Writers about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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Episodes
  • All of Our Stories Were War Stories: Jamil Jan Kochai and Kalyan Nadiminti (AV)

    All of Our Stories Were War Stories: Jamil Jan Kochai and Kalyan Nadiminti (AV)
    Nov 21 2024
    Imagine growing up between Sacramento, California and Logar, Afghanistan; you hear stories about war, watch coverage of the United States’ War on Terror on television, and then visit your family in the very places that the U.S. army invaded and occupied. These experiences shape the work of novelist Jamil Jan Kochai, author of 99 Nights in Logar and The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, which was a finalist for The National Book Award. Jamil joins Northwestern prof. Kalyan Nadiminti and host Aarthi Vadde for a wide-ranging conversation about narrative form and the cycles of war. We begin by discussing the second person, a technique Jamil uses throughout Hajji Hotak. He describes it as the most “dangerous perspective” for a fiction writer to take because it brings readers to the edge of the immersive world fiction is supposed to create. The second person in The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, from which Jamil reads, forces readers to grapple with our own complicity in the surveillance of Afghan families in the United States and to consider the paradoxical affection that develops between people on opposing sides of war. From there, Jamil, Kalyan, and Aarthi discuss the relationship between video games as mass media and the novel as literary form. Jamil is a huge fan of Final Fantasy 7 (who isn’t?) and talks about how games like Call of Duty (a game he played more ambivalently) perform a recruitment function for the U.S. army. He rewrites that vision of war in more complex terms in his own story “Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain." Kalyan reflects on how the category of the post-9/11 writer intersects with the War on Terror, and the three of us consider the symbolic function of 9/11 in contemporary fiction written from inside and outside the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    44 mins
  • Cornelia M. Spelman, "Solace" (Jackleg Press, 2024)

    Cornelia M. Spelman, "Solace" (Jackleg Press, 2024)
    Nov 20 2024
    How do we become the persons we are? Cornelia Maude Spelman's Solace (Jackleg Press, 2024) seeks to answer that question. A portrait of the emotional legacies and psychological landscapes that shaped the author's life, Solace unfurls in a series of vignettes drawn from diaries and personal stories about her relationship to others as daughter, mother, friend, wife, therapist, and grandmother. These are stories of compassion and attention bringing about healing from grief and brokenness and the necessity of our deep and caring connection to others: the comfort offered to us and the comfort we offer to others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    47 mins
  • Emily Dinova, "The Antagonist" (Bruce Scivally, 2024)

    Emily Dinova, "The Antagonist" (Bruce Scivally, 2024)
    Nov 20 2024
    Today I spoke with Emily Dinova about her new novel The Antagonist (Bruce Scivally, 2024). Dinova, a psychoanalytic candidate working towards a license to practice psychoanalysis, wrote The Antagonist as a way of healing her own trauma. Written as a creative act of revenge, Dinova found herself in a fragmented state while writing the book. “I really feel like a fragmented part of myself wrote this book.” From this fragmented state she created characters who represent several psychoanalytic concepts including repression, negation, the uncanny, and Spotnitzian narcissistic object protection. The structure of the novel is an enactment of Nachträglichkeit. I found the novel intoxicating and disorienting. It kept me happily off balance throughout. Rooted in the psychological adage that the urge to destroy does not have to be taught, Dinova renders her characters with layers of beguiling complexity. The horrors of this deeply informed psychological thriller unfold gradually. It is a masterful demonstration of unconscious processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
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    50 mins

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