Germany is enthralled with the revelation that a dramatic political event, which ushered in reforms and reshaped the new Germany may have actually been a work of espionage. In  1967, while participating in a left-wing protest against the visit of the Iranian Shah, German university student  Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the [...]

  I confess. I have a crush on Alice Munro. I’m 47. She’s 77, and I don’t call because, given the life force and vitality of her prose, I’m too old for her.  Ms. Munro, perhaps Canada’s most talented and celebrated writer of short fiction, is in today’s news because of  her selection for the [...]

  British poet Ruth Padel has resigned a week after being appointed to Oxford University’s poetry chair and only days after her role in the smear campaign that eliminated her rival Derek Walcott. Walcott was the favorite for the 301-year-old post, which has been held by the likes of Robert Graves, until a campaign, highlighting [...]

The film version of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons earned $4.7 m today, and $50.9 m since its release, but that is no consolation to Angels’ actor Stellan Skarsgard who called Brown “a terribly bad writer.” “… He had cliffhangers after every chapter which makes you continue reading,” said Swedish born Skarsgard, who plays the head [...]

Stephen King, the prince of the modern thriller and popular fiction, is famously well-read, and has been known to praise fellow writers whom he considers particularly worthy. So it is no surprise he singled out Olen’s ‘The Tourist’ for special mention as one of this summer’s must-read books.  Check out King’s review in which he calls ‘The [...]

This Slate article on the re-emergence of the apocalyptic thriller raises the question: How is the current world crisis affecting reading tastes?  Fellow Nomad Olen Steinhauser told me recently that his publisher believed that the crisis will be good to thrillers. (Meaning, the thriller fiction market may not shrink like the rest of the industry, [...]

Congratulations to Kevin (for Conrad Hirst’s international success and the re-release of People Die) and to Olen (who is off to Italy to promote The Tourist). But while contemplating the fascinating fiction of my colleagues, violent events at home once again remind me how reality sometimes trumps the artist in depicting life’s darkness and mystery.  [...]

News that Vladimir Nabokov’s son, Dmitri, plans to publish his dad’s last novel (unfinished before the great man’s death) raises for me the question: Given how hard it is to publish while alive, should one publish when dead? According to the Guardian, Dmitri Nabokov has wrestled with the pros and cons of releasing his father’s [...]

Charleston Heston’s death at 85 has brought a flood of plaudits for his movie roles as Moses, Michelangelo, and Ben-Hur. There was something about Heston’s manner or his era that made him well-suited to play icons. His lesser known historical roles included Andrew Jackson (twice) in ‘The President’s Lady’ and ‘The Buccaneer’, and Rodrigo Diaz de [...]

My apologies for turning this blog into a mutual admiration society, so I’ll be brief, and simply say that I’ve just read an advanced copy of Olen’s The Tourist, and consider it one of his best books to date. (Although I am a big fan of The Confession.) Well done, Olen. It is clear why [...]

Here is my question for 2008: Is Western society becoming more violent? In the aftermath of 9/11, with wars raging in Afghanistan and Iraq, and amid the security concerns that haunt us in airport check-in line-ups and even on the London underground, are we losing restraint, and are “official” acts of violence becoming acceptable and [...]

At this writing, the best estimate for the advance proffered by HarperCollins for the new James Frey book is “more than” a million dollars. This figure from Gawker, which initially reported that Frey had been offered exactly a million for a book of short stories. Gawker recanted, and is now reporting that ‘Bright Shiny Morning,’ [...]

Let’s put into context the sensationalized news that the parents of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann (who disappeared in Portugal earlier this year) are officially being investigated by Portuguese police for murder. If this affair didn’t concern the life of a child, the transition of Kate and Gerry McCann from grieving parents to prime suspects would be [...]

As bloggers, critics, and editors mark the half century anniversary of the pub date of Kerouac’s On the Road, I can’t help but wonder: Will the literature of the Beat Generation ever regain its initial respectability? And should it? I grew up a fan of Kerouac, lured by both his myth and his writing. (To [...]

Elmore Leonard, 82,  has had the most eclectic career of almost any writer I know of.  For years, a PR flack in the auto industry, Leonard used this day job to launch a career in pulp fiction: first as a writer of western stories, and then in the 1960s (after popular interest in westerns began [...]