The past few months have seen the appearance of two short novels by American writers. Both books begin in downtown Manhattan on the morning of 9/11, and both forsake grand socio-political theorizing for the intimate study of one family's reaction to the tragedy. In both cases, the family in question...

Last week, after years on the sidelines, I finally joined Oprah's book club.

Up until then, I had been content to watch Oprah from afar. I had never seen more than a few moments of any book club episode -- or any other episode of her show, for that...

Last month Granta published its Best of Young American Novelists issue, the magazine's second such compilation, to go with three Best of Young British Novelists, including the granddaddy of them all, the 1983 Best of Young Brits that featured Amis fils, Barnes, Ishiguro, McEwan and Rushdie. The literary futures...