Robert W. Norris is an American writer and retired teacher who lives near Fukuoka, Japan. Robert’s books include his memoir, The Good Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise (2023); novels, including Looking for the Summer (1996); The Many Roads to Japan: A Search for Identity (1997); Toraware (1998); and Autumn Shadows in August (2006). …
Continue reading A Life’s Journey: An Interview with Robert W. Norris
Published by HarperOne / Coronet, 2022, 293 pages. “Everybody has secrets. Everybody. I guess the difference is that we either die with them and let them eat us up, or we put them out there, wrestle with them (or they wrestle with us) until we . . . reconcile. Secrets are what swallow us.” In …
Published by Jonathan Cape / Vintage / Penguin, 2019, 242 pages. “In a previous draft of this letter, one I’ve since deleted, I told you how I came to be a writer. How I, the first in our family to go to college, squandered it on a degree in English. … But none of that …
Continue reading On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: Ocean Vuong
Translated from Japanese by Philip GabrielPublished by Doubleday, 2017, 247 pages. Original version published in 2012. Nana is a cat. He was once a stray cat with no name, sleeping on the bonnet of a silver van, made “warm and toasty” by the sun. But when Nana is hit by a car, the owner of …
Continue reading The Travelling Cat Chronicles: Hiro Arikawa
Published by Orbit, 2015, 468 pages. “This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another. This has happened before, after all. People die. Old orders pass. New societies are born. When we say ‘the world has ended,’ it’s usually a lie, because the planet is just fine."But …
Translated from German by Tess LewisPublished by And Other Stories, 2023, 495 pages. Original version published in 2020. East Germany, November 1989. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Carl Bischoff, a student, is heading home, summoned by a telegram from his parents saying, “we need help please do come immediately your parents”. When Carl gets home, …
Published by Tin Gate, 2023, 469 pages. Sometimes so-called ordinary people lead extraordinary lives. The two people at the centre of this memoir are among these: Robert W. Norris and his mother, Kay Murphy Schlinkman. Norris writes about his life, weaving it with his mother’s, someone who influenced him deeply and with whom he formed …
Translated from German by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin.Published by Scribe, 2019, 934 pages. Original version published in 2014. “And I’m afraid of these stories. These stories that constantly run in parallel, chaotically; that appear in the foreground, conceal themselves, interrupt one another. Because they connect and break through each other, they betray and mislead, …
Continue reading The Eighth Life (for Brilka): Nino Haratischvili
Published by Harvill Secker, 2024, 317 pages. “We come from prisoners of a long war that didn’t stop even when it stopped.” In 2018, Tommy Orange published his debut novel, There There, which follows a group of Native Americans in Oakland, California, as they prepare for a powwow. Wandering Stars, in a sense, nests that …
Published by Harper Collins Publishers, 2022, 408 pages. Lichen Hall, the Scottish Borders. A place where unmarried pregnant women are sent to give birth and where their babies are given up for adoption. It is not an institution in the way the Magdalene Laundries were; Mrs. Whitlock, the owner of Lichen Hall, has set up …
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