As a white student amid the 1960s surge of anti-colonial liberation movements, R.W. Johnson turned to the African National Congress’s (ANC) blend of black nationalist and... Read More

Olga Slavnikova’s novel 2017*, set one hundred years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, is an imagined amalgamation of Russia’s near future and its conflicted past. The... Read More

While sailing in the Bahamas on what was to be his last drug run, Charley chains himself to the mast of his sinking ship and leaves behind an incomplete logbook, mysterious DNA... Read More

Crime and rebellion characterized life for many of the downtrodden in the 1920s’ US, while the elite lived high on booze and luxury. Known as the Jazz Age, this fascinating... Read More

“Trouble with webs. When you’re in one, you can’t see past the next knot,” laments private investigator Philip Noir, the lead character in Robert Coover’s gritty and... Read More

A crazed old man spends his life tunneling under the vast reaches of Moscow. Caked in grime and sewage, he pronounces himself “Lord of the Underground.” Despite his regal... Read More

Those far-sighted enough to have snapped up Overlook Press’s 2005 re-issue of the *Mortdecai Trilogy—*Kyril Bonfiglioli’s powerfully comedic, high-octane send-ups of the... Read More

Like all great novels, Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time stands alone, creating its own world and its own independent reality. Yet far more than most, it is a work... Read More

“Many unsuspecting passers-by had to relinquish molars before their ruler’s lust for surgery was satisfied,” the author writes of Peter the Great’s obsession with... Read More

Following the trail of Lewis and Clark while researching this novel, the author came upon a white rock near Decision Point, the spot where a group of white explorers took the... Read More

From rubbing elbows with Ho Chih Minh to knitting for warmth in a Chinese prison, the author’s life story parallels the highs and lows of Communist China-with all its warts.... Read More

What makes A.J. Lewinter run? That’s the question that both American and Russian intelligence agencies ask themselves in this Cold War thriller. While attending an academic... Read More