NPR's Book of the Day

When you think of an epic, what comes to mind? The Iliad, the Odyssey, maybe Beowulf? Well, author Honorée Fanonne Jeffers points out that epics are almost always about white men. She told former Morning Edition host Noel King that she didn't want to tell that story because that story has already been told...many times. So, Jeffers set out to write a different kind of epic about heroic Black women in The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

It's already pretty hard to tell what's really real when it comes to social media. But Jennifer Egan takes it one step further in her latest novel The Candy House where people can upload their actual memories, and let other people live in theirs. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad talked with NPR's Leila Fadel on Morning Edition about what it means to be "authentic." See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Both interviews today are with author Douglas Stuart. The first about his Booker prize-winning Shuggie Bain; a story based on his own life growing up a queer son of a single mother struggling with addiction. He told NPR's Scott Simon that he hoped people could find comfort in this story. Next, Stuart spoke to NPR's Ari Shapiro about his new book, Young Mungo. It's a story about two boys separated by faith who end up falling in love with each other. Stuart told Shapiro that when he "write[s] about heartbreak or sadness, I'm really only doing that to make the tenderness and the love shine more."See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Bonnie Garmus' new novel Lessons In Chemistry has been getting a lot of buzz. Elizabeth Zott is a talented chemist but because it's the 1960s she faces sexism in her quest to work as a scientist. So instead she has a cooking show that is wildly popular. Garmus told NPR's Scott Simon that the character of Elizabeth lived in her head for many years before she started writing this novel.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Former Homeland Security official and author Juliette Kayyem has a new book out that encourages preparedness. The Devil Never Sleeps makes the case that disasters are going to happen, and gives advice on how to manage them. Kayyem told NPR's Steve Inskeep that we need to redefine our definition of success after disasters occur.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Author Jenny Tinghui Zhang is out with a new historical fiction novel, Four Treasures In The Sky. Set in the 1800s during the height of anti-Chinese sentiment, a young girl named Daiyu is kidnapped and brought to the U.S. Zhang told NPR's Ayesha Rascoe that she has seen a lot of reviews that refer to this book as 'timely' – and that she does not think that is a good thing when a book is about racism.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

April is National Poetry Month, so to celebrate we are bringing you a conversation with poet Ocean Vuong. His new collection, Time Is A Mother, is about his grief after losing family members. Vuong told Morning Edition's Rachel Martin that time is different now that he has lost his mother: "when I look at my life since she died in 2019, I only see two days: Today when she's not here, and the big, big yesterday when I had her."See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Writer Maud Newton could not ignore her family's white supremacist history, so she decided to reconcile with it in her new book Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation. She told NPR's Ari Shapiro that she felt a responsibility to deal with her family's past. Next, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri's book Whereabouts is about a sense of place – even though we are never told where exactly the book takes place. Lahiri told NPR's Mary Louis Kelly that we can be too fixated on who we are and where we are from, so not naming where this novel is set was freeing.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel The Committed follows the same unnamed character we met in his Pulitzer-winning thriller, The Sympathizer. The character is now in Paris; having become disillusioned with the revolution he was a part of when we last saw him, he hasn't given up on the idea entirely. Nguyen told NPR's Scott Simon the book is also about colonization: He "wanted it to be set in a Paris that was not the tourist Paris or the romantic Paris. [It's] a novel about French ideas and French Revolution and French colonialism, but it's also a crime thriller set in these immigrant neighborhoods."See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In 1970, a cyclone tore through Pakistan and the political lines that existed, leading to genocide and very nearly a nuclear war in the country. Author Scott Carney was curious about this catastrophe but also how these extreme weather events, which are only becoming more common, have political consequences. Carney told NPR's Steve Inskeep that we will almost certainly face similar problems in the future, so we should be wary of today's unstable political systems.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy