As 2025 comes to a close, we're revisiting interviews with this year's nominees and winners of some of the biggest prizes in literature. Last up: A 10-year-old girl, Louisa, is later found on a beach in Japan – and her father has disappeared. She and her mother are left on their own – but the tragedy doesn’t bring them closer together, at least for a long time. Susan Choi’s novel Flashlight follows this family across generations and a vast historical expanse. In today’s episode, Choi speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about why her protagonist fends off love, her interest in the historical tensions between Korea and Japan, and the benefit of writing in chronological order.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Folge vom 02.01.2026Susan Choi’s 'Flashlight' is about an alternate-universe version of her own family
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Folge vom 01.01.2026'Feeding Ghosts' is a graphic memoir grappling with generational traumaAs 2025 comes to a close, we're revisiting interviews with this year's nominees and winners of some of the biggest prizes in literature. Tessa Hulls’ grandmother, Sun Yi, was a dissident journalist in Shanghai who faced intense political persecution during the Chinese Communist Revolution. In today’s episode, Hulls tells Here & Now’s Scott Tong that her grandmother’s trauma often cast a shadow over their family – one she decided to finally face in her new graphic memoir, Feeding Ghosts. It’s a reexamining of Hulls’ matriarchal lineage, of Chinese history and of generational love and healing.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Folge vom 31.12.2025In ‘A Guardian and a Thief,’ a mother’s love for her family threatens her own moralsAs 2025 comes to a close, we're revisiting interviews with this year's nominees and winners of some of the biggest prizes in literature. Megha Majumdar’s novel A Guardian and a Thief, a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award, takes place in a near-future Kolkata struck by climate change. There, one family’s possibility of escape is put in jeopardy when their passports are stolen. In this conversation with Here & Now, Majumdar tells Jane Clayson that hope isn’t always noble in situations of crisis.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Folge vom 30.12.2025A new novel from Karen Russell is a sprawling story set during the Dust BowlAs 2025 comes to a close, we're revisiting interviews with this year's nominees and winners of some of the biggest prizes in literature. Karen Russell’s novel The Antidote is set during the Dust Bowl – a period when poor farming practices and drought led to a wave of severe and damaging dust storms. In this bleak setting, we’re introduced to a cast of characters, including a woman who stores other people’s memories and a photographer tasked with documenting the crisis. In today’s episode, Russell speaks with NPR’s Scott Simon about the inspiration behind The Antitode’s core characters, including the work of photographer Gordon Parks and an image that came to Russell as she finished her first novel.To listen to Book of the Day sponsor-free and support NPR's book coverage, sign up for Book of the Day+ at plus.npr.org/bookofthedayLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy