"The narrator of this novel works at a Tokyo convenience store and loves the routine of the job; she is also something of an anthropologist, noting her observations of human behavior in a distant and yet utterly open way. Watching her try to participate in the world is both moving and unsettling."

"Perhaps the best introduction to another great original of the English novel, who learned from Firbank's economy, but who had his own quite different imaginative world. Loving, set among the servants of an Irish country house, combines his superbly truthful ear for how people really speak with an unforgettable vein of surreal poetry."

"This is a recent Booker-winning novel with Tolstoyan ambitions that presents the horrors inflicted on Australian prisoners of war by the Japanese during World War II in Burma - and then turns around and gives us a compassionate portrait of the defeated Japanese. A book distinguished by its big heart and beautiful language."

"One of the most beautifully told family sagas in world literature. Exploring gender identity, ethnic identity, American dream, immigrants, family memories and collective myths… but to me this is primarily a novel about belonging—how we fail but still somehow find the hope and the will to continue to try to belong."

"I’ve been touring recently, so I’ve been reading Joe Dunthorne’s The Adulterants. It’s a slim, short novel for taking on the road, and it’s very funny. It’s set in the backdrop of the riots that took place in the UK a few years ago, so it’s light and grotesque at the same time."

"Pachinko is the novel I tell anyone who will listen about. It is a multigenerational, sweeping saga of Koreans in Japan. The prose is as edifying as it is absorbing. There are no easy, convenient endings for any of these characters but my goodness, how richly Min Jin Lee renders their lives."

"Pachinko” is the novel I tell anyone who will listen about. It is a multigenerational, sweeping saga of Koreans in Japan. The prose is as edifying as it is absorbing. There are no easy, convenient endings for any of these characters but my goodness, how richly Min Jin Lee renders their lives."

"Oh, how beautifully confusing this novel is. Heller, a war veteran himself, creates a cast full of colorful characters and antagonists to illustrate the insane bureaucracy of the war machine. A perfect compatriot to “Slaughter House 5,” revealing that we all may have a little Yossarian and Billy Pilgram in our personalities."

"So I have to think of one more? Okay, I’ll say that on the plane coming here I saw The Reader and I thought that was an amazing film, a very affecting film dealing with an almost overfamiliar subject but in an almost novel and emotional way. That’s my current favorite movie."

"When I was asked by my publisher to write a novel in their new series of novels based on Shakespeare-plays, I said yes, if I can have “Macbeth.” Why? Because it’s bloody. And short. And quite good. I don’t know if it was because of that answer, but they gave me “Macbeth.”"