By Parul Sehgal, Tin House Summer Issue, 2013 Sinclair Lewis wrote that “every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.” Few writers have so flagrantly flouted these pressures as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the celebrated Nigerian author of Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck. Her newContinue reading “A Conversation with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”
Author Archives: parulsehgal
Writers and the Women They Worship
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times April 17, 2013 These three delightfully deranging books offer alternatives to your staid biographies. They’re a bit dangerous, a bit rude — free from the tyranny of good taste. The authors, first-rate obsessives, riff on the women who’ve consumed them — bearing out Frank Bidart’s line, “What youContinue reading “Writers and the Women They Worship”
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
By Mohsin Hamid Parul Sehgal, New York Times Book Review, March 29, 2014 “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia” begins under a bed. With you — yes, you — under a bed. Once you quit cowering, you’ll be the hero of this novel written in the second person, although there’s nothing remotely heroicContinue reading “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia”
Red Doc>
By Anne Carson Parul Sehgal, Bookforum, February 2013 When Anne Carson was a child, she read Lives of the Saints and adored it so much she tried to eat its pages. The Canadian classicist and poet has never lost this desire to merge with the text; if anything, she’s created forms that allow her toContinue reading “Red Doc>”
The Wayward Essay: ‘The Fun Stuff,’ by James Wood, and More
By Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, Dec. 28, 2012 In its quality of attention and faith in the salvific power of the right words in the right order, the essay resembles nothing so much as a secular prayer. That, at least, was the original point. The essay has proved wayward, whichContinue reading “The Wayward Essay: ‘The Fun Stuff,’ by James Wood, and More”
The Power of Books
By Parul Sehgal, The National Endowment for the Arts, Sept. 19, 2012 We are not supposed to be in the study. The books live in the study. The study is dim and fragrant and forbidden. The books are forbidden. We are not supposed to be in the study. We are always in the study. WeContinue reading “The Power of Books”
NW
By Zadie Smith Parul Sehgal, Bookforum Sept/Oct/Nov 2012 Pity; they used to be such nice girls. Leah Hanwell and Keisha Blake grew up together in a grim housing estate in North West London. They acquired university degrees, good jobs, political convictions, pretty husbands. And they’re miserable. Now in their mid-thirties, they’re pickling in bile andContinue reading “NW”
Lionel Asbo: State of England
By Martin Amis Parul Sehgal, NPR.org, August 29, 2012 Too much is made of literature’s ennobling qualities. There are those of us who come to books for the debasement and danger, for Hannibal and Humbert. For Faulkner’s Popeye and Hedda Gabler. We want to meet the monsters. And monsters are Martin Amis’ specialty. Amis trafficsContinue reading “Lionel Asbo: State of England”
Our Lady of Alice Bhatti
Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review, June 15, 2012 “A Case of Exploding Mangoes,” Hanif’s first novel, drew favorable comparisons to “Catch-22” — both are stinging sendups of life in the air forces, but the similarities run deeper. Like Joseph Heller, Hanif specializes in a kind of horror and humor joined atContinue reading “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti”
My Poets
By Maureen McLane Parul Sehgal, Bookforum, May 2012 Readers are not created equal. Frances Ferguson observed, rather dolorously, that the “reader can only read the texts that say what he already knows,” but let’s be frank: There are gifted—or maybe just thirstier—readers among us who, by dint of stamina or plain need, won’t be stymiedContinue reading “My Poets”
Parul Sehgal 