In 1868 writer John William DeForest introduced the idea of the ‘great American novel’ – a work that succeeded in ‘the task of painting the American soul’. Now, the editors of ‘The Atlantic’ have published a list that offers a wider, deeper and weirder take on the idea. Author and senior editor Gal Beckerman talks us through the 136 books chosen by the magazine. He tells us about the fascinating selection process and how ‘The Atlantic’ is returning to its founding principles and defending democratic values.

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“Education for girls is the family business”, says Sudanese-British broadcast journalist Zeinab Badawi. She tells us about her family, career and what it’s like to interview the world’s most notable politicians on ‘BBC Hard Talk’. Badawi explains how her groundbreaking TV series, ‘The History of Africa’, for which she visited 34 African countries over seven years, led her to write her debut book ‘An African History of Africa’.

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The Melbourne-based author talks about how his life has changed since his multi-award-winning 2008 novel ‘The Slap’ made him one of Australia’s most celebrated writers. Born to immigrant Greek parents, his writing confronts themes ranging from social and cultural tensions in modern Australia to faith, sexuality, class, race and the blights of communism in practice. His latest novel, ‘The In-Between’ is a tender exploration of love between two middle-aged gay men. 

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Is the near-universal game of “cowboys and Indians” just positive propaganda for genocide? When a Vietnamese-American watches ‘Apocalypse Now’, does he identify with the victim or perpetrator? As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s book ‘The Sympathizer’ comes to HBO, we explore these themes and discuss his triumphant new memoir, ‘A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial’.

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Author Tom Baragwanath hails from New Zealand and lives in France. He grew up in the remote farming community of Wainuioru, separated from Wellington by the Rimutaka mountain range. While working for the government on Māori land policy in his mid-twenties, he began reading extensively and writing short stories. After relocating to Paris with his wife, he embarked upon an MA in creative writing. His literary crime debut, ‘Paper Cage’, won the 2021 Michael Gifkins Prize. Set in his hometown, the book blends mystery and social critique as local children start to go missing.

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Nairobi-based nonprofit Book Bunk, the brainchild of Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka, restores existing public libraries and installs new libraries in public spaces. Its flagship project in the Kenyan capital is the McMillan Memorial Library, which opened in 1931 but it was segregated only for the use of white people until 1962. Book Bunk’s founders imagine that the almost 50,000 public libraries in Kenya can be steered to become more than just repositories, acting as sites of knowledge production, shared experiences, cultural leadership and information exchange; they see them as sites of heritage, public art and memory.

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UK author and journalist Helen Russell left her job in London as editor of Marie Clare and relocated to Jutland, Denmark, with her husband in 2013. What initially set out to be a year-long trip quickly turned into a decade. Her freelance career had seen her work as Scandinavia correspondent for ‘The Guardian’, write for publications such as ‘The Observer’, ‘Stylist’ and ‘Grazia’, and publish six books including ‘The Year of Living Danishly: Uncovering the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country’, which became an international bestseller and was translated into 21 languages. Her latest book, ‘How to Raise a Viking’ uncovers the secrets to parenting the world’s happiest children.

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US cartoonist and illustrator, Denise Dorrance’s sharp, satirical work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers such as the ‘The Spectator’ and ‘The Sunday Times’. Her debut graphic novel, ‘Polar Vortex’, has been celebrated by the likes of Oprah Winfrey. She is best known for her character Mimi, a self-involved fashionista in dark sunglasses, typically drawn with a glass of wine in one hand and an unnamed infant in the other, which ran as a weekly cartoon in ‘The Mail on Sunday’. In this interview she opens up about what led her to write her autobiographical illustrated story, how she engages with genre and how she adapted her artistic process to develop her poignant story of grief and mortality in her hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

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Jane Cholmeley co-founded and opened the feminist Silver Moon Bookshop in London during the Thatcher era to promote the work of female authors. It quickly came to play a vital role in the second-wave feminist movement. Operating in a male-dominated space, the stop was often subject to threats of arson but maintained a safe space for customers, with community activism at its core. The bookshop frequently hosted writers such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Margaret Attwood. Cholmeley has recorded the cop’s 17-year history in her new book ‘A Bookshop of One’s Own.’

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It was the end of a relationship in London that led Tabitha Lasley to pack her bags, leave her journalism job and move to Aberdeen, Scotland, to pursue a story that she’d been sitting on for years. She grew up on the Wirral in northwest England, a place frequented by the men who worked on oil rigs in the Irish Sea. She initially set out to write an objective view of life on the rig but an encounter with one oil-rig worker in the North Sea set her on a different path. ‘Sea State’ is a captivating memoir that chronicles both her own breakdown and the breakdown of a way of life for the men working in the industry.

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American novelist and screenwriter Michael Cunningham is best known for his 1998 novel ‘The Hours’, which became a ‘New York Times’ bestseller and won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Best American Short Stories’, and he has worked as a creative writing lecturer at Yale University for the past 16 years. At the heart of his novels and short stories is a preoccupation with the human condition, whether through the intense experiences of love, loss or heartbreak. ‘Day’, his first novel in almost a decade, explores such themes through the lens of the coronavirus pandemic.

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