Annalisa Quinn
Annalisa Quinn is a contributing writer, reporter, and literary critic for NPR. She created NPR's Book News column and covers literature and culture for NPR.
Quinn studied English and Classics at Georgetown University and holds an M.Phil in Classical Greek from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Cambridge Trust scholar.
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The former presidential candidate's latest book is just what you might expect from this genre: His platforms are presented but not interrogated — and there is little self-reflection.
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In her memoir, the porn star lures readers with salacious details of her alleged time with President Trump, then insists that those "two to three minutes" are the least interesting part of her life.
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Kevin Young's new book puts forth an instantly convincing pairing of race and hoaxing — both a "fake thing pretending to be real." But he loses readers' trust with knotty, overly aphoristic writing.
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For centuries, Shakespeare's tragedy was too painful for audiences; it was performed with an altered happy ending. But Edward St. Aubyn has never flinched at inflicting pain on his readers.
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Edgar Allan Poe once wrote that the death of a beautiful woman is "unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." In her new book, The Burning Girl, Claire Messud responds: Not to us women.
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Ivanka Trump's new book — named after her brand's marketing campaign — is packed with anodyne advice borrowed from others, and a striking lack of awareness about economic and racial realities.
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The narrator of Zadie Smith's new novel is never named — fitting, for a book about the illusions of identity and the ways people try and fail to know and define themselves.
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Anne Carson's unconventional collection of 22 chapbooks can be read in any order, and covers everything from Helen of Troy to H.G. Wells — but mostly, it's about women taking back their own stories.
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Dan Vyleta's new novel imagines a world where inner faults and sins are made visible by black smoke curling from bodies. He says his big, sprawling narratives were inspired by the works of Dickens.
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Also: George R.R. Martin enters the political fray; Robert Darnton on censorship.