Alan Cheuse

Alan Cheuse has been reviewing books on All Things Considered since the 1980s. His challenge is to make each two-minute review as fresh and interesting as possible while focusing on the essence of the book itself.

Formally trained as a literary scholar, Cheuse writes fiction and novels and publishes short stories. He is the author of five novels, two collections of short fiction, and the memoir Fall out of Heaven. His prize-winning novel To Catch the Lightning is an exploration of the intertwined plights of real-life frontier photographer Edward Curtis and the American Indian. His latest work of book-length fiction is the novel Song of Slaves in the Desert, which tells the story of a Jewish rice plantation-owning family in South Carolina and the Africans they enslave. With Caroline Marshall, he has edited two volumes of short stories.

With novelist Nicholas Delbanco, Cheuse wrote Literature: Craft & Voice, a major new introduction to literary study. Cheuse's short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. His most recent collection of his short fiction was published in September 1998, and his essay collection, Listening to the Page, appeared in 2001.

Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University in Washington, DC, and spends his summers teaching writing at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers in Santa Cruz, Calif. Cheuse earned his Ph.D. in comparative literature with a focus on Latin American literature from Rutgers University.

4:38pm

Fri April 5, 2013
Book Reviews

Book Review: 'Submergence'

Originally published on Fri April 5, 2013 6:04 pm

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

The writer J.M. Ledgard leads multiple lives. He's a journalist and covers East Africa for the Economist, but Ledgard is also a novelist. Here's Alan Cheuse with a review of his latest book, "Submergence."

ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: James More, a British secret agent, has been captured by a Somalian affiliate of al-Qaeda, a peripatetic fringe group that keeps moving him back and forth across the mostly barren terrain of northeastern Africa, trying to hide from drone attacks and make jihad at the same time.

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5:39pm

Fri March 15, 2013
Book Reviews

Book Review: 'Where Tigers Are At Home'

Originally published on Wed March 20, 2013 1:05 pm

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

And I'm Audie Cornish. Our book reviewer, Alan Cheuse, has just traveled to Brazil and back in an 800-page novel. The book is called "Where Tigers Are At Home." It's by a French novelist named Jean-Marie Blas de Robles and it's just out in English. Here's Alan's review.

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1:20pm

Mon February 18, 2013
Book Reviews

Under Ogawa's Macabre, Metafictional Spell

Originally published on Mon February 25, 2013 7:23 pm

It used to be a truism among critics of British poetry that Keats and most of his fellow Romantic poets worked in the shadow of John Milton. I'm not making a perfect analogy when I suggest that most contemporary Japanese writers seem to be working under the shadow of Haruki Murakami, but I hope it highlights the spirit of the situation.

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2:48pm

Fri December 7, 2012
Best Books Of 2012

A Wintry Mix: Alan Cheuse Selects The Season's Best

Originally published on Fri December 7, 2012 11:50 pm

Credit Nishant Choksi

It's that time of year again — the leaves have fallen, the dark comes early, the air brings with it a certain chill — and I've been piling up books on my reading table, books I've culled from the offerings of the past few months, which because of their essential lyric beauty and power stand as special gifts for you and yours.

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4:40pm

Mon November 19, 2012
Book Reviews

Book Review: 'Dear Life'

Originally published on Mon November 19, 2012 5:52 pm

Critic Alan Cheuse says Canadian short story writer Alice Munro's new collection, Dear Life: Stories, is both arresting and worth reading.

4:16pm

Wed September 26, 2012
Book Reviews

A Midcentury Romance, With 'Sunlight' And 'Shadow'

Originally published on Wed September 26, 2012 5:54 pm

New York, New York, it's a wonderful town! And Mark Helprin's new near-epic novel makes it all the more marvelous. It's got great polarized motifs — war and peace, heroism and cowardice, crime and civility, pleasure and business, love and hate, bias and acceptance — which the gifted novelist weaves into a grand, old-fashioned romance, a New York love story that begins with a Hollywoodish meet-cute on the Staten Island Ferry.

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5:30pm

Fri September 21, 2012
Book Reviews

Book Review: 'The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid'

Originally published on Wed October 3, 2012 10:36 am

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now, an insider's view of the Israeli Defense Force. In the new novel, "The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid," author and veteran Shani Boianjiu tells the story of three young women serving in the IDF. Alan Cheuse has our review.

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5:36pm

Tue September 11, 2012
Book Reviews

Book Review: 'God Carlos'

Originally published on Tue September 11, 2012 9:57 pm

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block. Now to the 16th Century and the Spanish port of Cadiz. It's the setting for "God Carlos," a new novel by Jamaican-born writer Anthony Winkler, who takes us on a voyage to the New World. Alan Cheuse has this review.

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4:34pm

Fri August 3, 2012
NPR Story

Reviews: 'The Fallen Angel' And 'A Foreign Country'

Originally published on Fri August 3, 2012 6:06 pm

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

August is here and, for many, that means vacation and a last minute scramble for a good book to pass the quiet hours. Well, take heart. Our reviewer Alan Cheuse has reached deep into his pile of new books and found two spy thrillers, perfect, he says, for brisk summer reading.

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4:11pm

Mon July 9, 2012
Book Reviews

Alan Cheuse Reviews 'The Colonel'

Originally published on Mon July 9, 2012 5:38 pm

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi's new novel, The Colonel, tells the story of an Iranian military figure whose personal life demonstrates the strains in the social and political order of his native land.

8:23am

Thu June 14, 2012
Critics' Lists: Summer 2012

Sail Into Summer With Novel Picks From Alan Cheuse

Originally published on Wed June 20, 2012 6:23 pm

Credit Harriet Russell

Head to the bookstore or pick up your Nook or Kindle or iPad, and prepare, if you will, to make some decisions about your summer reading life. My suggestions this year tend to be fine new fiction, the kind that not only flows on the page but also makes a sort of music in your mind. So, word music it is! Strike up the orchestra! It's going to be a big summer for big broad American literary voices, voices that leap from the page and linger with you, echo through your summer and perhaps even beyond.

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