From Hillary Clinton’s upcoming political memoir about the 2016 campaign to a promise of a new book or two from George RR Martin, here’s the latest in literary news:
Simon & Schuster has announced the title of Hillary Clinton’s new book, set for release on September 12: What Happened. The book will discuss Clinton’s defeat to Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election. The publisher told the Associated Press that Clinton’s book will be a “highly personal work” and a “cautionary tale” about Russian interference in the election. Since it was first announced in February, the book has evolved from a collection of essays about Clinton’s life to a memoir focused on the campaign. Simon & Schuster says the book will show readers the “intense personal experience of becoming the first woman nominated for president by a major party in an election marked by rage, sexism, exhilarating highs and infuriating lows, stranger-than-fiction twists, Russian interference, and an opponent who broke all the rules.”
Michiko Kakutani, the longtime chief book critic for the New York Times, is retiring from her position, the newspaper has announced. The Pulitzer Prize winner began as a culture reporter at the Times in 1979, and in 1983, she became a book critic. Authors she has reviewed include Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, J.M. Coetzee, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Franzen, and J.K. Rowling. Pamela Paul, who was hired last summer to oversee all books coverage at the Times, said in a letter to staff that Kakutani’s “tenure at the Times has been among the most storied and influential in our history.” The Times has yet to appoint a new chief critic for the book department, but Parul Sehgal will join the team of daily critics. Currently a senior editor and columnist at the New York Times Book Review, Sehgal writes the “Roving Eye” column focused on international literature.
For fans wondering when the next Game of Thrones novel will be published, George RR Martin has announced that while he’s months away from finishing The Winds of Winter, he hopes it might be ready in 2018. The novel has been in the works since 2011 when Martin finished A Dance With Dragons, the fifth novel in the series. The author is also working on two volumes of “fake histories” of the Targaryen kings, from the Game of Thrones universe, called Fire and Blood. Martin said he expects the first volume will be published in late 2018 or early 2019. “Whether Winds or the first volume of Fire and Blood will be the first to hit the bookstores is hard to say at this juncture,” he said, “but I do think you will have a Westeros book from me in 2018 . . . and who knows, maybe two. A boy can dream.”
