Arts

David Lida

'First Stop' Captures Lurid, Vibrant Mexico City

Half shantytown, half boomtown, the teeming and complex Mexican capital defies coherent description. David Lida's sharply drawn vignettes are expansive and vivid — like the city itself.
José Eduardo Agualusa

Vignettes And Characters Shift In 'Chameleons'

In The Book of Chameleons, a gecko narrator weaves fragmentary tales of invented pasts into a story of charming airiness. The prize-winning Portuguese novel is set in post-civil war Angola.
Jess Winfield

Sex, Drugs And Sonnets: In 'Will,' All's Well

Even the bard wasn't as bawdy or silly as drug-addled scholar "Willie" Shakespeare Greenberg, the fumbling protagonist of Jess Winfield's lovingly naughty academic picaresque, My Name Is Will.