Great New Writers selection, LibraryReads favorite, and #1 Indie Next pick, The Immortalists was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. The Anatomy of Dreams received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and was longlisted for the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Originally from San Francisco, CA, Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Wisconsin.
Her new novel is Under Story.
At Lit Hub the author tagged ten literary-leaning science fiction and fantasy titles that offer hope for the future. One title on the list:
Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey, Vita NostraRead about the other books on Benjamin's list at Lit Hub.
My friend Brittany Cavallaro gives me some of the best book recommendations, because she knows that what I crave most is immersion. Reading Vita Nostra—written by a Ukrainian couple and set in Russia—means beingimmersed in a metaphysical magic school: rain and streetlights and clanking radiators, enigmatic professors and strange gold coins, overnight trains, the smell of damp leaves, mortal danger, and the kind of mind-bending that reminds you how little we know of reality after all. The novel follows teenager Sasha Samokhina’s matriculation at the Institute of Special Technologies. The Institute’s professors teach something utterly mystifying: for years, neither Sasha nor her classmates can figure out exactly what it is. While reading Vita Nostra, I felt like a fellow student at the Institute, studying their materials, experiencing my own metamorphosis. The full reveal is as satisfying as any fantasy concept I’ve encountered.
Vita Nostra is among Liberty Hardy's five top sci-fi and fantasy books set at school, Caroline Wolff's seven mysterious and unsettling novels set on campuses, and Olivie Blake's five books about regretting that cult you joined.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
