Thursday, June 17, 2021

Top 10 books about public spaces

Jonathan Lee is an award-winning, internationally bestselling novelist, editor, and screenwriter living in New York. His new novel is The Great Mistake.

Lee's writing has been called “achingly good” in The New Yorker, and The New York Times has stated that “Lee’s prose will shame just about anyone who writes for a living.” According to The Guardian, “Lee dives deep into the minds and hearts of his characters, skillfully shoring up ‘the private moments history so rarely records.’”

At the Guardian Lee tagged ten stories that are "are celebrations of areas where strangers can mingle, think, and be less alone," including:
The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You by Dina Nayeri

There are those for whom public space is the only space available. Aged eight, Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, living in a refugee camp before eventually being granted asylum in the US and making her way to Princeton University. Here, she weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers who have been displaced in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives as they gather in camps and borderlands, trying to find a path toward resettlement in homes they can call their own.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue