Jonathan Lethem: Brooklyn Crime Novel

Nov 08, 2023, 12:00 PM

In this week's Book Club podcast, I'm joined by the novelist Jonathan Lethem. Two decades after his breakthrough book The Fortress of Solitude crowned Lethem the literary laureate of Brooklyn, he returns to the borough's never-quite-gentrified streets with the new Brooklyn Crime Novel. He tells me why he felt the need to go back, and talks about race, intimacy, realism, the 'non-fiction novel' – and why he regrets his beef with the critic James Wood.