NYT Books

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature for books often called bleak and challenging. But they’re also comical and deeply human.

​The prize committee said the Hungarian writer’s work “reaffirms the power of art.”

“Minor Black Figures” encompasses race, class, religion and art, but at its heart it’s really about “what happens when you encounter a priest at a bar one hazy summer night in New York.”

The awards are being announced this week.

In “The Nine Lives of Christopher Columbus,” Matthew Restall explores the seemingly immortal reputation of one of history’s most projected-on figures.

“I wanted to tell a story that encompassed the gender spectrum,” said Tonatiuh, who transformed his body to play the queer window dresser Luis Molina.

The author of the Seeds of America trilogy recommends books that run the gamut from Native American history to the civil rights movement.

County officials in Wyoming fired Terri Lesley, a library director, after she refused to purge children and young adult books that contained sexual content and L.G.B.T.Q. themes.

In Jacqueline Harpman’s novel “Orlanda,” the repressed half of a woman’s soul jumps into the body of a man. Chaos ensues.

Sharing the plot of the 20th “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” book had him cringing at the memory of ruining a birthday surprise. Also surprising: the O.J. Simpson book on his shelves.