Joan's Picks: Yellowface and A Line in the Sand

Yellowface by Rebecca Kuang. Young, smart and extraordinarily prolific writer with some fantasy to her name and then the book Babel which has been very strong since published in September last year. This new one is very different - set in the world of publishing, there’s a huge buzz around it internationally. It’s about two writers, one of whom has made it and the other hasn’t - so when the successful author suddenly dies, she steals her work in progress and presents it as her own - trouble is the original author was Asian and the story has Asian themes; and our thief is white. She changes her name to Juniper Song which is more ambiguous and shoots up to the top of the bestseller charts, all the while terrified she’ll be found out. It is absolutely scathing about the publishing industry. I reckon HarperCollins only published it to make sure they keep getting all of her other books. It’s very good.  A Line in the Sand by Kevin Powers. He wrote a book called The Yellow Birds several years ago - set in Iraq, he is himself a veteran of the Iraqi war. This one is about an Iraqi man who was working as an interpreter for the US in Baghdad, but after witnessing (and filming) a massacre carried out by an American Defense contracting team, he’s taken to the US for safekeeping. One day he finds a body on the beach and clues quickly point to the dead man being on his trail, and his new life is suddenly threatened. The themes of the book are concerned with the privatisation of military functions - how Defense Contractors are signing squillion dollar contracts with the US government and then not being held to account. It’s terrific - part mystery and part thriller.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.