EPISODE · Apr 25, 2026 · 52 MIN
Nora Lange — Day Care: Stories - with Tope Folarin
from Politics and Prose Presents · host Politics and Prose
From award-winning author Nora Lange comes a ransacking of the house of motherhood and matrimony.Nora Lange’s debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the “Great American Novel” by Molly Young in The New York Times, and “a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism” by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by.In “Heart Beats,” Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of “messy socializing” with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a “kinky sort of game” while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In “Island of Phaetons,” an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with “the husband” and “the friend who wanted more than friendship” to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece “with news” for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In “Dog Star,” two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex.These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.Nora Lange’s debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her project “Dailyness” was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family.Lange is in conversation with Tope Folarin, a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, DC. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of A Particular Kind of Black Man.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781953387578?ic_referral=Au7ChQ1cBhMKWuq2u7RHQLmciq8fjB4MhF8kAJ7GRw8wM4Vr_G-8xEqfL4yu63-S_AhrBN96zwEzixGg5iiLP-rUnaixM6eAivLJSN7rQbTLyiAhHIi-uY0oN5lo3nLV41VeHZ4
What this episode covers
From award-winning author Nora Lange comes a ransacking of the house of motherhood and matrimony.Nora Lange’s debut novel, Us Fools, was praised as the “Great American Novel” by Molly Young in The New York Times, and “a razor-sharp critique of American capitalism” by Michael Schaub at NPR. Now, she turns her eye toward the daily exercise of getting by.In “Heart Beats,” Carol and David arrive late to a Boston dinner party for a night of “messy socializing” with other couples, including a former cult-leader turned financial-advisor and a woman who learned of a “kinky sort of game” while riding public transit, details that she will reveal after the peach crumble. In “Island of Phaetons,” an expatriate living in Istanbul is called away from her daily life with “the husband” and “the friend who wanted more than friendship” to visit her mother, who notoriously makes bad decisions, and who has just arrived in Greece “with news” for her daughter, a tantalizing invitation that has her daughter immediately on a plane. In “Dog Star,” two figurines live out their dreams before succumbing to the truth that they have been assembled inside of a snow globe and will never go anywhere. In the title story, a new mother in Los Angeles navigates a job, a long-distance relationship with her husband, and her visiting mother, while hoping to find relief in daytime app sex.These stories of lust, estrangement, and self-preservation are at once hilarious and savage. Day Care is a biting reflection on economic precarity, love, and peeing your pants.Nora Lange’s debut novel Us Fools was awarded the The Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, named a best book of 2024 by The Boston Globe and NPR, a Los Angeles Times bestseller, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. Her project “Dailyness” was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She has received fellowships from Brown University and is a fellow at USC’s Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities. She recently moved to Salt Lake City with her family.Lange is in conversation with Tope Folarin, a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, DC. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also recently named to the Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of A Particular Kind of Black Man.PURCHASE:https://politics-prose.com/book/9781953387578?ic_referral=Au7ChQ1cBhMKWuq2u7RHQLmciq8fjB4MhF8kAJ7GRw8wM4Vr_G-8xEqfL4yu63-S_AhrBN96zwEzixGg5iiLP-rUnaixM6eAivLJSN7rQbTLyiAhHIi-uY0oN5lo3nLV41VeHZ4
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Nora Lange — Day Care: Stories - with Tope Folarin
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