ZADIE SMITH

Books are an easy gift choice, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fresh.

Is this the end of another summer, or the end of summer as we know it?

American-Canadian writer Ruth Ozeki has won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel called “The Book of Form and Emptiness.”.

From an imprisoned Ukranian journalist to a high school activist in Florida, PEN America paid tribute Monday night to democracy and free expression and warned about the dangers faced in the U.S. and abroad.

The 23rd novel by acclaimed American author Louise Erdrich and an adult fiction debut by Trinidadian stand-up comedian Lisa Allen-Agostini are among finalists for the 30,000-pound ($38,000) Women’s Prize for fiction.

Author Zadie Smith is this year’s winner of the PEN/Audible Literary Service Award, an honor previously given to Toni Morrison, Stephen Sondheim and Margaret Atwood among others.

"Recitatif," written by Morrison in the early 1980s, follows the lives of two women from childhood to their contrasting fortunes as adults.

To much of the world the late Toni Morrison was a novelist, celebrated for such classics as “Beloved” and “The Bluest Eye.”.

British writer Susanna Clarke has won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction for her mind-tweaking fantasy novel “Piranesi.”.

Ngmaije's gift is to show us that, although this novel is urgent and timely, Seraphin’s struggle to learn how to live in a harsh world is timeless.