Hari Kunzru

Early in Bret Easton Ellis’s bleak new novel, the narrator, Clay, a well-known writer, is negotiating a sexual transaction with a starlet who hopes he’ll put her in a movie. He’s suspicious that ‘Rain’ isn’t her real name. “Does it matter?” she asks.  Well,” Clay answers.

 My story, Memories of the Decadence, published most recently in Pen America #10, has won a Puschart Prize. Thanks to David Haglund and the editorial team at PEN for submitting it. 

On 25th November 1970, the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, accompanied by a private army of extreme right wing students dressed in Ruritanian uniforms he’d commissioned from a well-known fashion designer, entered the Eastern Army Group Headquarters in Tokyo and took a senior general hostage.

The Millions blog is doing its annual 'year in reading' series, not restricted to books published in 2009.  Participants so far include Jonathan Lethem, Philip Lopate and me...

 It's that time of the year again. Every publication on earth is choosing its best of 2009.