Loot of the Week 07 July 2016

After a brief hiatus, we have work of Louise Erdrich, Roberto Bolano, and Yaa Gyasi.

Louise Erdrich is an important American writer most commonly associated with the Native American Renaissance movement along with N. Scott Momaday, who won the 1969 Pulitzer prize with "House Made of Dawn". Her novels are rich in the depictions of the American experience, portraying "her fellow Native Americans as no contemporary American novelist ever has'. In 2015, she won the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, whose past winners include Morrison, Roth and DeLillo.

Erdrich's debut novel is "Love Medicine", published in 1984 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston to instant acclaim by clinching the National Book Critics Circle Award, beating fellow finalists David Levitt's "Family Dancing", Jayne Anne Phillips' "Machine Dreams", Harriet Doerr's "Stone of Ibarra", and Alison Lurie's "Foreign Affairs", that year's Pulitzer winner. "The Plague of Doves". Erdrich would revise this novel twice, once in 1993 and then again in 2009. "The Plague of Doves" was published in 2008 by Harper, and is a finalist of that year's Pulitzer but lost out to eventual winner, Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge". "LaRose" is Erdrich's latest novel, and likely a contender of major literary award this year.

"2666" is Roberto Balano's last novel, published posthumously in 2004, one year after his passing. The English translation, by Natasha Wimmer, was published in 2008 by FSG and won the year's National Book Critics Circle Award, beating fellow finalists Marilynne Robinson's Home", Aleksandar Hemon's "The Lazarus Project", M. Glenn Taylor's "the ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart", and Elizabeth Strout's "Olive Kitteridge".

The final book is Powell's Indiepensable Volume 59, Yaa Gyasi's debut "Homecoming".