Parisian Phoenix Publishing

I am a sentimental soul but not prone to fits of nostalgia. Something random triggered my memory of thick novels I read in my teen years, most of which I never owned but borrowed.

Now, my two recent reading “rabbit holes,” to borrow an internet term, have been disability philsophy/theory/experience and writing craft/memoirs. But something about my morning coffee meeting triggered something like a scent in the air, where I could feel books in my hands by Leon Uris, James Clavell and James Michener. Odd, how now decades later, I am drawn to novels by these very traditional 20th-century, white, and male writers.

I am thinking specifically of The Hadj, Shogun, and The Novel, though I know I read multiple Michener novels, (which tickles me now as I am working with the widow of Michener’s cousin. These were heavy, hardcover novels. Clavell wrote Shogun in the early 1970s, then Uris published The Hadj in 1985, and Michener’s The Novel debuted in 1991. And I’m curious how the first two books on this list depict these cultures (Japanese and Arab) and if their literary and cultural merit hold up to snuff. These were epic novels that publishers cannot afford to print today.