fiction

When I Discovered Latin American Literature

February 25, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Yesterday, I received I Gave You My Silence, the new novel by Nobel Prizewinner Mario Vargas Llosa. Vargas Llosa died last year; this is his final work, published posthumously.

When I saw the notice that it was being published. My mind moved back in time, some 40 years, to 1986. I was in a master of liberal arts program at Washington University in St. Louis, and I signed up for a fall seminar – The Latin American Novel. We would be reading novels by Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig (Kiss of the Spider Woman), and Carlos Fuentes, among others. The reading syllabus was challenging.

I don’t recall why I signed up for that particular course; others were available. My total reading experience in the Latin American novel was limited to one book – One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perhaps that was the reason; Latin America has a vast literature, and I’d read very little of it.

We started with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Then we turned to a Peruvian writer, Vargas Llosa. The book we read was The Green House, which I found myself fascinated by. A few weeks later, I was in Kansas City for a conference related to work, and one night I found myself in a bookstore, where I spotted Vargas Llosa’s The War of the End of the World. I was more than fascinated; it’s an incredible story based on historical fact, an Amazonian rebellion in Brazil.

That same fall, our professor hosted Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa for campus visits and speeches. Our class got to see both writers up close and personal. By 1986, the writers, who both had started out on the political left, had diverged. Garcia Marquez remained on the left. Vargas Llosa had moved to a more conservative position; he would later run for president of Peru. (He lost.)

Our research paper for the course involved a literary analysis of any Latin American novel. We had a considerable number of writers and works to choose from. For some unknown reason, I decided to tackle Vargas Llosa’s Conversation in the Cathedral. It’s likely his most difficult and least accessible work. It’s a big story – 600+ pages. Set in Peru in the 1950s, it’s a story of people and relationships set against the dictatorship of the time.

I read the first 125 pages and thought I would die if I had to finish it. The most pressing problem was that I couldn’t follow it. Was this one story? Four stories? It seemed to move all over the place. I almost gave it up to work on another book when something clicked. I remembered how deeply structured Vargas Llosa’s books are. I knew if I could figure out the structure, I might grasp the novel.

I did, finally. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe how obvious it was.

We had to present our papers in class. When I finished my presentation, the professor smiled. “You got it,” he said. “You got exactly what this book is about.”

I still rate it as one of the most difficult books I’ve read. I also rate as one of the best books I’ve read. Once you figure out the structure, it’s an amazing story. (I think Vargas Llosa, like many of the Latin American “Magic Realism” authors, tried to out-Faulkner William Faulkner; Faulkner was certainly a major influence on them.)

The books Vargas Llosa published after Conversation in the Cathedral were almost all generally shorter. He definitely wrote shorter books as he got older. This new one is 246 pages.

He changed my understanding of literature. He showed what imagination could do. The structure of my novel Brookhaven, if not a literal descendant of Conversation in the Cathedral, was certainly influenced by it.

Yeah, I’m a fan.

In Praise of Art Museums as Sources of Inspiration

February 11, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’d heard that, as you age, you often become more interested in art. What I didn’t expect was to discover how that growing interest in art would affect my fiction writing.

I wasn’t a stranger to art, but I can’t say it was a major preoccupation, either. I had two semesters of art history in college; I took two, because the same textbook was used for both, and it was more expensive than the tuition. I’m also not an artist.

I know when my connection of art to writing fiction started. It was some 50 years ago. We were young twenty-somethings living in Houston, and we saw two exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts. One was the works of Paul Cezanne, and it was stunning. But the one that captured me was “Master Paintings from the Hermitage and the State Russian Museum, Leningrad.” Houston was one of five cities hosting it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW blog.

Painting: Lumpeguin, Cigwe, Animiki, by Anselm Kiefer, from collection of the artist on display at the St. Louis Art Museum.

“The Prodigal of Leningrad” by Daniel Taylor

January 28, 2026 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

I’m trying to remember when I first became interested in Russian history. Most likely, when I was 10, and one of my Christmas presents (my mother knew me) was a Horizon Caravel book entitled Russia Under the Czars. I must have read it a dozen times. And I still have it.

My senior year in high school, I discovered Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward, and The First Circle. In college, I took two semesters of Russian history, and I was glad I knew more about Russia’s past than most people. The professor was a great lecturer; he was also an unapologetic defender of the Soviet regime.

In my first job as a newspaper copy, I still remember editing the front page to include the announcement about the publication of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Part 1. It was first published in French in Paris, and that publication led to the Soviet Union expelling Solzhenitsyn from the country. As soon as the English version was announced, I placed my pre-order at the Cokesbury Bookstore in downtown Houston, Texas. I read it almost immediately, and the next two volumes that followed.

Fast forward 40 years. I had read two novels by Daniel Taylor, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist and Do We Not Bleed?. I liked them both. I was surprised when I saw the title of his upcoming new novel, The Prodigal of Leningrad. It was a decided shift from his previous works to a story about a docent at The Hermitage museum in Leningrad during the German siege of World War II.

I knew the basic historical facts – how German and Finnish troops essentially encircled the city for nearly 900 days, with German planes bombing at will and all supplies cut off. Some 650,000 Leningraders died, many from starvation. The siege began in 1941 and lasted until 1943.

I wondered what would Daniel Taylor do with that setting. Far more than I expected, as it turns out. It may be one of the most Russian novels written by a non-Russian that I’ve read. It is a story of war and deprivation. But it is also a story about the Soviet Gulag, art, fith, and one of the most extraordinary paintings in the Hermitage – “The Return of the Prodigal” by Rembrandt.

Leningrader Daniil Aslanov works as a docent at The Hermitage. He’s an outstanding tour guide, and his favorite painting is “The Return of the Prodigal.” But all of the valuable art orks, including his beloved Rembrandt, have been removed and stored in safety, in case the Germans break through. What is left are empty frames, but Daniil can still talk about the missing paintings. He talks with his friends as well, which can be a dangerous thing in Stalin’s Russia. For at least two of them, he is in danger simply for not reporting what they talk about – criticism of the beloved ruler, the Soviet system, and anything that might be considered disloyal. Which would be anything at all.

Daniil’s story is paralleled by the story of his grandfather, whom Daniil believes is dead but is still very much alive in the Gulag. The grandfather was an Orthodox priest, and that was his crime; the Soviet regime has murdered thousands of them. But in the camps, even atheists come to appreciate this aging man who doesn’t judge, who sits with the dying, and who gives final blessings to the dwindling few who still believe.

The siege, the mass starvation, the bombing, and the corruption of the Soviet system will lead Daniil to a particular end. Like depicted in the Rembrandt painting, the prodigal will return.

Taylor is the author of The Skeptical Believer, Tell Me a Story, Creating a Spiritual Legacy, The Myth of Certainty and several other books. He’s contributed to Bible translations and is co-founder of The Legacy Center, created to help families and individuals find their stories, values and meaning. He’s also a contributing editor for Christianity Today’s Books and Culture Magazine. Taylor blogs at Neither/Nor: Ruminations of a Spiritual Traveler. Death Comes for the Deconstructionist won Christianity Today’s best novel award in its annual book awards and the Illumination Award for best fiction by an independent publisher.

The Prodigal of Leningrad connects art, faith, and a terrible time in Russian and human history to tell a story of how one man finds his soul. It’s a remarkable story.

Do We Not Bleed? by Daniel Taylor.

Painting: The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt van Rijn, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.

Single Dads in Non-Fiction and Fiction

November 12, 2025 By Glynn Young 1 Comment

It was only coincidental. I read Joseph Luzzi’s In a Dark Wood: A Memoir (2015) and the next in my reading pile was Unconditional: A Novel by Stephen Kogon. Both books, one non-fiction and the other fiction, told the stories of young men suddenly finding themselves single fathers.

Luzzi is a professor of Italian and teaches at Bard College in New York. In 2007, just as his lecture class was about to begin, he noticed a security guard come into the room. The message was awful; Luzzi’s wife Katherine had been in an automobile accident and was seriously injured. Katherine was also eight-and-half months pregnant. The baby, a little girl, was delivered and survived. Katherine didn’t.

And thus began a journey of grief, the loss of his wife, navigating funeral and death arrangements, caring for a newborn, and eventually dealing with lawsuits filed against Katherine’s estate and countersuits filed against the other driver. And that on top of trying to resume a “normal” life, as if life could ever be normal after that.

Luzzi turned to the poet Dante and his Divine Comedy. Like Virgil serves as Dante’s guide in the great poem, Dante served as Luzzi’s guide. He tells a moving, heartbreaking story, a man overwhelmed by loss and grief and with the responsibility of a child. If there is a hero in this story, Luzzi might be the first to admit it was his Italian mother, who essentially moves in to care for her granddaughter.

In addition to The Divine Comedy: A Biography, Luzzi has also published Romantic Europe and the Ghost of Italy (2008), A Cinema of Poetry: The Aesthetics of the Italian Art Film (2014), My Two Italies (2014), In a Dark Wood: What Dante Taught Me About Grief, Healing, and the Mysteries of Love (2015), and Botticelli’s Secret: The Lost Drawings and the Rediscovery of the Renaissance (2022). He received his Ph.D. degree from Yale University, and he teaches literature, film, and Italian Studies. He is also the founder of the Virtual Book Club, which focuses on the world’s great books and storytelling.

Writer and filmmaker Stephen Kogon has previously published a young adult novel and two children’s stories, and Unconditional is his first aimed at adult reader. It tells the story of Matthew Russell, a 35-year-old bachelor who is a photographer for the Arizona Cardinals in Phoenix. He’s attending the retirement part of his best friend (and football team member) Kenny when he receives the telephone call that changes his life.

The Albuquerque police explain that Matthew’s estranged brother Paul and Paul’s girlfriend have been killed in an automobile crash. Apparent suicides, they’ve left behind a premature baby girl who’s in a hospital neonatal intensive care unit. The only note they left behind read “Please take care of the baby.”

And Matthew is the only person capable of doing that. Overwhelmed with loss, not to mention having to manage his brother’s death and funeral, he has to decide what to do with Allie, his new niece. What he decides is that he will take care of her, even if it means radically changing his life.

It’s a moving tory, sometimes borderline sentimental, but that’s of little account when you become engrossed with the story. Matthew surrenders his life to fatherhood, and that includes changing jobs and putting aside his relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Monica.

Kogon previously published Max Mooth, Cyber Sleuth and the Case of the Zombie Virus and two children’s stories, Squiglet the Ryming Piglet and Squiglet the Piglet Goes on a Nature Hike. His first film, Dance Baby Dance, was released in 2018. He’s also written screenplays, comedy sketches, and comic strips.

Related:

Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography by Joseph Luzzi.

Top photograph by Illia Panasenko via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story” by Wendell Berry

October 22, 2025 By Glynn Young Leave a Comment

Andy Catlett, whom we first met as a boy in an earlier novel by Wendell Berry, is now an old man. As old men are wont to do, he’s looking backward – at his life, his parents’ lives, and even earlier. And what he sees, far more clearly than he would have seen in his youth, is what shaped four generations of Catletts, including himself and his own children.

It is a story, a story that happened to his grandfather, Marce Catlett, a story that happened in less than 24 hours but lasted more than a century. And it shows every sign of continuing to last.

Marce Catlett and his good friend and neighbor Jim Stedman travel together by horse and train to Louisville. Their tobacco harvests are finished for the season. Now comes the time when the crop is auctioned in Louisville.

Marce and Jim both have an unspoken apprehension about the auction. Both know what they need to make a profit and continue to farm. And both know there is one bidder at the auction – the agent of James Buchanan Duke, who controls a near-monopoly on the U.S. tobacco business.

When the auction ends, both Marce and Jim leave to return home. Their profit might cover the cost of their train tickets.

In a few short words, Marce will tell his family what happened. Fear enters the home. Fortunately for the Catletts, they won’t starve; they have livestock and some diversification of crops. But tobacco is the lion’s share of the family income.

Even then, however, that is not the story. The story is what Marce does next. He begins to make his plans for next year’s tobacco crop.

That resilience in the face of financial disaster, what can only be called theft by monopoly, is what propels the family forward. Marce’s youngest son Wheeler will go on to become a congressman’s aide, an attorney, and the force behind the creation of the tobacco farmers’ cooperative to ensure farmers could make a decent profit. It will propel Wheeler’s son Andy to become a professional writer and then a farmer and writer. And it will influence Andy’s own children.

That’s the heart of Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, Berry’s most recent novel and what feels like the last. Berry’s Port William novels are not precisely autobiographical, but they are clearly shaped by Berry’s own experiences. Marce Catlett reads like a summing up, not only of the series of novels but also of Andy Catlett’s, and Wendell Berry’s, life. The front and back inside covers suggest that as well – the front being a chart showing the relationships of the Feltner, Coulter, Beechum, Wheeler, and Catlett families, and the back being a map of Port William and its environs.

The map is just as important as the genealogy. Together, they are two sides of the same coin – family and geography. The story that lies between them is the resilience that binds them together.

Berry is a poet, novelist, essayist, environmentalist, and social critic. His fiction, both novels and stories, are centered in the area he calls Port William, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. He’s won a rather astounding number of awards, prizes, fellowships, and recognitions. He lives on a farm in Kentucky. As he should.

Wendell Berry and the Land.

My review of Berry’s Jayber Crow.

Wendell Berry and This Day: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry and Terrapin: Poems at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Wendell Berry’s Our Only World.

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry.

Nathan Coulter by Wendell Berry.

Andy Catlett: Early Travels by Wendell Berry.

A World Lost by Wendell Berry.

A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry.

The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry.

Wendell Berry and Another Day: Sabbath Poems 2013-2023.

Remembering by Wendell Berry.

Top photograph: Broadleaf tobacco field by Rusty Watson via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Wendell Berry and the “Mad Farmer Poems”

September 10, 2025 By Glynn Young 2 Comments

It was a conversation that went much like you might expect.

“I don’t understand it,” the executive said. “They hate us. They hate what we do. They don’t even really understand what it is that we do. They don’t understand how important our products are for farmers and for the world’s food supply.”

I was sitting in the executive’s office, working with him on a speech he was to give. What he was talking about wasn’t the subject of the speech, but it was clearly on his mind. I listened to what was essentially a rant, and then I asked a question.

“Have you read Wendell Berry?”

He stared at me. “Who’s that?”

And there it was. The animosity about the company’s products, the position of the company in the marketplace, the company’s close identification with “Big Agriculture,” and the executive’s being perplexed with the activists and animosity on social media could all be summed up that that question – “who’s that?”

I answered his question. “Berry,” I said, “is the man who has articulated a very different understanding of agriculture, the idea of community, and the understanding of the land. He’s widely read and admired. You have to read his essays to understand what’s behind all the animosity and controversy. His fiction and poetry will help, too.”

The response? “I don’t have time to read that stuff.”

Now 91, Berry was born in Henry County, Kentucky, where his family had farmed for five generations. He worked as a writer for agricultural publications like Rodale Press, but he eventually returned to Henry County and worked his own farm, Lane’s Landing.

But he continued to write. He wrote essays, poems, general interest articles, short stories and novels. He fictionalized his region of Kentucky, renaming the nearby town of Port Royal as “Port William.” Slowly and then rapidly, his ideas of land, community, and agriculture permeated American culture, influencing people like Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan, who in turn have had a huge influence.

I generally prefer Berry’s fiction and poetry to his essays. A good place to start is with The Mad Farmer Poems, where Berry articulates his major problems with agriculture as practiced in the United States. It’s a relatively short collection, about the size of a chapbook, and it includes such poems as “The Mad Farmer Revolution,” “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” (which is not as radical as it sounds) and “Prayers and Sayings of the Mad Farmer.”

The poems introduce you to a man who is, yes, angry about the state of modern agriculture, but who maintains a reverence for the land, the people who farm it, and the community the people create together. This is what Berry sees as broken and lost in America of the 21^st century, and it’s difficult not see the sense he makes.

In 2007, Jason Peters, a professor at Hillsdale College, assembled and edited a collection of essays about Berry under the title Wendell Berry: Life and Work. It’s a good introduction to Berry and his writings from people who admire his work and his beliefs and have generally been strongly influenced by him.

The contributors include non-fiction author Sven Birkerts, novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Gene Logsdon, poets Donald Hall and John Leax, Patrick Deneen of Georgetown University, ecology writer Bill McKibben, and numerous others. They speak to Berry’s fiction, his poems, his faith, his philosophy, his deep beliefs in land and community, and related topics. And the key here is the word “related.” Berry doesn’t compartmentalize different parts of his life. It is all part of an integrated whole.

Berry received B.S. and M.A. degrees from the University of Kentucky. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and studied in Italy and France under a Guggenheim Fellowship. He taught at New York University and the University of Kentucky and served as a writer for Rodale Press. Since 1965, he and his wife have lived at Lane’s Landing. And he has a new Port William novel publishing in October – Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story.

When the executive and I had that conversation, more than a decade ago, I had read much of Berry’s poetry, two of his novels, and several of his essays – a mere drop in the bucket of what the man has published. I’ve read much more since then. And I think my answer to “Who’s that?” is even more on point now then it was back then. If you want to understand the culture – and cultural battle – of American agriculture, you have to read Wendell Berry.