Louise Erdrich | featured news

Three novelists who've gained literary respect as well as commercial success — Junot Diaz, (This is How You Lose Her), Louise Erdrich (The Round House) and Dave Eggers (A Hologram for the King) — are among the finalists for the National Book Award for fiction announced Wednesday.

Aristotle once declared that when it comes to whacking together a piece of literature from materials both quotidian and mythic, "it is probable that many improbable things will happen." By that light, The Red Convertible, Louise Erdrich's short-story collection that spans three decades of whacking stories out of the improbable, the tragic, and the hilariously painful stuff of life, deserves a laurel wreath. Actually, several of them.