Titles starting with N from Abandoned Books

Interviews conducted by NPR journalists, including Nina Totenberg, Susan Stamberg, Linda Wertheimer, and Robert Siegel. Those interviewed include: Charles Schultz on Charlie Brown; Richard Avedon on photography; Arthur C. Clarke on technology; Curtis Mayfield on soul music; Harry Blackmun on the Supreme Court; Richard Cheney on foreign policy; Benjamin Hooks on civil rights; Octavio Paz on the language of poetry; Amos Oz on the Middle East; Desmond Tutu on peace; Fred Rogers on his neighborhood; Russell Baker on Masterpiece Theater; George Gallup, Jr. on spirituality; Richard Leakey on evolution; John le Carre on espionage and writing; and Donna Shalala on education.

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer for her story collection, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Her first novel, set in Boston and New York, begins in 1968 with a young Indian man doing research at MIT, and his wife, who becomes pregnant with a son. As years go by, their son, unlike his parents, becomes thoroughly westernized and even rebellious, with a series of non-Indian girlfriends--none of whom stick. After a painful breakup, in the year 2000, the young man, who was named Gogol on a whim of his father's (he has since changed it), decides it's time to read a book by the Russian writer for whom he is named. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

Two former nannies collaborate on a novel about being a nanny on New York City's Park Avenue, a job complete with overcompetitive parents, hapless children, ridiculous Halloween costumes, birthday parties from hell, and plenty of funny stories.

A story of a spiritual quest is set in the Middle Ages. Brother Narcissus, a monk at Mariabronn Abbey, serves as an adviser to Goldmund, a student at the Abbey School. Goldmund is attracted to the monastic life, but Narcissus suggests that he is unsuited for it and urges him to pursue a life in the world. Goldmund leaves the Abbey and becomes a woodcarver. Many years after he has achieved fame as an artist, he returns to the Abbey to die. The duality of body and mind, and the inevitable conflict between them, is at the center of the novel.