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New & Notable

Three new books from UVA grads

Ministers of Fire
Mark Harril Saunders (Grad 
97)

This complex spy thriller follows CIA agent Lucius Burling from 1979 Afghanistan to 2002 Shanghai, where he must smuggle a dissident Chinese nuclear physicist out of the county. The physicist turns out to be a man from Burling's past, and their journey to freedom a test of the relevance of Cold War agents in a post-9/11 world.


Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces
Cory MacLauchlin (Grad 
06)

New Orleans writer John Kennedy Toole committed suicide 12 years before the publication of his novel A Confederacy of Dunces, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. MacLauchlin tells Toole's story using new interviews with friends, family and colleagues as well as the Toole archive at Tulane University.


Richard Linklater
David T. Johnson (Col 94)

From the inventive and nonlinear Slacker to nostalgia-soaked Dazed and Confused, director Richard Linklater's films are about time and memory. Johnson analyzes this focus on temporality—as a narrative element and as cultural criticism—and interviews Linklater about his career.