Six top literary escapes

Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and Wanted, The Newlyweds and The Dissident, and of the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Named one of The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” in 2010, she is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and son.

At The Week magazine Freudenberger recommended six literary escapes, including:

Illywhacker by Peter Carey (1985).

This wildly funny Australian tall tale has one of my favorite chapters in fiction, in which a Chinese merchant teaches the narrator to become invisible. Herbert Badgery is a 139-year-old professional liar, and the story of his adventures allows Carey to stretch realistic fiction to its outermost limits.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue