Word: novelists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Medvedev likes to quote another historian, Jules Michelet, who defined his profession as "the action of bringing things back to life." Scarcely anyone does that better than Medvedev. All existing portraits of Stalin, even one drawn by a great novelist like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, seem bland in comparison with the real-life killer who charges through the pages of Let History Judge. Although the statistics amassed by Medvedev are overwhelming -- he conservatively estimates that no fewer than 5 million Soviet citizens were arrested from 1936 through 1938 -- it is the telling human detail that brings alive Stalin's wickedness...
Talbott is now one of what might be called Le Carre's People, an exclusive team of TIME correspondents the novelist has consulted through the years. Whenever he needs sophisticated guidance about the far-flung settings of his novels or the kind of characters who populate those worlds, Le Carre travels to the scene of intrigue, seeks out the best reporters he can find and interviews them thoroughly, taking voluminous longhand notes. "It has followed by chance that they are TIME people," he explains. "It's because TIME has the knack of hiring very good local people...
...sword that once belonged to the Palestinian's father. "Have you ever tried to take a sword through security in the Middle East?" Le Carre asks with a chuckle. After much negotiation, the pilot agreed to carry the sword in the cockpit. It now rests in the novelist's workroom -- a reminder of affection from one of Le Carre's People...
...responded two years ago by giving its blessing to an investigation of the murder charges by British journalist John Cornwell, whose book, A Thief in the Night, was released in Britain in late May. A onetime seminarian, Cornwell, 48, is a veteran editor for the London Observer and a novelist. Rome backed the project after Britain's George Basil Cardinal Hume vouched for Cornwell's fairness and integrity. The author spent months interviewing the main witnesses, many of whom decided to speak only because of the Vatican go-ahead...
Readers usually get their first impression of anthologies from high school or college English classes; the assigned texts are there to be studied, not enjoyed. But of course many collections can be read with pleasure, as this one engagingly demonstrates. William Trevor, the distinguished Irish novelist and short story writer, understands his compatriots' love of tale telling, the anecdotal impulse that flourishes among people who savor the spoken word. In his brief, informative introduction, he notes, "English fiction writers tend to state that their short stories are leavings from their novels. In Ireland I have heard it put the other...