He’s been showered with fellowships and prizes, but Nathan Englander (“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank”) is sweating his first play: “The 27th Man,” which just started previews at the Public Theater. “God bless Nora Ephron!” he cries. The late great writer discovered the story — about Yiddish writers rounded up by Stalin’s secret police — in Englander’s 1999 collection, “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges.” “She took me to Barney Greengrass and said, ‘There’s a play in here, and I want you to write it!’ ” Englander wrote a novel in the interim, and then, he says, Ephron helped him take it from there. “She literally taught me the rules of drama,” he marvels.Here’s what’s in his library.
An Exclusive Love
by Johanna Adorján
I was in Berlin on a book tour and my publicist and I were waiting for a cab when a journalist offered us a ride. She turned out to be Johanna Adorján. Her book is a memoir with imagined parts about her grandparents, who had a suicide pact. They were Holocaust survivors who decided to choose their own end, who didn’t want to go on without the other.
Smiley’s People
by John Le Carré
I’m trying to live in a broader world. I hadn’t read a mystery in 20 years when I found this book at an airport in Edinburgh. It’s a reminder of what a good story’s supposed to do. It has a driven narrative, and it’s beautifully written. It’s been a while since I had a book I couldn’t put down! Now I’m on my third or fourth LeCarré.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind
by Julian Jaynes
I’m in love with the idea that we assume we’re always conscious because we never know when we’re not. I was talking about that when some nice person said, “Do I have a book for you!” I’ll never finish this book because I keep writing in the margins.
Other Desert Cities
by Jon Robin Baitz
I’m now reading through plays endlessly. Some lovely person I hardly know sent this to me and said, “I think you should read this.” I’m working now with Ron Rifkin, a close friend of Baitz’s who’s been in many of his plays. What I love about this is the unbelievable twist at the end. You just don’t see it coming.