“A great story casts a spell,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Vulnerables.” “It can enthrall you so completely that you not only forget that you’re stuck between two manspreaders in a noisy, crowded, smelly subway car but miss your stop.”
Like many who call Madrid home, Elena Medel was born elsewhere, but forged her identity in the Spanish capital. Here, she recommends books about this city that “refuses to be reduced to an ideal.”
This captivating adaptation of J.M. Coetzee’s novel, a collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company, follows a man and his ailing mother during a civil war in South Africa.