Welcome to episode 10 of Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This week Jonathan and Gary have a delightful conversation with Nghi Vo, whose The Empress of Salt and Fortune won this year’s Crawford Award and is a Hugo finalist, and whose debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful, a fantastical revisioning of The Great Gatsby with a queer, Asian Jordan Baker as narrator, is out this week.
We discuss the value of fanfic, the virtues and vacancies of Fitzgerald’s classic novel, the question of whether any narrators are ever reliable, and how Nghi managed to convey the sense of a full epic fantasy in The Empress of Salt and Fortune and then shift to a very different narrative mode in When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, the second novella in the “Singing Hills” cycle. We also get a preview of the forthcoming novel Siren Queen, with its intriguing exploration—again in fantastic terms—of the early Hollywood film industry as experienced by an Asian actress.
As always, our thanks to our guest, Nghi, for her time. We hope all of you enjoy the episode.
Episode 382: Ten Minutes with Alex Irvine
Episode 381: Ten Minutes with Tamsyn Muir
Episode 380: Ten Minutes with Andy Duncan
Episode 379: Ten Minutes with Ellen Klages
Episode 378: Ten Minutes with Garth Nix
Episode 377: Books in the Time of Coronavirus
Episode 376: Ten Minutes with Naomi Kritzer
Episode 375: Ten Minutes with Jeffrey Ford
Episode 374: Ten Minutes with Tochi Onyebuchi
Episode 373: Ten Minutes with Alix E. Harrow
Episode 372: Ten Minutes with James Bradley
Episode 371: Ten Minutes with Nisi Shawl
Episode 370: Ten Minutes with Ian Mond
Episode 369: Ten Minutes with Sarah Pinsker
Episode 368: NK Jemisin and The City We Became
Episode 367: Ken Liu and the Power of Good Story
Episode 366: Apocalypse, awards, and others
Episode 365: On talking about SF (or chatting under the influence)
Episode 364: On being a fan
Episode 363: Books We're Looking Forward to in 2020
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