Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to bookworm.

Today my guest is

Francine Prose,

the author most recently

of guided tours of hell

two novellas

published by Metropolitan Books,

the title Nubella,

Guided Tours of Hell,

the second, longer one,

three pigs in five days.

The books go back and back, and I go back with them.

I have to say that I picked up a paperback copy of Marine LeVoe.

It was a book about a voodoo queen in Haiti, and I didn't think that I was going to like it.

I think I found it somewhere in a waiting room, and I couldn't stop reading it.

So I went back, and I read The Glorious Ones and Judah the Pious, and I thought, oh, you know, the glorious ones is about a traveling theater troupe,

and Judah the Pius is about a prophet.

...