In 'The Unveiling,' a disastrous cruise becomes an opportunity for cultural reckoning

NPR's Book of the Day

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Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even if you’re scared of cruise ships, don’t turn away from Quan Barry’s The Unveiling. When film scout and photographer Striker boards an Antarctic cruise in search of locations for a new biopic, things start to go wrong — lots of things. But there’s much to learn from Barry’s quirky cast of characters, with a tech billionaire and a blended queer family among them. In today’s episode, Barry talks with NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe about the power of discovery on and off the ship, and the process of crafting a novel without a single chapter break.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's MPR's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. I do not go on cruises. That's just a rule I have.
0:09.4	I've derailed a handful of family vacations my mom has tried to plan because of how hard I commit to that rule.
0:16.0	My reasoning is I don't like the idea of not being able to just leave when things go wrong.
0:21.8	Today's book is just helping bolster my argument.
0:24.8	It's a novel by Kwan Barry titled The Unveiling about a photographer who goes on an Antarctic
0:30.3	cruise and guess what?
0:31.8	Things go wrong.
0:33.9	Kwan Barry talks at NPR's Aisha Roscoe about the cultural fissures that get revealed when things go awry
0:39.5	and what redemption means to different people.
0:42.6	That's after the break.
0:44.2	This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.
0:48.8	When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.
0:54.9	Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and C's Apply.
1:00.3	A Christmastime Antarctic Cruise in crystalline, icy waters is the setting for
1:06.3	Kwan Berry's latest novel, The Unveiling. Experienced, mostly through the eyes of a film scout and
1:13.5	photographer named Stryker, were taken on a luxury trip gone horribly wrong in so many ways.
1:21.7	A mishap earlier in the book leaves our cast of characters stranded, fending for themselves in a hostile, at
1:29.5	time mysterious environment, and things get tense and a little strange pretty quickly.
1:38.0	Poet, playwright, and novelist, Kwan Berry joins us from Madison, Wisconsin.
1:42.7	Welcome to the program.
1:44.0	Fabulous. Thanks for having me.
1:45.7	First of all, tell us about this main character, Striker. I'm just the name for me, I'm thinking,
	...

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