Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read. From KCRW, Santa Monica,

I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today I'm happy to have as my guest, Jeanette

Turner Hospital. She is the author most recently of due preparations for the plague. It's published

by Norton.

Now, for some time now, I've seen this name, Jeanette Turner Hospital,

and all kinds of interesting comments were coming along,

and eventually I begged the publisher, Norton, to send her here.

And so I've had the pleasure of reading several of her books.

In addition to do preparations for the plague, one can find published by Norton,

Oyster, The Last Magician, and her collection of short stories dislocations.

She's written six novels and three collections of short stories,

and it's a pleasure to have her here

because this book, in certain ways,

represents both a wonderful introduction to her work

and a culmination of many of her themes.

If you pick up dislocations, what you find is stories about people between cultures,

Indians celebrating Davali in Canada, all kinds of circumstances that have led to the internationalization of the world. And this book, Due Preparations for the Plague, is a book about the consequence of that internationalization.

It's a book that is about not only terrorism but the descendants of the

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