Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Sequels are a tricky business.

Sure, they're building on something established, but they've still really got to earn their place in the world.

And it's especially difficult if the first book was a hit.

Andrew Sean Greer's book, Less, following a medium-successful writer nearing 50, won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for

fiction. And so the new sequel, Less is Lost, has a lot to live up to. Actually, he told here

and now as Robin Young that he didn't want to write a second Les book, but something about the

characters he created kept calling to him. Because as much as the book takes satirical

shots at the pretentious literary crowd, Greer says in this interview, he's really trying to

critique himself. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources

and methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you

understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or

wherever you get your podcasts. We love less, and now we love less more.

Less is Arthur Less, an author the hapless and ever-hopful hero of Andrew

Sean Greer's 2017 novel, Less, a 50-something fading blonde with a career that would also

be fading, if only it was ever bright.

A friend helpfully

tells Arthur Les his books don't work because he's a bad gay, something someone once told

Andrew Sean Greer. So Greer launches his character on what the character hopes will be a homeric

foreign book trip, but in fact becomes the biblical book of Job, Sandstorms,

disinterested audiences. When we spoke with Andrew Sean Greer in 2017, he said,

every author is allowed one book about a struggling author, but then he won the 2018 Pulitzer

...