The Mars Room
By Rachel Kushner
While some other books on the list are long on awards but not necessarily sales, Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room is both critically acclaimed and a New York Times best-seller. Kushner, who earned a National Book Award nomination for both her previous novels, has been called “a young master” by legendary fiction author George Saunders. “I honestly don’t know how she is able to know so much and convey all of this in such a completely entertaining and mesmerizing way,” he writes. Vogue calls The Mars Room “a searing, tragic look at life in the prison-industrial complex, covering poverty, sex work, mass incarceration, education, trauma, suffering, love, and redemption. Somehow, Kushner’s rapid-fire, imaginative prose makes it seems effortless.”
Originally Published
