Memoirs from Bob Odenkirk and Sarah Polley top our list of books to read this March

by Yoko Tawada (trans. by Margaret Mitsutani; March 1, New Directions)The prolific, multilingual Yoko Tawada follows up her beguiling 2018 novel, The Emissary, with another delightfully strange story of a futuristic world in decline. In Scattered All Over The Earth, Japan has all but disappeared from public memory. Hiruko, a refugee living in Denmark, teaches schoolchildren a language she’s invented, eventually drawing the attention of a linguist who helps her search for others who speak it. Scattered All Over The Earth is the first installment of a planned trilogy, and in it Tawada explores themes of not just language but also globalization and climate change. Tawada fans should also stay on the lookout for the slim short story collection, , which New Directions will publish in July.

(trans. by Ann Goldstein; March 15, Europa Editions):Part memoir, part craft book, Elena Ferrante’s new nonfiction collection promises to be a writer’s origin story. In four essays, the Italian author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lying Life Of Adults revisits her first childhood experiments with narrative, her earliest attempts at writing a novel, the unique challenges faced by women writers, and how Ferrante was influenced by the work of Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson, María Guerra, and Dante. In The Margins looks like an intimate self-portrait and an essential read for Ferrantephiles. 

by Keith Phipps (March 29, Henry Holt)In his first book, film journalist (and former A.V. Club editor-in-chief) Keith Phipps traces the eclectic filmography of the one and only Nicolas Kim Coppola, a.k.a. Nicolas Cage. Age Of Cage pairs a history of the film industry at large with analyses of Cage’s most well-known films, highlighting the actor’s many phases (and faces). There’s Cage’s breakout with 1980s comedies Moonstruck and Peggy Sue Got Married (the latter directed by his uncle Francis Ford Coppola). Then strong (if wildly different) performances in Wild At Heart and Leaving Las Vegas, for which Cage won his only Oscar; scenery-chewing turns in action-movie classics like Face/Off and The Rock; and into the present day. Publishers Weekly calls Age Of Cage an “entertaining odyssey,” and we’d expect nothing less from a book about one of Hollywood’s most fascinating stars.