Skilled at turning “the ordinary marvelously, frighteningly strange” (The Boston Globe), Helen Oyeyemi is the author of five virtuosic novels that explore the spaces inside and beyond fairy tales and myths: her first novel, The Icarus Girl, published to acclaim before her 19th birthday; The Opposite House; White Is for Witching, winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; and Boy, Snow, Bird, which revisits the classic story of Snow White through a young mother’s experiences with race and family in wintry 1950s Massachusetts. Her new book is a collection of intertwined stories built around the idea of locked doors and their literal and metaphorical keys.

One of the most accomplished Latin American writers of his generation, Álvaro Enrigue is an essayist, critic, and the author of four novels and two short story collections. His first novel, Death of an Installation Artist, won the prestigious Joaquín Mortiz Prize. His other acclaimed works include Perpendicular Lives, Hypothermia, and Decency. Enrigue’s new novel—his first to be translated into English—tells the still-reverberating story of 16th-century Europe’s collision with the Aztec empire through the prism of dark comedy, historical caricature, and a surreally brutal tennis match.

Please note that Ms. Oyeyemi's reading has been edited from the podcast