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Philip Short's new biography of French president Francois Mitterrand, A Taste for Intrigue, is a compelling, polished portrait of a slippery, contradictory figure who relished reinventing himself.

The Swedish Academy praised the Chinese writer's work, which "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The award is a cause of pride for a government that disowned the only previous Chinese winner of the award, an exiled critic.

Alexis Ohanian is co-founder of the popular social news site Reddit. His new book, Without Their Permission, tells the story of the site, from startup to Internet giant.

Dylan Dethier took a year off between high school and college for an unusual quest: He wanted to play a round of golf in each of the 48 contiguous states. His new book, 18 in America, chronicles that year, and he joins NPR's Scott Simon on the putt-putt course to talk about it.

Sherman worked a tight niche: classic songs rewritten to tickle a Jewish audience's funny bone. A new biography, Overweight Sensation: The Life and Comedy of Allan Sherman, explains how the performer's 1960s crossover fell in line with a collective awakening to ethnic identity in America.

The attack on the barracks and detention centers raised fears of a breakdown of order amid a surge of coups in the region.

Raymond Gunt is profane, rude, heartless and truly the Worst. Person. Ever. Author Douglas Coupland says he's not exactly sure how the character, with no redeeming qualities, came into his mind.

Salvadoran journalist Oscar Martinez has ridden the train known as "the Beast" eight times, interviewing Central American migrants on their way to the U.S. He shares his experiences in the book The Beast. Alt.Latino asked him about the books he read that inspired him — and what he'd take to read on a desert island.

The New Zealand-born author Adam Christopher has a fascination for America — his latest, Hang Wire, is a decade-jumping, character-crisscrossing urban fantasy set in San Francisco. Reviewer Jason Heller says that with Hang Wire, his fourth novel, Christopher has mastered "geek-centric weirdness and galloping, whiz-bang pace."

In Bangladesh, the army-backed interim government has eased a curfew that was imposed in a bid to end days of clashes between police and students. Authorities have called the violence a "conspiracy" and have closed a number of universities in the capital and other cities.