Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century bourgeois France, the story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

Catherine Lacey (Nobody Is Ever Missing), Akhil Sharma (Family Life), Francoise Mouly (art editor at The New Yorker), and Kate Zambreno (Heroines, Green Girl) discuss the acclaimed novel in celebration of its 30th anniversary. Marguerite Duras' (Hiroshima Mon Amour) haunting, luminous book tells of the tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover in pre-war Indochina. With a reading by Kathleen Chalfant (The Affair, Angels...

Susanna Clarke discusses and reads from her novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.

Zadie Smith sits down with Laura Miller to discuss and read from her novel, On Beauty.

Edward P. Jones sits down with Wyatt Mason to discuss his collection, All Aunt Hagar's Children. Carmen De Lavallade reads an excerpt from the book.

Claire Messud joins Valerie Martin to discuss her book, The Emperor's Children. Hope Davis reads an excerpt from the book.

Edwidge Danticat sits down with director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) to discuss and read from her book, Brother, I'm Dying.

Isaiah Sheffer sits down with two memoirists, Alexandra Fuller and Wendy Kann, to discuss their memoirs from Africa: Fuller's Scribbling the Cat and Kann's Casting with a Fragile Thread.

Susan Cooper talks with Symphony Space's education director about The Dark Is Rising sequence, her series of five thrilling fantasy novels for young readers, among them The Dark Is Rising and 1976 Newbery Medal winner The Grey King. The heroic series, originally published in the 1960s and 70s, is inspired by Arthurian myths and depicts an epic struggle between good ("The Light") and evil ("The Dark") in which children like 11-year-old Sign-Seeker...

David Wrobleski sits down with Dan Menaker to discuss and read excerpts from his book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.