A.G. Mojtabai

• Dec-2024
• / Literary

Plato famously defined a human being as a “featherless biped.” It’s hard not to sense the ironic humor in this definition, a reminder that, for all our talk about human dignity, our condition is contingent, vulnerable, and at some level even co...

• Feb-2021
• / Literary

As A.G. Mojtabai's Thirst opens, Lena has been summoned to the bedside of her ailing "brother" Theo, an aging country priest who has started to refuse food and drink. What Lena faces is complicated by the fact that she left the faith long ago. First...

• Oct-2016
• / Literary

The rules are simple enough: “Here’s the deal: Whoever keeps his hands longest on one of the dealer’s brand new pickup trucks owns it and gets to drive it away.” An actual contest hosted by an auto dealership in Texas is the prompt for this f...

• Jul-2011
• / Literary

Two decades into his career, Tom Limbeck, a New York City social worker, is leading an orderly, utterly prosaic life. He is, by self-description, “a poor man’s psychiatrist,” dedicated to helping his clients see things rationally, the better to...

• Apr-2008
• / General Fiction

In the middle of the night, somewhere in Oklahoma -- or is it Missouri? -- a bus hurtles down an anonymous American highway. Its passengers, among them two children traveling on their own, a retired salesman, an unwed teenage mother, an unemployed ch...

• Nov-2000
• / General Fiction

• May-1994
• / Literary

"Long on vision, and as lyrical as need be," in the words of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, A. G. Mojtabai's novels are well-known for their consummate craft. Nowhere is this vision more evident than in her splendid new novel, Called Out, ...

• Aug-1989
• / General Fiction

• Jul-1982
• / General Fiction

This is a piece for solo voice, the voice of Will Ross, recently widowed. For years he's worked on refurbishing his vacation cottage to be a retirement home for himself and his wife, Helen. As soon as he settles in, Helen dies. As the book opens, Wil...