Author and investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe stands in a bookstore and presents his curated list of five essential narrative non-fiction books. He sequentially introduces each book—'In Cold Blood,' 'People Who Eat Darkness,' 'News of a Kidnapping,' 'Killers of the Flower Moon,' and 'Random Family'—providing a brief summary of its story and explaining its significance, while the video intersperses his commentary with title cards and illustrative B-roll footage.
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Loved London Falling? Patrick Radden Keefe is back Under the Cover to share five of his own favourite works of narrative non-fiction.
Patrick is an investigative journalist at The New Yorker, the author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing, and a master of immersive storytelling. In his latest, London Falling, he looks at the troubling death of teenager Zac Brettler and the criminal world he had inadvertently been drawn into.
Which books would you add to Patrick’s list? Let us know - or get hold of his recommendations through our online bookstore (affiliate link in bio).
🎥 With huge thanks to Daunt Books Marylebone for having us
📜 Patrick’s list:
London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Transcript
My name is Patrick Radden Keefe, and here's my list of five books to get you into narrative nonfiction. No the first would be In Cold Blood best Truman Capote. It's about a terrible series of murders in the High Plains of Kansas, and Capote goes and investigates and then writes about the killers. I think it's a really interesting meditation on evil. And it started in the New Yorker, which is where I write, and so I feel a particular connection to that book. People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry. Another book about a terrible crime. This one in Japan. It's got a kind of immersive, almost hallucinogenic quality at tier. All these kind of strange, subcultural highways and byways. The next book is one that was very influential on me called News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which is a nonfiction book about a series of kidnappings in Colombia. It's using all of the kind of tools of a novelist, but also his background as a reporter to tell a very vivid, gripping story. Killers of the Flower Moon, completely extraordinary about a series of murders in a Native American community. In its kind of deeper preoccupations about resource extraction and the way in which native communities in The United States have been marginalized and exploited tells a really profound story about some of the original sins of my country. Final one is Random Family by Adrienne Nicole LeBlanc. Written over the course of many, many years, she gets to know this cluster of young people living in the Bronx in New York. Not famous people, just ordinary people struggling. She renders that in beautiful detail.
