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India's politics and history play a central role in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland. In the Booker Prize-nominated novel, an Indian radical is killed, and his wife and brother start over in America. Lahiri tells NPR's Lynn Neary that the story was inspired by true events, but very unlike her own life.

President Obama heads to New York on Monday for the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. The international meeting comes as, back in Washington, the U.S. Congress is once again heading into a possible government shutdown over spending priorities.

World leaders meeting at the United Nations in New York this week face potentially dramatic changes to arms control in the Middle East. Syria may give up chemical weapons. Iran is signaling it could negotiate with the West over its nuclear plans. How might this affect Israel, and its own weapons programs?

Thousands of scallywags in costume turned up at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Va. They wanted to break the Guinness record for largest pirate gathering. They fell short and may try again next year.

This week, booksellers and writers highlight works removed from schools and libraries. Among the banned books is Toni Morrison's Beloved which gets removed for explicit content. Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is targeted for racial issues.

Thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh continued protesting today. Dozens of people have been injured in clashes with police. Working conditions have come under the spotlight, because of tragedies like the collapse of a garment factory that killed more than a thousand people.

Congress could be steering the country towards the first government shutdown since the Clinton administration. Host Michel Martin speaks with columnist Joe Davidson of The Washington Post and Sudeep Reddy, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, about the budget battle and what a potential shutdown could mean.

Host Michel Martin speaks to Mary Harper, author of Getting Somalia Wrong to learn more about al-Shabab, the group claiming responsibility for this weekend's mall attack in Kenya.

This year’s ArtPrize is in full swing in downtown Grand Rapids. At the Western Michigan University Conference Center in Grand Rapids, a piece called…

The pop star has a flair for the extravagant, to say the least, but his new album is stripped down. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the "Elton John excess," his fear of sex as a young man, and how Liberace's example encouraged John to make the piano a star instrument.