Melville House Books

Ian McEwan says his ongoing difficulty with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “is becoming a little Kafkaesque,” and his current visit to promote his just-released novel Saturday may be his last. “”I only got in this time by the skin of my teeth,” he tells Mark Egan in this Reuters wire story, explaining that it took him nine months to obtain a visa to enter the country, and it was finally “granted just hours before his departure.” As Egan reports, “McEwan’s diplomatic woes began a year ago when U.S. officials turned him away from entering the country in error. But that error has remained on the books to haunt him still.” Although he finds it “a matter of enormous irritation,” the liberal McEwan says he doesn’t think what’s happening has anything to do with his politics. “All large bureaucracies throw up absurdities,” he says.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.