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Le notti bianche (1957) We began this short week with a look at the enthusiastic response to Mark Harris’s Mike Nichols: A Life, and opening this month’s round on new and noteworthy books, we turn to a few more biographies. For a New York Times profile of literary biographer Hermione Lee, widely admired for her books on Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald, Charles McGrath spoke recently with novelist Julian Barnes who recalled the day that playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard approached Lee and asked her if she might consider making him her next subject. When she asked why he’d set his sights on her, he replied, “Because I want it to be read.” When ....