Read The City Born Great, new fiction N.K. Jemisin, winner of a Hugo award for her novel, The Fifth Season.
fiction
Posted inFiction, Quotes
The City Born Great: Fiction by N.K. Jemisin
Read The City Born Great, new fiction N.K. Jemisin, winner of a Hugo award for her novel, The Fifth Season.
Posted inQuotes
The Story of a Marriage: Jenny Offill’s ‘Dept. of Speculation’
“The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three.” From Jenny Offill’s wonderful 2014 novel Dept. of Speculation — the story of a married couple in Brooklyn, told through snippets of wisdom, anger, love, and bedbugs. In […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Story
Rainy Season
Two young sisters living in Thailand sneak off their diplomatic compound for a night of beauty and danger in this spellbinding short story.
Posted inFiction, Story
Cities I’ve Never Lived In: A Story By Sara Majka
“These stories are a marvel and will break your heart.”
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
On ‘Remaining in the Shadows’: Elena Ferrante on Anonymity and Writing
After so many years, are you still sure about your decision to remain in the shadows? “Remain in the shadows” is not an expression I like. It savors of plots, assassins. Let’s say that, fifteen years ago, I chose to publish books without having to feel obliged to make a career of being a writer. […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Honeymooning with Elizabeth Taylor, and Crying All the While: The Fiction of Margot Hentoff
The Harper’s digital archive is a small and unsung national treasure, at least as far as I’m concerned; I’ve spent countless hours sifting through old issues, scanning for early work from familiar names and tracking down forgotten gems from authors whose bylines have largely faded. One such writer is Margot Hentoff, whose short story “Where Do […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
The Dreamy, Sensual, and Bizarre Folk Tales of Yoko Tawada
Yoko Tawada’s English-language publisher, New Directions, describes her slender book The Bridegroom Was a Dog in simple and straightforward terms: “A bizarre tale of passion and romance between a schoolteacher and a dog.” There is, of course, complexity to this tight and colorful novella (written in 1993, and translated from Japanese in 1998), in which the life of […]
Posted inBooks, Fiction, Quotes
A Book in the Mail is the Cure For Ferrante Fever
As a regular book browser, or shelf stalker, and former employee of Community Bookstore in Brooklyn, I’ve recently watched several customers come in asking for recommendations of what to read next after finishing Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s four-volume saga, The Neapolitan Quartet — a masterwork concerning issues of class, status, and the remarkable complexity of […]
Posted inFiction, Quotes
Angela Carter on Myth and Deception in Hollywood
Angela Carter’s short story “The Merchant of Shadows” first appeared in The London Review of Books in 1989. Set in Hollywood, the narrator is a young, male student conducting research on a famed but mysterious director. The story bends and twists, ricocheting between dark comedy, deep camp, and Carter’s signature surreal, Gothic sensibility. Carter was an ardent fan […]