In August 2021, I could not study. I had just had a miscarriage—my second within six months—and every time I picked up a novel, I would become disoriented, the words jumbled up, almost incomprehensible. I complained about this to a friend of mine. “I don’t know what to do,” I said. “It’s like my brain
I have to admit that what is classified as “literary fiction” is a bit slippery. We’ve teased the meaning a bit before, and the consensus among many in the book world is that literature emphasizes prose, character development, and thematic depth. Still, there’s also the argument that this applies to many books, which is my
The best of literary internet Today: 1930 Hilda Hilst, Brazilian poet, playwright and novelist, is born. More recaps of why odyssey Women should be put at the center: “We are like Penelope, appropriating Homer’s story for our own purposes.” | lit hub criticism How Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals embraced Marxism, which horrified some
during a critical moment odysseyCirce sends Odysseus to the kingdom of the dead to find a prophet who can instruct him on how to return home after more than a dozen years. But to travel to the kingdom of the dead, our “complex” (the most appropriate Homeric adjective, introduced only a few years earlier in
Each day, my dog Helgi and I walk about eight miles. We started on Wymore Street, in the middle of Elliott, my neighborhood, and passed by the city workers’ fuel station and dump, with the odd hint of a baseball field, where the same old boats had been parked for months, rained on and loose.
Fiona Sampson explores the ways we can combine reality with fantasy Where is “literariness” in literary biography? With the book’s subject—or its author? Traditionally, it is associated with both, and also the third element. Literary biography also cares about the writing that originates from its subjects, and has been so since perhaps its founding text,
The best of literary internet Today: 1866, Steamer Governor Higginson Jules Verne encounters a mysterious sea creature twenty thousand league under the sea. “For years I have been trying to obtain Greek citizenship, which, if one of your parents was born in Greece, can apparently be a straightforward process.” On experiencing the homeland of one’s
This first appeared in Lit Hub art of writing Newsletter—Sign up here. Article continues after ad My grandmother suffers from dementia. I could say that his sense of reality is unstable, but that would be misleading. What is more, his experience of reality is not bound by time and space. When she looks at me,
Sigrid Nunez, Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup, featuring Julie Buntin and others Sigrid Nunez’s it will come back to youLauren Collins’s they stole a cityand Julie Buntin’s famous men All of these are among the best reviewed books of the week. Brought to you by book marksLit Hub’s home for book reviews. * Imagination 1. It
Tanaaz Bhathena recommends books by Pat Barker, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and others Mythologies around the world are filled with stories that center on heroes. yes GilgameshThe iliadThe Mahabharata Or shahnamaWhile great epics highlight the exploits and adventures of men, the women in their lives are often marginalized, their roles reduced to dutiful wives, villains, or