Fiction

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

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  The “Cosmological Nothingness” of Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

  Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi on unstable language, paranoid reading, and the Persian-French influences of her experimental thriller "Fra Keeler."

  John WisniewskiJun 18, 2015

  • Fiction

• Antoine Volodine’s Post-Exoticism

  The literary movement called “post-exoticism,” practiced by a group of imprisoned revolutionaries in a fictional devastated world, bursts with invention.

  Diana GeorgeJun 17, 2015

  • Fiction

• Secure Your Own Mask Before Helping Others

  A trapdoor is most alarming when you don't see it; knowing the floor might give way at any moment allows you to brace yourself for the fall.

  Marie BrennanJun 13, 2015

  • Fiction

  • SF

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  Life Is Governed by Intention

  The scope of Diamond Head is ambitious and sweeping, spanning the anti-imperialist Boxer Rebellion through Pearl Harbor to the beginnings of the sexual revolution.

  Celeste NgJun 12, 2015

  • Fiction

• “Siphoning Away the Warmth”: On Jim Shepard’s Radical Empathy

  "The Book of Aron" is a book about annihilation, and the human spirit that somehow lives on, in slivers and cracks.

  Nicholas MirielloJun 12, 2015

  • Fiction

  • Literary Fiction

• Season of Saul

  A review of the first volume of Zachary Leader's new biography of Saul Bellow.

  Shehryar FazliJun 11, 2015

  • Biography & Autobiography

  • Fiction

  • Literary Criticism

• A Patron Saint for Sadsacks: What Snark Says About Failure — and What Literature Says Back

  If the violence of these stories is often shocking, their logic is predictable. A would-be novelist experiences catastrophe.

  Jamie FisherJun 10, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Insolence, Exile, and the Kingdom

  The Los Angeles Review of Books interview with novelist and journalist Kamel Daoud.

  Robert ZaretskyJun 9, 2015

  • Fiction

• Will the Real Harun Please Stand Up?

  Is Kamel Daoud's "The Meursault Investigation" a critique of Jean-Baptiste set in a different dispensation? Or it is an attempt to go him one better?

  Ron SrigleyJun 9, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Creativity and Recovery

  Krista Lukas interviews Jill Kelly.

  Krista LukasMay 29, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Horror Stories Are Love Stories

  “Shock” seems like the right word for that place where we aren’t quite sure what emotion we’re experiencing: intensity in the moment that swamps meaning.

  Helen OyeyemiMay 26, 2015

  • Fiction

• War of the Imagination

  The book’s title may at first sound like the name of a death metal band, but "The Infernal" is likely a portmanteau of "inferno" and "internal": an internalized and self-made hell-on-earth.

  Alex NorciaMay 24, 2015

  • Fiction