Fiction

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

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  The Memories of Elephants

  Violence plays an essential, defining role in novelist Tania James’s stunning second novel, The Tusk That Did the Damage. The novel shines a necessary light on the challenges faced when living alongside the wild.

  Anita FelicelliMay 23, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Ten Commandments of Writing

  Nancy Spiller and Karen E. Bender discuss being an outsider, the role of literary fiction for modern readers, and the 10 commandments of writing.

  Nancy SpillerMay 21, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Mona Simpson, “Middlemarch,” and the Anti-Marriage Plot

  Marriage is neither an ending nor a beginning in "Off Keck Road." Instead, Mona Simpson let's it flicker at the edge of vision.

  Rachel PastanMay 20, 2015

  • Fiction

• Yet Another Genre for Jane Smiley

  Jane Smiley has published the second volume of her "Last Hundred Years" trilogy.

  Meredith MaranMay 18, 2015

  • Fiction

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  The Long Haul of Love

  If we're writing about love, we should write about how you keep love alive and healthy and strong over all the different changes and pressures …

  Jane GaydukMay 17, 2015

  • Fiction

• What Happened: A Look at Joseph Heller’s Forgotten Novel

  What distinguishes "Something Happened" from its thematic predecessors is the application of the same untamable wildness that touched "Catch-22."

  Carmen PetaccioMay 15, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Writing About Not Writing

  “The literary conceit I’m referring to could be thought of as an X-ray, or a negative, of the book-within-a-book device.”

  Ruth MargalitMay 11, 2015

  • Fiction

  • Literary Criticism

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  The Burden and the Beauty of Loneliness: An Interview with Leslie Parry

  Leslie Parry on her debut novel: "How do you take what makes you different … and turn it into the strongest, most necessary part of you?"

  Zach MannMay 9, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Don’t Call “The Sellout” a Ghetto Pastoral

  Paul Beatty, incisive chronicler and prodigal son of LA, talks about his new novel, 'The Sellout.'

  Evelyn McDonnellMay 7, 2015

  • Fiction

• Seeing Like an Exile

  'Orhan’s Inheritance' traces the history of two families thrust into chaos by the massacre and violent expulsion of over one million Armenians from Ottoman Turkey.

  Lisa Sanchez PowersMay 6, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Creatures of Ambiguity

  Translator Jeffery Zuckerman interviews internationally acclaimed Mauritian writer Ananda Devi about her novel "Eve Out of Her Ruins"; the first section to appear in English was recently published on LARB channel The Offing.

  Jeffrey ZuckermanMay 5, 2015

  • Fiction

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  Thomas Cromwell, a Man for All Treasons

  That a public man such as Thomas Cromwell can be understood so differently by writers acting in good faith is due to a number of factors: his distance from us in time, our incomplete record of his correspondence, the nature of politics, and the nature of observation.

  Josh EmmonsMay 1, 2015

  • Fiction

  • History