Fiction

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

• 

  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

• 

  Creativity and Recovery

  Krista Lukas interviews Jill Kelly.

  Krista LukasMay 29, 2015

  • Fiction

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  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

• 

  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