#literature

#literature

Morris was a sympathetic historian of empire who became a republican Welsh nationalist, and yet she accepted a CBE, showcasing her complex identity.

Catherine Lacey reads her story 'Rate Your Happiness,' from the April 13, 2026, issue of the magazine, highlighting her narrative style and thematic depth.

Valeria Luiselli, an acclaimed author, discusses the intricacies of Julio Cortázar's 'The Night Face Up,' highlighting its themes and narrative structure that intertwine reality and dreams.

Sigmund Freud believed that every crush has a strand of disgust, that people are attracted to what repulses them. The enchantment of an infatuation always counterbalances the reality that our lovers - irksome, confusing, and unflaggingly human - depart from whatever ideal archetype we have stored in our heads.

The creative output of that tribe was so immense, and their bohemian adventures so inspiring, that I wrote and published a historical novel, The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses Are Empty featuring many figures from the Lost Generation.

I'm currently writing my very first adult novel. It's really smutty, really creepy, very gay. I will be cancelled when it comes out. It's been nice knowing you.

I remember seeing it in drama school. I remember being so profoundly moved by it. I remember being so frightened by the performances in terms of seeing both sides to the thing that I think for most of us is, the most alive thing in our life, which is these, like, romantic relationships and the kind of inception of those things and the death of those things.

Competitors must attempt to answer 240 questions, such as the following, from 2022: "Playing for Bangalore against Pune in the IPL in April 2013, who set a new record for the fastest century in professional cricket by reaching 100 off 30 balls?" If it makes you feel better, the median number of correct answers the year of that test was 64.

1 Which Briton has the most statues erected in their honour? 2 Which parts of the world have no assigned time zones? 3 Whose portrait of Elisabeth Lederer recently sold for $236m? 4 Germany's Isabell Werth is considered the GOAT in what Olympic sport? 5 Which Old English poem commemorates a battle of AD991? 6 What is the oldest university in the Netherlands? 7 Which US rocker died in Bath in 1960? 8 What phase follows a full moon?

Deliberating over the Atlantic 10 list is, in some ways, a test of memory. Does a novel we read in January still thrill us? Does the reportage that impressed us midyear still feel surprising when we turn back to it in the fall? We're asking ourselves, in short, which books have kept our attention, sometimes months after we've first encountered them.

I met John Tottenham in LA because we have the same publisher, Semiotext(e). I was intrigued to read his first novel, Service, because I'm interested in first novels written by middle-aged people. In sport, it's good to be young, but not always in literature. You have to go through some kind of trouble before you can write a book. Service is about a character called Sean - a double of Tottenham - who is in his late forties

It's about the platforms that facilitate it, and how social media diverts attention away from things like reading and toward things that largely don't matter. Josh says it himself: in fairness, short-form content is slightly more engaging than Macbeth quotation flashcards. That's truly worrying. It's true that the education system can and should do better, but I also think we need reminding that young people have always felt alienated from the education system.

But if you talk to people in the publishing industry, you'll also hear a few names that aren't riding high with the bookies, such as Swiss Popliteratur novelist Christian Kracht, whose Eurotrash was longlisted for the International Booker this year. Australian novelist Gerald Murnane has been a perennial bookies' favourite, but if the prize goes to Down Under, some suggest it's more likely to be awarded to Aboriginal writer Alexis Wright instead.

Pynchon does not spare himself but, unfortunately, he is right. For aficionados only.

Kinga, the protagonist in "A New New Me," is a forty-year-old corporate employee who struggles with the grind of everyday life, facing exhaustion and self-optimizing pressures.

When Theo loses his mother in a museum bombing, the rupture is instant, but the collapse stretches across years. Grief hollows him out and leaves him spiraling without an anchor.

The public library was his sanctuary, a haven of quiet reflection amidst the chaotic pulse of the Boston condo for sale market.