Whether delving into chunky historical narratives or listening to short story podcasts, we’ve all been approaching reading differently during lockdown. Our reading habits can take us back in time, allow us to examine our present, or give us hope for the future. In time for the May bank holiday weekend, the Literature team shares what they’ve been reading lately. You People by Nikita LalwaniNikita Lalwani's You People follows Nia, a 19-year-old British-Indian girl, and Shan, a Tamil refugee, who work at a London pizzeria and are both in thrall – in different ways – to the restaurant's enigmatic manager Tuli. Initially, Nia and Shan don't have much in common, and their differing views of Tuli reflect this. Nia wants to escape her troubled family, while Shan longs to bring his wife and child to the UK; Nia, having been sent down from Oxford, wants to escape the bonds of the establishment, while Shan longs for Britain's elite to grant him indefinite leave to remain. To Nia, Tuli is mercurial and charming, glimpsed offering deals and generous loans; from Shan's perspective, he's to be courted and obeyed, able to use his influence and wealth to bring Shan's family to safety.Things change when Nia voluntarily enters a world that Shan can’t escape, and You People uses a gripping, thriller-like structure to reflect this. But even as the jaws of the trap close around them, and the protagonists rely on quick thinking and deduction to survive, the novel creates a larger tension from... Continue reading at 'British Council global'
[ British Council global | 2020-05-07 13:58:54 UTC ]
Ali Smith's first novel since her seasonal quartet takes place in our pandemic-inflected world. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-04 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Colin Barrett's second collection, 'Homesickness,' expands the reach of this mordantly funny Irishman beyond the small-town millennials of his debut. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-05-03 13:00:20 UTC ]
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“Liarmouth” is about three generations of women in one family who plan to confront or kill one another. It also has a trampoline fun park. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-05-03 09:00:08 UTC ]
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Editor James Crews talks about how poems of kindness reminded him during the pandemic that “the world could still be a joyful, connected place.” Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2022-04-25 15:06:52 UTC ]
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Very short stories–also known as flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, and the like–are a delightful form of fiction. Start with these. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-19 10:34:00 UTC ]
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Literature is full of monsters whose names and appearance have passed into general circulation: we all recognise Frankenstein (even if, as pedants will be quick to point out, Hollywood has made us confuse the ‘monster’ with his creator), Dracula, and the Minotaur, among many others. But what are... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-13 14:00:46 UTC ]
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If you're in search of more of the best short stories of all time, start with this list to build your to-read list! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-05 10:32:00 UTC ]
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One of her country’s first writers to address female sexuality from a woman’s perspective, she produced four novels and dozens of short stories that could be read as political allegories. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-04 22:13:26 UTC ]
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The 1918 short story ‘Bliss’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Although Mansfield never wrote a novel, her short stories helped to redefine the possibilities of the story form. ‘Bliss’ is a story full of ambiguous and... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-02 14:00:03 UTC ]
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Mine is the story of the woman who thought she was making a book about others; realized only as it was about to be published, that she was the broken one the book talked about. The fragmented, the dispersed, the uprooted. When I was editing the anthology Home in Florida: Latinx Writers and the... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2022-03-29 11:00:00 UTC ]
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What are some of the best short stories by female writers? Women have been making their mark on the short story form since the form became popular in the nineteenth century, and many notable female practitioners of the short story, such as Katherine Mansfield and Kate Chopin, were among the […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-23 15:00:17 UTC ]
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The inventive and philosophical short stories of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) take in a range of themes. Like many other authors, Borges had a set of preoccupations which he revisited time and again in his fiction, and a number of his stories are variations on the same […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-22 15:00:53 UTC ]
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The producers of Until Dawn are returning to their roots after years of Dark Pictures Anthology games. Supermassive Games and 2K have unveiledThe Quarry, a teen horror title that has you once again deciding the fates of frightened youth. You control nine camp counselors as a night of celebrating... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2022-03-17 20:15:57 UTC ]
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Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? Sure you do! Well,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 16:16:55 UTC ]
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Last year not only marked the twentieth publication anniversary of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, it also saw the release of his first novel in seven years, Crossroads. So it was only fitting that Picador would embark on a redesign of the author’s backlist. We spoke with Alex Merto, the art... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 08:54:52 UTC ]
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How’s this for fun? Take 27 incredible writers—including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, PEN Awards, Women’s Prize for Fiction, Edgar Award, and more—and invite each of them to write an erotic short story. Then publish the collection in one steamy anthology with the... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 08:50:16 UTC ]
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Lee Cole’s first novel is not only the story of a young man finding his vocation as a writer but also a wrenching examination of class differences Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-03-14 11:00:51 UTC ]
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Dolly Parton has written her first novel with the help of best-selling author James Patterson. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2022-03-10 00:01:14 UTC ]
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Essay Para on Lake Baikal in southern Siberia / Photo courtesy of the author Editorial note: “Siberian Romance,” a suite of Para’s poems, accompanies this introductory essay. Born in 1956, Jean-Baptiste Para is a poet, art critic, essayist,... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-08 19:30:36 UTC ]
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As women writers adapted to a changing post-WWII job market, so too did they adapt in their work, translating their skills into writing suspense for television and turning short stories into screenplays. In her essay on adaptation and “gendered discourses,” Shelley Cobb writes that “feminist... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-28 09:50:01 UTC ]
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