How WG Sebald found his form
His studies of Austrian writers, at times more fiction than fact, offer a guide to the artist he would become.
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Chris Power
Chris Power is a writer and literary critic. He is the author of the short story collection Mothers and the novel A Lonely Man (Faber & Faber).
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George Saunders and the art of keeping the reader reading
In his fascinating new book on Russian short stories, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, Saunders considers…
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DBC Pierre: “Novels are free spaces, just about the only ones left”
The Australian novelist on fifth novel Meanwhile in Dopamine City, surveillance capitalism and why Beowulf deserves a retrospective Goldsmiths Prize.
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How Chekhov invented the modern short story
The Russian writer's tales of stasis, uncertainty and irresolution determined the path of 20th-century fiction.
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Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School: a fascinating, sometimes messy book
In his latest novel, Lerner attempts to use 1990s America to explain Donald Trump’s US, a nation hamstrung by…
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Thomas Bernhard’s fiction of the meaningless
His work was powered by bile and dread, but the Austrian novelist found laughter in the dark.
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Amy Arnold: “Writing something so dangerous genuinely scared me”
Amy Arnold on her Goldsmiths-shortlisted novel Slip of a Fish, science and fiction, and testing the limits of her…
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Amy Arnold’s Slip of a Fish: an admirable, determined novel
This Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted novel commits itself absolutely to portraying the troubled state of mind of its protagonist.
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James Ellroy’s monuments to bigoted men
Ellroy is a crime writing great – but has he got too close to the ugly racism of his…
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