The top 10 classic spy novels From Joseph Conrad to John le Carré, intelligence historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones picks the fiction that best reveals the secrets of espionage “So my selection of novels reflects the interests of a historian, and draws on both domestic and foreign espionage. They are “classics” in being of some antiquity, and […]
A Pearl Buck Novel, New After 4 Decades Big recent literary news is the discovery of a final novel by Pearl S. Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The manuscript was discovered in a storage unit in Texas. Buck’s son, Edgar S. Walsh, believes that Buck completed the manuscript
The Werewolf Novel as Post-9/11 Political Allegory? If you’ve hung around Notes in the Margin for a while, you probably know that I usually don’t review fiction about vampires, werewolves, or zombies. I understand that lots of people see these entities as metaphors for society, or for the human condition, or perhaps for political and
Authors weigh in on their favorite page-to-screen adaptations The opening of the latest film version of The Great Gatsby has focused interest on adaptations of books into movies. Here authors Dennis Lehane, Chuck Palahniuk, Judy Blume, Bret Easton Ellis, Warren Adler, and Kelly Oxford discuss “the times Hollywood got it right.” A Nigerian-‘Americanah’ Novel About
Books —> Film The latest adaptation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is garnering most of the attention in this category right now, but there’s other news as well. Here’s some news on upcoming films: Will Baz Luhrmann’s noise dampen ‘Great Gatsby’s’ joys? “Seattle Times movie critic Moira Macdonald revisits the book’s melancholy beauty prior to
How Literature Saved My Psyche: Attending a Book-Themed Therapy Session at the Center for Fiction Just read this. That is all. Nicholas Royle’s top 10 first novels Clever Nicholas Royle: First Novel, my seventh, is all about first novels (and other stuff). My narrator, a creative writing tutor, tries to help students write their debuts
“Ghost Stories”: The ubiquitous anti-feminism of young adult romances In a Guardian article last November, Tanya Gold condemned the Twilight franchise and the paranormal progeny it has spawned, calling them sado-masochistic “disempowerment fantasies” masquerading as fairy tales, normalising abuse in the name of risqué romance. But her argument – though apt – hardly goes far
Amherst College: Emily Dickinson Collection To say Emily Dickinson has an association with Amherst College is a bit of an understatement. Her grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson, was one of the founders of the college and her father, Edward Dickinson, was treasurer of the school for over 35 years. In 1956, Millicent Todd Bingham gave Amherst
Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman Confirmed To Reteam For ‘Before I Go To Sleep’. I’m excited to hear about this film, based on quite a suspenseful novel. And Colin Firth. . . . The film is expected to appear in 2014.
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Hemingway family mental illness explored in new film Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, struggled with depression throughout his life before committing suicide in 1961. In this article from CNN, his gradddaughter, Mariel Hemingway, discusses a new documentary about the family that she hopes will increase awareness of and allow
