According to Isaiah Berlin’s formulation, inspired by Archilochus’s aphorism that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” one set of thinkers dig into a single topic all... Read more »
In the opening chapters of Zimbabwean author Brian Chikwava’s follow-up to his 2009 debut Harare North, the eponymous teen protagonist is given a pendant by an elder of the family, the irrepressible... Read more »
Margaret Atwood has released a new short story critiquing elected officials for a wide-ranging book ban in the Canadian province of Alberta. The controversial decision to remove books purportedly containing “explicit sexual... Read more »
What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he’s found a historic couple who make the ideal source material.... Read more »
To read Rachel Clarke’s The Story of a Heart, which has won this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction, is to experience an onslaught of often competing emotions. There is awed disbelief at... Read more »
Kazuo Ishiguro still remembers where he was when he wrote A Pale View of Hills: hunched over the dining room table in a bedsit in Cardiff. He was in his mid-20s then;... Read more »
This year, we have decided to launch the annual Faber/Observer/Comica graphic short story prize with an event as well as an announcement: an evening that will hopefully be highly enjoyable for anyone... Read more »
‘It’s a drag, isn’t it,” Paul McCartney told reporters quizzing him the day after John Lennon’s murder, a soundbite as dispiritingly muted, even callous, as his reaction to his mother’s death when... Read more »
I love the amorous mayhem of Handel’s operas, but have always had my doubts about his oratorios, especially the Messiah. First there’s the bossy compulsion to stand during the “Hallelujah” chorus, just... Read more »