Like many short stories, Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Cat in the Rain’ contains a very small cast of characters. All of the characters in the story can be defined by their relationship to the story’s protagonist and central character, the American wife, who is staying at a hotel in Italy with her husband, George. Let’s take a
Literature
April 4, 2022, 11:50am I am not generally a fan of awards shows (I don’t want to go to someone else’s work banquet, sorry!), so I didn’t tune in for last night’s Grammys. This morning, though, I was delighted to see that Ukrainian poet Lyuba Yakimchuk took the stage (accompanied by Ukrainian musicians Siuzanna Iglidan
The following is excerpted from Selim Özdogan’s new novel, 52 Factory Lane. Özdoğan was born in Germany. He has won numerous prizes and taught creative writing at the University of Michigan. Türkoğlu is a writer and literary translator based in North London. Her translation interests include the literature of the Turkish diaspora in Germany and
‘Apple Girl’ is an Italian folktale which was memorably told by Italo Calvino (1923-85) in his 1956 collection Italian Folktales. The story concerns a queen who gives birth to an apple, which the king of a neighbouring kingdom sees and falls in love with. Before we analyse ‘Apple Girl’ it might be worth quickly summarising
Every month, all the major streaming services add a host of newly acquired (or just plain new) shows, movies, and documentaries into their ever-rotating libraries. So what’s a dedicated reader to watch? Well, whatever you want, of course, but the name of this website is Literary Hub, so we sort of have an angle. To
You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a collection from Alaa Abd el-Fattah published this year by Seven Stories Press, is living history. Many of its words were first written with pencil and paper in a cell in Egypt’s notorious Torah Prison, and smuggled out in ways we likely will never understand. One was drafted in
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 intriguing symbols and images, so let’s take a
TODAY: In 1805, Hans Christian Andersen is born. Also on Lit Hub: How writing a novel helped Jules Ohman say gay • Naomi Klein on the resilience of Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah • On the joys of digging through archives from home • What happens to a world populated by centenarians? • How to
April 1, 2022, 1:31pm Huge news from Staten Island today: employees who work at the Amazon facility located there just voted in favor of unionizing, the first in the company to do so, in a huge win for labor organizers in the US. Employees of the JFK8 Amazon warehouse cast 2,654 votes in favor of
Langston Hughes (1901-67) was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance in New York in the 1920s. Over the course of a varied career he was a novelist, playwright, social activist, and journalist, but it is for his poetry that Hughes is now best-remembered. ‘Mother to Son’ is one of Hughes’ best-known poems, and sees
TODAY: In 1868, French poet and dramatist Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand, best-known for his 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, is born. Carley Moore on the joys of writing a serialized novel. | Lit Hub Crime programming stages a takeover in April’s literary film and TV (but Austen makes an appearance, too!). | Lit Hub
March 31, 2022, 1:19pm Yesterday, on late poet and memoirist Molly Brodak’s 42nd birthday, a new nonprofit formed in her memory launched. Glass Orchid is an organization committed to supporting independent artists, writers, publishers, and alternative spaces; they provide grant opportunities, financial support and community sustainment to a network of emerging talents from diverse backgrounds.
‘An Imperial Message’ is a short text by Franz Kafka (1883-1924), written in 1919. Too brief to be considered a ‘short story’ in the traditional sense, ‘An Imperial Message’ is usually classified as a parable. The text describes a dying emperor who dispatches a messenger with a message for us, the reader of the text,
March 31, 2022, 10:38am Old Lion Publishing, a book publisher based in Lviv, Ukraine, has created a campaign to collect funds for books that they will distribute among Ukrainian children who are living as refugees. More than four million Ukrainians have fled the country since Russian forces invaded earlier this year, of which 2.5 million
TODAY: In 1967, Harlem Renaissance poet and novelist Jean Toomer dies at 72. It turns out there are positive things happening in the world? David McCandless breaks down a few in some unlikely and hopeful infographics. | Lit Hub How Marshall McLuhan introduced God into media theory (and Wired Magazine). | Lit Hub Tech
‘Love poetry’ is a wide and varied thing, but perhaps of all the loves in the world, the purest and most valuable is unconditional love: love given without expectation of reciprocity, love that will endure no matter what. But what are the best poems about this unconditional love which age cannot wither? Below, we introduce
The all-time, all-universe grand champion of book clubs everywhere is being recognized for her work. Yes, Oprah Winfrey is the next recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion award which “recognizes a lifetime of devoted literary advocacy and a commitment to inspiring new generations of readers and writers.” Whatever your opinion on l’affaires Franzen and Frey*,
March 29, 2022, 3:56pm New hero alert: Wong May, the winner of this year’s $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prize in poetry, who expressed surprise at the award given than she has consciously eschewed the literary world in favor of the work itself. On the Windham-Campbell website, Wong May has one of the all-time great response-to-prize quotes (big