Literature

The story of Moses parting the waters of the Red Sea so he and the Israelites could flee Egypt and travel to the Promised Land is one of the most famous stories from the Old Testament. What this episode means, however, remains less clear. Should this be analysed as a divine miracle alone, or does

July 16, 2021, 12:09pm We’ve known since March that FX has given a pilot order to Kindred, a series adaptation of Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel of the same name. Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins—Pulitzer Prize finalist, MacArthur fellow, and consulting producer on HBO’s Watchmen—wrote the pilot, and is set to executive produce alongside Courtney Lee-Mitchell (The Reluctant

In the world of classical Greek epic poetry, two poems are universally renowned: The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both, of course, are attributed to Homer. But there is another classical epic poem, written a few centuries later, which has been largely forgotten – although the story it tells is one of the most celebrated tales

July 16, 2021, 12:16pm Sunjeev Sahota’s China Room, Matt Bell’s Appleseed, Anuk Arudpragasam’s A Passage North, Kristen Radtke’s Seek You, and The Letters of Shirley Jackson all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.” Fiction 1. China Room by Sunjeev Sahota(Viking) 7

‘The Sect of the Phoenix’ is one of the shortest stories by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, published originally in 1952. In some respects, ‘The Sect of the Phoenix’ is a sort of extended riddle, although unlike traditional riddles, its definitive solution is never revealed. However, there is a proposed solution which fits the

July 16, 2021, 12:37pm “I was surrounded by phonies…They were coming in the goddam window.” 70 years ago today, The Catcher in the Rye first hit bookshelves across the US, and people still have some pretty strong opinions about J. D. Salinger’s groundbreaking debut. Die-hard fans and rabid haters are legion. Indeed, of all the

‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ These words, along with ‘to everything there is a season’, are among the most famous in the Book of Ecclesiastes, part of the Old Testament. The Bible is full of well-known quotations which are often cited in a way that floats quite free

TODAY: In 2001, Katharine Graham, who presided over The Washington Post as it reported on the Watergate scandal, dies at 84.    What Borges’ science fiction got right about the importance of forgetting, according to child psychiatry. | Lit Hub Science Searching for Moby-Dick (and the elusive truths of America’s pastime): Rick White goes deep on Bill James, Herman Melville,

In lieu of my usual Secret Library column this Friday, an announcement – not a particularly momentous one – and a poem. Yesterday, I made the decision to leave Twitter for good. This is nothing to do with my experience of running the @InterestingLit account (which has, 99.9% of the time, been nothing but positive,

July 16, 2021, 1:06pm The American Booksellers Association has made their Twitter account private after promoting a scientifically inaccurate anti-trans book, apologizing, and then deleting the apology. The controversy started when the ABA, as part of their July “white box” promotional mailing, sent 750 bookstores a copy of freelance journalist Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The

Here’s a question for you: originally, how many ‘plagues of Egypt’ were there? If you answered ‘ten’, you need to read on. The so-called ‘ten plagues of Egypt’, described in the Book of Exodus, have been the subject of considerable commentary and analysis, but in this post we’re going to try to offer an introduction

July 16, 2021, 10:30am Late to the party yet again, I recently saw Shawshank Redemption for the very first time. For those of you who have been living under an adjacent rock, it’s a movie based on Stephen King’s novella, starring Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins, who play Red and Andy, two men serving lengthy

‘Why I Write’ is an essay by George Orwell, published in 1946 after the publication of his novella Animal Farm and before he wrote his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The essay is an insightful piece of memoir about Orwell’s early years and how he developed as a writer, from harbouring ambitions to write self-consciously literary

July 15, 2021, 1:38pm Donald Trump, in response to the numerous exposés on his presidency hitting shelves this year, has taken to doing angry rebuttal interviews and praising books by his political allies. But I guess it runs in the family: as Internet sleuths discovered yesterday, Trump plagiarized HarperCollins publicity copy and passed it off

‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ These words are recognisable to many people who are unaware of the poem in which they originate. Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, ‘Ozymandias’ is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley’s most celebrated and best-known poem. And we find the famous line ‘Look on my works, ye

July 15, 2021, 12:29pm Talk about following virtue and knowledge: The Visual Agency has created DivineComedy.digital, a digital humanities tool that maps the influence of Dante Alighieri’s narrative world on art around the globe. DivineComedy.digital displays artworks that depict scenes in the Divine Comedy—illuminated manuscripts, engravings, canvases, frescoes, and drawings. Users can browse the collection

The parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most famous parables from the New Testament. But what is less well-known is that it concludes a trio of similar parables which can be found in chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke. What does the parable of the Prodigal Son symbolise? And what happened

July 14, 2021, 1:25pm On your marks, get set… BOOK! The Booker Prize revealed its 2022 judges today, among them a familiar face for fans of Great British Bake Off—no, not Paul Hollywood. It’s OG host Mel Giedroyc! Mel is joined by chair and translator Frank Wynne (tr. Animalia), author and academic Merve Emre (The