TODAY: In 1930, Harold Pinter is born. “What these readers are expressing is not so uncommon: the fear of indirect contact. They can’t bear to think that their beloved author has passed through the filter of some other being.” Todd Portnowitz on the translating the stories in Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection. | Lit Hub
Literature
“Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.”— Maximilien de Robespierre (1758–1794) There were unwitting cheers when the first suicide bomber in France’s history blew himself and a bystander up outside the Stade de France. To begin with, hardly anybody knew what the explosion really signified: most assumed it was a supersized firecracker ignited
The rise of chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude has revived old debates about just how human a machine can be. When it comes to the capabilities of these current tools, the answer is simple (spoiler: they’re not), but in the world of literature, the answer is very different. Sapient machines have appeared in stories
TODAY: In 1993, Toni Morrison becomes the first black American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. “Just why The Kite Runner has become so popular isn’t entirely clear to me… but there is a universality to this tale of a boy who feels inadequate and longs for his father’s love.” Khaled Hosseini reflects on
This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. If I tell you that a character is heartbroken, does that break your heart? No, it doesn’t. But now the heartbreak is here, lingering on the page, what to do with it? Let’s put it away for a minute, pull up a floorboard in this
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a book about the rooms in which great writers worked ‘Writers stamp themselves upon their possessions more indelibly than other people, making the table, the chair, the curtain, the carpet into their own image.’ So wrote Virginia Woolf in Great Men’s Houses (1911),
October 6, 2023, 12:57pm Last Sunday, the 44th Annual American Book Awards were presented at the Koret Library in San Francisco, with Maxine Hong Kingston, Darryl Pinckney, and the late bell hooks among the recipients. Administered by the Before Columbus Foundation, which prides itself on not accepting any corporate funding, the awards were established in
When I first encountered Andrew Chan’s work nearly a decade ago, my response was akin to that of hearing a great new recording artist: Who is this?! He was writing about Jazmine Sullivan’s 2014 album Reality Show, and clearly listening to women artists with what James Baldwin, quoting Henry James, might have called “perception at
October 5, 2023, 1:00pm The Royal Society of Literature, in partnership with Lit Hub, presents Michael Imperioli and Ocean Vuong in conversation about their writing and the importance of literature in their lives. They will discuss the experience of writing and releasing novels when you’re known for other artforms, as well as the overlapping themes in
Beginning in the nineteenth century, Buddhism captured the imagination of an eclectic range of people around the world—from African-American writers and British nobles to devout clergymen, socialist freethinkers, radical pacifists, and imperial adventurers. Within colonial India, a new generation of equally diverse figures forged their own Buddhist publics. These included migrant laborers, anti-caste activists, self-styled
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) The phrase ‘salt of the earth’ has entered common speech (and writing), and many people who use the phrase now may be unaware of its religious origins. Indeed, even those who suspect the phrase originates in biblical scripture may not be familiar with the specific passage in which the
October 4, 2023, 3:16pm Earlier today, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 2023 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant”—an $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. Each of the recipients receives the whopping 800k purse over five years
October 3, 2023, 10:00am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for C. Michelle Lindley’s debut novel, The Nude, which will be published by Atria in June. Here’s a little bit about the book from the publisher: A gripping, provocative, and sensual debut novel about an art historian who journeys to a Greek island to
October 3, 2023, 10:15am Today, the National Book Foundation announced their finalists for the 2023 National Book Awards in five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Five winners will be selected from the twenty-five finalists and announced on Wednesday, November 15 at the 74th National Book Awards, featuring special guest Oprah
October 2, 2023, 3:49pm Netflix has released a teaser trailer for Leave the World Behind, a star-studded psychological thriller based on Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel. [embedded content] Directed by Sam Esmail (Mr. Robot), the film stars Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as Amanda and Clay, a pair of wealthy Brooklynites vacationing with their teenage children
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University) Yellow is a curious colour. It carries some interesting symbolism: although it’s a ‘warm’ colour associated with brightness and joy and hope, it can also carry connotations of sickness and pallor: having a ‘sallow’ complexion isn’t usually a good sign, and sallowness denotes a pale yellowish hue. It’s perhaps