Logic and Revolution: Wang Xiaobo’s “The Golden Age”
“Wang’s understated wit and distinctive tone is undeniable, conjuring up connections to Kafka’s logic-riddled restraint, Camus’s detachment, and Lu Xun’s dark humor.”
“Wang’s understated wit and distinctive tone is undeniable, conjuring up connections to Kafka’s logic-riddled restraint, Camus’s detachment, and Lu Xun’s dark humor.”
“Accurate identification of the fictional form is important to readers and authors. But it also makes life easier for book reviewers who walk a tightrope between several different constituencies—the author, the publisher, and the reading public.” Sharon Oard Warner on the pleasures and particulars of the novella.
“The trick is to find the place where emotion sparks action, and action sparks emotion”: Sarah Van Arsdale chats with Natalie Baszile about setting, gender, and her new collection of novellas, In Case of Emergency, Break Glass.
John Vanderslice talks to Garry Craig Powell about his collection Island Fog: “. . . whenever I’m there I’m always struck by how different Nantucket seems. I’m always telling people it’s like visiting an alternative United States.”
I don’t read post-apocalyptic fiction, but I will read about anything by Lane Kareska. Lane and I were MFA students together at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Over our three years in the program, Lane and I met almost weekly outside of class to workshop our own work. We supported each other as our literary voices emerged. But when he told me that he was publishing North Dark (Sirens Call Publications, 2013), a novella, set in sparse futuristic failed state, I all but rolled my eyes. It’s not that I don’t see value in science fiction or the end of […]
Fiercely protective of his writing time, Joshua Cohen (Four New Messages) makes no apologies for keeping his interview answers pithy: “The book is the oil painting above the grand piano of the future. Certain households have them. We/they know who they are.”
Does the lowly individual stand a chance against the blunt force of the mass? Anita Desai’s novella collection, The Artist of Disappearance, celebrates the wish to be left alone, and the raw agony of the desire to be seen.
