A major transformation is underway in Romancelandia. Once upon a time, romance novels from major U.S. publishers featured only heterosexual couples. Today, the five biggest publishers regularly release same-sex love stories. From May 2022 to May 2023, sales of LGBTQ+ romance grew by 40%, with the next biggest jump in this period occurring for general… Continue reading What’s behind the astonishing rise in LGBTQ+ romance literature?
When OceanGate, the deep-sea exploration enterprise, created a promotional video for its ill-fated US$250,000-per-head trip to see the wreck of the Titanic, it told prospective passengers to “Get ready for what Jules Verne could only imagine – a 12,500-foot journey to the bottom of the sea.” Those behind the video hoped viewers would recognize the… Continue reading Classic literature still offers rich lessons about life in the deep blue sea
Imagine a world where we knew the name of Homer, but the poetry of The Odyssey was lost to us. That was the world of the early Italian Renaissance during the second half of the 15th century. Many people knew the names of some early poets of Italian literature – those who were active during the 13th… Continue reading How a lost manuscript revealed the first poets of Italian literature
Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, is her first foray into the world of historical fiction. The result is a stunning, well-studied examination of Victorian colonial England and some of its inhabitants. As with other works by Smith, the novel takes a patchwork approach, with several interwoven plots taking place over a period of about 50… Continue reading The Fraud by Zadie Smith review: a dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England
Knife is Salman Rushdie’s account of how he narrowly survived an attempt on his life in August 2022, in which he lost his right eye and partial use of his left hand. The attack ironically came when Rushdie was delivering a lecture on “the creation in America of safe spaces for writers from elsewhere”, at… Continue reading In Knife, Salman Rushdie confronts a world where liberal principles like free speech are old-fashioned
Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) – affectionately known as “Gabo” – started his career as a journalist, but is famous for the novels and short stories that earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Alongside Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes, he was the best-known member of the triumvirate that… Continue reading Gabriel García Márquez’s last novel is a moving testament to his genius
William Blake’s Universe, the new (free) exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, is a celebration of work by the Romantic artist, writer and visionary. Famous now but little known in his lifetime, Blake (1757-1827) has been given star billing by Tate Britain recently. But at the Fitzwilliam, he is made to share the spotlight… Continue reading William Blake exhibition: making a European out of the poet and artist who never left England
India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, implemented the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA, in March 2024. Opponents of the law – which fast-tracks citizenship for undocumented, non-Muslim migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan – decry the ways in which it discriminates against Muslims. As they did when the law was passed in… Continue reading Indian protesters look to poetic tradition to resist Modi’s Hindu nationalism
There is a striking photo, taken in 2015, of a deactivated nuclear missile at an air and space museum in Tucson, Arizona. Written in dust on this missile are the words, “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds”. These words, from the Sanskrit scriptural text the Bhagavad Gita, are famously attributed to J… Continue reading ‘Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’ – the Bhagavad Gita explained
“Italy had its renaissance, Germany its reformation, France had Voltaire”, the historian Will Durant once commented. Born François-Marie Arouet, Voltaire (1694-1778) was known in his lifetime as the “patriarch” of the French enlightenment. A man of extraordinary energy and abilities, he produced some 100 volumes of poetry, fiction, theatre, biblical and literary criticism, history and… Continue reading Voltaire’s Candide — a darkly satirical tale of human folly in times of crisis
