Reading Anthony Powell, aka ‘The English Proust’ | Harry Mount of The Oldie
Listen now | Why the English masterpiece “A Dance to the Music of Time” is the reading thrill of a lifetime.
Literature & Geopolitics
The Substack newsletter of literary taste, current affairs, and history’s curious turns.
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The Allure of the Untranslated Masterpiece.
S. Yizhar’s 1,100-page Days of Ziklag is a masterpiece of Hebrew modernism. Inside the long-running effort to translate the 1958 novel into English.
When Writers Become Diplomats | Abhay K.
Listen now | The Indian poet and diplomat on literature, diplomacy, poetry, and representing India around the world.
Why Great Books Intimidate Us.
Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, and the books we can't quite finish.
The British Literary Idea America Should Steal.
The “state-of-the-nation novel” may be exactly what American fiction needs.
What If Great Novels Are Really Fairy Tales?
Revisiting the Forgotten English novels about the British Raj.
How Great Writers Paid the Bills.
From Gombrowicz and Bukowski to ambassadors and bank clerks, the hidden history of literary day jobs.
The Past Has Left the Book World.
One Lit Hub podcast exemplifies how literary culture lost the habit of historical comparison.
The Case For—and Against—Reading William T. Vollmann’s New Colossus.
When a novel stretches to 4 million words, length becomes part of the story.
The Strange Religion of Visiting Writers' Graves.
Why devoted readers travel thousands of miles to stand beside a forgotten tomb.
Why So Many Great Latin American Writers Became Diplomats.
From Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda to Sergio Pitol.