1. The idea for The Hunger Games came to author Suzanne Collins while channel-hopping between coverage of the invasion of Iraq and a reality TV show. The idea began to form in her mind of a narrative which concerned a televised fight to the death. The theme of the series has led […]
Simone de Beauvoir (or, to give her full name, Simone-Lucie-Ernestine-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir), is perhaps best known as the author of the feminist treatise The Second Sex (1949) and as the long-term lover of Jean-Paul Sartre. Since she was born on this day in 1908 – at four in the morning, according to […]
By Ariell Cacciola Unreliable narrators run rampant throughout literature, compelling us toward them and their often-twisted tales even as we question every word and action. To me, they are the most fascinating of narrators. Note that their unreliability might not be obvious at first, like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in […]
Tolkien was born on this day in 1892. In honour of the anniversary of his birth, we’re launching a new series, ‘Five Fascinating Facts’, which will be a regular feature on this blog over the coming months. Fans of our blog may have followed our recent series, ‘Five Reasons’, featuring […]
This is the fourth in our ‘Five Reasons’ series, which could carry the alternative name of ‘Forgotten Victorians’, since every writer we’ve looked at so far has belonged to that period: our previous posts have been on George Meredith, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and Ernest Dowson. Now it’s the turn of […]