As the Danish physicist Niels Bohr probably never said, ‘predictions are hard, especially about the future.’ And although the job of authors of science fiction and speculative fiction isn’t to make accurate predictions about what our future lives might look like, but to entertain us by tapping into current concerns, […]
Literature is full of monsters whose names and appearance have passed into general circulation: we all recognise Frankenstein (even if, as pedants will be quick to point out, Hollywood has made us confuse the ‘monster’ with his creator), Dracula, and the Minotaur, among many others. But what are the best […]
Novelists and short-story writers have created some classic narratives about man’s best friend, the dog. But what are the very best stories and novels about dogs? Where should we begin in assessing the classic, canonical literature that features dogs? From Homer’s Odyssey onwards – where the hero’s faithful hound remembered […]
Although we know Franz Kafka’s novel under the English title The Castle, it’s worth pointing out that we might also make a case for calling it ‘The Lock’: Schloss, in the novel’s original German title, means both ‘castle’ and ‘lock’. Kafka’s The Castle is about both a castle and about […]
The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most influential American novels published in the mid-twentieth century. Upon its publication in 1951, J. D. Salinger’s only full-length novel became something of a cult, helping to inspire the Beat Generation and powerfully capturing a moment in American cultural history. Salinger […]