Literary Fiction

Reviews

What Remains: Siri Hustvedt Writes Through Paul Auster's Ghost

Siri Hustvedt's new book 'Ghost Stories' is described by El Cultural's Alberto Gordo as a 'deep and moving work' where she merges with Paul Auster's ghost. Two years after his death, the question the book poses is both literary and unbearable: what does a writer do with the story they cannot tell?

News

Dave Eggers’ ‘Contrapposto’: On the Rarity of Writing Long Friendships

Dave Eggers' new novel Contrapposto follows two friends across decades. It's also, quietly, one of the rarest things in Anglo-American fiction: a genuine long friendship between a man and a woman that doesn't dissolve into something else.

Reviews

A Novel That Resists Being Filmed, and a Star Who Doesn't Care

Richard Gere is set to play aging novelist Ezra Blazer in a film adaptation of Lisa Halliday's Asymmetry. A great book about power and attention — and a casting choice that raises as many questions as it answers.

Reviews

John Banville in Venice: On Not Caring About the World

John Banville's new novel arrives from Venice with the author's declaration that 'society, wars, and the world matter little' to him as a writer. A meditation on what literature owes—or doesn't—to the present.

News

Go Gentle, Maria Semple's Return with Oprah's Blessing

Fourteen years after Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple is back with Go Gentle, Oprah's latest Book Club pick. On the long wait, comedy as serious craft, and novels that ripen slowly.

Literature

Four Debuts and a Prize: The 2026 Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist

The Women's Prize for Fiction 2026 shortlist arrives with four debut novels among six finalists — a signal that something is opening up in literary fiction written by women.

News

Raven Leilani's Second Novel Finds Its Home at FSG

Six years after Luster announced one of the most arresting debut voices in American fiction, Raven Leilani's second novel — about women artists — has been acquired by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

News

Han Kang Wins the NBCC Fiction Prize, and Other Literary Inevitabilities

Han Kang's We Do Not Part has taken the NBCC Fiction prize, adding another trophy to an already extraordinary run. The question, as James Whitmore sees it, is what we expect from a literary award once the Nobel has already spoken.