Talk of a possible third book to follow this week’s release of Go Set a Watchman suggests the ‘delicious mystery’ of Harper Lee will continue for years to come. So what basis is there for the rumours?
Coming to a lecture theatre near you.
EPA/Andy Rain
Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee, is one of the most anticipated follow-ups in history, to be published next week after a 55-year hiatus. So what does the opening chapter prime us to expect?
Many covers of Nabokov’s novel convey the false impression of Lolita as a young seductress.
Ivana Vasilj
The discrepancy between cover designs for Lolita – published 60 years ago – and the themes of the novel are stark. But that hasn’t stopped hundreds of designers trying to get it right.
Whatever name you give it, writing of this sort is increasingly becoming the prime location for imaginative representations of our culture’s deepest hopes and fears.
Many child narrators in adult fiction are precocious. This enables them to describe events and people in ways that would not be possible for ordinary children of their age.
Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s interactive pen.
Zoë Sadokierski
Cooper Hewitt’s Pen is designed to be more interactive for visitors by allowing users to draw and play on the spot – keeping people engaged in the physical museum environment.
Book theft in South Africa has recently been under the spotlight.
shutterstock
The late Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko and political philosophers Frantz Fanon and Achille Mbembe top the list of writers who get routinely abducted by discerning pirates of the book world.
Actor Taylor Kinney leaving the much loved City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco.
Kanaka Menehune/Flickr
If a society should be judged by the way it treats its children, and those who are struggling on the margins, then Laguna’s work once again proves that the novel is a crucial means for drawing attention to the burning problems of our times.
The idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion.
Geraint Rowland
The very idea of the happy ending as appropriate literary fare for children is an illusion. Most fairy tales are full of darkness and violence, and as often as not do not end happily.
The desire to connect with literary places supports a substantial tourist trade. And the reasons why people embark on literary pilgrimages are as diverse as the kinds of fiction that inspire them.
Canterbury Tales mural (1939), Library of Congress.
The Refugee Tales is a modern reconstruction of Chaucer’s classic pilgrimage – this time, telling the largely unspoken realities of immigration detention.
Is the line between truth and fiction clear when it comes to history?
Dennis Jarvis
Is the line between truth and fiction clear when it comes to history? And if not, is there scope for historians and novelists to re-engage, with a view to learning from – rather than bludgeoning – each other?
Eleanor Catton won the 2013 Man Booker Prize, for a novel centred largely on men.
EPA/Tal Cohen
We know that male writers win more prestigious literary awards than female writers, but sadly, when women do win, it’s typically because they write about male characters, or “masculine’ topics.
Make no mistake: patriarchy and capitalism are completely entwined.
Shehan Peruma/Flickr
Wednesday Martin’s book Primates of Park Avenue has stirred debate over the so-called “wife bonus”, but feminism needs to be about more than the ability to buy things.