Mistress of Murder
In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to Kat Rosenfield about her novel, You Must Remember This and about nostalgia, suspense and the process of writing. The…
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Fiction
26 posts
Nev March: History and Mystery
In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to novelist Nev March about her latest book, Peril at the Exposition, an intricately plotted and lushly descriptive historical…
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When Fiction Is Truer Than Fact: Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism
Just over fifty years ago, in 1971, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was published and instantly became a countercultural classic. However, people have always struggled to…
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The Innovations of Jane Austen: A Conversation with John Mullan
In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, I talk to Professor John Mullan about the subtlety and genius of Jane Austen: one of most popular and perhaps the most…
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Art and the Search for Immortality
In the 1982 film Blade Runner, a group of synthetic humans called replicants abandon their various posts off world and make an illegal return to Earth. Their motives become clear…
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What’s Possessed Us? “The Story Paradox” by Jonathan Gottschall
Many movies feature characters with dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. But when researchers combed through all the psychiatric records from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for…
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Ancient Archetypes and Modern Superheroes
Nothing is said that has not been said before.—Terence, Eunuchus. We live in an age of superheroes. In every one of the past five years, with the exception of 2020…
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One Book to Rule Them All: The Enduring Popularity of The Lord of the Rings
A commercial for Amazon’s forthcoming TV series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, aired during this year’s Super Bowl, racked up a record 257 million views online…
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Interview with Nev March, Author of “Murder in Old Bombay”
In the latest episode of Areo‘s Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia interviews novelist Nev March about her ambitious historical novel, which explores issues of race, class and imperialism in…
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Santa, Superman and Notre Dame: On the Reinvention of Culture
So, it turns out that Santa Claus is gay. Or at least he is according to Norway’s postal service, Posten, which recently released a Christmas advertisement showing him enjoying some…
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Why We Should Treat the Bible as Literature, Not Scripture
In the 17 May 2021 episode of his podcast, Jordan Peterson talks to Stephen Fry about how atheists view the moral value of mythology. (Fry, a well-known atheist, is also…
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Updike’s Panther: Rabbit Redux at Fifty
“Say what you see.” That was Roy Walker’s advice to contestants on the UK quiz show Catchphrase. We are attracted to other people’s observations—it is one of the reasons we…
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Censorship and the Policing of Identity in Young Adult Literature
Becky Albertalli is a mover and shaker in YA (young adult literature). Her 2015 debut novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, won the American Library Association’s prestigious William C.…
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Not Quite the Satire You’re Looking For: “Somewhere in Europe” by P. J. Vanston
“It’s like a cross between Catch-22 and Lucky Jim for the Brexit generation,” declares a blurb on the back cover of P. J. Vanston’s 2020 comic novel Somewhere in Europe.…
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Dostoevsky’s Critique of the Modern World
Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest novelists of all time—a reputation that is well earned. Most writers would be content to write one masterpiece; two would be an exceptional…
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The Novel Virus: In Defense of Fiction
As 2020 draws to a close, there is a pre-echo of normalcy in the air, the possibility of a return to a glorious summer even as we head into what…
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Brave New Literary World
I recently saw a tweet by writer Thomas Chatterton Williams that said, “We are going to need very brave novelists again.” My first reaction was that he’s right. My second…
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“Troubled Blood” by J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling’s fifth Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood, is a brilliantly successful literary work. It engages the reader on intellectual, emotional and aesthetic levels. It is a long novel—927…
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