Tag: fiction
The end of men: the controversial new wave of female utopian fiction
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All the men are gone. Usually this is conceived as the result of a plague. Less often, the cause is violence. Occasionally, the men don’t die and the sexes are just segregated in different geographical regions. Or men...
The king and queen of popular fiction: Marian Keyes and Richard Osman on their successes and struggles
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“So, how does it feel to be a publishing phenomenon?” the Irish writer Marian Keyes asks TV producer-presenter and now fellow novelist Richard Osman, over Diet Cokes and chocolate croissants. “A record-breaker of reco...
Whiti Hereaka wins New Zealand’s Ockham fiction prize for novel subverting Māori myth
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A novel subverting a Māori myth has taken home New Zealand’s most prestigious writing prize at this year’s Ockham New Zealand book awards. Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka, which draws on the Māori legend of Hatupatu and...
The best recent translated fiction – review roundup
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Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead (Harvill Secker, £14.99)Insincerity, said Oscar Wilde, “is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities”. It’s a principle that ...
For Black Republicans, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is an obligatory fiction
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Aside from racial gerrymandering, suppressing votes, underfunding schools, upholding a biased criminal justice system, denying a woman’s right to choose, preventing access to healthcare, undermining democracy, opposin...
The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup
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Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda (Virago, £14.99)A young artist arrives in London for an internship at a prestigious gallery. Without enough money for another room, she plans to sleep on the floor of her unfurnished stud...
The Guardian view on social media’s metaverse: it may remain science fiction
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In the 1992 sci-fi dystopia Snow Crash, the author Neal Stephenson imagined a bleak 21st century where the collapse of the global economy had seen governments fall and their power replaced by a few giant businesses. T...
Kaws: New Fiction review – an art show where you brush shoulders with virtual visitors
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For decades, artists have worked across physical and digital canvases, especially in public installations, where a virtual component can lend a futuristic frisson to traditional works. The current brouhaha about NFTs ...
Colm Tóibín is named new Irish fiction laureate in ‘exciting time to be a reader in Ireland’
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Colm Tóibín has been named as the new laureate for Irish fiction, taking over from Sebastian Barry. The three-year role is intended to “acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural li...
Lighten up the satire? That’s a tall order when life is out-crazying the most vivid fiction
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In 1944, George Orwell got a letter from TS Eliot, a director at Faber, rejecting his political satire, Animal Farm. There were several reasons. First, it was not the right time. Also, said the creator of The Waste La...
Romantic fiction writers creating a more diverse happily ever after
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Talia Hibbert was rewatching a Spider-Man film and eating a meal in her living room when she received life-changing news. Her romance novel Act Your Age, Eve Brown, which she wrote at the beginning of the pandemic, ha...
Fiction to look out for in 2022
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Whether it’s a hangover from a pandemic-disrupted few years, a sign that writers had particularly productive lockdowns, or perhaps it’s the many centenaries coming up – Ulysses, The Waste Land and Jacob’s Room – but 2...
I write ‘women’s commercial fiction’ –why is my work still seen as inferior to men’s?
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In the four months since my first novel came out, I’ve had the same conversation probably a dozen times. “What’s it about?” a well-meaning stranger will ask. “Well,” I’ll reply, “it’s the story of a woman choosing bet...
Best fiction of 2021
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The most anticipated, discussed and accessorised novel of the year was Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber), launched on a tide of tote bags and bucket hats. It’s a book about the accommodations of ad...
Damon Galgut’s layered feat of fiction is a clear Booker winner
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This year an idiosyncratic shortlist has produced a clear and unsurprising winner. With an impressive backlist and two former shortlistings, Damon Galgut is a major figure in world literature and a vital, nuanced chro...
Covid by numbers: 10 key lessons separating fact from fiction
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Genomic sequencing has identified more than 1,000 different seeds of Sars-CoV-2 introduced in early 2020. Instead of one central outbreak, reverberating outwards like an explosion, we now know there were many erupting...