Novellas in November

Three Contemporary Novellas: Moss, Brown and Gaitskill

Classic Novellas Week Buddy Read: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton #NovNov

Classic Novellas Week: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James #NovNov

What can I say about The Turn of the Screw that hasn’t already been said and written? I know there are countless papers, essays even PHDs exploring this slim book, which is the most inconclusive of ghost stories. In Henry James novella, an unnamed narrator is engaged as governess to two angelic children at Bly, a remote English…

Classic Novellas Week: Catholics by Brian Moore #NovNov #brianmoore100

Two reads for Translation Week: Redonnet and Zweig #NovNov #germanlitmonth

For Translation Week: An interview with Stella Sabin of Peirene Press #NovNov

Translation Week Buddy Read: Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt #NovNov

Translation Week: Dinner by César Aira, translated by Katherine Silver #NovNov

I’m kicking off Translation week for Novellas in November with a bold and frankly quite odd book from Argentine author César Aira. Aira’s work has been compared to Jorge Luis Borges and Roberto Bolaño, and his work is characterised by playful juxtapositions and unexpected tangents that defy any standard idea of plot. Aira has described…

Short Nonfiction Buddy Read: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller #NovNov

Short Nonfiction: Hiroshima by James Hersey #NovNov #NonFicNov

Originally published as a 30,000 word essay in The New Yorker, James Hersey’s Hiroshima had a powerful impact despite the brevity of the work. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Japan in August 1945, decimating the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and killing 100,000 men, woman and children and leaving countless others suffering the…