Latest posts
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The Cost of Revenge: Reading Monte Cristo Again
Everyone loves the revenge. But Dumas springs a trap: vengeance corrodes the one who carries it out. On reading Monte Cristo to the end.
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In Praise of Sancho Panza
The deepest pleasure of the first modern novel is not the mad knight but his servant. In praise of Sancho Panza, the soul of Don Quixote.
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Miles Franklin: The Teenager Who Wrote the First Great Australian Novel
She wrote it before she was twenty, on a remote farm, and became an overnight sensation. On Miles Franklin — and why Australia’s most important literary prize bears her name.
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The Green Light: What Gatsby Is Really Reaching For
The most famous symbol in American literature — and Daisy was never really the point. On Gatsby’s green light and the dream of repeating the past.
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St. Petersburg: Dostoevsky’s Accomplice
Return to Crime and Punishment and notice how much of Raskolnikov’s mind is really the city. On St Petersburg as Dostoevsky’s accomplice.
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The Madwoman in the Attic: What Jane Eyre Hides
There is another woman in Jane Eyre, locked upstairs. On Bertha Mason, the rage a Victorian heroine could not feel, and the secret the romance rests on.
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My Brilliant Career: The Netflix Hit — and the Australian Classic Behind It
The new Netflix series opened with a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. But the 1901 novel behind it is a classic in its own right — written by a teenager, suppressed by its author for forty years. Watch the series, then read the book.
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The Economics of Pride and Prejudice
The greatest love story is also a novel about money, where marriage is the only career. On the ruthless economics under Pride and Prejudice.
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Frankenstein in the Age of AI
A teenager wrote the exact story we are now living. On Frankenstein as the founding parable of artificial intelligence — and the creator who won’t take responsibility.
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The Women of Dracula
Dracula is obsessed less with a count than with women — and what they might become if propriety slipped. On Lucy, Mina, and the New Woman that terrified the 1890s.