Latest posts
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Pushkin: The Fountainhead of Russian Literature
Not Tolstoy, not Dostoevsky — Russians name Pushkin their greatest. On the poet who made the Russian language sing, and the fountainhead of a whole literature.
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Gogol’s Overcoat: The Story All Russian Fiction Came Out Of
‘We all came out of Gogol’s Overcoat.’ On the poor clerk, the stolen coat, and the short story that gave birth to the whole Russian novel.
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The Canterbury Tales: The First Great Book in English
Six centuries before the novel, Chaucer gathered a knight, a miller and a lusty widow on the road to Canterbury. On the first great book in English — and one of the funniest.
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Chekhov: The Master of the Ordinary
Nothing happens in a Chekhov story, and everything does. On the doctor who reinvented the short story and the play by refusing to judge anyone.
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How to Read Proust (and Why the Madeleine Matters)
The longest great novel ever written, and the one everyone fears. On how to actually read Proust — slowly — and why one little cake unlocks three thousand pages.
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Zola and the Rougon-Macquart: The Novel as Autopsy
Balzac mapped a society; Zola dissected one. On the Rougon-Macquart cycle, the birth of Naturalism, and the novel that looked where no one else would.
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Voltaire’s Candide: Cultivate Your Garden
Written in three days, it demolished the idea that this is the best of all possible worlds. On Candide, Voltaire’s furious comedy, and the wisdom of tending your garden.
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Thomas Paine: The Man Who Talked a Colony into a Country
A failed immigrant wrote a pamphlet in 1776 and turned a colony into a country. On Thomas Paine, the plainest and most dangerous pen of his age.
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Montaigne: The Man Who Invented the Essay
He retired to a tower and wrote about the one subject he truly knew — himself — and invented a form that never stopped being useful. On Montaigne, the first modern voice.
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Euripides: The First Modern Playwright
The youngest of the three great tragedians, the least honoured in his time, and the most like us. On Euripides — who dragged tragedy down to the human.