Fiction
Browse our essays and reviews on fiction.
The Prophet of the Far Right
Michel Houellebecq’s Islamophobia and chauvinism have made him a favorite intellectual of right extremists. So why does he appeal to so many on the left as well?
The Plots Against America
Alternate histories like Philip Roth’s force us to imagine a different America.
English as a Sexual Language
Garth Greenwell’s Cleanness movingly depicts the vulnerabilities of queer desire, but it also continues a long tradition of exoticizing Eastern European sexuality.
The Other Toni Morrison
A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.
A World of Electric Children
Science fiction author Ted Chiang wrote the story for the Academy Award–winning film Arrival. Now his new collection of short stories gives us further glimpses of possible futures.
“More Queer Writing, Please”
Novelist Andrea Lawlor talks trans identity, the origins of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, and the future of queer literature.
Dystopia Is Everywhere
Hye-young Pyun’s surreal, violent novels reject stereotypes about Korean women’s writing, taking up global themes of environmental collapse and the loneliness of city life.
Rewriting Poland
Novelist Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Booker International Prize, presents a multicultural Poland, to the ire of the Polish far-right.
Left Behind by Korea’s Success
Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Familiar Things sounds a warning about the pitfalls of Korean reunification.
Masters and Servants
Neel Mukherjee is part of a new generation of Indian writers dissecting postcolonialism’s failed promise of a classless society.
A Postcard from Ursula
A science fiction writer remembers his early correspondences with Ursula Le Guin.
Philip K. Dick and the Fake Humans
We live in Philip K. Dick’s future, not George Orwell’s or Aldous Huxley’s.
What Would Doctorow Do?
His novels might be read as a fictive analogue to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States: a polyphonic chronicle of the betrayal of his country’s original promise.
History Is a Dystopia
A conversation with novelist Tananarive Due on writing the past—and a way out of it.
Waving at Trains
Nalo Hopkinson on the politics of dystopia, writing from the Global South, and the enduring importance of black mermaids.
Saving Orwell
He has been pressed into service of all sorts of causes, but the real Orwell remains unknown.
The Dystopia Next Door
A new generation of young Polish novelists has turned to dystopia to express Poland’s cultural and economic contradictions.
Writing at the End of the World
Celebrated dystopian novelist Paul Kingsnorth talks surviving the collapse of civilization as we know it.
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