Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin.
Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.
Texts include:
The Thousand and One Nights
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
The Travels of Marco Polo
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
The stories of Franz Kafka
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin
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Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin.
Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.
Texts include:
The Thousand and One Nights
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
The Travels of Marco Polo
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
The stories of Franz Kafka
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin
In the stories of Franz Kafka we find the fantastical wearing the most ordinary, realist dress. Though haunted by abjection and failure, Kafka has come to embody the power and potential of literary imagination in the 20th century as it confronts the nightmares of modernity.
In this episode, Marina Warner is joined by Adam Thirlwell to discuss the ways in which Kafka extended the realist tradition of the European novel by drawing on ‘simple forms’ – proverbs, wisdom literature and animal fables – to push the boundaries of what literature could explore, with reference to stories including ‘The Judgment’, ‘In the Penal Colony’ and ‘A Report to the Academy’.
Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:
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Further reading in the LRB:
Franz Kafka (trans. Michael Hofmann): Unknown Laws
https://lrb.me/ffkafka1
Rivka Galchen: What Kind of Funny is He?
https://lrb.me/ffkafka2
Judith Butler: Who Owns Kafka?
https://lrb.me/ffkafka3
J.P. Stern: Bad Faith
https://lrb.me/ffkafka4
LRB AUDIOBOOKS
Discover audiobooks from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiobooksff
Fiction and the Fantastic
Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis traverse the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, dread and hope, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin.
Marina Warner is a writer of history, fiction and criticism whose many books include Stranger Magic, Forms of Enchantment and Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. She was awarded the Holberg Prize in 2015 and is a contributing editor at the LRB.
Texts include:
The Thousand and One Nights
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
The Travels of Marco Polo
Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
The stories of Franz Kafka
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself
Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
and works by Angela Carter, J.G. Ballard and Ursula K. Le Guin
