In Praise of Reading and Fiction

Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last December, and this slim, handsome volume, translated by Edith Grossman, brings his Nobel Lecture to a wider audience. It is an eloquent and wise defence of imaginative literature and the liberties of every kind it fosters.

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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