Fiction and the Fantastic - Details, episodes & analysis

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Fiction and the Fantastic

London Review of Books

Arts

Fiction

Frequency: 1 episode/27d. Total Eps: 15

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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A Taxonomy of the Fantastic

Episode 14

Thursday, December 18, 2025 • Duration 15:01

Though the last twelve episodes have taken Marina Warner and her interlocutors through many worlds and texts, no series could ever encompass the full scope of fantastic literature. This episode, recorded live at Swedenborg House, is an attempt to fill the gaps, or fail heroically. Marina and Adam Thirlwell are joined by Edwin Frank, editorial director of the New York Review Books and author of ‘Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth Century Novel’. Together they assess existing canons and definitions, redefine and rediscover categories and exceptions, and consider the pleasures and uses of the fantastic. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠ Read more in the LRB: Colin Burrow: Fiction and the Age of Lies https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n04/colin-burrow/fiction-and-the-age-of-lies Marina Warner on fairytale: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n21/marina-warner/that-which-is-spoken Jonathan Lethem on Stanisław Lem and Science Fiction: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n03/jonathan-lethem/my-year-of-reading-lemmishly A.D. Nuttall on the rhetoric of the fantastic: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/a.d.-nuttall/really-fantastic

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Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin

Episode 13

Monday, November 17, 2025 • Duration 13:18

When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese translations. The huge and loyal readership among children and older readers that she built during her lifetime has only grown since her death, as has recognition of her work as ‘serious’ literature. Chafing against her confinement in genre fiction, she liberated sci-fi, fantasy and YA literature from the condescension to which they had long been subjected. In 2016, she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetime by the Library of America. For the final regular episode of Fiction and the Fantastic (though there will be one more special episode) Marina and Chloe read ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘The Dispossessed’: works of exceptional imaginative power and intellectual range, passionate idealism and keen-eyed observation. Is Le Guin’s status in both literary and ‘genre’ canons a testament to the force and clear-sightedness of her radical – even prophetic – political vision? And what does it mean for the fantastic if we accept her self-characterisation as a ‘realist of a larger reality’? Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠ Further reading and listening from the LRB: Colin Burrow on Ursula K. Le Guin: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/colin-burrow/it-s-not-jung-s-it-s-mine A collection of writing on science fiction from the LRB: https://www.lrb.co.uk/collections/in-hyperspace Amia Srinivasan on Le Guin’s experiments with pronouns: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita Colin Burrow discusses Le Guin with Thomas Jones on the LRB Podcast: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/magical-authority Next episode: A taxonomy of fantastic literature with Marina, Adam Thirlwell and Edwin Frank.

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J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter

Episode 12

Sunday, October 19, 2025 • Duration 14:14

J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter were friends and co-conspirators in their witness to the postwar world and the liberation movements of the 1960s. Both were scathing in their antipathy towards the polite novels of manners and empire that still dominated English readers’ appreciation and expectations. Pioneers in the liminal spaces between literary and ‘genre’ fiction, and science fiction in particular, both of them are haunted by the visions of Swift, Shelley, Kafka and Borges. Ballard’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ and ’The Passion of New Eve‘, considered together here along with Ballard’s short story ’The Drowned Giant‘, are vivid, fearless, still shocking novels of ideas – if ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’ can be described as a novel at all. Marina and Chloe discuss that question as they consider Ballard’s catalogue of contemporary violence and pop culture transgression. Then they turn to Carter’s own gleeful transgressions, born out of the ferment of 1970s cultural theory, which she explores and interrogates with inimitable style. But do the excesses of these works still speak to the present, and does their lack of restraint risk collapsing the whole category of the fantastic? Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Susannah Clapp on Angela Carter: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v14/n05/susannah-clapp/diary⁠ Edmund Gordon on J.G. Ballard: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n10/edmund-gordon/his-galactic-centrifuge⁠ Watch ‘If God is a snail...’, a film about Carter’s food writing for the LRB: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxqr5O2JFvE⁠ Listen to Edmund Gordon discuss Ballard on the LRB Podcast: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/on-j.g.-ballard⁠ Next episode: Ursula K. Le Guin.

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‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington

Episode 11

Sunday, September 21, 2025 • Duration 15:46

Leonora Carrington was a prodigious artist closely associated with major surrealists of the 1930s. Though only sporadically in print until recently, her writing has helped cement her cult status, not least The Hearing Trumpet (1974). Before her family consign her to an old-age facility, nonagenarian Marian Leatherby is gifted a hearing trumpet with almost magical capabilities. Her institutionalisation leads to much eavesdropping, a Grail quest, descent into the underworld and an apocalyptic ice age. Joyous, disturbing and subversive, The Hearing Trumpet is full of themes and images that populate Carrington’s artwork and other writing. Both Marina and Chloe knew Leonora Carrington, and in this episode they reflect on the ways her personality inflected her work. Their reading of The Hearing Trumpet reveals her humour, her visionary imagination and her attention to the boundaries between inner and outer realities. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Chloe Aridjis: A Leonora Carrington A to Z ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2017/april/a-leonora-carrington-a-to-z⁠ Alice Spawls: On Leonora Carrington ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n08/alice-spawls/at-tate-liverpool⁠ Edmund Gordon: Save the feet for later ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n21/edmund-gordon/save-the-feet-for-later Next episode: Marina and Chloe discuss J.G. Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition and Angela Carter’s The Passion of the New Eve.

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Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Episode 10

Sunday, August 24, 2025 • Duration 13:16

Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian with rock star status, a stimulus for magical realism who was not a magical realist, and a wholly original writer who catalogued and defined his own precursors. It’s fitting that he was fascinated by paradoxes, and his most famous stories are fantasias on themes at the heart of this series: dreams, mirrors, recursion, labyrinths, language and creation. Marina and Chloe explore Borges’s fiction with particular focus on two stories: ‘The Circular Ruins’ and ‘The Aleph’. They discuss the many contradictions and puzzles in his life and work, and the ways in which he transformed the writing of his contemporaries, successors and distant ancestors. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Michael Wood on Borges’s collected fiction: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v21/n03/michael-wood/productive-mischief⁠ Colm Toíbìn on Borges’s life: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n09/colm-toibin/don-t-abandon-me⁠ Marina Warner on enigmas and riddles: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n03/marina-warner/doubly-damned⁠ Daniel Wassbeim on Sur and Borges’s circle: ⁠https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v10/n05/daniel-waissbein/dying-for-madame-ocampo⁠ Next episode: Marina and Chloe discuss The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.

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‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Episode 9

Sunday, July 27, 2025 • Duration 31:41

Born from grief, exile, intellectual ferment and the ‘year without a summer’, Frankenstein is a creation myth with its own creation myth. Mary Shelley’s novel is a foundational work of science fiction, horror and trauma narrative, and continues to spark reinvention and reinterpretation. In their fourth conversation together, Adam Thirlwell and Marina Warner explore Shelley’s treatment of birth, death, monstrosity and the limits of science. They discuss Frankenstein’s philosophical and personal undercurrents, and how the creature and his creator have broken free from the book. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠⁠ Read more in the LRB: Claire Tomalin on Mary Shelley’s letters: https://lrb.me/ffshelley1 Caroline Gonda on the original Frankenstein: https://lrb.me/ffshelley2 Marilyn Butler on Frankenstein as myth: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ffshelley3 Anne Barton on Mary Shelley’s life: https://lrb.me/ffshelley4 LRB Audiobooks Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksff⁠

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Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg

Episode 8

Sunday, June 29, 2025 • Duration 14:20

James Hogg’s ghoulish metaphysical crime novel 'The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' (1824) was presented as a found documented dating from the 17th century, describing in different voices the path to devilry of an antinomian Calvinist, Robert Wringhim. Mikhail Bulgakov’s 'The Master and Margarita', written between 1928 and 1940, also hinges around a pact with Satan (Woland), who arrives in Moscow to create mayhem among its literary community and helps reunite an outcast writer, the Master, with his lover, Margarita. In this episode, Marina and Adam look at the ways in which these two ferocious works of comic horror tackle the challenge of representing fanaticism, be it Calvinism or Bolshevism, and consider why both writers used the fantastical to test reality. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff Further reading in the LRB: Liam McIlvanney on James Hogg: https://lrb.me/ffbulgakov1 Michael Wood on Bulgakov: https://lrb.me/ffbulgakov2 LRB Audiobooks Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksff⁠

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Gothic Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen

Episode 7

Sunday, June 1, 2025 • Duration 15:05

‘With Potocki,’ Italo Calvino wrote, ‘we can understand that the fantastic is the exploration of the obscure zone where the most unrestrained passions of desire and the terrors of guilt mix together.’ The gothic is a central seam of the fantastic, and in this episode Marina and Adam turn to two writers in that mode who lived over a hundred years apart but drew on the period of the Napoleonic wars: Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of Karen Blixen). Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1805) is a complex sequence of tales within tales, written from the point of view of the early 19th century but describing events in Spain in the 18th century. It’s a powerful commentary on the preoccupations of the Enlightenment and the repression of historical guilt. In Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Dinesen confronts some of the most unsettling aspect of sexual guilt and desire with psychological astuteness. Adam and Marina discuss the ways in which, in both works, the gothic was able to explore areas of human experience that other genres struggled to accommodate. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crscfflrbpod⁠⁠ Read more in the LRB: On Potocki: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ffpotocki1 On 'Out of Africa': https://lrb.me/ffpotocki2 On Dinesen's letters: https://lrb.me/ffpotocki3 LRB Audiobooks Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksff⁠

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Stories by Franz Kafka

Episode 6

Sunday, May 4, 2025 • Duration 16:06

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: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠ 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

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‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

Episode 5

Sunday, April 6, 2025 • Duration 15:41

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are strange books, a testament to their author’s defiant unconventionality. Through them, Lewis Carroll transformed popular culture, our everyday idioms and our ideas of childhood and the fantastic, and they remain enormously popular. Anna Della Subin joins Marina Warner to explore the many puzzles of the Alice books. They discuss the way Carroll illuminates other questions raised in this series: of dream states, the nature of consciousness, the transformative power of language and the arbitrariness of authority. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrff⁠⁠ In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsff⁠⁠ Further reading in the LRB: Marina Warner: You Must Not Ask https://lrb.me/ffcarroll1 Dinah Birch: Never Seen A Violet https://lrb.me/ffcarroll2 Marina Warner: Doubly Damned https://lrb.me/ffcarroll3 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. Anna Della Subin’s study of men who unwittingly became deities, Accidental Gods, was published in 2022. She has been writing for the LRB since 2014. LRB AUDIOBOOKS Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksff⁠

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