Category Margaret Atwood

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Books, Bret Easton Ellis, DH Lawrence, Fiction, George Orwell, JK Rowling, Jodi Picoult, Khaled Hosseini, Kurt Vonnegut, Ma Jian, Margaret Atwood, Roald Dahl, Rupi Kaur, Sách & Tri thức, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov

Banned! The 20 books they didn’t want you to read

From Instagram poetry to Greek classics, the works of fiction that have caused uproar through history – and into the present

The banning of books, it would be easy to think, is a relic of less enlightened ages. The Catholic church, in a last spasm of rectitude, added Jean-Paul Sartre, Alberto Moravia and Simone de Beauvoir to its Index of Forbidden Books during the 1940s and 50s, but then abandoned the list, which had lasted four centuries, in 1966.

Public book burnings by Nazis or McCarthyites, too, might be assumed to be nothing more than a baleful warning from the past. Yet the burning of books still appears an irresistible act to some – even in the country with the strongest statutory protection of free speech, the United States. In 2019, students at Georgia Southern University burned copies of visiting Cuban-American author Jennine Capó Crucet’s Make Your Home Among Strangers, some shouting “Trump 2020!”. In 2022, the Nashville pastor Greg Locke held a public bonfire for “demonic” books, including the Harry Potter and Twilight series.

thanhtoong0
August 23, 2025

Blogging, Books, Chuck Palahniuk, Digital media, Elif Shafak, Fiction, George Saunders, Hanif Kureishi, Howard Jacobson, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gaitskill, Miranda July, Publishing, Roxane Gay, Sách & Tri thức, Salman Rushdie, Substack

Where authors gossip, geek out and let off steam: 15 of the best literary Substacks

More and more writers are publishing newsletters – but which are worth your time? From Margaret Atwood to Hanif Kureishi, George Saunders to Miranda July, here’s our guide to the best

A peculiar aspect of the dawning of the digital age is that it has, in some respects, returned literary life to the 18th century. A hullabaloo of pamphleteers, the effective abolition of copyright – and a return to patronage networks and serial publication. In this context, then, the way in which literary writers are now turning to Substack – a platform that allows authors to send emails to a list of subscribers, and allows those subscribers to interact in comment forums – seems entirely natural.

Literary Substacks don’t follow a single pattern. For some, it’s a way of getting new work into the world, whether publishing a novel in serial form or hot-off-the-keyboard short stories; for others, it’s a way of interacting directly with readers (while building a handy marketing list); for still others, it’s a home for criticism, journalism, personal blowing off of steam, self-promotion, or a more direct version of the traditional writerly side hustle, teaching creative writing to aspiring authors.

thanhtoong0
July 12, 2025

Books, Culture, Margaret Atwood, Sách & Tri thức

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood audiobook review – a puzzle waiting to be decoded

Romance, sci-fi and family drama are thrillingly combined in this Booker-winning novel, shared between three narrators

It’s 25 years since the publication of The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s intricately plotted, multi-narrative novel which led to her first Booker prize win. Blending romance, pulpy sci-fi and family drama, it opens with octogenarian Iris Chase Griffen recalling the moment she was told her sister, Laura, had driven off a bridge. The police inform her that two people witnessed Laura deliberately swerve off the road. Though Iris believes this to be true, she insists to the officers that it was an accident.

We go on to hear about Iris’s privileged upbringing and marriage of convenience to Richard Griffen, the wealthy owner of a button factory, and her estrangement from her granddaughter with whom she hopes to reconcile. The book also contains excerpts from Laura’s posthumously published novel which features clandestine romantic encounters between an unnamed man – seemingly a fugitive – and a wealthy woman. During their trysts, they concoct a wild fable about life on a distant planet. All this is interspersed with newspaper items reporting on the lives of the Chases and Griffins over 60 years.

thanhtoong0
June 26, 2025

Banned! The 20 books they didn’t want you to read

Where authors gossip, geek out and let off steam: 15 of the best literary Substacks

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood audiobook review – a puzzle waiting to be decoded

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