Podcasts · Close Readings

Fiction and the Fantastic: A Taxonomy

18 Dec 2025 · 16 min · S13 E14

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.

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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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Links in the notes 5

• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n04/colin-burrow/fiction-and-the-age-of-lies
• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v12/n21/marina-warner/that-which-is-spoken
• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n03/jonathan-lethem/my-year-of-reading-lemmishly
• https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n21/a.d.-nuttall/really-fantastic
• https://megaphone.fm/adchoices