Fiction and the Fantastic

Fiction and the Fantastic

London Review of Books

Episodes 14
Avg. Duration 14m
Activity Declining
Since Jan 2025
Latest Episode Dec 2025

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Schedule
Monthly
Format
Serial
Consistency
93%
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feeds.megaphone.fm

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About This Podcast

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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Recent Episodes

A Taxonomy of the Fantastic

Dec 18, 2025 15m

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,…

Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin

Nov 17, 2025 13m

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…

J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter

Oct 19, 2025 14m

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…

‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington

Sep 21, 2025 15m

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…

Stories by Jorge Luis Borges

Aug 24, 2025 13m

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…

‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley

Jul 27, 2025 31m

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…

Mikhail Bulgakov and James Hogg

Jun 29, 2025 14m

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…

Gothic Tales by Jan Potocki and Isak Dinesen

Jun 01, 2025 15m

‘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…

Stories by Franz Kafka

May 04, 2025 16m

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…

‘Alice in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll

Apr 06, 2025 15m

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…

‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino

Mar 10, 2025 15m

Italo Calvino’s novella Invisible Cities is a hypnagogic reimagining of Marco Polo’s time in the court of Kublai Khan. Polo describes 55 impossible places – cities made of plumbing, free-floating,…

‘Gulliver’s Travels’ by Jonathan Swift

Feb 10, 2025 15m

Jonathan Swift’s 1726 tale of Houyhnhnms, Yahoos, Lilliputians and Struldbruggs is normally seen as a satire. But what if it’s read as fantasy, and all its contradictions, inversions and reversals as…

‘The Thousand and One Nights’

Jan 13, 2025 14m

The Thousand and One Nights is an ‘infinite text’: it has no fixed shape or length, no known author and is transformed with each new translation. In this first episode of Fiction and the Fantastic,…

Introducing Fiction and the Fantastic

Jan 03, 2025 8m

Marina Warner is joined by Anna Della Subin to introduce Fiction and the Fantastic, a new Close Readings series running through 2025. Marina describes the scope of the series, in which she will also…

Frequently Asked Questions

How many episodes does Fiction and the Fantastic have?

Fiction and the Fantastic has published 14 episodes since January 2025, covering topics in Arts, Books.

Is Fiction and the Fantastic still active?

Fiction and the Fantastic is currently declining with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 14m.

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