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James Wood

James Wood’s How Fiction Works is just out. He is also the author of The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief and is a staff writer at the New Yorker.

Selected bibliography

  • How Fiction Works (2008)  Buy this book
  • The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel (2004)
  • The Book Against God (2003)
  • The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (1999)

Search the web for James Wood: Google · Yahoo! · AltaVista · Wikipedia

In the LRB archive

Nothing in a Really Big Way · 24 April 2008

subscriber-only content Metaphysical Parenting · 21 June 2007

subscriber-only content Anxious Pleasures · 4 January 2007

  • Thomas Hardy: The Time-Torn Man by Claire Tomalin

subscriber-only content Bastards · 2 November 2006

  • Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn

Damaged Beasts · 8 June 2006

  • Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey

At the tent flap sin crouches · 23 February 2006

Puffed Wheat · 20 October 2005

subscriber-only content Tides of Treacle · 23 June 2005

subscriber-only content Overloaded with Wasps · 17 March 2005

A Long Day at the Chocolate Bar Factory · 16 December 2004

subscriber-only content Inside Mr Shepherd · 4 November 2004

  • Jane Austen and the Morality of Conversation by Bharat Tandon
  • Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style by D.A. Miller  Buy this book

The Slightest Sardine · 20 May 2004

  • The Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000: The Last of England? by Randall Stevenson

The Lie-World · 20 November 2003

  • Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre

A Frog’s Life · 23 October 2003

  • Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons by J.M. Coetzee

subscriber-only content How’s the Empress? · 17 April 2003

  • The Light of Day by Graham Swift

subscriber-only content Bobbery · 20 February 2003

  • Pushkin: A Biography by T.J. Binyon

Credulity · 14 November 2002

  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Fundamentally Goyish · 3 October 2002

  • The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

subscriber-only content Phut-Phut · 27 June 2002

  • Critical Times: The History of the ‘Times Literary Supplement’ by Derwent May

subscriber-only content From a Novel in Progress · 9 May 2002

Mixed Feelings · 3 January 2002

  • Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo, edited by William Weaver
  • Memoir of Italo Svevo by Livia Veneziani Svevo, translated by Isabel Quigly
  • Emilio's Carnival by Italo Svevo, translated by Beth Archer Brombert

Gossip in Gilt · 19 April 2001

  • Licks of Love: Short Stories and a Sequel, ‘Rabbit Remembered’ by John Updike

subscriber-only content Cold-Shouldered · 8 March 2001

  • Pure Pleasure: A Guide to the 20th Century’s Most Enjoyable Books by John Carey

Bohumil Hrabal · 4 January 2001

  • Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Michael Henry Heim
  • Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Michael Henry Heim
  • I Served the King of England by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Paul Wilson
  • Closely Observed Trains by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by Edith Partiger
  • Total Fears: Letters to Dubenka by Bohumil Hrabal, translated by James Naughton

Addicted to Unpredictability · 26 November 1998

  • Knut Hamsun: Selected Letters, Vol. II 1898-1952 edited by Harald Næss and James McFarlane
  • Hunger by Knut Hamsun, translated by Sverre Lyngstad

Not currently in the LRB archive

 not available in archive Can this be what happened to Lord Lucan after the night of 7 November 1974 · 7 September 2000

  • Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark

 not available in archive Like a Mullet in Love · 10 August 2000

  • Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories by Giovanni Verga, translated by G.H. McWilliam

 not available in archive Rambling · 1 June 2000

 not available in archive Buckets of Empathy · 30 March 2000

  • On Trust: Art and the Temptations of Suspicion by Gabriel Josipovici

 not available in archive Tell me what you talked · 11 November 1999

  • Letters between a Father and Son by V.S. Naipaul

 not available in archive Watering the Dust · 30 September 1999

  • Saint Augustine by Gary Wills

 not available in archive Too Many Alibis · 1 July 1999

  • Canaan by Geoffrey Hill
  • The Truth of Love: A Poem by Geoffrey Hill

 not available in archive Empire of Signs · 4 March 1999

 not available in archive Ceaseless Anythings · 1 October 1998

  • Damascus Gate by Robert Stone

 not available in archive The Crotch Thing · 16 July 1998

 not available in archive The Great Dissembler · 16 April 1998

  • The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd

 not available in archive Faulting the Lemon · 1 January 1998

  • Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature by Iris Murdoch

From the LRB letters page