Fiction Literature Courses
Study online & in London

A selection of 20th century classics from South Asia, China, Korea and Japan, in English and in translation, which have a lasting impact on world literature. These include Yasunari Kawabata's haunting story of reunion and revenge, Beauty and Sadness, Fumiko Enchi's exploration of a complex triangular relationship, Masks, R.K Narayan's story of love, deception and faith, The Guide, Kamala Markandaya's Nectar in a Sieve, the miniature saga of a woman's life in rural India, and the stories of Eileen Chang and Park Kyongni.

Enjoy talking with other people about the things you have read? Want to share great stories, poems and drama? Come along and join the conversation. The group is led by a shared reading practitioner trained by The Reader Organisation.

From Mexico to Patagonia, Latin America has produced some of the most spellbinding literature of the modern age. From dictatorship and death to national identity and the natural world, join us as we investigate the cultural heritage of the continent through some of its best writers.

The 1950s in British literature was a time of bold new movements alongside struggles to break free of the past. Find out how writers like Daphne du Maurier, Philip Larkin, Iris Murdoch and Sam Selvon forged a new era of British writing to reflect the rapidly changing times.

Short stories offer a brief window into a variety of other lives, places, and situations. This literary form has remained popular in Japan over several centuries, with topics as diverse as natural disasters, the beauty of everyday life, hellish curses and the consequences of fame. We’ll explore the history of this medium through a selection of short stories by some of Japan’s most popular short story authors.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

This online course will look at the unique style of writers who emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. We’ll explore fin de siècle writers who were grappling with new questions of modernity. Using the exciting backdrop of the 1890s, this course explores the cultural innovations of the period alongside the works of Oscar Wilde and other writers of this period.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Ulysses is often thought of as one of the most daunting novels of the twentieth century, perhaps more often talked about than read. This course will take on the book episode-by-episode, breaking it down into manageable chunks and gradually working through the key themes, characters and stylistic devices. We will use the guides to the book that James Joyce himself provided, while exploring alternative ways of reading this modernist masterpiece. By the end of the course, you will have a thorough working knowledge of both Ulysses and Joyce’s life.

This course focuses on the intriguing and unlikely storytellers at work in recent fiction. How do we believe a story told by a woman who has dementia or a man who thinks that only fifteen people ever lived? What do we think when a dead person is telling the story, or a ghost? What are we to make of these improbable and sometimes unsettling stories? Can these unusual narrators open up new ways of thinking about the world?

Come and explore London in writing! This course introduces you to a variety of fiction and non-fiction



from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. We’ll discover different voices and perspectives about the city, exploring writers’ narrative techniques and the social context of novels, short stories and non-fiction. Includes work by Edgar Allan Poe, Sam Selvon, Robert Louis Stevenson and Zadie Smith.

This class examines transatlantic literature, embarking on a voyage of intercontinental literary exploration to investigate the history of literary exchanges between Europe and the Americas. From the Hispanic Atlantic and the Black Atlantic to the French and British Atlantic, we encounter a rich body of important writing that charts the unfolding relationship between the new and old worlds.

Explore literary works by British writers of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent that capture themes essential to human experience: China Room by Sunjeev Sahota, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, Marriage Material by Sathnam Sanghera and poetry by Imtiaz Dharker.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

In a world of ever-increasing ecological awareness, nature writing has taken on a new importance. It explores what it means to be human, bringing us face to face with our environmental fears. But what is new nature writing? In this course, we take a global look at a range of writers (including Amitav Ghosh and Kathleen Jamie) who explore the changing meanings of ‘nature’ in our modern world.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Discover how some Jewish characters have been portrayed by Italian novelists of the 20th century. We will read and comment on extracts from Italo Svevo, Giorgio Bassani and Natalia Ginzburg.