Fiction Literature Courses
Study online & in London

Explore and discuss the work of key writers from 19th century  Russian literature, including Chekhov's The Kiss, Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.

This in-person Literature course explores three novels by Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion. We will develop an appreciation of Austen’s narrative style and social critique through close analysis of her language, informing our reading by engaging with the literary, historical and critical contexts of these novels.

This class explores major voices from 19th Century French literature, discussing literary style, themes, and key contexts as a way of developing responses to celebrated French writers. From Balzac and Flaubert to de Nerval and Laforgue, come discover French prose and poetry produced between the Revolution and the Great War.

On this in-college literature course we will read four depictions of mid-century British women’s lives, in very different settings and styles, by some of the most excellent authors of the 1950s: Barbara Pym, Doris Lessing, Muriel Spark and Shelagh Delaney.

We explore a careful selection of novels, in a variety of genres, that display the skill and virtuosity of  renowned mid-20th century Italian writers, including Natalia Ginzburg, Italo Calvino, and Giuseppe di Lampedusa. These works have withstood the test of time and are recognised as modern classics.   

This course focuses on innovative short fiction from around the globe which reworks folkloric traditions to grapple with conditions of twenty-first century life. As well as engaging with the unique folkloric influences each text draws on, we’ll consider the complexities of the present that they are addressed to – and how the rising popularity of ghost stories, fairy tales, dark fables and surreal myths suggests a renewed fascination with the intrigues of the mysterious, monstrous and inexplicable.

This course explores the fiction of Patricia Highsmith: four novels and one short story, based around the crime fiction/thriller format which concentrate on psychological themes. We will focus on themes of disturbed personalities, troubled relationships, insecurity, and explorations of fragile masculinity, considering the effect of Highsmith’s narrative style and how this has contributed to the crime fiction genre. Texts include: short story from the collection Eleven (1970) TBC, The Blunderer (1954), Deep Water (1957), The Cry of the Owl (1962), and A suspension of Mercy (1965).

Discover some of the most compelling voices in Spanish Literature over six centuries, from the first novels and the Baroque era to the national and regional conflicts of the modern period and their impact on the imaginations of whole generations of writers. Spend eight weeks exploring ‘Lazarillo de Tormes’, Cervantes, de Castro, Lorca, Goytisolo, Marias, Almodóvar and many others.

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.

Bold, passionate, provocative, and revolutionary: just four of the adjectives that can be used to describe the writers studied on this course. Focusing on Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse (1954), Marguerite Duras’ The Lover (1984) and Annie Arnoux’s The Years (2008), this course will explore how French female writers have approached writing the experience of modern women throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We’ll think about issues of power, autonomy, sexual awakening, and adolescence in each of our key novels. We’ll also contextualise these novels in the history of women’s writing in France from the philosophy of de Beauvoir to the bold feminist Francophone literature of today. 

Why does time travel fascinate readers and writers? On this in-person literature course we’ll study time travel fiction, from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the present. Why bend the rules of time, and what can this tell us about history, society and what it means to be human?

Come and study twenty-first century British writing, from renowned authors and emerging voices. We’ll read a selection of novels and short stories, to explore: What makes fiction ‘contemporary’? How does fiction today reflect and respond to the time in which it’s written? We’ll read Sarah Moss’s Summerwater, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, Samantha Harvey’s Orbital and short stories including work by Saba Sams and Eliza Clarke.

Does the end justify the means? What does the perfect society look like and is it worth pursuing at any cost?

This course invites learners to grapple with the searing social, spiritual and political visions of three twentieth century novelists: Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene and Arthur Koestler. We will explore the strains of utopianism, disillusionment and resistance that run through each writers’ most celebrated works, and position these texts within their cultural context against a backdrop of turmoil and change.