Royals

The 3 Quarks Daily annual prize for Arts and Literature blog writing has been announced!  Nominations are open in the comments of the announcement.  This year’s judge is author, professor, blogger, intellect Laila Lalami.  Dear readers, feel free to nominate any Millions writing you enjoyed here. And to the guest contributors out there, be sure to nominate your Millions contributions!

Does modern China need its own literary sub-genre? On trying to understand China’s “ultra-unreal” reality: “If Magic Realism was the way in which Latin American authors presented their view of their reality, then Ultra-Unreal Realism should be our name for the literature through which the Chinese regard their reality. The Chinese word ‘chaohuan’ (ultra-unreal) is something of a play on the word ‘mohuan’ (magic), as in ‘mohuan xianshizhuyi’ (magic realism)— ‘mohuan’ is ‘magical unreal,’ and ‘chaohuan’ is ‘surpassing the unreal.’”

Last Tuesday, I wrote about an article in the Literary Review that shed light on the daughters of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Now, in the LRB, Tim Parks reviews a new biography of the children of Charles Dickens. (Related: our own Mark O’Connell reviewed Mr. Parks’s new book.)