The Octavian 2021 Book List
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Our picks for the books you need to read in 2022, featuring Fareed Zakaria, Dara Horn, BHL, Mario Vargas Llosa, and many others.
November 26, 2021
Elliot Ackerman on Our Exit from Afghanistan
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Elliot Ackerman -- decorated solider, best-selling novelist and National Book Award Nominee -- talks about our exit from Afghanistan.
September 17, 2021
The Octavian 2020 Holiday Book List
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The best books we read in 2020, from Shakespeare in America to Hiroshima's secrets and beyond.
December 15, 2020
Genius and Isolation (COVID-Related and Otherwise)
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We spoke with Craig Wright, author of The Hidden Habits of Genius. We spoke with Craig about his views on talent, art, and isolation.
October 5, 2020
Self-Healed Physician
An interview with Laura Marris
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A translator on why Camus and his novel of plague speak to us in this dark moment.
Vol 6, Fall / September 7, 2020
Good Old Charlie Brown
An Interview with Andrew Blauner
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Charles Schulz's Peanuts can still delight, sadden, and fascinate us seven decades after it premiered in newspapers. We spoke with the editor of a Peanuts writing anthology about why.
Vol 6, Fall / September 7, 2020
Mary Shelley and Her Plague Masterpiece
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We spoke with Eileen Hunt Botting about Mary Shelley and The Last Man, the first post-apocalyptic novel, set in a world devastated by plague.
August 31, 2020
Thomas Mann and the Literature of Disease
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We spoke with eminent Germanist and intellectual historian David Wellbery on Nobel laureate Thomas Mann and the literature of disease.
July 20, 2020
Why You Should Read Proust In 2021
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Proust scholar Caroline Weber told us why In Search of Lost Time makes for essential reading.
June 3, 2020
Translating The Plague During a Plague
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We spoke with Laura Marris, the translator of a new version of Albert Camus’ seminal novel The Plague, about translating this classic during a pandemic.
May 26, 2020
