Sing O Goddess, the rage of Achillies

According to Joseph Tartakovsky in the summer edition of The Claremont Review, Alberto Manguel's slim " The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography" is a literary history of Homer's epics, half criticism, half Britannica entry. In each of 22 short chapters, averaging ten pages apiece, he examines an angle of the Homeric phenomenon: the question of his existence; his reception by Greek philosophers; his heirs Virgil and Dante; the agonies of St. Jerome and Augustine of Hippo in reconciling him with Scripture; the excavation of Troy; his role in French debates between anciens and modernes; and his lessons on war and peace. Read more here.

Exile of the Native Son

As James Campbell writes in this week's TLS, by the time he sailed to France from New York in 1947, Richard Wright was a star, fixed in the literary firmament. Two of his books – Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) – had risen high in the US best-seller lists, and were being translated into European languages. In Paris, Wright was aggrandized by the reigning intelligentsia: he and his wife became friendly with Simone de Beauvoir, and to a lesser extent with the non-English-speaking Sartre. Except for one brief visit during the making of a film of Native Son, in which the forty-one-year-old Wright took the role of his teenage anti-hero Bigger Thomas, he never returned to the United States. Read more here.

Rereading Herodotus

One of the first names on any Great Books Lists would be Herodutus and his Histories. Herodotus made history by inventing history. There are two senses of "history" in that English sentence, neither of which corresponds to the Greek historia. The first sense seems to me to be a powerful one in public usage. This is the sense involved in such phrases as "making history", "history will show", or "the end of history". Really, this is the way that moderns get at a concept of "fate"—where fate itself is an ossified word that lives, for most people, as something the ancients "believed in". Read more here.

Dangerous Liaisons

In The Great Books List few of writers on the list were partners; Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir were perhaps the most famous couple in Paris and their tumultuous affair both scandalized and wowed Parisians. The rleationships political dynamic also elevated the affair above the usual liquor-soaked door-slamming affairs of other famous literary couples. But according to Carole Seymour Jones in A Dangerous Liaison the relationship was one based on lies and some morally repugnant positions. Read more here.

MacBeth and the Moral Universe

Macbeth is a moral play par excellence. In this, it stands in stark contrast to two more recent well-known tales of murder, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Camus's The StrangerIn Macbeth Shakespeare presented the moral phenomena in such a way that those who respond to his art must, in some way or another, become better human beings. In Dostoevsky's and Camus's heroic criminals we see the corruption of moral consciousness characteristic of modern literature. The message of Macbeth, is the inexorability of the moral order. Macbeth's soliloquy in act 1 tells us with perfect clarity why the murder must fail. The action that follows bears out the truth of that soliloquy. Not only does the plot fail, but neither Macbeth nor Lady Macbeth is allowed one moment of enjoyment of the fruit of their crime. The moral order, accordingly, is more powerful than the evil spirits that Lady Macbeth called upon. The moral order, according to The Stranger or Crime and Punishment, lacks any such power. Both of these works record the declining power of morality in Western civilization, and in this sense they record the decline of the West. . Read the article here.

The shoplifters great books list

To work in an independent bookstore is to always be aware of shoplifters. It can devour you; you can spend all your time watching people, wondering if they're watching you. Every shoplifter caught is a major victory against the forces of darkness; every one who escapes is another 10 minutes kept awake at night with gnashing teeth. The New York Times even publishes a top ten list of stolen books. Read the article here.

The Best of Booker competition announced

A battle of the Booker Award winners is brewing this year, with organizers announcing a "best of" honour to celebrate the award's 40th anniversary. Organizers recently unveiled a "Best of the Booker Prize" competition to determine the best novel to have won the prestigious English-language fiction honour since the inaugural trophy was handed out in April 1969. Winnersof the award given to writers from the British Commonwealth have included: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989), Ian McEwan, Amsterdam  (1998); Pat Barker (left), The Ghost Road (1995); Graham Swift, Last Orders (1996); Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea (1978); A.S. Byatt, Possession (1990); William Golding, Rites of Passage (1980) and Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1981). Read the article here.

Things Fall Apart celebrates 50 years

The Great Books List, and indeed most other great books lists will feature Things Fall Apart. But the book wasn't written with great aspirations. "I was alone in my room, scribbling away, and if nobody had paid any attention at all to me, I wouldn't have been terribly surprised," Chinua Achebe recalls with a quiet chuckle. Yet the towering achievement of Things Fall Apart has been to become arguably the most influential work of fiction by an African writer. Since 1958, the novel has sold about 11 million copies in some 50 countries and as many languages. (This month Anchor Books will issue a 50th-aniversary edition.) Read more here