Page 14 | Harper's Magazine

Fiction

Loyalty

As much as I love her, I blame Astrid. Astrid told my wife, Corinne, that she could achieve happiness if only she’d leave me. It sounded simple. “Leave that guy,…

A Delicate Truth

by John le Carré,

On the second floor of a characterless hotel in the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar, a lithe, agile man in his late fifties restlessly paced his bedroom. His very British…

Limhamnsfältet

by Karl Ove Knausgaard,

By Karl Ove Knausgaard, from My Struggle, Book Two: A Man in Love, the second volume of his six-volume autobiographical novel, to be published next month by Archipelago Books. Translated…

On the Origins of Stories

by Alexander Maksik,

“I could trace the origin of this story for pages, back and back and back.”

Brautigan’s Heirs

by Wes Enzinna,

A thwarted novelist’s tale

Eleven Orphans

by Zsuzsi Gartner,

From a selection of openings to abandoned short stories by Zsuzsi Gartner included in Five Dials number 25. As part of an ongoing project, Gartner issues adoption certificates to readers who request…

The Worldly Prose of Thornton Wilder

by Michael Dirda,

How Wilder evokes the music of our lives

A Conversation With Russell Banks

by Jesse Barron,

"[T]o be an artist . . . you really have to blast the launch pad to get liftoff, scorching everything and everyone around you, and you cause a lot of damage sometimes."

Layla Roberts as Pharisee in the Louisiana State Penitentiary production of The Life of Jesus Christ

by Deborah Luster,

Love in the House

by Heidi Julavits,

On fiction, reality television, and why crushes thrive in small spaces.

My Great Depression

by Harper’s Staff,

Ten dispatches from the near future