This week on The Big Book Project, I’m joined by Ron Restrepo — Houston attorney, voracious reader of big books, and a board member of Deep Vellum — to dig into Fernando del Paso’s News from the Empire.

Del Paso’s 700-page novel takes on the doomed three-year reign of Maximilian and Carlota as Emperor and Empress of Mexico (1864–1867). But what makes the book remarkable isn’t the history — it’s how del Paso writes it. Twelve of the novel’s twenty-three chapters are monologues by an exiled, possibly mad Carlota, narrating from Bouchout Castle in Belgium, where she lived sixty years past her husband’s execution.

Ron and I talk about:

Why Carlota, not Maximilian, is the true center of the book

Del Paso’s interrogation of European imperialism — and his quieter interrogation of historiography itself

The parallel paths of Maximilian and Benito Juárez

How the Monroe Doctrine returns the moment the U.S. Civil War ends

Del Paso’s two years of research and his choice to be a “reliable narrator of the unreliable”

And a long, generous recommendation list: Yuri Herrera’s Season of the Swamp, Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, and Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostra

Watch above, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

— Lori

https://substack.com/@thebigbookproject

Chad W. Post, publisher at Open Letter Books and translation studies instructor at the University of Rochester joins Lori Feathers on The Big Book Project to discuss the first 145 pages of Karl Ove Knausgåard's The School of Night. They explore Knausgaard's ouvre, the companion novels in his The School of Night constellation, as well as some of the author's autobiographical writing in the My Struggle series.

Chad and Lori talk about Kristian's ambition and his art; the enigmatic Hans; and, how Kristian deflects all criticism about himself and his work. They dig into Knausgåard's distinctive style and the way his detailed explanations of Kristian's way of seeing and organizing his world is so difficult for other authors to imitate.

Whether you are reading the novel along with us or simply want to hear what Chad has to say about Karl Ove Knausgaard's work, you will enjoy the discussion.

https://substack.com/@thebigbookproject

Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is too much—too many characters, too many plot points, too much chaos—and that’s exactly what makes it extraordinary. In this episode of The Big Book Project, host Lori Feathers sits down with Professor Michael Sexton, a devoted reader now on his fourth reading of the novel, to dig into Part Two, Chapters VII through XII.

They talk about the riotous scene where a motley crew of young nihilists storms in to demand money from Prince Myshkin—a scene so over-the-top that Michael confesses he skipped it on previous readings but now finds it devastatingly funny. Lori and Michael explore how Dostoevsky parodies nihilistic thought through these characters and why the women in the room are furious at this attempt to humiliate the Prince and call the scene a madhouse.

They linger on one of the novel’s most complex characters, Lizaveta Prokofyevna, who Michael sees growing into a great comic creation of Dostoevsky across his readings—a woman who ridicules the dying Ippolit for making speeches and then pulls him to her bosom in a moment of devastating maternal tenderness. The conversation turns to a foundational question of the novel: is Prince Myshkin best understood through the figure of Don Quixote or through the tradition of the holy fool? Michael brings in Miguel de Unamuno’s Our Lord Don Quixote and Nabokov’s Lectures on Don Quixote; Lori pushes back, arguing the Prince’s interiority and complexity exceed what Cervantes gave us.

They also discuss Nastasya Filippovna’s shadowy, sinister presence lurking in the background, the theme of doubleness and duplicity as both a motif and a structural principle in Dostoevsky, and Chapter VII—a seemingly throwaway exchange between the Prince and Lizaveta that both Lori and Michael argue is indispensable, written in the style and spirit of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome & Introduction to This Week’s Reading

01:14 Dostoevsky Is “Too Much”—And That’s the Point

05:14 The Nihilists Storm In: Comedy and Chaos

09:19 Lizaveta Prokofyevna: From Foolish Woman to Holy Fool

15:07 The Prince’s Friends React—Insult and Dignity

18:42 Chapter 12: Oscar Wilde Meets Dostoevsky

22:08 Nastasya Filippovna’s Sinister Shadow

25:58 Don Quixote, Christ, and Prince Myshkin

36:50 Dostoevsky’s Christianity, Russian Nationalism, and Harold Bloom

41:14 The Idiot as One Chapter of a Larger Novel

42:30 Doubles, Duplicity, and Keller’s Confession

45:43 Why Chapter 12 Is Indispensable

Subscribe to The Big Book Project and join the group read of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. New posts every Tuesday and Thursday on Substack. Follow along, leave your thoughts, and read along with Lori and the community.