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.

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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.

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D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow rewards readers willing to move inward — into the psychological depths of a single family across three generations — rather than outward toward the conventional satisfactions of plot and incident. In this episode of The Big Book Project, host Lori Feathers is joined by novelist Mark Haber for a rich, searching conversation about one of Lawrence’s most extraordinary and, as both agree, somewhat underappreciated works.

The Rainbow traces the Brangwen family through the pressures of nationality and gender, the primal forces of love and sexual desire, and the slow, irreversible transformation of a world that once measured time by the seasons. Lori and Mark explore how Lawrence sustains narrative intensity across three generations using a remarkably tight circle of characters — no strangers arrive to upend the story, no dramatic external events intrude — relying instead on what Mark notes as the novel’s defining quality: its passionate psychological interiority.

The conversation moves through the novel’s most compelling terrain: the question of whether The Rainbow is, as some critics have charged, misogynistic, or whether Ursula Brangwen — the novel’s fierce, searching third-generation protagonist — represents someone genuinely radical for her era; the treatment of sexuality as a primal, deeply psychological force rather than mere titillation; the immigrant narrative embedded in Lydia’s Polish origins and what it contributes to the novel’s portrait of cultural difference; the role of religion and nature as competing — or perhaps complementary — forms of the sacred; and the tender, unusually intimate portraits of father-daughter relationships that mark the book as distinctly working-class in its emotional priorities.

Mark Haber also discusses his forthcoming novel, Ada and shares his current reading, including a deep immersion in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.

Mark Haber is the author of three novels, most recently Lesser Ruins, and an editor at Coffee House Press. His fourth novel, Ada, is forthcoming in July.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction & Welcome

00:17 Why The Rainbow? Mark’s Curveball Pick

02:10 The Brangwen Family & Tight Circle of Characters

05:09 Three Generations in Under 500 Pages

08:44 Sexuality and the Psychological Interior

12:09 Is The Rainbow Misogynistic? Female Agency in Anna and Ursula

17:35 Flux and Consistency: Lawrence’s Narrative Rhythm

22:09 Is It a Dark Book? Tone, Mood, and Hope

24:33 Overwriting, Purple Prose, and Literary Genius

28:08 Religion, Faith, and Nature as the Sacred

33:43 Lydia’s Polish Origins and the Immigrant Narrative

38:06 Passion, Nature, and Human Longing

39:28 Father-Daughter Relationships Across Generations

47:16 Mark Haber’s Forthcoming Novel Ada

49:39 Current Reading and What’s Coming Next

William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses is one of those novels that resists easy summary — and that resistance is precisely what makes it so worth discussing. In this episode of The Big Book Project, host Lori Feathers is joined by Faulkner scholar Larry Allums for a deep, unhurried conversation about one of Faulkner’s most structurally ambitious and morally searching works.

Go Down, Moses occupies a deliberately uncomfortable formal space — neither quite a novel nor quite a short story collection — and Lori and Larry explore how that ambiguity is central to the book’s meaning rather than incidental to it. They trace Faulkner’s decision to arrange the chapters outside of chronological order, examine why the McCaslin family genealogy is essential reading before the first page, and follow Ike McCaslin from boyhood to old age as he grapples with inheritance, land ownership, and the accumulated moral weight of what his family has done and left undone.

The episode gives extended attention to “The Bear” — the novel’s longest and most mythically charged section — where Old Ben emerges not merely as an animal but as something closer to a totem for the land itself. The mentorship of Sam Fathers, the ritual dimensions of the hunt, and the way Faulkner’s extraordinary nature writing creates a kind of sacred space outside ordinary human corruption are all examined at length. Lori and Larry also discuss the surprising vein of dark comedy running through the novel.

The conversation does not look away from what Go Down, Moses most urgently demands: a reckoning with the entangled bloodlines of the McCaslin and Beauchamp families, the unacknowledged moral debts of the slaveholding South, and the question of whether the McCaslins's legacy of inheritance is an attempt to rectify a wrong or a form of denial and evasion.

Larry Allums is a William Faulkner scholar who previously joined The Big Book Project for the group read of Absalom, Absalom! His expertise and genuine love for Faulkner’s fiction make him one of the most illuminating guides available to this particular literary terrain.

Subscribe to The Big Book Project for readings and discussions of novels that reward the full measure of attention you bring to them.

Where to Find the Host

The Big Book Project on Substack

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction & Welcome Back to Larry Allums

01:20 Publication History of Go Down Moses

07:20 Non-Chronological Structure & Family Genealogy

13:00 Ike McCaslin — Childhood to Old Age

18:30 Humor in The Fire and the Hearth

27:50 Lucas Beauchamp & Inheritance

40:20 Interiority and Character Consciousness

47:55 Old Ben the Bear & Sam Fathers

55:50 Ike’s Renunciation of the Land

59:50 McCaslin Characters Across Faulkner’s Fiction

01:03:30 Final Reflections & Reading Tips

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In this episode of The Big Book Project, Lori Feathers is joined by translator Ursula Phillips to discuss her extraordinary translation of Ice, the monumental, genre-defying novel by Polish author Jacek Dukaj.

Clocking in at nearly 1,200 pages, Ice is both an alternate-history epic and a philosophical meditation on truth, language, power, and perception. Phillips guides us through the novel’s vast imaginative scope—from its reimagining of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century, and its complex political, religious, and commercial entanglements in a world frozen by ice, to the deeply personal story of its hero, the Polish mathematician Benedykt Gierosławski, who travels to Siberia in search of his exiled father. Along the way, Phillips offers insight into the intellectual and technical challenges of translating such a singular work.

This conversation moves fluidly between plot, prose, and process, exploring how Ice engages with 19th-century novelistic traditions while pushing the boundaries of science fiction, historical fiction, and metaphysical inquiry. Phillips also reflects on narrative voice, linguistic instability, and the role of the translator as both craftsman and interpreter.



What We Discuss in This Episode





An overview of Ice’s alternate-history premise and frozen world after the Impact



The novel’s protagonist, Benedykt Gierosławski, and his search for his exiled father, who has become a cult figure in the Land of Winter



Political theories, religious movements, and commercial interests shaped by the Ice



The historical and speculative roles that the Russian Empire and the Trans-Siberian Railway serve in the novel’s plot.



The unusual shifts in narrative voice and perspective and how this is executed. The translator’s postscript and the philosophical problems of language and meaning



The technical and conceptual challenges of translating a 1,200-page novel



Dukaj’s lush, sensory language



Connections to Kafka, Dostoevsky, and the 19th-century “big novel” tradition



Recommendations on other Polish literature for readers to explore



Notable Moment

Lori reads a striking passage describing Benedykt’s first experience wearing frosto-glaze glasses—a scene that transforms the world into a riot of color and movement, highlighting the novel’s extraordinary visual imagination and the precision of Phillips’s translation.



About the Guest

Ursula Phillips is an acclaimed literary translator specializing in Polish literature. Her translation of Ice has been widely praised for preserving the novel’s philosophical depth, linguistic complexity, and stylistic ambition.



About the Book

Ice by Jacek Dukaj is an alternate-history novel set in a world reshaped by a mysterious climate-altering event. Blending science fiction, political theory, metaphysics, and historical fiction, the novel interrogates how truth, logic, and power shift under radically altered conditions.



Listener Tip

Ice includes a Glossary and Dramatis Personae to help readers navigate its neologisms and cast of characters.

Links and Resources:
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In this episode of The Big Book Project, Lori sits down with novelist and philosopher Mark de Silva to explore his monumental 2022 novel The Logos — a thousand-page meditation on art, perception, capitalism, and the visual texture of contemporary life.

A writer steeped in philosophy and the visual arts, Mark reveals how The Logos emerged from nearly a decade of research into advertising theory, image culture, and the psychological forces that shape our desires. Lori and Mark’s conversation ranges from the phenomenology of seeing, to the dark glamour of New York City, drawing versus painting, and the strange seductions of stealth marketing.

Together, Lori and Mark dive deep into:

• The narrator’s crisis of art and identity — and how success in the gallery world becomes a trap
• Drawing vs. painting as competing ways of capturing truth
• The philosophy of visual perception and why looking too closely can dissolve the world
• Advertising as the new public art, and the blurred lines between art, manipulation, and influence
• Daphne and Duke, the quasi-celebrities at the center of a massive, ambiguous ad campaign
• New York City as a psychological landscape — its light, darkness, and peripheries
• Emotional stuntedness, knowledge as alienation, and the costs of obsessive perception
• The Logos as a portrait of contemporary capitalist culture — the beauty and the rot
• Mark’s new work-in-progress: a sweeping novel about psychiatry, objectivity, homelessness, and agricultural labor in California

Mark also recommends some of the big books currently on his mind, including:

• Hermann Broch — The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil
• Solvej Balle -- On the Calculation of Volume series

This is a rich, layered conversation about what it means to see, what it means to make art, and what it means to capture the truth of a world defined by images.

CHAPTERS

00:00 — The twin crises at the heart of The Logos
00:40 — Introducing Mark de Silva
02:00 — Nine years of research and writing
04:20 — An artist losing faith in the art world
06:15 — Advertising as the new public art
08:10 — Portraiture, obsession, and the essence of a person
10:00 — Seeing too closely and dissolving boundaries
12:00 — Drawing vs. painting: form vs. sensory seduction
15:15 — The sensory trap of consumer culture
17:30 — Ubiquity vs. usefulness in advertising theory
20:00 — Stealth campaigns, non-celebrities, and identity
23:00 — Art or capital? Garrett’s mysterious motives
25:30 — The darkness underneath Daphne and Duke
29:00 — New York City as a living organism
33:00 — Emotional stuntedness and the alienation of knowledge
37:00 — Writing through the eye — the book’s visual intensity
40:45 — Art after capitalism: what still matters?
45:00 — Is commercial art “real art”?
47:20 — Mark’s next novel: psychiatry, mind, and California
51:00 — Big book recommendations
55:00 — Closing reflections

In this final discussion of Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner, Lori is joined once again by Dr. Larry Allums to close out one of the most haunting and inexhaustible novels in American literature.

Together, they trace Faulkner’s labyrinth of narration—Quentin and Shreve’s imaginative reconstruction of the Sutpen story—and explore what it reveals about truth, storytelling, and the South’s enduring obsession with its past. Lori and Larry discuss themes of fatalism, love, terror, and the moral weight of history, examining how characters like Judith and Charles embody both the inescapability of inheritance and moments of grace within it.

They also reflect on Faulkner’s ambivalence toward the South—his simultaneous hatred and love for it—and how that tension gives the novel its tragic depth. From the image of the blackbird referring to Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the conversation concludes by considering what it means, as readers, to seek truth in a story that resists any single interpretation.

A fitting end to The Big Book Project’s journey through Absalom, Absalom!—and a reminder that the most profound books never truly end; they continue to reverberate in the imagination long after the final page.

Chapters:00:00 — Introduction02:00 — The unreliable narrators: Quentin and Shreve15:30 — Judith and Charles: love, fate, and moral choice35:00 — The curse and fatalism of the Sutpen legacy50:00 — Faulkner’s ambivalence toward the South1:02:00 — Wallace Stevens and the search for truth1:04:30 — Closing reflections

📚 Subscribe to The Big Book Project for more deep dives into literature’s boldest novels.🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.