Books by Sofia Samatar
“I picked this one partly because it’s one of my favourite books of the past ten years or so. People can get hung up on the idea that ‘classics’ can only be older books, but I think there are still fantasy classics being written at a pretty steady clip. I think this book is a good candidate for classic status, partly because it’s in a loving-but-critical conversation with other fantasy, and partly because the writing is so good. It’s a book about a rebellion, sort of, although it’s actually stories told around that conflict: not much time is spent on the conflict itself. It’s a story told through the voices of women who are usually pushed aside in epic fantasy stories. The principal characters are a soldier, a scholar, a singer and a socialite, all very different people, each of whom gets about eighty pages to tell their story in their own way.” Read more...
Interviews where books by Sofia Samatar were recommended
Classic Fantasy Books, recommended by Matthew Sangster
A fantasy ‘classic’ is a book that enables a new kind of story to be written, says fantasy scholar Matthew Sangster. He introduces five classics, and explains how they both build on and subvert our shared stock of stories to create wonderful new worlds – worlds that are not made to be admired from a distance, but rather to be lived inside, and shared.
