Of all the literary legends that have been successfully mined by more than one ambitious artist, the sell-your-soul-to-the-devil trope, rolled out by Christopher Marlowe in the 1604 play “The Tragical History of D. Faustus” and reinvigorated by Goethe’s “Faust” two centuries later (and notably referenced by 19th-century opera composers Gounod and Berlioz), has been one of the most fertile. Get ready for another interpretation. Coming Jan. 26 from the chilly climes of Norway, courtesy of a translation by Martin Aitken, is Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “The School of Night” (Penguin Press, $29, 512 pages), the fourth in the acclaimed author’s “Morning Star” six-novel series. Its protagonist is Kristian Hadeland, an aspiring photographer who dreams of bigger and better things and moves to London to pursue them, where he encounters eccentric Dutchman Hans, and suddenly the doors start opening. An acknowledged modern riff on the Marlowe play, “The School of Night” is described on Amazon.com as Knausgaard’s “most daring and macabre novel yet” and “an indelible tale about dark temptations and moral depravity, and what we forget when we bargain with the devil.”
In an event presented by Green Apple Books and Litquake and sponsored by Norway House, Knausgaard speaks about the novel at Calvary Presbyterian Church at 2515 Fillmore St., San Francisco at 6 p.m. Jan. 17 in a conversation with novelist Rachel Kushner, author of last year’s best-seller “Creation Lake.” Tickets, $42.99, through Eventbrite (price includes a copy of the book), can be found at greenapplebooks.com.
More retold tales: Continuing in the vein of one good story sparks an imitation, the HarperCollins publishing empire has a couple of them coming out soon. On Jan. 27, Australian author Kathy George’s riff on Charles Dickens’ classic “Oliver Twist” comes out in paperback from the HQ Fiction imprint. Titled “The Scent of Oranges,” the novel reworks the underbelly-of-Victorian-London saga of pickpockets and their marks through the eyes of Bill Sykes’ Nancy, who undertakes the protection of the title urchin of the Dickens book. And on March 17, from the Borough Press imprint, comes Jane Crowther’s new work, unabashedly titled “Gatsby: A Modern Retelling of Fitzgerald’s Beloved Classic Novel.” In addition to switching its Long Island setting from the Jazz Age to modern day, Crowther renders both the title character and the narrator “Nic” Carraway as women!
In the pipeline: While I can’t personally vouch for the readability of the two remakes just discussed, I have high hopes, based on my familiarity with the authors’ earlier works, for two books coming from the great British novelist Julian Barnes and America’s own beloved Louise Erdrich. Booker Prize winner Barnes (for 2011’s “A Sense of an Ending”) has a writer-narrator named Julian in “Departure(s)” reconnecting previous lovers Jean and Stephen, friends of his from their university days, and watching as their love affair is rekindled. The novel will be released by Knopf on Jan. 20, one day after the author’s 80th birthday.
And, from Erdrich on March 24, courtesy of HarperCollins, we’ll have “Python’s Kiss,” a collection of 13 short stories she has been working on over the past couple of years. Erdrich’s Native American roots on her mother’s side have led her to develop a fascination with Ojibwe culture, and its mythology includes the Mishipeshu, a snake with a cat’s head that stands guard between the realms of life and death – a concept that informs the collection’s thematic thrust. The new book is also notable because the author’s daughter, Aza Erdrich Abe, an artist who created covers for some of her mother’s paperback releases, has provided an illustration for each anthology story.
Cream of the crop: As we plow headlong into another new year, it’s an opportune moment to look back at 2025 titles deemed the best of the year and see what we were wise (or lucky) enough to have read. Ever-reliable readers at the New York Times Book Review have lent an assist with a list of their top 10 five fiction, five nonfiction. With some chagrin, I’ll note I’ve read only one, but another is in my possession and high on my next-to-try list, and a third is definitely the next book I will be buying. Here they are (for those who want to check their own score) beginning with the fiction: “Angel Down” by Daniel Kraus is a one-sentence-long novel (!) in stream of consciousness style about a World War I soldier who narrowly escapes death on the battlefield and plays protector to a fallen angel. “The Director” by Daniel Kehlmann revolves around an Austrian filmmaker in the World War II era who must kowtow to the Nazis to make his movies. “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” by Kiran Desai tells the long arc of a story about two immigrants from India who initially reject their grandparents’ matchmaking attempts but get together much later anyway. (And it’s the next book to get my money!), “The Sisters” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri tracks the lives of Ina, Anastasia and Evelyn, Tunisian-Swedish siblings with markedly distinctive personalities. “Stone Yard Devotional” by Charlotte Wood features as its protagonist an Australian woman, an atheist and an anti-Catholic, who nonetheless seeks shelter and the contemplative life in a convent in New South Wales. In nonfiction, the winners include Sophie Elmhirst’s “A Marriage at Sea,” a shipwreck story I read that is as much about the state of the marital union of two radically different people as it was about a voyage gone wrong. Kevin Sack’s “Mother Emanuel,” subtitled “Two Centuries of Race, Resistance and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church,” examines what led up to and followed the 2015 murderous attack that killed nine members of a Bible study class in South Carolina. In Arundhati Roy’s “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” “The God of Small Things” novelist offers her highly acclaimed account of her complex relationship with her impressive activist mother. (This one is on my bedside table.) Brian Goldstone’s “There Is No Place for Us” is a sobering account of a largely unseen but sizable population—the hardworking people who, through no fault of their own, are unable to afford adequate housing. Sue Prideaux’s “Wild Thing” strips away possible misconceptions about the controversial French artist Paul Gaugin, who abandoned wife and children to pursue his art—and some young Polynesian girls—in Tahiti and the Marquesas.
Hooked on Books is a monthly column by Sue Gilmore on literary buzz and upcoming book events. Look for it (mostly) on the last Thursday of the month.
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