Boston Book Festival

Crafting a new work of fiction based on beloved plots, characters, and themes poses a unique challenge for the author—and an undeniable pleasure for the reader. In this session, three novelists serve up refreshing takes on classic works of literature, with plenty of undeniably modern twists. In Nelly Dean, novelist and English professor Alison Case gives the narrator of Wuthering Heights a new compelling story to tell: her own. In Even in Paradise, Elizabeth Nunez infuses Shakespeare’s King Lear with all the cultural richness, beauty, and complexity of the postcolonial Caribbean. And in Roses and Rot, debut novelist and Neil Gaiman protégé Kat Howard puts a new (and frankly sinister) spin on the evil stepmother trope so common in fairy tales. Helping us bridge the classic and the contemporary is moderator Henriette Lazaridis, author of The Clover House.