Daniel Mendelsohn on Greek Tragedy, Edwin Frank on Ursula K. Le Guin and H.G. Wells

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The Last Seminar from Our “Political Novel” Series Edwin Frank on H.G. Wells and Ursula K. Le Guin Three weekly sessions beginning Monday, November 3, 2025 Science fiction has exercised a powerful shaping influence on the modern political novel. H.G. Wells’s breakthrough novella The Time Machine exposes the mirage of progress and in The Island of Dr. Moreau, an inspiration for Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as well as Orwell’s Animal Farm, he depicts a dystopia driven both by colonialist exploitation and scientific enlightenment. Taking off from Wells, our final seminar will turn to Ursula K Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, in which anarchist collectivism and capitalist liberalism vie in the infinitude of outer space. Three one-hour sessions: November 3, 10, and 17. All sessions will start at 7 PM EST. Full members and auditors will have access to recordings of each session,  which may be viewed after the live sessions conclude. Register for Wells / Le Guin   Also Available: The Next Seminar from Daniel Mendelsohn’s “Drama Queens” Series   Daniel Mendelsohn on Greek Tragedy Three weekly sessions beginning Wednesday, November 5, 2025 The three great Athenian tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—gave a powerful new expressiveness and a profound interiority to the heroines of myth. In this three-week course, we’ll cover Agamennon, where Aeschylus gives Clytemnestra a notable complexity, at once deeply sympathetic and horrifyingly violent (week 1); Sophocles’ Electra—a remarkably acute portrayal of Clytemnestra's traumatized young daughter, Electra (week 2); and Hecuba and Trojan Women by Euripides, famous above all in antiquity for his portrayals of “women on the verge” (week 3). Three one-hour sessions: November 5, 12, and 19. All sessions will start at 7pm EST. Full members and auditors will have access to recordings of each session,  which may be viewed after the live sessions conclude. Register for Greek Tragedies   The remaining seminars for “Drama Queens” will resume in 2026, but you may register for them now at the links below.   Madame Bovary and Italian Opera  Madame Bovary, Lucia di Lammermoor, La Traviata, and Madame Butterfly Three sessions, starting Wednesday, January 7, 2026 Register for Operas   Twentieth-Century Theater  Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee Four sessions, starting Wednesday, January 28, 2026 Register for Twentieth-Century Theater     Politics   Literature   Arts   Ideas You are receiving this message because you signed up for e-mail newsletters from The New York Review. Update your preferences View in browser The New York Review of Books 207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305   Preferences  |  Unsubscribe