Close Readings is the podcast subscription from the London Review of Books, in which longstanding contributors explore a literary period or theme through a selection of key works. In one of this year’s series, the writer and mythographer Marina Warner traversed the great parallel tradition of the literature of astonishment and wonder, from the 1001 Nights to Ursula K. Le Guin, in conversation with Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis.

Listen to the Close Readings: Fiction and the Fantastic series here.

Leonora Carrington, ‘Dogs of the Sleeper’, courtesy of Viktor Wynd.

Over twelve episodes, the tapestry Marina and her interlocutors wove was inevitably patchy in places and completely blank in others; the implicit canon of the fantastic could only ever be a partial one. This event, the first of its kind attempted (but perhaps it will become a Close Readings/Swedenborg tradition) is an attempt to fill in all the gaps, live! Marina, Adam and special guest Edwin Frank, editorial director of New York Review Books and author of Stranger than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel will assemble a complete taxonomy of the genre over 75 minutes, or fail heroically, either way completing the series in the process. The recording will be released as the thirteenth episode of the podcast at the end of the year.

The event is taking place at The Swedenborg Hall (The Swedenborg Society, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH ), 7pm – 8.30pm, doors open at 6.30pm.

Tickets available here.