In a recent review for 4Columns, Brian Dillon discusses Civic Storytelling: The Rise of Shorts Forms and the Agency of Literature by Florian Fuchs. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Civic Storytelling is a scholarly exploration of fragments and other literary genres distinguished by their brevity: proverbs, fairy tales, novellas, Joycean epiphanies… [it] argues that some short forms have been especially directed toward the immediate ‘lifeworld’ of the reader. These are types of writing that are not just about the world they join, but are meant to make something happen there. They are part of a long history whose origins Fuchs locates in the classical ars topica.”