Free Short Online Course: How to read a novel

Have you ever wondered how a novel is written? What are the building blocks of a good piece of fiction? Or are you just missing the Edinburgh International Book Festival? If so, the University’s highly popular free short course, How to read a novel, might be for you.

How to read a novel explores four of the main building blocks of modern fiction: plot, characterisation, dialogue, and setting using examples from a range of texts including the four novels shortlisted for the 2020 James Tait Black fiction prize.

This free four week course, starting on 3 August 2020, provides an insight into how to gain the most out of reading a novel and is designed for anyone who enjoys reading. You can enrol and join the discussion throughout August - no prerequisite knowledge is required. 

The course complements the Edinburgh International Book Festival and James Tait Black Fiction Awards which this year will both take place online.

The four novels shortlisted for the 2020 fiction James Tait Black Prize, and introduced in the course are:

• Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann (Galley Beggar Press)
• Travellers by Helon Habila (Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin)
• Sudden Traveller by Sarah Hall (Faber)
• Girl by Edna O’Brien (Faber).