The Whale Belly

What does Alphra Behn’s Oroonoko teach us about writing fiction? It’s considered a forerunner of the modern novel, the latter beginning with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. One obvious reason it isn’t considered a novel itself is its relatively short length, but what also separates it from the form is the distance the reader is held from…

I was scanning the olives when I heard what I first thought were the shopping aisles collapsing like dominos. I winced, then whipped my head around expecting to see something like a tsunami of groceries swelling towards me, but everything in my visual field was absurdly stable. Still, the grinding and smashing of glass and…