As I write, the May/June issue of StAR is winging its way to the printers. On the theme, “Truth in Fiction: The Art of the Novel”, it is packed with really top quality articles by some of today’s finest writers. Highlights of this issue include:

Exclusive and for the first time in English: Georges Bernanos on truth in fiction, on the role of the Catholic novelist, and on the work of Marcel Proust. Translated by J. C. Whitehouse.

Mitchell Kalpakgain on “Love, Lust, and Listlessness in the Literature of Greene, Percy, and Chekhov”.

Kevin P. Shields on “A Handful of Catholic Authors”, specifically J. K. Huysmans, Sigrid Undset, Rumer Godden, Flannery O’Connor, John Kennedy Toole, and Cormac McCarthy.

Victoria Nelson asks: “Don Quixote: Madman or Mystic?”

Benjamin Wiker examines “Jane Austen and the Moral Worlds of Sense and Sensibility”.

James V. Schall, S.J., looks at “Belloc on Wodehouse”.

Joseph Pearce interviews the celebrated artist and sculptor, John Collier, as part of a full colour art feature on Collier’s work.

Steve Terenzio compares Bram Soker’s classic novel with modern film adaptations in “Modernising Van Helsing: Sucking the Faith from Dracula’s Enemy”.

Joseph T. Stuart admires “Mauriac: The Man and the Novelist”.

Christopher Timothy discusses two of Chesterton’s novels as “a revolution of orthodoxy”.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker in his regular film column compares two film adaptations of Brideshead Revisited.

James Bemis continues his series on the Vatican’s list of 45 “great films” with Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il Gattopardo).

Susan Treacy devotes her regular music column to Niccolo Piccinni’s opera La buono figliuola, an adaptation of Samuel Rcihardson’s novel, Pamela.

Kevin O’Brien muses on “Fiction and the Faith”.

Fr. Benedict Kiely asks “what good are poets in barren times?”

Aaron Urbanczyk reviews Curtsinger’s Seascape Soulscape: Moby Dick.

Robert Merchant reviews Chosen: How Christ Sent Twenty-three Surpirsed Converts to Replant His Vineyard, edited by Donna Steichen.

Matthew P. Akers reviews Lorraine V. Murray’s first mystery novel, Death in the Choir.

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