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Often compared to Orwell and Kafka, he walked a political tightrope with works that offered veiled criticism of his totalitarian state.

Joy Williams distills much learning — from philosophy, religion and history — into 99 stories about the guy who takes your soul.

The writer and director, famous for making theatergoers squirm in their seats, says he feels most at home wherever the outsiders gather in his native city.

Ikbal and Idries Shah delighted London society with their romantic tales of the East. The only problem? They made them up.

Nearly 2,400 years ago, Plato worried that stories could corrupt susceptible minds. Moral panics over fiction have been common ever since.

The journalist Richard Behar communicated extensively with the disgraced financier. His rigorous if irreverent book acknowledges his subject’s humanity.

The books in this month’s column have something in common: unforgettable main characters.

In a memoir and a novel, the characters deal with grief by singing in front of strangers.

In Fernanda Trías’s novel “Pink Slime,” one woman holds out in her town after an environmental disaster, trapped in a limbo of indecision.

In “All the Worst Humans,” Phil Elwood recounts a career spent engineering headlines for some of the world’s villains.