How does great fiction work? Which techniques enable readers to lose themselves in plots and connect with characters?

On this episode, celebrated novelist and short story writer George Saunders shares the lessons he’s learned from Russian masters like Chekhov and Tolstoy.

The best literary works, Saunders tells Commonweal literary editor Anthony Domestico, are much more than something beautiful or entertaining. Like the liturgy, they’re also a way of loving.

For further reading:

• A Kindly Presence of Mind, Anthony Domestico
• A Moralist with an Ear, John Garvey
• Near Occasion, Dominic Preziosi