Last night I watched the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, starring Tilda Swinton as Alithea, a solitary-but-contented "narratologist," and Idris Elba as the Djinn she inadvertently releases from a bottle bought in an Istanbul shop. Because she's a scholar of stories, Alithea resists falling for the pitfalls inherent in stories of wishes while the … Continue reading Longing Against the Facts of History: ‘The Marriage Portrait’ by Maggie O’Farrell