First Fiction

A lively, insightful tour through the origins of storytelling, First Fiction explores the world’s earliest novels and the cultures that produced them, revealing how writers across time first began shaping narrative as we know it.

With clarity and wit, Jane Smiley moves from ancient Greece and Rome to early Japan and beyond, uncovering the themes, voices, and innovations that still echo in modern fiction—making the distant past feel unexpectedly familiar and alive.