His earliest fiction was written for children.
The confusion of ethnicity and sexuality is apparent in Sacher-Masoch's very earliest fiction.
At first glance, "Billancourt Tales," a freshly translated collection of Berberova's earliest fiction, seems unlikely to bear comparison with anything as fine as "The Resurrection of Mozart".
After his death, a number of unpublished works came to light, most notably the novella Khadji-Murat (1904; Hadji-Murad), a brilliant narrative about the Caucasus reminiscent of Tolstoy's earliest fiction.
Updike's earliest fiction was published 50 years ago; his output (an industrial term suggestive of powerful engines) -- novels, short stories, essays, criticism, poems, children's books, a play, a memoir -- comes to 54 volumes, with who knows what lavishness lies ahead.
Instead there is a rote retailing of the sort of adolescent-minded obsession with bodily functions that surfaced in his earliest fiction, and inane, pointless wordplay that seems like a parody of his much-vaunted fascination with language.
Here, Ms. Lessing's wonderfully evocative sense of place -- reminiscent of that displayed in her earliest fiction -- kicks in, providing us with a visceral sense of Sylvia's arduous day-to-day life.
"It is not his greatest work, but it is the earliest fiction manuscript we have, his first published novel, relatively readable and still funny, and these are precious qualities.
His earliest fictions, whether short stories or full-length novels, were westerns, because, he later confessed, he liked cowboy movies and he hoped to sell to Hollywood.
His early fiction, though mordant, is often comic beyond compare.
Oyeyemi's earlier fiction is similarly inclined toward the fantastical.
