Books book reviews Theodora Goss’s Excellent Letters From an Imaginary Country Explores Genre, Gender Politics, and Identity Alexis Ong reviews a “thoroughly inspiring, beautifully written corpus on the possibilities and politics of place.” By Alexis Ong | Published on January 14, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share The finest moments of Theodora Goss’s excellent Letters From An Imaginary Country are, for me, the stories that channel some of Borges’ most significant ideas into fresh works for a new century. But my favorite in this collection, which now lives in a place of honor in my head, is “Child-Empress of Mars,” which shows how a skilled prose stylist can have fun with pastiche and politics while lowkey committing the world’s most readable murder. It’s a delightful little inversion of the Barsoom series by (celebrated eugenicist) Edgar Rice Burroughs: A curious alien civilization celebrates the arrival of a Hero, secretly orchestrates his whole journey like a madcap version of The Truman Show, and immortalizes his deeds in art and poetry. It’s compact, clever, and deliciously funny, and shows Goss working, almost effortlessly, on a higher plane of short storycraft. Goss is probably best known for her Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club novels, a series based on reimagined classic 19th century literature, history, and horror through a feminist lens; this is my first time reading her work. There are several Athena-related tales in this collection, chronicling the lives of women whose fathers (or husbands) are household names: Frankenstein, Jekyll, Hyde, and so on.  For all my love of period literature and historical mysteries, this type of straightforward gendered reinvention has generally never appealed to me for many reasons, especially when the aesthetics and marketability of girl power and girlbossing have become profoundly lazy indicators of cultural relevance and substance (Enola Holmes, for instance, feels like decent fare for a YA audience, and only a YA audience). For a thoughtful adult, the shock value of “what if this man character… was… a woman?!” (or some such variation) simply does not land now in the same way it would if my heaving bosom was still encased in whalebone. Buy the Book Letters from an Imaginary Country Theodora Goss Buy Book Letters from an Imaginary Country Theodora Goss Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Goss’s approach to all of this is much more substantive than most, takes greater care to explore gender politics without oversimplification, and does an understated examination of legacy and trauma carried by the women connected to the aforementioned men. “The Secret Diary of Mina Harker” focuses on a young academic who gets a copy of the titular diary; it turns out, of course, that there was much more to the real Mina Harker than her role in Bram Stoker’s book. It’s a well-textured, engaging read, fortified by the savvy academic’s secret weapon: really good footnotes. It is not surprising that Goss, armed with four degrees including a JD and a doctorate, is ace at footnotes; for a reader on the fence, their tone and execution give the story a powerfully charismatic edge (in her notes, Goss says that the footnotes were unintentional!). What I really want to highlight are Goss’ works that draw directly from Borges’ landmark short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” In truest Tlönian form, “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology,” follows a small group of American academics who create a fictional country that gradually becomes real; the Borges hypothesis is openly referenced among Cimmeria’s creators as the country inserts itself into the fabric of their reality. The narrator marries a Cimmerian royal with a twin—a concept that Cimmerians understand as one soul in two bodies—and takes them both back to America, with consequences. It’s dense, layered, and packed with conflict over identity, authenticity, and diaspora politics in a way that leaves the brain humming long after the story is over. It’s also a striking companion to the more grounded diaspora-related stories in the collection, namely “Dora/Dóra: An Autobiography,” in which a girl from Soviet-era Hungary immigrates to the US, only to find out that a version of herself remains growing up in Hungary.  “Dora/Dóra: An Autobiography” feels like the most personal read of the lot (also in the running is “Letters From an Imaginary Country,” whose epistolary form feels imbued with the kind of existential despair and bleak matter-of-factness that one finds in exhausted, tenured academic communications), and while set against the dual backdrop of Hungary/America, carries a universal thread for anyone who has been split from their roots and transplanted into strange new soil. Jo Walton says as much in her introduction, but the simplicity of Goss’s approach to the idea of diaspora identities—as if no one has really, fully explored, why not two of them?—makes it all the more striking; Walton says the impact of this story haunts her, and now it haunts me. “Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology,” is the charming sibling to “Cimmeria…” and comes from the point of view of high school friends who create a country named Pellargonia. It’s a close second for my favorite in the collection, brimming with earnestness and young neuroses that leap off the page—the perfect distillation of all that excited, sardonic back-and-forth that dominates so much of teenage camaraderie under fire. It took a second to get into the rhythm of the piece, with Goss making liberal use of interjections to get that manic energetic texture going, but by the end I’m champing at the bit to see this made into a 1990s-era adventure blockbuster about these kids dealing with the consequences of their now-very-real creation (I realized in pondering similar vibes that I started thinking of Jumanji—the original Robin Williams one—and you know what? Jumanji was a great movie).  If fairy tales are Theodora Goss’ bread and butter, she’s taken those basic universal ingredients and made them into one-of-a-kind rétes (Hungarian strudel-type pastries that pop up in the footnotes; the sweet cheese ones sound divine). This one’s for the Borges sickos and deconstructionists who also appreciate the roots of fairy tales in anthropology, for people who delight in seeing a weirder side of their favorite literary greats (“Pug” is for the Jane Austen lovers out there). In particular, her exploration of mirroring and doubling is so impactful precisely because of its elegance and simplicity; an offshoot of this is how the doubling and reflecting (mainly in “Cimmeria,” and some of “Dora/Dóra”) also includes some truly novel, engaging explorations of postcolonial psychology. All this to say is that Letters from an Imaginary Country is an analytical treasure trove that I’m going to take my time unpacking, because my god, it’s so rich. What Goss has here is a thoroughly inspiring, beautifully-written corpus on the possibilities and politics of place, and I’m looking forward to reading more of her work. [end-mark] Letters from an Imaginary Country is published by Tachyon Publications.Read an excerpt. The post Theodora Goss’s Excellent <i>Letters From an Imaginary Country</i> Explores Genre, Gender Politics, and Identity appeared first on Reactor.