J.K. Rowling‘s new book has critics questioning if the novel is actually semi-autobiographical.
She’s used to writing about magic and fantasy, but many think Rowling’s new book, The Ink Black Heart (written as Robert Galbraith) has more than a little dose of reality in it.
It is the sixth book in her Cormoran Strike series, in which popular cartoonist Edie Ledwell gets heat for being racist, ableist, and – what really got people’s attention – transphobic.
As many people know, J.K. Rowling faced backlash in 2019 when she supported researcher Maya Forstater, who lost her job due to making transphobic tweets. Later, she mocked the phrase “people who menstruate.”
Rowling stated on a podcast that the book was written prior to any of these events. “I said to my husband, ‘I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,’ but it genuinely wasn’t,” she said. “The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened.”
The book has been heavily criticized for defending transphobia, as well as its length. At 1,024 pages, it is considerably longer than Dune by Frank Herbert and the encyclopedic novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
For more on this story, please read the article by NPR.org’s Rachel Treisman.