The Happy Reader Issue 18

The little magazine that offers the most bang for your buck!

A collaboration between Penguin Classics and Fantastic Man, the concept of The Happy Reader is simple: the first half of the magazine is a long-form interview with a notable book fanatic and the second half explores one classic Book of the Season from an array of surprising and invigorating angles

On the cover this time, the fashion goddess Diane Von Furstenberg, once described by newsweek as ‘the most remarkable woman since Coco Chanel’. Taking in reading, writing, publishing and collecting in a freewheeling interview with our editor-at-large, Seb Emina, we bring you dispatches from the library of fashion’s No.1 royalty.

The Book of the Season, Nella Larsen’s novel PASSING, prompts stories on race, code-switching and the whirlwind of Harlem in the 1920s. This novel caused a major stir in 1929, only to then be forgotten and for its author to effectively vanish. It’s now recognised as one of the greatest books of the Harlem Renaissance. Contributors include: Willy Ndatira, Awol Erizku, Morgan Jenkins, Roisin Kiberd, Gabrielle Bellot, Wayde Compton and Georgina Lawton