Big Ideas Simply Explained - The Literature Book

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 299 See also: Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Ficciones 245 ■ Hopscotch 274–75 ■ The French Lieutenant’s Woman 291 ■ Midnight’s Children 300–05 Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s is fractured by further metafictional Italo Calvino Night a Traveler is acknowledged reflection: the reader is questioned as one of the metafiction novel’s about their reaction to the book, Italo Calvino was born in finest modern incarnations, with and thereby invoked as one of the Cuba in 1923 and was two a mesmerizing narrative plot that novel’s protagonists. when he moved to Italy with not only challenges traditional his parents, who were narrative forms but also asks the A distinct structural form runs returning home. Having reader to interrogate the actual through the novel. Each chapter settled in Turin during World process of reading. is in two parts: the first is written War II, Calvino fought for the in second-person form (“you”) and Italian Resistance, before As with the finest examples of concerned with the very process turning to journalism at the metafictional texts, the opening of reading; the second part, being war’s end, writing for the words of If on a Winter’s Night the beginning of a new book, is communist paper L’Unità. Not a Traveler immediately demand seemingly an original narrative. long after the war, in 1947, his that the reader undertake a The influence of the Oulipo— first novel, The Path to the process preparatory to actually a group of French writers who Spiders’ Nests, was published. commencing the “story”: “You experimented with new and are about to begin reading Italo demanding literary forms, which Calvino left the Italian Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s Calvino joined in 1968—is evident Communist Party in 1957, night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. in these structural constraints. after the Soviet invasion of Dispel every other thought. Let the Hungary. In 1964, he married world around you fade.” A narrative maze Esther Judith Singer, resettled If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler in Rome, and focused on the The self-reflection by Calvino introduces the reader to imaginary short stories that would form in the first sentence is a typically writers of fictional works that do the collection Cosmicomics. metafictional device. Half the not exist, to fabricated biographies, first chapter is a guide to “you” and even to countries that are Calvino moved with preparing for the very real task of invented—all are common traits his family to Paris in 1968, reading this book; it is a somewhat of metafiction. The reader is where he joined the group mesmeric world—reminiscent of guided into a narrative maze of innovative writers known the metafictional playfulness of by a masterful storyteller—one as Oulipo, short for Ouvroir Jorge Luis Borges’ work—as though who delights in playing eccentric de littérature potentielle Calvino has some insight into the postmodern games. The experience (“workshop of potential processes of each reader’s mind as is utterly captivating. ■ literature”). He died in 1985 they embark on reading his book. from a cerebral haemorrhage. A fantasy of fictions One reads alone, even Other key works After the meditative beginning, in another’s presence. Calvino proceeds to plunge the If on a Winter’s Night 1957 The Baron in the Trees reader into what appears to be a 1959 The Nonexistent Knight more traditional narrative plot. A a Traveler 1965 Cosmicomics character (“you”) keeps starting 1972 Invisible Cities a book, but due to various circumstances cannot continue; in his quest to finish the books he meets a female reader who he (“you”) falls in love with. He also discovers a conspiracy to render all books false and meaningless. This rather strange narrative tale

ONE LIFETO UNDERSTAND JUST THE WORLDYOU HAVE TO SWALLOW MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN (1981), SALMAN RUSHDIE



302 MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN IN CONTEXT M agic realism is a literary Memory’s truth … selects, style in which magical or eliminates, alters, exaggerates, FOCUS surreal elements appear Magic realism goes global in an otherwise realistic and minimizes, glorifies, and traditional narrative structure and vilifies also; but in the end it BEFORE setting. Originally used to describe 1935 A Universal History of the work of certain German artists creates its own reality. Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges in the 1920s, the term was then Midnight’s Children is published, often considered applied to literature, in particular the first work of magic realism. to the works emanating from Latin the strange phenomena seem America in the mid-20th century. completely normal. Plots are often 1959 Günter Grass writes The The Cuban Alejo Carpentier and labyrinthine, and the world may Tin Drum, founding magic the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges be depicted in exaggerated detail realism in German literature. are often considered the precursors or color, adding to the surreal of the form, while the Colombian complexity of the novel’s vision. 1967 One Hundred Years of Gabriel García Márquez brought In some respects, magic realism Solitude by Gabriel García it to its peak in the boom years requires the reader to take on a Márquez takes magic realism of the 1960s and ’70s. From Latin more active role than in other forms to new heights of wonder. America, magic realism spread of fiction, because the elements of around the world, with a number the novel are disconcerting, and AFTER of American and European writers may impact the sense of reality 1982 Chilean-American author adopting the style, or elements of it, experienced by the reader. Isabel Allende’s first novel, The in their work. In Salman Rushdie’s House of the Spirits, becomes Midnight’s Children, magic realism Much magic realism also a global best seller. merges with postcolonial themes contains a metafictional aspect, and Indian references to give the which makes the reader question 1984 British writer Angela novel its unique flavor. Carter writes the magic realist Nights at the Circus. Aspects of magic Magic realist writers depict bizarre, 2002 Haruki Murakami inexplicable, or overtly supernatural publishes the dreamlike novel events alongside ordinary events Kafka on the Shore. in the real world in such a way that Salman Rushdie Salman Rushdie was born in great controversy when Iranian Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947 leader Ayatollah Khomeini to Muslim parents of Kashmiri issued a fatwa (religious ruling) descent, who moved to Karachi in calling for the assassination of Pakistan soon after the partition Rushdie for blasphemy. Rushdie of India. He was educated in India went into hiding in Britain. In and Britain, attending Cambridge 2000, he settled in New York University, before becoming an and has continued to write on advertising copywriter. Midnight’s matters of religion and society. Children, Rushdie’s second novel, He has been married four times brought him worldwide attention, and was knighted in 2007. winning the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Best of the Bookers in Other key works 2008, and establishing Rushdie as a leading light of the Indian 1983 Shame diaspora. The appearance of 1988 The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses (1988) drew 2005 Shalimar the Clown

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 303 See also: The Tin Drum 270–71 ■ One Hundred Years of Solitude 280–85 ■ A Suitable Boy 314–17 ■ The House of the Spirits 334 ■ Love in the Time of Cholera 335 Magic realism goes global In the first half of the From the mid-20th Postcolonial, hybrid layers 20th century, Latin century, the style is deepen the scope of the American writers such named magic realism as Jorge Luis Borges lead and gains popularity across form, as ever more the construction of a the globe, from Colombia to complex and fantastical new style of literature Germany to Japan. examples are offered by late that merges the realistic 20th-century figures such with the fantastical. as Salman Rushdie. the way in which they read the take place as monumental political India. In the opening lines of the work. Metafiction often includes a shifts are happening with the book Saleem recounts: “I was born self-referential narrator, and stories removal of British authority over in the city of Bombay … on August within stories: both devices are India after some 200 years. 15th, 1947. … On the stroke of present in Midnight’s Children. midnight..” As Saleem says, “at the These manipulations of reality— At the beginning of the novel, precise instant of India’s arrival at magic tricks within the narrative— the main protagonist Saleem Sinai independence, I tumbled forth into make demands on the reader and is approaching his 31st birthday the world.” He then goes on to ensure their role is an active one. and is convinced that he is dying. explain, in broad hints that cannot The book is ostensibly the story of yet be fully understood by the The birth of a nation Saleem’s life—as well as the lives reader, the premise of the book: “I Politically, magic realist texts of his parents and grandparents— had been mysteriously handcuffed often embody an implicit critical narrated by Saleem himself to his to history, my destinies indissolubly position against the dominant companion, Padma; but it is also chained to those of my country.” ❯❯ ruling elite, and as such they the story of the creation of modern are generally subversive in their stance. In Midnight’s Children, the fusion of Rushdie’s magic realism with postcolonial issues weaves new and vibrant threads into an already complex genre. Rushdie sets the work partly in the vast, sprawling city of Bombay (now Mumbai)—once a jewel in Britain’s colonial crown and now at a crucial moment of history. Events Mumbai is a densely populated city, teeming with all forms of human life. Rushdie uses rich, vivid language to evoke its myriad elements—squalor, beauty, pathos, despair, and humor.

304 MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN India’s Independence Day on historical events of India and This gift allows him to discover August 15, 1947, was an occasion for Pakistan, represents his attempt that there were a total of 1,001 celebration, yet chaos soon struck, as to understand all the elements “Midnight Children,” who were Muslims and Hindus migrated between that make him who he is. born in the hour after midnight on the new nations of India and Pakistan. India’s Independence Day. They all The many and the one have marvelous superpowers, with As the narrative unfolds, it soon Saleem is marked by his large, those who were born closest to the becomes clear that every political cucumber-like, and constantly actual second of partition having event appears to be driven by— running nose. At the age of 10, the greatest powers. By the time or be driving—one or more events he discovers that he has telepathic Saleem discovers their existence, in the life of Saleem. powers (a not uncommon trait 420 of the children have already of magic realist protagonists). died, and only 581 remain. Saleem’s arrival at the exact moment of India’s independence … perhaps, if one wishes Saleem befriends another of the is wildly celebrated by the Indian to remain an individual children, Parvati, who can perform media. India’s first prime minister, magic; another of their number, Jawaharlal Nehru, sends him a in the midst of the Shiva, who is at once Saleem’s letter congratulating him on the teeming multitudes, counterpart and nemesis, has “happy accident” of his moment of incredibly strong knees and a gift birth, and identifies him with the one must make for warfare. Parvati and Shiva nation—a role that Saleem adopts, oneself grotesque. are named after Hindu gods, seeing himself as an important Midnight’s Children thereby illustrating the religious historical figure. His life is seen as underpinning of India as a cultural closely tied to the fate of the newly entity and adding a further layer of born India; the bloodshed that allegory to the novel. ensues directly after partition and the fierce conflicts that occur over Using his telepathic powers to the following years are echoed broadcast their thoughts, Saleem by the concurrent violence within arranges a nightly “conference” of his own family. Saleem’s narration the Midnight Children. There of his family’s story, and of the are the same number of children— 581—as there are members in the lower house of the Indian parliament, adding political symbolism to their meetings. Their conference is a model of successful pluralism, reflecting the way the new Indian government sought to collate the disparate elements of its vast country. Rushdie implies that troubles arise when such multiplicity becomes suppressed. The rush of history As the tale of Midnight’s Children unfolds, Rushdie shifts his story across the subcontinent, employing the narrative of his characters’ tales to tell the history of India, and so too of Pakistan and Kashmir. In 1962, border tensions between China and India erupted into war; it was short-lived, but

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 305 India was defeated and in the Who what am I? Gandhi will continue to die at the novel, public morale “drains away.” My answer: I am the sum wrong time.” In this novel, the truth In Saleem’s life, as conflict with is malleable, subjective, and far China intensifies, his nose gets total of everything that from absolute. ever more stuffed until, on the day went before me, of all I the Chinese army halts its advance, have been seen done, of The end of the book returns to he has an operation to drain his everything done-to-me. the present day, as Saleem finishes sinuses. Once again, the events in Midnight’s Children telling his story to Padma. Despite Saleem’s life seem to be entwined his own prophecy that his body will with the wider events of history. and a poor Hindu woman who died crack apart, he agrees to marry her in childbirth. So, paradoxically, the on his 31st birthday—which is also However, with his nose finally “destiny” he is fulfilling was that Independence Day. To the last, his clear, Saleem finds that he has of another child; yet because he history is intermingled with India’s. lost his mind-reading powers. In was brought up as Saleem Sinai, compensation, for the first time he considers that that is who he is: Magical mystery tour in his life he has a sense of smell. it is his truth. For the reader, Midnight’s Children And this itself is another kind of is a complex and mesmerizing superpower, since he can detect Even historical facts cannot be journey, a mystery tour through the not only smells but also emotions regarded as unassailable. Saleem back streets to the heart of modern and lies—“the heady but quick- notes that he recorded the wrong India. Time speeds up and slows fading perfume of new love, and date for the death of Mahatma down or is nonlinear. Fate is also the deeper, longer-lasting Gandhi, and yet he is content to frequently invoked, futures are pungency of hate.” let the error stand: “in my India, foretold, prophecies are listened to and expected to come true. Memory, truth, destiny The bizarre and the magical are The novel is a kaleidoscope of commonplace and real. Weaving Saleem’s memories, and yet the together all these elements of distinction between true and magic realism, Rushdie creates untrue is never clear, even making a dense and vibrant tapestry full allowances for the outright magical of violence, politics, and wonder elements that form part of the to tell the tale of the early years book’s tapestry. Some characters of independent India. ■ are overt liars, while in many cases Saleem admits that he has embroidered certain things in order to convey an emotional truth rather than a strictly factual one. Early on in the narrative, Saleem confesses that he was switched at birth with another baby who was born at the same time. This baby was Shiva, while Saleem’s real parents, far from being the relatively rich Muslims who brought him up, are a colonial Englishman, William Methwold, Saleem’s friends Shiva and Parvati are named respectively after the great Hindu god of destruction and the goddess of love, and these attributes are reflected in their roles in the book.

306 IN CONTEXT FOWCWRFLAAEATSSEIHMIOANAINNGTNOEGFYTTROOHHEUWEIERRNNDSGEESRLESFLHFIP FOCUS Contemporary African- BELOVED (1987), TONI MORRISON American literature BEFORE 1953 James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain captures the pain of life in a racist society. 1976 Alex Haley’s novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family traces family history back to slavery. 1982 Alice Walker reveals the hardships of African-American women’s lives in the 1930s in The Color Purple. AFTER 1997 Junot Díaz’s sizzling prose paints a picture of the Dominican-American diaspora in his story collection Drown. 1998 Edwidge Danticat recounts the 1937 massacre of Haitian cane workers in The Farming of Bones. B y the end of the 20th century, African-American writing had grown from the slave narratives of 150 years earlier into a major canon of American literature. From educational works such as Booker T. Washington’s Up From Slavery (1901), through the vibrant literature of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance, it reached a high point with Ralph Ellison’s philosophical novel Invisible Man (1952). During the late 1950s and the 1960s, young black writers were fueled by the civil rights and Black Power movements. Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved emerged during a new flourishing of black writing that began in the

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 307 See also: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 126–27 ■ Their Eyes Were Watching God 235 ■ Invisible Man 259 ■ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 291 ■ Roots: The Saga of an American Family 333 1970s, when authors such as Alex Haley, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker sought new ways to explore race, identity, and the legacies of slavery. This affirmation of the power of black writing has continued into the present day with “hyphenated American” authors, including Dominican-American Junot Díaz and Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat. Memory and history Inspired by the real-life case of Freed slaves, such as these men In her early novels—The Bluest Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave photographed during the American Eye, Sula, and Song of Solomon— who killed her baby after she Civil War, were technically free, but they Morrison focused on the African- was recaptured by marshals in were still affected by segregation and American experience within her Cincinnati, Ohio, Beloved is a the psychological aftermath of slavery. own lifetime, offering an original piece of social history with a strong voice on themes such as moral and political agenda, but it undermines reader to engage with a retelling spiritual revival, white standards expectations of its genre with its of history that is built on an easy of beauty, and sisterhood. Her use of expressionist fantasy and intimacy with the supernatural. Pulitzer Prize-winning novel rhetorical stylization. Morrison also Beloved is regarded as one of the asserts her roots and her pride in The book begins in 1873 in most influential works in African- African folklore by incorporating Cincinnati, Ohio. Slavery has American literature. Dedicated to the cultural focus, origins, and been abolished but racism is still the “Sixty Million and more” who mythology of black Americans rife. Sethe, a former slave, and her are believed to have died on slave into the novel. She employs the 18-year-old daughter Denver live in ships and in captivity, it reclaims rhythms and speech patterns a home haunted by a spiteful baby the ascendancy of memory and of African-American discourse, spirit named 124, after the number history in black identity, resolving not as a simple pastiche of black of their house on Bluestone Road. symbolically issues that are still speech but in a lyrical, incantatory Sethe’s two sons ran away years swept aside in present-day reality. voice, often making use of poetic ago and her mother-in-law, Baby repetitions at the beginning and Suggs, is dead. The arrival of Paul Not a house in the the end of interior monologues: D, who lived as a slave with Sethe country ain’t packed to “Beloved is my sister,” “She’s mine, at Sweet Home, Kentucky, starts Beloved. She’s mine,” “I am Beloved a process that unlocks the past. its rafters with some and she is mine.” The author invents dead Negro’s grief. a feminine style of narrative built The past in the present around motherhood, sisterhood, Morrison’s time-traveling story slips Beloved Afro-Christian revivalism, tribal back and forth between Sethe’s rites, and ghosts. She asks the present and events 20 years earlier, when slaves fleeing north ❯❯

308 BELOVED were subject to fugitive slave laws Slavery is a psychological as well as a physical condition. that allowed owners to cross into While slaves are bound in literal chains—shackles, gags, iron free states to reclaim their property. neck collars—the psychological chains that Sethe is left with Piece by piece a story emerges. as an ex-slave mean that every area of her life is infected. Sethe and her husband, Halle, planned a break for freedom, unable Slaves were stripped of Slavery enforced to endure their treatment at the their humanity and silence: by recounting her hands of the new governor of Sweet memories, Sethe confronts Home, known as “schoolteacher.” treated like animals: the atrocities in her past. Heavily pregnant, Sethe sent her Sethe struggles to build two small boys and baby daughter on ahead. When Halle failed to a sense of self. arrive at their agreed meeting place, Sethe traveled on alone, The bonds of slavery The suppression of all giving birth to her new daughter restricted movement: aspects of life under on the way, with the help of a white Sethe is psychologically slavery led to fear and girl called Amy Denver. After unable to move on self-repression, which reaching safety in Cincinnati, she hinders Sethe’s progress found temporary happiness with from the past. her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, a as a free woman. freed slave. A horrific event—the details of which are revealed later in the novel—is triggered by the arrival of schoolteacher with a posse to take Sethe and her children back to the farm. Moral complexity and segregation. The absurd notion memories are the emotional shards Good and evil are not binary of “good” and “bad” slave owners that make self-determination so opposites in this story. At its core is addressed by Paul D as he hard, and which are drawn out as is a terrible action committed out reexamines life at Sweet Home a psychological necessity. Morrison of profound love. The supposedly under the benign Mr. Garner: on suggests that black Americans “free” society that sympathetic other farms male slaves were can begin living in the present white folks offer to released slaves gelded to make them manageable, only by confronting the past. The is built on unchallenged racism but Garner’s men “are men.” After fragments of earlier events in Garner’s death, the much harsher Sethe’s and Paul D’s lives slowly I never talked about regime instituted by schoolteacher come to the surface throughout it. Not to a soul. enabled them to know the real the novel, coalescing into a horrific condition of their slavery for the account of slavery conditions in the Sang it sometimes, but first time, and Paul D realizes they South—tales that are too terrible I never told a soul. had only been men on home soil by to relate as a consecutive narrative. Beloved virtue of Garner’s protection. “One step off that ground and they were “Rememory” is the invented trespassers among the human race.” word that Sethe uses for the kind of remembering that takes former Remembered pain slaves deeper into the past to the Self-repression brought on by years appalling places that are always of sociopolitical repression is a waiting to reclaim them. Sethe’s major theme in the novel. Buried rememories include the time that schoolteacher instructed his

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 309 nephew to list her human and personification of Sethe’s guilt, Toni Morrison animal characteristics, and the both destroyer and enabler, who occasion when his boys pinned her coaxes out stories that have been Toni Morrison is one of the down and drank her breast milk. too difficult to articulate. Her own America’s most powerful Paul D keeps his memories in a story in child-speak recalls the literary voices, and the first rusted “tobacco tin buried in his cramped hold of slave ships and African-American woman to chest where a red heart used to be.” bodies tipped into the sea. Beloved win the Nobel Prize in Baby Suggs remembers the births seems to embody the suffering Literature (1993), among her of seven children from different of the 60 million and more, but numerous other awards. Born fathers and losing them all. nothing is certain. Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 into a working-class Ohio Beloved The true element to be “beloved” family, she grew up with a The embodiment of the hurtful is a sense of self. Reclaiming self, love of reading, music, and past is Beloved, a young woman a central theme in Morrison’s work, folklore. She earned a BA from in unspoiled shoes and a silk dress is an imperative as there is nothing Howard University and an MA who insinuates herself into the in the landscape for ex-slaves to from Cornell. She was married household after Paul D drives own. Robbed of normal family life, for a short time to Jamaican away the baby poltergeist. This mated, traded, and their offspring architect Harold Morrison, attention-seeking woman with sold on, slaves are defined by with whom she had two sons. baby-smooth skin is violently their enslavement. Starting with Morrison wrote her first four selfish and has an inexplicable these first tentative steps taken novels while working as an knowledge of Sethe’s past. Sethe is in freedom, the events in the novel editor in New York. Her fifth, slow to recognize what for Denver presage the long road ahead. In the Beloved, was widely acclaimed is obvious. Beloved is a revenant (a 1950s the protagonist of Ellison’s and made into a movie. From person who has died but come back Invisible Man was still in search 1989 to 2006 Morrison held to life): Sethe’s dead baby grown to of a self, and we can hear the first a professorship at Princeton womanhood and craving the love notes of Martin Luther King’s civil University. In 2005 she wrote she has been denied. She is the rights rhetoric in Baby Suggs’ the libretto for Margaret sermon in the forest: “in this here Garner, an opera based on the African folklore traditions connect place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, story that inspired Beloved. with the American present in Beloved: laughs; flesh that dances on bare She continues to write, and the character of Beloved herself appears feet in grass. Love it.” Pride in to speak against censorship to embody the belief that the dead race, sex, and self is the healing and repression of history. return to Earth in the form of spirits. medicine, because, as Paul D tells Sethe, “you your best thing.” ■ Other key works 1970 The Bluest Eye 1977 Song of Solomon 2008 A Mercy 2012 Home

310 HWEEARVEENINATNUDREMAORITLH RED SORGHUM (1987), MO YAN IN CONTEXT I n the xungen, or “roots- whose color symbolizes vitality, seeking,” movement that arose bloodshed, and stability. Set in FOCUS in Chinese literature during northwest China’s rural Shandong “Roots-seeking” (xungen) the mid-1980s, writers tried to Province, the book follows one movement reconnect with folk culture. The family from 1923 to 1976, through movement took its name from a the Japanese occupation, the BEFORE 1985 essay by Han Shaogong, “The Communist Revolution, and the 1981 “A Preliminary Enquiry Roots of Literature,” which called horrors of the Cultural Revolution. into the Techniques of Modern on writers to seek out forgotten Fiction,” an essay by future sources of creativity. While some As a true “roots-seeking” novel, Nobel Prize-winner Gao xungen authors examined China’s Red Sorghum incorporates mythical Xingjian, lays the groundwork ethnic minorities, others took a and folkloric elements, and its break for the xungen movement. fresh look at the indigenous values with the chronological structures within Taoism and Confucianism. that accompanied the realistic 1985 Lhasa-based Zhaxi tradition gave new energy to (Tashi) Dawa’s story “Tibet: For decades, Chinese writing Chinese literary modernism. ■ A Soul Knotted on a Leather had been on a strict diet of realism. Thong” draws upon Tibetan In harking back to folk influences, Lines of scarlet figures shuttled folk culture and traditions. the xungen authors also introduced along the sorghum stalks to elements of the supernatural. The weave a vast human tapestry. 1985 Wang Anyi’s novella Bao new work brought Chinese writers Red Sorghum Town minutely depicts harsh to the attention of the literary world village life in northern China. again for the first time in decades. 1985 Beijing writer Ah Cheng Redefining modernity publishes Romances of the One of the movement’s most Landscape, describing border famous books is Red Sorghum areas far from “civilization.” by Guan Moye (1955– ), better known by his pen name Mo Yan AFTER (“Don’t Speak”). Red Sorghum is 1996 In A Dictionary of Maqiao named after a rare wheat crop, Han Shaogong uses etymology and vignettes to examine life See also: Romance of the Three Kingdoms 66–67 ■ Call to Arms 222 ■ in the Cultural Revolution. Playing for Thrills 336

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 311 YYAAOOSSUUTTOOCCRROOYYUULLLLDDIIKKNOEENOTTLTHHYTIISSFEE.LELL OSCAR AND LUCINDA (1988), PETER CAREY IN CONTEXT A ustralian writers have faith—an ungainly, uncomfortable attracted international individual, brought up in an English FOCUS interest since the middle seaside community. The latter is an Australian writing of the 20th century. Novelists have independent-minded young woman, moved from traditional themes such who grew up in an “earth-floored hut BEFORE as “mateship” (the egalitarian bonds in New South Wales” surrounded 1957 Patrick White—one of forged by mutual reliance in a harsh by the works of Dickens, Balzac, the most influential modern environment), national pride, and and other literary greats. Becoming Australian writers—uses rural survival, to create works that an heiress after her mother’s death, religious symbolism in Voss, a are provocative and often disturbing. Lucinda buys an old glass factory in story of a visionary explorer’s The areas explored by these books Sydney, where she is regarded as encounter with Australia in include fantasy, beliefs, and odd because of her aloofness and the mid-19th century. personal relationships, while being strange behavior. rooted in the Australian experience. 1982 Thomas Keneally’s The pair meet onboard a ship Schindler’s Ark mixes fact One of the leading writers and traveling from Britain to Australia and fiction to explore the creators of this modern genre is and from then on their lives are impact of an individual on Australian novelist and former interlinked, coming together in an historical events. advertising copywriter, Peter Carey extraordinary project to build and (1943– ). His Oscar and Lucinda, transport a glass church through AFTER which won the Booker Prize in the Australian bush. 2001 Peter Carey is awarded 1988, is a rich and complex novel a second Booker Prize for his set in the mid-19th century, with While on one level Oscar and novel The True History of the events taking place in England Lucinda is a historical novel, it Kelly Gang, an imaginative and New South Wales. is also steeped in fantasy and take on the legendary unreality—Peter Carey described Australian hero Ned Kelly. Guilt and faith it as “a science fiction of the past.” The protagonists of the book Its rich and complex characters, 2006 Indigenous writer are Oscar Hopkins and Lucinda descriptive storytelling, and broad- Alexis Wright explores the Leplastrier. The former is a young ranging themes of faith, belief, and dispossession of Aboriginal clergyman who grapples with his sexuality ensured its influence on lands by white people in her modern Australian literature. ■ novel Carpentaria. See also: The Three Musketeers 122–23 ■ The Lagoon and Other Stories 286

312 MCTAHOUHEMLISTOMTIUCIOTTURMCLITEOCNUMARTLEAVOLIFSIAON, OMEROS (1990), DEREK WALCOTT IN CONTEXT H istory and memory have Odyssey and Iliad, while also always been a part of celebrating the landscape, people, FOCUS the Caribbean literary and language of St. Lucia. The Caribbean writing landscape, and writing from the poem follows Dante’s The Divine region has highlighted the struggle Comedy in its use of terza rima, BEFORE to find a truthful voice that reflects a three-line poetic form, or tercet, 1949 Cuban writer Alejo the reality of alienation in a colonial in which the second line rhymes Carpentier publishes his novel situation. Caribbean authors— with the first and third lines of The Kingdom of this World, contingent on who their islands’ the next tercet. At the same time, which negotiates Caribbean previous colonial owners were— Walcott honors the tone and rhythm history and culture. write in Spanish, French, English, of the local Caribbean patois from or Dutch. Each writer negotiates the very beginning of the poem. 1953 In the Castle of My the known fragments of his or her While some of the characters’ Skin, by Barbadian writer own history within the particular names, such as Achille and Hector, George Lamming, is one of the postcolonial situation. are classical in origin, they are region’s key autobiographical also not unusual names for novels and wins the Somerset Intertwined narratives St. Lucian fishermen. Maugham award in 1957. A towering figure in this literary landscape is St. Lucian author Omeros interweaves time and 1960 In Return to My Native Derek Walcott (1930–). In 1992 he place to interrogate topics such as Land, Martinican poet Aimé was awarded the Nobel Prize for slavery, American-Indian genocide, Césaire discusses négritude, Literature for “a poetic oeuvre of and expatriates in the Caribbean. or black consciousness, as great luminosity, sustained by a Walcott fuses stories from Africa, a form of identity for people historical vision, the outcome of the US, London, and Ireland with whose ancestors had been a multicultural commitment.” St. Lucian events to create a mosaic dislocated from Africa. narrative of collective memory. Walcott’s magnificent and AFTER hugely ambitious 300-page poem Island life, memories of Africa, 1995 To Us, All Flowers Are Omeros (the Greek name for Homer) and the vestiges of colonialism Roses: Poems confirms Lorna endorses the judges’ claim. Epic remain the focus for Caribbean Goodison as one of the finest in length, it references Homer’s writers as they attempt to make Jamaican poets of the sense of their disjointed histories. ■ postwar generation. See also: Iliad 26–33 ■ Odyssey 54 ■ The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■ Ulysses 214–21 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 313 IVFEERLGTELOEFTHFRAELNOZNY THE AMERICAN PSYCHO (1991), BRET EASTON ELLIS IN CONTEXT T he explicit treatment of a yuppie and a homicidal sociopath. taboo topics such as He inhabits a morally bankrupt, FOCUS rape, incest, pedophilia, drug-dependent world that revolves Transgressive fiction drugs, and violence characterizes around designer clothes and trangressive fiction, a genre that exclusive clubs and restaurants; he BEFORE came to the fore in the 1990s. expounds his love of a rock band in 1973 The protagonists of Writers such as Charles Bukowski, the same tone as he ponders how English writer J. G. Ballard’s William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard, to dispose of a corpse. Forced to controversial novel Crash and Kathy Acker had paved the view the world through his eyes, are a group of car-crash way in previous decades with the reader is urged to question victims who are sexually novels that variously described a society in which everything aroused by car accidents. weird sexual acts, body mutilation, has become commodified. ■ drug use, and extreme violence. 1984 Foreshadowing later I have all the characteristics transgressive fiction, American To transgress is to go beyond of a human being: blood, writer Jay McInerney’s satire established moral boundaries, and flesh, skin, hair; but not Bright Lights, Big City places American Psycho, a black comedy a single, clear, identifiable the reader as the central by American author Bret Easton emotion, except for greed character in a hollow world. Ellis (1964–), does this with relish. and disgust. Its scenes of violence, particularly American Psycho AFTER against women, have led to calls 1992 Brutal and shocking, for the book to be banned. Irish writer Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy plunges Psychotic dream the reader into the violent Its true transgression, however, lies fantasy world of schoolboy perhaps in the suggestion that the Francie Brady. pursuit of the American dream is akin to a mental disorder. The 1996 Tyler Durden, the book is set in Manhattan during antihero in American the 1980s Wall Street boom and the writer Chuck Palahniuk’s narrator, Patrick Bateman, is both transgressive Fight Club, is an anarchic, masochistic nihilist. See also: Lolita 260–61 ■ A Clockwork Orange 289 ■ Crash 332

314 IN CONTEXT MSTHUAOCEIVERECTEDALDYLDMRTOIHWAVENENYRD FOCUS Indian English writing A SUITABLE BOY (1993), VIKRAM SETH BEFORE 1950s R. K. Narayan’s texts help introduce Indian English writing to a global readership. 1981 Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children marks a new stage in Indian English writing. AFTER 1997 Arundhati Roy wins the Booker Prize with The God of Small Things, which challenges the caste system. 2000 Amitav Ghosh looks at migration and colonial control in The Glass Palace, a historical novel set in Burma, Bengal, India, and Malaya. 2006 In The Inheritance of Loss, Indian English author Kiran Desai explores the impact of colonialism. O ver the last few decades Indian English writing has carved a niche as a recognizable literary genre that has gained increasing international attention. In the 1950s and ’60s some Indian writers—notably R. K. Narayan, one of the first Indian English novelists to be recognized outside India—made a deliberate choice to write about the Indian experience in English rather than in one of the numerous Indian languages or dialects. Most of these earlier Indian English novelists were writing from within India, portraying everyday experiences. Since the 1980s, however, a new generation of

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 315 See also: Midnight’s Children 300–05 ■ Interpreter of Maladies 338 Indian English novelists has Epic in scale, A Suitable Boy is one Vikram Seth emerged, most of whom have of the longest novels in the English chosen to focus on the themes of language. Set in the early 1950s— The son of a businessman and postcolonial India, including the soon after India’s independence a judge, Vikram Seth was born impact of imperialism, religious and partition in 1947—the novel in 1952 in Calcutta, India. tensions, and the caste system. follows the fortunes of four families After leaving the Doon School, over a period of 18 months. Three of he completed his schooling in Intertwined stories the families, the Mehras, Chatterjis, Tonbridge, England, and went Salman Rushdie was one of the first and Kapoors—all of whom are on to Oxford University, of the so-called Indian diasporic middle-class, educated Hindus— studying philosophy, politics, novelists—Indian writers living are related to each another by and economics (PPE). He outside India. His Booker Prize- marriage. The fourth family, the received a master’s degree in winning Midnight’s Children, with aristocratic, Muslim Khans, are economics from Stanford its blend of Hindu myth, Bombay friends of the Kapoors. University, California, and movies, magic realism, and hybrid later spent some time in use of English peppered with The novel opens in the fictional China, where he studied Indian terms, is the starting point town of Brahmpur, on the Ganges classical Chinese poetry. He of what has been described as river between Banares (also known now lives in England but a renaissance in Indian English as Varanasi) and Patna, although keeps close contact with India. literature, mainly produced by events also take place in Calcutta, diasporic authors. Several writers Delhi, and Kanpur. These places are Seth’s written works followed Rushdie, including Vikram described with immense include poetry, a children’s Seth, whose novel A Suitable Boy richness, and often with wit. Seth book, and three novels. In was published in 1993. recreates, in magnificent, almost 2009 he announced that he photographic, detail the India of was working on a sequel to Towns along the Ganges river the early 1950s, bringing to vivid A Suitable Boy, titled A pulsate with life and color, providing life the Ganges river, the crowded, Suitable Girl. Initially due to a vibrant backdrop to the interweaving bustling streets and markets, finish the novel in 2013, he stories and multiple realities of the the country’s extremes of wealth commented on BBC’s radio India evoked by Seth’s narrative. and poverty, and its wonderfully program Desert Island Discs in varied landscapes. Central to ❯❯ 2012 that the pace of work was slow: “The sound of deadlines pushing past is one of the sounds that authors are most familiar with.” Other key works 1986 The Golden Gate 1999 An Equal Music 2005 Two Lives (biography)

316 A SUITABLE BOY ‘You too will marry And yet A Suitable Boy is much in postpartition India during the a boy I choose,’ said more than just a romantic plot, formative years of the Nehru period Mrs. Rupa Mehra firmly incorporating numerous subplots, (1947–64). Woven into the text to her younger daughter. both personal and political, and are key issues such as the value A Suitable Boy a large and finely drawn cast of of work, the process of change, characters. These range from the the injustice of poverty, and the the text is the determination of widowed Mrs. Rupa Mehra, with direction being taken by India. It Mrs. Rupa Mehra to arrange the her tireless meddling in the lives describes the period just before the marriage of her younger daughter of her four children, to the young postindependence election of 1952, Lata, a 19-year-old university Muslim idealist Rasheed; from the in which the Kapoor family is student, to a “suitable boy.” strong-minded Malati, Lata’s best closely involved. Religious friend, to the young mathematical intolerance, in particular Hindu– genius Bhaskar; and from the Muslim tensions, is revealed in the politician Mahesh Kapoor to the reactions to Lata’s love for Kabir musician Ishaq. Real historical and to Pran’s younger brother figures, such as India’s first prime Maan’s relationship with a Muslim minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, are singer-courtesan, Saeeda Bai; and, also added to the literary mix. more violently, in a near-riot between Hindus and Muslims over A Suitable Boy provides a plans to erect a Hindu temple near detailed account of the social a mosque. The author also depicts and political events taking place The personal and political Lata has a tough choice to make: Kabir The novel begins with a wedding: should she choose the Muslim student, Amit that of Lata’s elder sister Savita to the internationally acclaimed poet, Haresh Pran Kapoor, a young university or the businessman as her partner? professor from a prominent family. Her plight echoes that of postpartition Although he suffers from asthma, India: should it opt to overcome he qualifies as a “suitable boy.” religious factionalism, to strive for Lata, an independent-minded a sophisticated internationalism, young woman whose thoughts or to settle for economic stability? and actions in many ways mirror the changes occurring in India Lata at the time, has mixed feelings about the marriage of her beloved sister, questioning how a woman can marry a man she does not know. As the novel progresses, Lata herself falls in love with three young men: Kabir, a Muslim student; Amit, an internationally celebrated poet; and Haresh, a determined businessman in the shoe trade. It is not until the last moment that the reader learns which of the three Lata chooses; significantly, it is a decision that she makes for herself, taking account of her mother’s wishes, social realities, and her own feelings about love and passion.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 317 Marriage lies at the heart of A Suitable Boy and is used to explore key issues—from religion, class, gender, and politics to national and personal identity. the iniquities of the caste system, English novelist Anita Desai has compared to Jane Austen—but poverty, and the status of lower- observed that it was only after although A Suitable Boy, like caste Indians, such as the jatav, Rushdie “that Indian writers finally Austen’s novels, deals with family who scrape their living in the evil- felt capable of using the spoken events and is realistic and smelling tanneries. Certain parts of language, spoken English, the way perceptive, it is unmistakably an the plot revolve around land reforms it’s spoken on Indian streets by Indian novel, written in English, and the abolition of the zamindari ordinary people,” something that and a landmark of the genre. system, which sought to remove Seth also captures perfectly. property from large aristocratic There have been fierce debates landholders. The novel explores the Language of imperialists? concerning the validity of Indian roles of women in 1950s India, too, Vikram Seth is a skilled and English literature, and in particular comparing Lata’s dependence on renowned poet as well as a novelist, a questioning of why leading Indian her family with the independence so it is perhaps unsurprising that novelists, most of whom live outside of her friend Malati and the Muslim his text includes superbly poetic India, should even be writing in custom of purdah, in which women passages. Many of these draw the English. In Rushdie’s words, “the are segregated and wear form- reader into the world of Urdu poetry, ironic proposition that India’s best covering clothes such as the burqa. Indian music and singing (ghazals), writing since independence may and myths and legends as sung and have been done in the language of Real-life concerns played by Saaeda Bai and her the departed imperialists is simply Unlike Rushdie’s magical India, musicians. Equally haunting are too much for some folks to bear.” Seth’s novel focuses on the matters descriptions of a tiger hunt, the Nevertheless, the popularity of the of real life: work, love, family, the stinking pools of the tanning Indian English genre continued to intricacies of lawmaking, political factory, the Indian countryside, and grow into the 21st century, with intrigue, the academic world, the Kumbh Mela festival. The novel writers such as Arundhati Roy, and religious tensions. These are also includes the flippant couplets Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, and presented in beautifully written nonchalantly tossed out by the Kiran Desai making significant and lyrical prose that is compelling, Chatterjis; and a contents page contributions, either setting their eminently readable, and often that comprises 19 rhyming couplets, novels in India or focusing on the amusing. It presents the English one for each part of the book. experience of rootlessness and language as it is spoken by the alienation in the diaspora. ■ people of India—embellished with It took Seth more than eight scatterings of Hindu and Muslim years to write his monumental They agreed with terms, many of which do not novel; it was a huge success and each other violently translate into English. The Indian was awarded the Commonwealth and disagreed with Writers’ Prize. He has been each other pleasurably. A Suitable Boy

318 IBATEN’SADUAATVPYERIRSOYFTOGEURRNEREDOKROINDEE.A, THE SECRET HISTORY (1992), DONNA TARTT IN CONTEXT W hen American author but it is the motive, not the identity Donna Tartt (1963–) of the perpetrator, that mystifies FOCUS published her novel The the reader and is gradually revealed The campus novel Secret History, it was recognized as as the plot unfolds. Tartt uses the a striking addition to the campus- premise of a hidden murder among BEFORE novel genre, which it both borrows the six students to explore wider 1951 American writer Mary from and extends. Academic novels ideas. Borrowing from Greek McCarthy’s The Groves developed in the 1950s, when the tragedy, she compels her reader to of Academe is published. It concerns of postwar society were question whether the “tragic flaw” is considered one of the first linked with the literary and cultural in character, a feature of that genre, academic or “campus” novels. debates taking place on Western does indeed exist. She explores campuses. These novels, set within this question through the plot to 1954 The influential book the confined space of a university, interrogate how and why we use Lucky Jim, by English writer often satirize academic life and the the literary past in the present. Kingsley Amis, develops the pretentiouness of scholars. campus genre further through A philosophical murder a plot that follows a young The allure of civilization For Tartt’s student characters, the history lecturer making his The Secret History follows a group literary is all too real: it is taken to way in a postwar world. of six classics students at an elite an explicitly literal extreme in the New England university. Using this form of a murder that pays homage 1990 The Booker Prize- setting to focus on various literary to the philosophical idea that winning novel Possession: and cultural debates, Tartt expands “Death is the mother of beauty,” A Romance, by English on her 1950s predecessors’ use of a as one student, Henry, declares. novelist A. S. Byatt, details a university environment to question Whether the murder is indeed to postmodern historical mystery the role of literature, identity, and be interpreted as a playful and set in an academic world. the genre itself. self-conscious literary device that draws from academic theory, or AFTER Tartt’s novel is an anti-detective perhaps as a critique of theory 2000 The Human Stain by story that complicates the 19th- itself, is something that Tartt American writer Philip Roth century detective genre. The book leaves for her reader to decide. ■ follows the complex life story of opens with a murder-mystery plot, a retired classics professor and the shifting world of academia. See also: Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Disgrace 322–23

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 319 IOWSFHJTAUHTSEWTWOEONSREELETDIBNEYFPOARRETUS THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE (1994–1995), HARUKI MURAKAMI IN CONTEXT F rom the late 20th century, As Orpheus visits the underworld globalization—in particular to bring back Eurydice in Greek FOCUS the spread of American myth, so Okada descends into a Writing for the world popular culture around the world— well to recover his wife Kumiko has created a forum in which after she disappears. BEFORE writers have been able to free their 1987 The hero in Murakami’s fiction of localized traditions, as if Yet this is still a Japanese story Norwegian Wood, a tale of love, writing for a universal readership. at its core. Murakami evokes the loss, and friendship, is a former alienation of modern urban Japan, college student interested in American influences are while at the same time probing American literature. particularly evident in Japanese Japanese history. For instance, culture—stemming, in part, from the Lieutenant Mamiya’s tales of 1988 Banana Yashimoto’s US occupation of Japan (1945–52). wartime exploits in Manchuria Kitchen tells a wistful story of Japanese author Haruki Murakami and a Soviet prison camp address a young Japanese woman, for (1949–) has a cultural background Japan’s violent war record. ■ whom the consumer opulence that seems half American: he of Western-style cooking translated F. Scott Fitzgerald and provides an emotional refuge. Truman Capote into Japanese, and ran a jazz club in Tokyo. AFTER 1997 Ryu Murakami’s In the East meets West Is it possible … for one human Miso Soup is a crime story set Murakami’s novel The Wind-Up being to achieve perfect among the hostess bars of Bird Chronicle calls on American understanding of another? Tokyo, with conversational influences, as well as cultural The Wind-Up Bird references to real-life motifs from Europe. For example, Chronicle Americans such as Whitney it begins with its hero, Toru Okada, Houston and Robert de Niro. listening to Rossini while cooking pasta; later in the novel, a baseball 2002 Kafka on the Shore bat is used as a weapon. The book shows Murakami exploring itself is a complex quest narrative metaphysical fantasy—in a with its roots in Western culture. Japan where Westernized culture and Shintoism meet. See also: Playing for Thrills 336

320 PWWTEHOIRELRHYLLATTDPRHSOUINFOLGYNTSLHAYBEREEIBNWLAINHDAT BLINDNESS (1995), JOSÉ SARAMAGO IN CONTEXT J osé Saramago’s harrowing that ruled the country from 1933 to novel Blindness (originally 1974, although the novel’s actual FOCUS published in Portuguese as settings, characters, and times are Allegorical satire Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira, “Essay left ambiguous. Under scrutiny is on Blindness”) is an example the lack of morality, kindness, and BEFORE of allegorical satire—a type of empathy typical of any right-wing 1605 In Don Quixote, Miguel narrative that has a parallel subtext capitalist society. de Cervantes explores the that is often moral or political in inability to see the world nature. In allegorical satire, events What if we were all blind? as it really is, in his main are used explicitly or implicitly The novel describes events after character’s delusional quest as metaphors to ridicule aspects people in a city of an unnamed to enact a knight’s saga. of society, politics, or life. In country start going blind—not a Blindness, the satire is inspired dark blindness, but a milky, pearl- 1726 Anglo-Irish writer by Portugal’s Estado Novo (New white blindness. The affliction Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s State), an authoritarian regime spreads via human contact or Travels exaggerates moral and political corruption in The world of the blind tales of fantastical cultures. Society is affected by Members of society are 1945 In Animal Farm, English metaphorical blindness: affected, as a result, author George Orwell traces by literal blindness. the parallels between the lack of empathy, reason, degeneration of politics in and morality. human society and a cast of rebellious farm animals. New societies form in Society seeks to blindness, as the old ones incarcerate, quarantine, AFTER and contain the affected. 2008–10 American writer descend into darkness. Suzanne Collins publishes The Hunger Games, using allegorical satire to indicate the power of media as a political tool in contemporary American society.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 321 See also: The Divine Comedy 62–65 ■ The Canterbury Tales 68–71 ■ Don Quixote 76–81 ■ Candide 96–97 ■ Gulliver’s Travels 104 ■ Animal Farm 245 ■ Lord of the Flies 287 Portugal’s repressive Estado Novo regime is an unspoken presence in Saramago’s text; the book’s title and contents gesture to a parallel theme of a dark and sinister political blindness. presence and is incurable. The of the violence and terror of a device allows for an enhanced government transfers those totalitarian regime. Saramago understanding of the bonds affected to a guarded asylum, and gives his narrative unstoppable being created, the habits being leaves them to fend for themselves, force by minimizing punctuation abandoned, and the ideologies with food and cleaning equipment and switching between tenses and being formed and re-formed in the as their only aids. perspectives. This creates a sense story. It is through the doctor’s wife of being propelled through the that the characters discover each As a form of society, based on story, thus echoing the themes another, and find hope and the solidarity, begins to emerge among of the narrative. strength to survive the white the blinded—fueled by need, blindness, the cruelty of the thugs, survival, and a return of human Blindness and insight and the harshness of the asylum. empathy—we see the main The reader is given an added It is thanks to her humanity and characters grow as members of a perspective on the bleak situation her empathy—symbols of the community. Saramago describes through the eyes of the doctor’s type of society toward which the physical and psychological wife, one of the first internees, people should be striving—that, struggles of the newly blinded as but one who feigns blindness ultimately, they start to rebuild a parallel to people who have lost to be with her husband. This a life outside the asylum. ■ sight of reason, humanity, and the very idea of human society: “These blind internees […] will soon turn into animals, worse still, into blind animals.” The arrival of a group of organized blind thugs becomes an added element of oppression, with obvious political connotations José Saramago José de Sousa Saramago was (O Poemas Possìveis) and, after born in Portugal in 1922, the writing more novels, received son of poor rural workers. His the Nobel Prize for literature parents could not afford to send in 1998. He moved to Spain him to school, so he trained as a following the Portuguese mechanic; only later did his talent government’s censorship of one for writing lead him into work of his books in 1992. He lived as a translator, journalist, and there until his death in 2010. editor. A politically engaged man, Saramago found that his first Other key works novel, Land of Sin (Terra do Pecado, 1947), was not well 1982 Baltasar and Blimunda received by the conservative 1984 The Year of the Death Catholic regime of Estado Novo of Ricardo Reis (New State), which blocked the 1991 The Gospel According book’s production. He resurfaced to Jesus Christ in 1966 with Possible Poems 2004 Seeing

322 FEUONONFGRFSLITOTIHSUMEHTEHTIDSRAIUUFAMTRNHICA DISGRACE (1999), J. M. COETZEE IN CONTEXT A n extraordinary canon postmodern preoccupation with the of literature has evolved language of their production and FOCUS in South Africa from a the authority of the speaking voice. South African literature society in which the black majority was oppressed for decades by Power relations BEFORE colonialism and apartheid—a Coetzee’s novel Disgrace centers on 1883 Olive Schreiner explores tyrannical system of segregation. the downfall of David Lurie, a patriarchal and gender issues Writing during and after apartheid professor in classics and modern against a colonial backdrop in falls very broadly into two camps: languages who is reduced to The Story of an African Farm. authors such as Nobel prizewinner teaching “communications.” A cipher Nadine Gordimer produced complex for the lost certainties of whites 1948 The best-selling Cry, the novels that are a testimony to from old European stock in the new Beloved Country by Alan Paton history, rooted in social realism South Africa, Lurie finds that exposes South Africa’s politics and the politics of their era. In communication fails him. He cannot of oppression to the world. comparison, J. M. Coetzee appears engage his students, nor use poetry almost socially irresponsible in to seduce Melanie, a student whom 1963–90 Thousands of books producing texts that “rival history.” he effectively rapes during an affair. are banned as “undesirable” His stories are characterized by in South Africa. ambiguity and elusiveness, with a After Lurie is plunged into disgrace and dismissed from his 1991 Writer and activist Repentance belongs to job, the story shifts to the Eastern Nadine Gordimer is awarded another world, to another Cape, where his daughter Lucy the Nobel Prize in literature. runs a small farm. Lurie sees universe of discourse. glimpses of an idealized rural past, AFTER Disgrace but struggles with the changing 2000 Writer NoZakes Mda order between white landowners experiments with a complex and their black employees and mix of Xhosa history, myth, neighbors. He fills his time helping and colonial conflict in his to dispatch neglected animals in a novel The Heart of Redness. rural veterinary clinic. 2003 Damon Galgut’s The The professor speaks several Good Doctor picks apart the European languages, but cannot promise of political change. engage with Lucy’s neighbor Petrus. “Pressed into the mould of English, Petrus’s story would

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 323 See also: The Story of an African Farm 201 ■ Cry, the Beloved Country 286 ■ A Dry White Season 333–34 come out arthritic, bygone.” He has optimism of the new nation. J. M. Coetzee no African words to reason with Condemned by some for its violent the three black youths who attack plot, the novel is finely balanced in Novelist, linguist, essayist, the farm and rape his daughter, its portrayal of a state of disgrace and translator John Michael nor can he unveil her neighbor’s that has no cultural boundaries. In Coetzee was born in 1940 to complicity. Later, at a celebration the end, there is a parity between English-speaking Afrikaner of Petrus’s new status as landlord, a the attack on Lucy and the parents. Coetzee spent his guest takes center stage to narrate professor’s sexual abuse of black early life in Cape Town and in the Xhosa language a future that prostitutes and the student Worcester in the Western only the blacks can understand. Melanie, who is assumed to be of Cape. After graduating in mixed race. While Lurie, in his the 1960s, he worked as An uncertain future arrogance, refuses to speak at his a computer programmer in Disgrace, published five years after hearing, Lucy’s silence about her London. He has a PhD in the first free elections in South ordeal suggests a realization that English, linguistics, and Africa, sits in stark contrast to life has to be stripped back to the Germanic languages from postapartheid “honeymoon” basics because there are no words the University of Texas. literature, suffused with the available to repair or heal. ■ From 1972 Coetzee held Professional disgrace Sexual disgrace posts at the University of The professor’s faltering Lurie’s sex life with prostitutes and Cape Town, finishing in 2000 academic career is completely sordid casual seductions contrasts as Distinguished Professor destroyed by his sexual of Literature, and taught harassment of a student. with the Byronic romances that frequently in the US. He haunt his imagination. has won a raft of literary awards, including the Booker The novel’s title Prize (twice) and the 2003 reaches further than Nobel Prize in Literature. the disgrace of the Coetzee now lives in South unrepentant David Lurie. Australia and is an advocate Inhuman acts, shame, for animal rights. and humiliation threaten to engulf a new and Other key works fragile society. 1977 In the Heart of the Country Treatment of animals Racial violence 1980 Waiting for Shameful animal neglect and Lucy’s rape and the ongoing the Barbarians 1983 Life & Times of maltreatment—a common coercion and threat to her Michael K theme in Coetzee’s novels— safety typify the tension 1986 Foe is reflected in the grim work between black people and 1990 Age of Iron the wealthy white minority. of the veterinary clinic. Apartheid The many strands of disgrace underpinning the novel suggest the wider disgrace of South Africa’s history of colonialism and apartheid.

324 EOTTVWWUETOIRSCYDIED:IMFEINOFAESMNRIEDDENENTTTAHHNHEADYIPSAPTREONERSIES WHITE TEETH (2000), ZADIE SMITH IN CONTEXT I mmigration has been a major heard. In Germany, for instance, part of the cultural fabric of the Renan Demirkan has paved the FOCUS US, Canada, and the UK for way for Turkish-German writing. Multiculturalism generations, but recent decades have seen a surge of new writing In the UK, multicultural BEFORE that reflects both the diversity of literature goes back to major 1979 A Black Power group their populations and the ubiquity waves of immigration from the takes over the basement in of English. The need to assimilate Commonwealth in the 1950s, and Moses Ascending, Trinidadian- into a new culture tends to suppress often brings a troubled, xenophobic born Sam Selvon’s tales of a migrant voices, so it is often the space into sharp focus, revealing West Indian landlord in London. second generation in immigrant the lives of people of multiple families who are strongly motivated ethnic groups in major cities. As 1987 Michael Ondaatje, a Sri to write stories that reflect the elsewhere, many mixed-race and Lankan-born Canadian writer, fusion of their cultures. This in part second-generation immigrant weaves native cultures into explains the slower emergence of authors penned first novels that rich storytelling about the multicultural writing in the rest dwell on the integration of diaspora lives of immigrant laborers in of Europe and around the world, communities. Zadie Smith’s award- Toronto in In the Skin of a Lion. but as other nations become more winning book White Teeth offers a diverse, new voices start to be fresh, youthful perspective on the 1991 Renan Demirkan’s complex inheritance of multicultural semiautobiographical account families in North London. of conflicting loyalties in a Turkish family in Germany, Do you think anybody is Melting-pot Britain Schwarzer Tee mit drei Stuck English? Really English? White Teeth stretches back to the Zucker (“Black Tea with Three last days of World War II, when the Sugars”), becomes a best seller. It’s a fairy-tale! English white working-class Archie White Teeth Jones is paired with a Bangladeshi AFTER Muslim radio engineer named 2004 Small Island, English Samad Iqbal in a British Army author Andrea Levy’s story tank unit in Greece. The friendship, of the lives of two couples, crossing class and color lines, sheds light on the migrant continues after the war. The bond experience in postwar Britain. is cemented by long afternoons in an Arab-run Irish pub, marital discord, and late-in-life fatherhood

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 325 See also: Cry, the Beloved Country 286 ■ A House for Mr. Biswas 289 ■ Interpreter of Maladies 338 ■ Life of Pi 338 ■ The Kite Runner 338 ■ Half of a Yellow Sun 339 In White Teeth, the network of relationships among whites, Friends first-generation immigrants, and their British-born children reflects the changing nature of British society. Marcus Joyce Archie Clara Samad Alsana Chalfen Jones Bowden Iqbal Begum Joshua Has crush on In love with Magid Irie Millat Chalfen family has major influence on for both men. Samad has twin is drawn to her mother’s homeland hash, and the chattering middle boys, Magid and Millat, through through her grandmother. Millat, classes—as epitomized by the his arranged marriage with Alsana; Magid, and Irie struggle, as their intellectual white Chalfen family, Archie and his Jamaican-born wife parents do, with the feeling that who exerts an inexorable influence Clara have a daughter named Irie. they belong nowhere, in contrast to on Irie, Millat, and Magid. those that have lived in Britain for Samad, now a “curry shifter” in generations and enjoy the luxury Set in part during the Thatcher a local restaurant, decides to send of history and entitlement. “There years—the 1980s—the book is his son Magid back to Bangladesh was England, a gigantic mirror, and dotted with cultural references, from to have him raised with a respect there was Irie, without reflection.” Salman Rushdie’s fatwa to street for his Muslim heritage; but when gangs in Nike attire. Smith has Magid returns years later, it is as a Smith has an ear for dialogue, criticized her undergraduate novel, secular scientist. By ironic contrast, and eyes everywhere—cataloguing but it remains a feisty chronicle of a his twin, wild-child Millat, joins a assaults on immigrant communities, time that demanded new definitions Muslim fundamentalist group. Irie comprehensive schools awash with of what it was to be British. ■ Zadie Smith Zadie Smith was born in North Smith has received nearly 20 London in 1975 to an English nominations and awards for her father and a Jamaican mother. writing. In recent years she has Originally named Sadie, she branched outm into short stories changed her name to Zadie at 14. and critical essays. In an article Smith wrote her acclaimed first in The Guardian newspaper she novel White Teeth during her was asked to give her 10 golden final year at King’s College, rules for writing fiction, which Cambridge. Moving to the US, included: “Tell the truth through she studied at Harvard and taught whichever veil comes to hand— creative writing at Columbia but tell it.” University School of Fine Arts before taking her current post at Other key works New York University. She divides her time between New York and 2002 The Autograph Man London, with her husband, writer 2005 On Beauty Nick Laird, and their two children. 2012 NW

326 IKTTSHHEETEEPORBIENPERGISSETANTW’SETNEAOYCDNROEEFT THE BLIND ASSASSIN (2000), MARGARET ATWOOD IN CONTEXT T he gothic fiction of the 18th postcolonial context, and can be and 19th centuries seen as a reflection of settlers’ FOCUS typically featured such anxieties about their history. Southern Ontario Gothic elements as haunted castles, tyrannical villains, endangered Narrative complexity BEFORE heroines, mysteries, and ghosts. Margaret Atwood relocates the 1832 Considered the first In the late 20th century, Canada, fascination with fear and terror Canadian novel, Wacousta and Southern Ontario in particular, that fed the European gothic to by John Richardson is full developed its own take on this her own home territory, exploring of menace and gothic terror. tradition. Novelists including Alice the darker side of human nature Munro, Robertson Davies, and and the destructive potential of 1967 Timothy Findley’s The Margaret Atwood appropriated buried secrets. Her book The Blind Last of the Crazy People is aspects of gothic fiction such as the Assassin is a notable example of published. Five years later supernatural and the grotesque, Southern Ontario Gothic, playing the author coins the term and the genre’s dark imagery, and on notions of sacrifice and betrayal, Southern Ontario Gothic applied them to contemporary truth and lies, conspiracy and to describe his novel. Canadian life. Frequently, such romance, and the boundaries literature attempts to make sense between the living and the dead. 1970 Robertson Davies’ Fifth of Canadian national identity in a Business is an early example The novel is a multilayered story of Southern Ontario Gothic, Darkness moved closer … told through the eyes of 83-year-old looking at the dark underbelly Back into the long Iris Chase Griffen, writing her of an Ontario community. memoirs in the form of a letter shadows cast by Laura. to her granddaughter. Within the AFTER The Blind Assassin story of Iris’s life another novel 2009 Intrigue, murder, and is nestled, also called The Blind fear infuse Alice Munro’s Assassin, about two lovers, and gothic short-story collection purportedly written by Iris’s sister, Too Much Happiness. Laura. And within that novel is yet another story, a pulp science- 2013 Hilary Scharper’s fiction tale related by the man in Perdita, which she describes Laura’s novel. All these stories are as “Ecogothic,” is a modern punctuated by newspaper reports Canadian ghost story. that add a further, supposedly factual, dimension to the narrative.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 327 See also: Frankenstein 120–21 ■ Dracula 195 ■ Wuthering Heights 132–37 ■ The Handmaid’s Tale 335 ■ Selected Stories (Alice Munro) 337 The main story, recounted in Iris’s the present from the past. Laura, Margaret Atwood memoir, revolves around Laura and whose suicide the reader learns Iris Chase in the 1920s and ’30s. about in the very first sentence, The Canadian novelist, gothic motifs are updated: the haunts Iris through memories and poet, and essayist Margaret haunted castle becomes Iris’s secrets that are slowly uncovered. Atwood was born in 1939 in family home, Avilion, a mansion Ottawa, Ontario. For much of built by her rich grandfather, Southern Ontario is itself a dark her childhood, she spent half complete with attics and turrets; and brooding character in the book. the year in the wilderness, there is a cruel male villain in Iris’s It may be likened to the underworld where her father studied domineering husband, Richard; of classical literature: ominous insects. During this time and Iris and Laura themselves are stretches of water must be crossed she would write poems, plays, versions of the victimized heroine. in order to enter it, and it has its and comics, and while still at own villainous gatekeeper, in the school she decided to become Haunted by the real form of Richard. The protagonists a writer. The American writer The novel is realistic in tone, yet wander here in search of meaning. Edgar Allan Poe was among symbolically the supernatural is her favorite authors and his never far away. The structure of Overall, Atwood’s reworking dark influence can be seen in flashbacks means that characters of gothic tropes and her skillful much of her fiction. we know to be dead appear almost interweaving of different genres as if they are ghosts speaking to creates a novel in which, despite Atwood’s first publication the darkness, each element was a collection of poems in illuminates the whole. ■ 1966, but she is best known as a novelist. Her first novel to The structure of The Blind Assassin, with its stories within be published was The Edible stories and multiple narrators, echoes gothic literature, while the Woman in 1969. Her passion third tale—although set on the planet Zycron—contains the for environmental issues and familiar gothic elements of romance, betrayal, and murder. human rights comes through in her dystopian novels such The first narrative is Iris as The Handmaid’s Tale and Chase Griffen’s memoirs, in the trilogy begun with Oryx which she reconstructs the and Crake. She has received past and re-evaluates her many distinguished literary own life and that of sister. prizes, including the Booker The second narrative is Prize for The Blind Assassin. a novel also called The Blind Assassin, ostensibly by Laura Other key works Chase, which tells the story of a political fugitive and his 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale socialite lover. 1988 Cat’s Eye The third narrative is a 1996 Alias Grace dark science-fiction fantasy 2003 Oryx and Crake about a blind assassin and a mute sacrificial virgin.

328 FSTTAHOOMEMFRIEOLETYRHWGWIENAATSGNTHEISD THE CORRECTIONS (2001), JONATHAN FRANZEN IN CONTEXT T he title of Jonathan and Don DeLillo. In addition to Franzen’s The Corrections Gaddis, many of them would likely FOCUS echoes that of William feature in Franzen’s literary ancestry. Dysfunction in the Gaddis’s The Recognitions (1955), modern family which features a restless son The Corrections tells the stories searching for authenticity and of the Lamberts: Alfred and Enid BEFORE contemplating his relationship with and their adult children Gary, Chip, 1951 In J. D. Salinger’s The his father, who is losing his mind. and Denise. This is a family tested Catcher in the Rye, Holden As in The Corrections, the scope by individual needs set against Caulfield is lonely and of The Recognitions extends to a differing notions of the familial alienated yet consumed wider cast of characters and tells unit, values, and rights—all played by thoughts of his family. the story of a single family by out against a backdrop of a US weaving narrative threads to economy dominated by capitalist- 1960 The first novel of John garner multiple viewpoints. Since driven high-tech and financial Updike’s “Rabbit” series is the late 20th century, the theme sectors. As the saga unfolds, the published, dramatizing family of the dysfunctional family has text achieves acute political and turmoil in contemporary often been at the heart of work social insights, touching on wide- America. by great American male novelists, ranging themes, from financial such as John Updike, Philip Roth, misdoings and gun death to food 1993 In The Virgin Suicides, and children’s literature. Jeffrey Eugenides tracks the He became agitated unexplained suicides of five whenever they were going Suspense and narrative drive teenage sisters. come from the family’s attempt to to see their children. have “one last” Christmas together AFTER The Corrections and the unfolding brutality of 2003 In We Need to Talk about degenerative disease. The personal Kevin, Lionel Shriver tackles the lives of the main characters are all subject of parenting a child who marked by instability, whether it be becomes a mass murderer. professional, romantic, or mental. 2013 Theo Decker, the narrator Generational change of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Through his depiction of two describes a family shattered generations, Franzen is able to by alcoholism and loss. reflect societal change over the period of a lifetime. Alfred, the repressed patriarch, identifies with

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 329 See also: The Catcher in the Rye 256–57 ■ White Teeth 324–25 Financial Emotional Parental Jonathan Franzen Seeking to profit There are shifts in the character Discipline is used to from the anticipated traits of damaged individuals, stifle the spontaneous Jonathan Earl Franzen’s father was a civil engineer and wonder-drug leading to personal growth. affection that the his mother, Irene, was a Corecktall, Gary fails Types children naturally “homemaker” (not unlike the demonstrate for their Lamberts in The Corrections). to notice gradual of correction Franzen grew up in Chicago changes in the The Corrections father, Alfred. and majored in German at investment markets. reveals a network of Swarthmore College, associations relating to the graduating in 1981. key word of the title, unfolding a plot that poses He married Valerie Cornell profound questions about at the age of 23; they divorced the extent to which we 14 years later. He is now in a are able fix our selves relationship with the writer Kathryn Chetkovich, and lives and our lives. in New York and California. Pharmaceutical Family rumors In 2001 Franzen sparked A pill, Corecktall, that Long-held myths, built a feud with American talk- show host Oprah Winfrey is a symbol of vain from incomplete when he voiced unease at the hope, doing “nothing information, are choice of The Corrections for dispelled and truths her book club, fearing that and everything.” men would be put off reading revealed. it. He continues to write on a Textual range of topics, including the Changes that Chip needs pitiful state of Europe and the to make to his screenplay. impermanence of e-books. a past order. His sections are and certainty that family ties and Franzen won the National punctuated with quotes from emotion have to be sacrificed to Book Award for fiction in 2001 Schopenhauer and illuminated by fully contribute to civilization, with The Corrections, which recalled scenes from Midwest reflects, while Enid is pregnant was also a finalist for the America in the mid-20th century, with their youngest child, Denise: Pulitzer Prize for fiction. when he worked as a railroad “A last child was a last opportunity engineer. Gary, Chip, and Denise to learn from one’s mistakes and Other key works inhabit a much less tractable world; make corrections, and he resolved their experiences distill the pressures to seize this opportunity.” 1992 Strong Motion and vicissitudes of the increasingly 2006 The Discomfort Zone: troubled late 20th century. Franzen later published a A Personal History (essays) memoir called The Discomfort 2010 Freedom Genetics aside, there is a Zone, which included an intimate common link between all of them: exploration of the impact of his despite neuroses and flaws, they all mother’s death. This eclectic have hope of improvement. Even collection reveals that the notion of Alfred, unwavering in his self-belief family still dominates his work. ■

330 ITTTTHHOAEEGLESOLTNAHSMEETEWREMNEISGCHFRRTEMOATMAERDE, THE GUEST (2001), HWANG SOK-YONG IN CONTEXT A fter Japan’s surrender at Ever since we were children the end of World War II, a we have known that the FOCUS line of latitude that crosses The 38th parallel the Korean Peninsula, the 38th Guest is a Western disease. parallel, was chosen as the dividing The Guest BEFORE line between Soviet and US 1893 Literature in Korea occupation zones, and is still brother. He discovers the truth of emerges from the cultural roughly in effect as the border the atrocity: it was not perpetrated shadow cast by classical between North and South Korea. by US forces, but was a result of Chinese literature. The first fighting between Christian and Western work of fiction printed The postwar generation of South communist Koreans themselves. in Korean is John Bunyan’s Korean writers embraced a The Pilgrim’s Progress, which traditionalist movement that looked Christianity and communism precedes even a translation of back at an idealized past. But this are seen as foreign “guests” that the Bible, published in 1910. nostalgia was rejected by the have turned Koreans against each writers of the 1960s, who sought other; and the Korean word for 1985 Hwang Sok-yong’s The to engage with the psychological guest refers also to smallpox, Shadow of Arms is an account damage of recent Korean history: another plague from the West that of black-market trading during the Japanese occupation (1910– ravaged the country. The novel’s the war in Vietnam (another 45), the Korean War (1950–53), 12-part structure mirrors that of a East Asian country split and communist rule in the north. shamanistic ritual to cure smallpox, between north and south). known as a “guest exorcism.” ■ Evils from abroad 1964–94 Park Kyong-ni’s In his novel The Guest, Hwang epic 16-volume historical Sok-yong (1943–) deals with the novel The Land depicts the real-life Korean War massacre at struggles of Koreans under Sinchon, in what is now North Japanese oppression. Korea. The novel’s Korean-born protagonist, a Christian minister AFTER living in the US, returns to visit the 2005 North and South Korean site, along with the ghost of his authors attend a joint literary congress for the first time. See also: The Heartless 241

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 331 ILTEARAKERGENSREHATOLTWIFHEATTOTOILTIVE EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2005), JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER IN CONTEXT T he terrorist attacks in New along the way. The novel contains York and Washington on unusual stylistic choices: pages FOCUS September 11, 2001 caused are black, or several in a row are Post 9/11 America a huge change in the political and left white; words are circled in red; cultural landscape, which literature and many photographs appear— BEFORE was sure to tackle sooner or later. of objects, famous personalities, 2001 Jonathan Franzen’s But at first many authors struggled and the Twin Towers themselves. The Corrections, published with its enormity; after the attacks, Through such techniques, Safran on September 11, 2001, leading novelists Martin Amis, Foer tries to make us look afresh foreshadows the concerns of Ian McEwan, and Don DeLillo all at 9/11, to find a new way of seeing American literature after 9/11. commented on how the nature of something so terrible that has also their job felt as if it had changed become so familiar. ■ AFTER and become more difficult in 2007 Don DeLillo’s Falling ways they did not yet understand. Man is published, detailing Authors chose different methods to the effects of the World Trade try to make sense of the topic. Center attacks on the life of a middle-class survivor. A new way of looking There are so many times In Extremely Loud and Incredibly when you need to make a 2007 Mohsin Hamid’s The Close, Jonathan Safran Foer (1977–) quick escape, but humans Reluctant Fundamentalist explores the aftereffects of 9/11 don’t have their own wings, depicts the way in which through a young boy, Oskar Schell. a middle-class Pakistani- Nine months after the attacks, in or not yet, anyway. American financial analyst is which his father was killed, Oskar Extremely Loud and drawn toward radicalization. suffers from a depression, which he says is like wearing “heavy boots.” Incredibly Close 2013 Thomas Pynchon’s Finding a key left by his father, he Bleeding Edge is published, embarks on a quest around New a lively novel touching on York to discover what the key is for, financial malfeasance during meeting many curious characters the dot-com boom, in which 9/11 takes place more than See also: The Corrections 328–29 ■ The Reluctant Fundamentalist 339 halfway through the story.

332 FURTHER READING L’HOMME RAPAILLÉ drugs consumed in such quantities coexistence between humans that at one point people appear as and machines in a high-tech future (1970), GASTON MIRON giant reptiles. Thompson blends world. People use technology and fact and fiction using the journalistic technology, in a sense, uses people, The masterwork of Gaston Miron mode he pioneered, which came to to the point that machines become (1928–96)—writer, poet, publisher, be known as “Gonzo journalism” an intermediary in human relations. and luminary of Quebec literature— after the book’s fictional attorney. L’homme rapaillé (“The Man Made HISTORY Whole”) is a major selection of the CRASH author’s poems. Lyric love poetry (1974), ELSA MORANTE sits side by side with explorations of (1973), J. G. BALLARD the political and social predicament Morante (1912–85) and her husband of the French-speaking Québecois Depicting the dark side of our Alberto Moravia, both half-Jewish population in Canada—Miron called fascination with speed, Crash is Italians, hid from persecution during for separatism, and his poems are a controversial novel about car- World War II in the mountains south a celebration of Quebec’s language, crash sexual fetishism and of Rome. Her experiences were history, and people. He also saw “symphorophilia” (being aroused reflected 30 years later in her most poetry as an endless process of by disasters or accidents); its shock famous novel, History, which traces self-discovery, hence his refusal value is typical of science-fiction the impact of politics and conflict on to authorize a definitive collection. writer Ballard. The protagonist is Dr. local farming communities around Robert Vaughan, a TV scientist and Rome. The central character is Ida FINEALRASANVDEGLAOSATHING “nightmare angel of the highways,” Mancuso, a widowed teacher whose whose fantasy is to die in a collision prime concern is the survival of her (1972), HUNTER S. THOMPSON with movie star Elizabeth Taylor. son, the offspring of a rape. A major Unflinching in showing a fusion of theme is the extra challenges war Mixing autobiographical elements sex and death, the text paints a brings to the poor, already familiar and surreal invention, this influential dystopian picture of the close with hardship even in peacetime. work, subtitled A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, J. G. Ballard short-story competition. He describes journalist Raoul Duke’s moved to London to study long weekend with his Samoan An exponent of the New Wave literature later the same year. attorney Dr. Gonzo to report on a of science fiction, J. G. Ballard His first fiction was influenced motorcycle race, along with a visit specialized in depicting futuristic by psychoanalysis and surrealist to a narcotics officers’ convention. dystopias, although one of his art. Working as a copywriter American writer Thompson (1937– most popular novels, Empire of and encyclopedia salesman 2005)—for whom Raoul Duke was the Sun, is more conventional. before joining the Royal Air an author surrogate, a character Ballard was born in 1930 in Force, he became a full-time based on and speaking for the Shanghai, China. As a teenager writer from 1962. Ballard died author—used this narrative he spent two years of the war in 2009, at 78, in London. framework to critique the failure interned by the Japanese. He of 1960s’ counterculture, such as studied medicine (at King’s Key works the reliance on drugs. The trip College, Cambridge), with the turns into a psychedelic odyssey goal of training as a psychiatrist, 1971 Vermilion Sands of excess, comic yet brutal, with but in 1951, during the second 1973 Crash (see above) year of his studies, he won a 1991 The Kindness of Women

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 333 THE AESTHETICS triumph of the human spirit over Angela Carter OF RESISTANCE oppression. The book, and the television miniseries based upon it, Known for fiction that fused (1975–1981), PETER WEISS led to a surge of interest in African- feminism and magical realism, American history and genealogy. Angela Carter was born in A three-volume historical novel 1940, in Eastbourne, England, dealing with the fight against the LIFE A USER’S MANUAL and studied English at Bristol Nazis by left-wing students in Berlin, University. In 1969 she left her as well as charting antifascist (1978), GEORGES PEREC husband and spent two years movements elsewhere in Europe, in Tokyo, where she claims The Aesthetics of Resistance Focusing on the inhabitants of a to have learned her feminist proposes that the model for political Paris apartment building, Life A principles. She was writer resistance is to be found in the User’s Manual, by Frenchman Perec in residence in the 1970s and stand taken by the artist. The title (1936–82) is a fictional web whose ’80s at various UK universities, of this highly acclaimed work refers main thread is a resident’s project and also taught in the US and to its meditations on painting, to paint 500 watercolors of the Australia. Her Nights at the sculpture, and literature. Its author places he visits, have them turned Circus was a joint winner of Weiss (1916–82), German-born but into jigsaws that he must solve on the James Tait Black Memorial with Swedish nationality, was also his return to Paris, before returning Prize in 1984. Carter was also a dramatist, painter, and filmmaker. each image to the place it depicts. a journalist and worked in His art teacher—a fellow resident— radio and the movies. She died ROOTS plans to paint the lives of all the in 1992 in London at 51. tenants. Perec was a member of (1976), ALEX HALEY the Oulipo group, who together Key works practiced writing under a set of Beginning in the 18th century with constraining principles, and was 1967 The Magic Toyshop the semifictional story of a teenage fascinated by literary playfulness. 1979 The Bloody Chamber and African boy who is kidnapped and Other Stories (see left, below) sold into slavery in the American TAHNED BOLTOHOEDRYSCTHOARMIEBSER 1984 Nights at the Circus South, Roots traces the lives of the next six generations, culminating (1979), ANGELA CARTER each subversively reinterpreted. with American writer Haley (1921– Metamorphosis plays a significant 92), who undertook a decade of Author of “magical realist” tales, part in these stories, both in the extensive research into his own Angela Carter based all ten stories form of magic (such as men turned ancestry. A major theme is the in her influential work The Bloody into wolves), and also in physical Chamber and Other Stories on and moral transformations—for Through this flesh, folktales, including Little Red Riding instance, with reference to which is us, we are you, Hood, Beauty and the Beast, and menstruation and deception. Puss in Boots. The psychological and you are us! themes underlying the original A DRY WHITE SEASON Roots narratives are intensified and modernized, although without any (1979), ANDRÉ BRINK Alex Haley loss of their inherent gothic folklore atmosphere. Rape, incest, murder, The underlying metaphor of A Dry torture, and cannibalism all feature, White Season is the equation of showing the dark side of humanity. climatic and moral drought. This Stereotypes of feminity, including acclaimed novel is set in Afrikaner the innocence of girlhood and the South Africa just before the political notion of a happy marriage, are changes took place that overturned apartheid and brought renewal to

334 FURTHER READING Milan Kundera husband with his second, younger visit her house in abundance. wife. The form of the novel is a letter Allende depicts love, betrayal, Born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, written by the widow to her friend, vengeance, and ambition in a in 1929, Kundera studied music an émigré to the US. Personal and country torn apart, but offering as a child and much of his social oppression are seen as two possible salvation in the prospects work bears a musical signature. sides of the experience of many of the female bloodline. He studied literature and then women in Senegalese society. film in Prague, becoming TLIHGEHUTNNBESEASROAFBBLEEING a lecturer after graduating. TSHPIERHITOSUSE OF THE Initially a member of the Czech (1984), MILAN KUNDERA Communist Party, he was (1982), ISABEL ALLENDE barred following the Soviet Set around the Prague Spring takeover of 1968, losing his The House of The Spirits was the of 1968, a brief period of political teaching positions. Kundera first—and most successful—novel reform in Soviet Czechoslovakia, emigrated to France in 1975 of Chilean-American writer Isabel The Unbearable Lightness of Being and has lived there ever since, Allende (1942–), the granddaughter is Kundera’s most famous work. taking citizenship in 1981. He of former socialist president of Chile The title refers to a philosophical labels himself as a novelist, Salvador Allende, who was deposed dilemma: Friedrich Nietzsche’s although his works skillfully in a coup that features in the novel. idea of eternal return, or heaviness, blend the philosophical, ironic, The book began life as a letter to as opposed to the ancient Greek political, comedic, and erotic. her 100-year-old grandfather and philosopher Parmenides’ notion of turned into a complex, epic saga life as light. It tells of a surgeon who Key works tracing three generations of family pursues his belief in “lightness” life, against a background of social through a promiscuous love life, 1967 The Joke and political turbulence in an which also serves as a distraction 1979 The Book of Laughter unnamed country (recognizably from his country’s fragile and and Forgetting Chile). The book has elements unstable politics. He falls in love 1984 The Unbearable of magical realism: one of the two with a waitress and marries her, Lightness of Being (see right) sisters, Clara, possesses powers of but cannot give up his mistresses. telekinesis and clairvoyance, which Kundera asks whether life can have the country. Through its protagonist, she consciously develops—spirits weight, or meaning, since return a white, male, mild-mannered to the past is impossible. teacher, author André Brink (1935– … I wait for better times to 2015)—himself a white South come, while I carry this child NEUROMANCER African—explores racial intolerance in my womb, the daughter of and the price for taking a principled (1984), WILLIAM GIBSON stand against an unjust system. so many rapes or perhaps of Miguel, but above all, One of the earliest and most SO LONG A LETTER influential works of “cyberpunk”— my own daughter … a science-fiction subgenre usually (1979), MARIAMA BÂ The House of the Spirits featuring an antihero in a dystopian high-tech future—Neuromancer by Written in French by Senegalese Isabel Allende American-Canadian author Gibson writer Mariama Bâ (1929–81), So (1948–) tells of a damaged, suicidal Long a Letter captures the feelings computer hacker. Having been of a recently widowed Muslim injected with a Russian toxin that teacher. After spending the last prevents him from accessing four years of her marriage cyberspace, he is commissioned emotionally abandoned, she now by an enigmatic employer to do a has to share grieving for her late

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 335 special job; being cured will be and the taboos that surround … she would not bury herself his payoff. The book combines foreignness and colonialism. alive inside these four walls to a futuristic vision with elements Alternating between first- and of hard-boiled noir. third-person narration and present sew her shroud, as native and past tense, the novel uses a widows were expected to do. THE LOVER spare, poetic prose style. Love in the Time (1984), MARGUERITE DURAS THE HANDMAID’S TALE of Cholera Set in French Indochina in the (1985), MARGARET ATWOOD Gabriel García Márquez 1930s, The Lover draws upon the real-life experiences of its French A dystopian vision of the near future, passionate one, Florentino Ariza, author, Marguerite Duras (1914–96). The Handmaid’s Tale by Canadian proposes to his youthful sweetheart It details the intense affair between writer Atwood (see p.327) depicts 50 years after first declaring his love a 15-year-old girl from a poor family an America where the establishment and being rejected in favor of and a wealthy Chinese man of 27, of a Christian theocracy has led to Dr. Juvenal Urbino, the pragmatist. yet beyond this it is also concerned the loss of women’s freedoms. A central question in the book is, with female empowerment, the Caste and class become organizing which kind of love is likelier to relationship between mother and principles of society, allowing bring happiness? Cholera features daughter, emerging adolescence, Atwood to comment on present-day literally in the narrative, but also inequalities. The narrator is Offred, serves as an imaginative analogy Don DeLillo a “handmaid”—a concubine for for infatuation. Other themes in the reproductive purposes in an era work include acceptance of aging Born in New York City in 1936, of rampant sexually transmitted and the continuation of romantic Don DeLillo garnered a cult diseases. Her master develops love among the elderly, even as following with his early works, feelings for her and gives her the body grows more infirm. entering the mainstream with privileges, as well as access to White Noise. Growing up in an some of the regime’s secrets. She WHITE NOISE Italian Catholic family in the later becomes implicated in a Bronx, he discovered a thirst growing resistance movement. The (1985), DON DELILLO for reading during a summer power of this highly controversial job as a parking attendant. work of fiction comes from its In his best-selling novel White He worked as an advertising devastating critique of patriarchy Noise, author and playwright Don copywriter after graduating in by exaggeration of its features. DeLillo tells of how the chair of communications arts in 1958 Hitler Studies at a US university is but, disillusioned with the job, LOVE IN THE TIME forced to confront his own mortality he quit in 1964 in order to write OF CHOLERA after a chemical spill creates an fiction. DeLillo’s novels have “Airborne Toxic Event.” The book been described as postmodern (1985), GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ is a darkly amusing examination in tone and focus on the US’s of consumerism, intellectual material excess and empty A tender exploration of love’s pretensions within academia, and culture as recurring themes. difficulties and ambiguities, Love the dominance of the media. It also in the Time of Cholera by Nobel examines cohesion, trust, and love Key works Prize-winning Colombian novelist Márquez (see p.282) deftly navigates 1985 White Noise (see right) the twists and turns of human 1988 Libra feeling. Two versions of love are 1991 Mao II presented, each enshrined in a 1997 Underworld male character: one passionate, 2011 The Angel Esmeralda and the other pragmatic. The

336 FURTHER READING within the family unit—which is mistaken for a private eye; in the book is populated by criminal and described as the “cradle of the last, an author who is suffering lowlife characters, and is reminiscent world’s misinformation.” from writer’s block obsessively tries of hard-boiled detective fiction. to track down a successful novelist THE NEW YORK TRILOGY who has disappeared. In immersing THE ENGLISH PATIENT themselves in writing fiction, letters, (1985–1986; 1987), PAUL AUSTER poems, or reports, the characters (1992), MICHAEL ONDAATJE become alienated from reality. A Auster plays with identity, illusion, major theme running through the In his Booker Prize-winning The and the absurd in his three hugely trilogy is the operation of chance English Patient, Sri-Lankan born successful interlocking novels: and coincidence in our lives. Canadian author Michael Ondaatje City of Glass, Ghosts, and The (1943–) shows how the lives of four Locked Room. This is film-noirish THE SATANIC VERSES characters intersect in an Italian crime fiction, with elements of villa in 1945. A nurse, a thief, and postmodern experimentalism. The (1988), SALMAN RUSHDIE a Sikh sapper are preoccupied by a links between an author and his or plane-crash victim who lies injured her subject are teasingly explored: In this deeply controversial book, upstairs. The narrative spirals into in the first book the protagonist is two Indian survivors of a terrorist the past to reveal an affair in the a writer of detective stories who is attack on a jet bound for London North African desert and other caught in complications after being become symbols of the angelic dangerous secrets. Lies and half- and the wicked, and experience truths mask identities, and physical Paul Auster miraculous transformations. The and emotional damage are inflicted novel’s title, The Satanic Verses, by both war and love. Novelist, essayist, translator, refers to passages in the holy book and poet, Auster primarily of Islam, the Koran, that allow The desert could not be writes about ideas of the self, intercessory prayers to pagan claimed or owned—it was identity, and meaning—and deities. British-Indian author a piece of cloth carried by sometimes the author himself Salman Rushdie (see p.302) was winds, never held down by features in his books. Born in subjected to a fatwa (death order) stones, and given a hundred 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, by the Supreme Leader of Iran for Auster moved to Paris in 1970 allegedly blaspheming against shifting names … to translate contemporary Muhammad—one of the characters The English Patient French literature. Returning is partly modeled on the prophet. to the US four years later, Michael Ondaatje he continued his translation PLAYING FOR THRILLS work, wrote poetry, and began TEXACO writing a series of existentialist (1989), WANG SHUO mystery novels, which were (1992), PATRICK CHAMOISEAU collected as The New York Wang Shuo (1958–) is a Chinese Trilogy. Auster has also writer working in the “hooligan” This key novel by Martinique written screenplays, two style, typified by using Beijing author Chamoiseau (1953–) takes of which became movies that dialect to show mocking indifference its name from a real-life shantytown he directed himself. to establishment values. His much suburb—itself named after an oil celebrated Playing for Thrills is a Key works satirical novel of urban alienation, centered on a murder. It is narrated 1982 The Invention of Solitude by the chief suspect, Fang Yan, a 1985–87 The New York Trilogy man who enjoys card playing, (see above) drinking, and womanizing. Along 1990 The Music of Chance with its “tough-guy” protagonist, the 2005 The Brooklyn Follies

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 337 company due to its industry What that Coyote dreams, County, southwestern Ontario, connections. The founder of this anything can happen. they typically show a mastery of community, whose father was a Green Grass, structure, switching back and forth freed slave, tells her family story, Running Water in time. They also feature a beginning in the early 1820s. The preoccupation with moral ambiguity narrative is punctuated by excerpts Thomas King and messiness in relationships, and from her notebooks, diaries, and also with the responsibility people letters. At the heart of the book is assume for parents, children, and the struggle between colonizer and in-laws at different times of life. colonized, and between official history and oral storytelling, both of INFINITE JEST which are mirrored in the interplay of languages: French and Creole. (1997), DAVID FOSTER WALLACE THE ROCK OF TANIOS as well as from literature (such as A torrent of zany humor and Robinson Crusoe). Both comic and surreal incident, Infinite Jest is the (1993), AMIN MAALOUF satirical, the work touches on the masterpiece of Wallace (1962–2008), cultural and political aspects of an American writer whose suicide Lebanese author Amin Maalouf Native American land issues. cemented his cult status. An (1949–), who writes in French, won ambitious novel that explores the Prix Goncourt for The Rock of SELECTED STORIES addiction, recovery, and the Tanios. The novel is set in the late American Dream, the book is set in 1880s, when Lebanon was caught in (1996), ALICE MUNRO a dystopian near future. Multilayered the conflict between Europe and the and nonchronological in style, it Ottoman Empire. It tells the story of Canadian author Alice Munro has features a huge cast of characters, Tanios, the illegitimate son of a written novels, but it is her short such as the residents of a Boston sheikh, who flees his homeland with stories that are regarded as her halfway house, students at a nearby his adoptive father to escape political supreme achievement, as can be tennis academy, and a gang of enemies. Tanios is soon embroiled in seen in this collection from eight of homicidal Quebec terrorists in the wider conflict and becomes an her books. Mostly set in Huron wheelchairs. The addictions it unlikely intermediary between the examines include entertainment, Western and Middle Eastern powers. sex, nationalism, and drugs. GREEN GRASS, Alice Munro (although Munro had moved RUNNING WATER from her home province ten years A writer of exquisitely crafted, earlier). Writing an impressive (1993), THOMAS KING compelling, and emotionally range of short stories and novels rich stories, Alice Munro has over the decades since, she has American-Canadian novelist and developed and advanced the art pioneered a narrative style that broadcaster King (1943–), who is of short-story writing over the is simultaneously rich in imagery part Cherokee, writes about Native course of six decades. Born in yet also lyrical, sparse, and American culture in spare, colloquial Ontario, Canada, in 1931, she intense in its description of the prose. Green Grass, Running Water had her first writing published complexities of ordinary lives. is set in the Blackfoot territory of in 1950 while studying English Alberta, Canada. The novel’s and journalism at the University Key works structure is complex, with four of Western Ontario. Her first plot lines each interspersed with collection of short stories, Dance 1978 Who Do You Think You Are? a different creation myth. One of the Happy Shades, appeared 1996 Selected Stories (see above) strand features figures from Native in 1968, featuring the lives of 1998 The Love of a Good Woman American and Christian traditions, women in small-town Ontario 2004 Runaway

338 FURTHER READING Jhumpa Lahiri INTERPRETER OF on loss, memory, and dissolution, MALADIES through memoir, history, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s father observation. The book’s title is the emigrated to the UK from (1999), JHUMPA LAHIRI name of the central character, who India, and Jhumpa was born was sent to England and placed in London in 1967. Her family Jhumpa Lahiri’s first work of fiction, with foster parents. Later, after moved to the US—the country Interpreter of Maladies was initially discovering his Czech identity and that she considers her home— rejected by several publishers, but becoming an architectural historian, when she was two years old. went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. A he explores his troubled past. After her school years she collection of eight short stories, the attended Boston University, unifying theme is the experience of LIFE OF PI where she earned multiple first- and second-generation Indian degrees, and went on to immigrants in America. Among (2001), YANN MARTEL teach creative writing there. the other subjects explored are loss, Renowned for her restrained, disappointed expectations, the In his acclaimed novel Life of Pi, poignant prose, Lahiri has disconnection between different Canadian author Martel (1963–) achieved acclaim with both generations of immigrants, and the follows the voyage of a teenage her short stories and novels, struggle to find a place in the West Indian boy, the son of a zookeeper, writing on themes informed for the traditional culture of India, who for 227 days drifts on a lifeboat by her experience as a second- where two of the stories are set. In in the Pacific Ocean following generation Indian American. many of them, food plays a major a shipwreck, with only a Bengal role as a focus of human interaction. tiger named Richard Parker as Key works his companion. The boy, en route AUSTERLITZ to Canada, develops wisdom 1999 Interpreter of Maladies through adversity. His experiences (see right) (2001), W. G. SEBALD (including delirium, blindness, 2003 The Namesake meerkats, and carnivorous algae) 2008 Unaccustomed Earth Often writing in an intentionally provide the occasion for urgent and 2013 The Lowland elaborate form of his native tongue, thought-provoking reflections on German author Sebald (1944–2001) spirituality, religions, and zoology. MY NAME IS RED lived in England for the latter part of his life. Austerlitz is typical of his THE KITE RUNNER (1998), ORHAN PAMUK work in its melancholy reflections (2003), KHALED HOSSEINI An intellectual murder mystery No one can explain exactly centered around 16th-century what happens within us Portraying themes of betrayal, guilt, miniaturists, My Name is Red won when the doors behind sin, atonement, and friendship, The international acclaim for its author, Kite Runner begins in Afghanistan Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan which our childhood terrors in 1975. A 12-year-old boy plans to Pamuk (1952–). The book exhibits lurk are flung open. win a kite-flying competition with a postmodern consciousness of its Austerlitz the help of his best friend, but an own artistry: characters know they act of violence mars the day of the are fictional, and the reader is W. G. Sebald contest. Exiled in California after frequently referenced. The narration the Soviet invasion of 1979, he switches viewpoint, often between eventually returns to a land under unexpected narrators—there are Taliban rule. Khaled Hosseini passages narrated by a coin and (1965–) was inspired to write this the color red. The novel’s themes partly autobiographical novel after include artistic devotion, love, and reading that kite flying had been tensions between East and West. banned in his homeland.

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE 339 2666 Africa and the West. Writing with WE NEED NEW NAMES feminist overtones, Adichio also (2004), ROBERTO BOLAÑO questions the ethics of Western (2013), NOVIOLET BULAWAYO journalism and the function of the The last, unrevised, labyrinthine academic establishment, as well Set initially in a Zimbabwean novel by the Chilean writer Bolaño as the effectiveness of relief aid. shanty named Paradise, the (1953–2003), 2666 (whose title is coming-of-age novel We Need never fully explained) focuses on WIZARD OF THE CROW New Names depicts lives scarred a mysterious writer, Archimboldi. by violence, poverty, disease, Partly set on the eastern front of (2006), NGUGI WA THIONG’O and injustice. The young female World War II, the story mainly takes narrator, sent to live with her aunt place in a Mexican town notorious Set in an imaginary African in the Midwestern US, is faced for around 300 serial homicides of dictatorship, Wizard of the Crow is a with a new source of discontent: women. After detailing the murders madcap satire of totalitarian politics. the exclusiveness of the American in a relentless series of police reports, Author Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1938–), Dream. The novel is especially Bolaño rewards readers for their a prisoner of conscience in his native memorable for its depiction of the stamina with a vivid historical Kenya, emigrated to the US after loyalty and vitality of childhood reconstruction that illuminates his release. In a parody of corrupt friendships in Zimbabwe, where the enigma at the novel’s core. governments, the plot involves a author NoViolet Bulawayo (1981–) despotic ruler who wishes to climb was born and raised. Metaphors are our way to heaven by building a modern- of losing ourselves in day Tower of Babel. Hope is found Chimamanda Ngozi semblances or treading in multiple voices of dissent—such Adichie water in a sea of seeming. as a group that causes chaos with plastic snakes. Influenced by oral Born in 1977 in southeastern 2666 traditions, the book operates by Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi broad strokes of caricature, with Adichie studied medicine and Roberto Bolaño some scatological touches. pharmacy at the University of Nigeria in Enugu, where HALF OF A YELLOW SUN THE RELUCTANT her father was professor of FUNDAMENTALIST statistics and her mother was (2006), CHIMAMANDA NGOZI the first female registrar. She ADICHIE (2007), MOHSIN HAMID studied communications and political science in the US, Adichie named her masterpiece Presented as a monologue that later obtaining a Master’s in Half of a Yellow Sun—which traces takes place in a Lahore (Pakistan) African Studies from Yale. An the Nigerian Civil War (1967–70) café, The Reluctant Fundamentalist author of novels, short stories, through its impact on three main captures the experiences of a and poetry, she won the 2007 characters—after the symbol on Pakistani man who comes home Orange Prize for Fiction for the Biafran flag. Themes include from the US after a failed love affair Half of a Yellow Sun. Adichie conflict’s human cost, politics and and 9/11, turning his back on a divides her time between the identity in postcolonial Africa, well-paid business job. In Pakistan US and Nigeria, where she and the relationship between his disillusionment with American teaches creative writing. capitalism forms into more radical views. Pakistani author Hamid Key works (1971–) uses the story line of the narrator’s girlfriend’s inability to 2003 Purple Hibiscus free herself from a past relationship 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun as a metaphor of America’s nostalgic (see left) attachment to past glories. 2013 Americanah

340 GLOSSARY aesthetic Concerning beauty and ballad A form of popular verse that conceit An elaborate or unlikely the appreciation of beauty; as a noun, narrates a story, often set to music, metaphor, especially popular in used to denote the set of principles and widespread throughout Europe Elizabethan poetry, comparing two and ideas that define an artistic from the Middle Ages until the early things that are not obviously similar. movement (“a classical aesthetic”). 19th century. English poet John Donne famously compares parting lovers to the arms of Aestheticism A movement, originating Bildungsroman A “novel of a compass, apart but still connected. in the late 19th century in England, formation” that tells of the early which valued “art for art’s sake,” and struggles and emotional education of couplet Two successive lines of verse rejected the idea that art or literature a young protagonist, who grows and that go together, often rhyming. When should offer a moral message or social matures during the process. The genre occurring at the conclusion of a poem purpose. Leading proponents included originated in Germany in the late 18th (such as a Shakespearean sonnet), it playwright Oscar Wilde, artist James century. Many Bildungsromans are can form a summing-up of the poem’s Whistler, and poet and artist Dante regarded as partly autobiographical. sentiment or message. Gabriel Rossetti. Byronic hero A hero having the drama A work intended to be acted alexandrine A poetic line consisting qualities for which the English out on a stage before an audience, of 12 syllables split into six iambic feet Romantic poet Lord Byron was originating in Athens in the 6th and (an unstressed syllable followed by a famed, including rebelliousness, 5th centuries bce. The main genres stressed syllable). passion, defiance, contempt for were originally tragedy and comedy. conventional morality, and possibly The term comes from the Greek word allegory A work of art or literature an appetite for self-destruction. meaning “action.” that contains a veiled meaning or message, often conveyed symbolically. canto From the Italian meaning dystopia The opposite of utopia: a For example, a tale about squabbling “song,” a section of a long (or especially vision (usually in novel form) of a farmyard animals can be an allegory epic) poem, comparable to a chapter in future in which society is dominated for a country’s corrupt political leaders. a novel or long work of nonfiction. by a totalitarian state, or has broken down, often through environmental alliteration The use of several words chanson de geste A form of epic disaster or war. Life in a dystopia in a row or close together that begin poem of the 11th to 13th centuries that usually involves fear and hardship. with the same consonant or sound, incorporates legends about historical often for deliberate poetic effect. figures such as Charlemagne, and epic poem A long narrative poem, which was sung or recited at court. detailing the adventures of a historic antihero The protagonist of a Often considered to be the beginning or legendary hero. Epic poems are the literary work who embodies a of French literature. The term is from oldest literary texts in the world, and noticeably different moral code from the Old French, “song of heroic deeds.” probably originated in an oral tradition. the conventional (or role model) hero, because they are either unheroic or classic In its literary sense, a work epistolary novel A type of novel actively villainous. widely accepted as being of lasting popular in 18th-century European value and worthy of study. literature in which the narrative antinovel A term coined by the is told entirely via letters or other mid-20th century existentialist comedy One of the two types of documents written by the characters. philosopher and writer Jean-Paul drama created in ancient Greece (the Sartre to refer to a novel in which other being tragedy), whose purpose existentialism A theory of philosophy the conventions of the form are is laughter, entertainment, and satire. that emerged in Europe in the late 19th deliberately ignored or subverted. In contrast to tragedy, comedy tends to century, focusing on the individual’s A key development of postmodern have a happy ending and to deal with experience of the world and the literature, an antinovel may have some ordinary people and with the mundane importance of individual agency and features in common with metafiction. aspects of life. responsibility. Existentialist literature

GLOSSARY 341 often contains elements of anxiety, haiku A Japanese form comprising or by having characters who are loneliness, and paranoia in characters’ a short poem with three lines of five, aware that they are in a story), to reactions to a meaningless universe. seven, and five syllables respectively, draw attention to the relationship and traditionally dealing with the between fiction and real life. fable A simple story with a moral natural world. It flourished from the message, often featuring animal 17th to the 19th centuries and became metaphor A figure of speech that adds characters and mythical elements. popular in Western literature in the an extra layer of meaning to an object 20th century. by equating it with something else. fairy tale A short tale featuring folkloric fantasy characters and hard-boiled fiction A type of urban meter In poetry, the rhythm of a wonderful events, and set in a magical, crime fiction originating with the piece of verse, dictated by the “feet” timeless, and usually rural world. American pulp-fiction detective (stressed syllables) in a line. magazines of the 1920s, often with a fiction A work that is entirely invented, sardonic private investigator as the Modernism In literature, a movement consisting of a made-up narrative and protagonist, and featuring gangsters, that lasted from the late 19th to the imaginary characters. A work of fiction prostitutes, guns, sex, and violence, as mid-20th century. It broke with may be wholly fantastical or embedded well as fast, colloquial dialogue. traditional forms and expanded in the real world. In a wider sense, the limits of poetry and fiction with fiction is the genre consisting of Harlem Renaissance A flourishing experimental methods that sought novels and stories. of black American writing (also art and a new level of psychological truth, music) that came out of the new black such as stream of consciousness. folklore The traditional beliefs, middle class in 1920s’ Harlem, New legends, and customs of a culture, York. Lasting from around 1918 to the motif A theme that returns several passed down by oral tradition for many early 1930s, it helped establish a black times throughout a work, and which hundreds (or even thousands) of years. cultural identity in the US. may reflect on and enhance the other themes or central message of a work. folktale A popular or traditional tale humanism During the Renaissance, handed down from generation to an intellectual movement springing myth A symbolic account of gods or generation by oral transmission; from a revived interest in classical superhuman beings existing in a time another name for a fairy tale. Greek and Roman thought; today, a apart from ordinary human history, largely secular, rationalist system of used to explain the customs, rituals, frame narrative An outer narrative thought that emphasizes human rather and beliefs of a people or culture. Often that introduces a story (or stories) than divine agency. mentioned in the same phrase as, but contained within it—generally via a different from, legend. character who narrates the main, inner legend A traditional story, linked to story. The frame provides context and historical events, people, or locations, narrative An account of a series of structure, and sometimes incorporates and operating within the realms of the connected events, whether fictional many different stories, as in Giovanni possible (as opposed to a myth, which or nonfictional. Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Geoffrey incorporates supernatural elements), Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. although the exact dates and details narrative voice The way in which may have been lost. a narrative is communicated to the genre A style or category of literature reader, for example via a first-person (or art or music), such as tragedy, magic realism A postmodern style or an omniscient narrator. comedy, history, spy fiction, science of artistic expression that in literature fiction, romance, or crime. takes the form of a traditional realist naturalism A literary movement that narrative into which bizarre or went further than realism in trying to gothic A genre that explores the supernatural elements are introduced, recreate human behavior in exact and limits of the imagination, originating forcing the reader to reevaluate the precise detail. It also tried to show how in England and Germany in the late reality of the surrounding fiction. people (especially the poor) are formed 18th and early 19th centuries. Its by their environments and social features include gloomy, macabre metafiction A type of postmodern pressures, and it was often criticized settings (such as castles, ruins, or writing that uses techniques to for concentrating on human misery. graveyards), supernatural beings remind the reader of the artificiality It originated in France in the mid-19th (such as ghosts and vampires), and of a fictional work (for example by century, and is perhaps best exemplified an atmosphere of mystery and horror. including the author as a character, by the novels of Émile Zola.

342 GLOSSARY neoclassicism A fascination with the praise of) a person, place, or thing. It prose The ordinary, natural form ideals of classical Greece and Rome originated in ancient Greece, where it of written or spoken language, as that was prevalent in the arts in Europe was performed accompanied by music. opposed to the more structured, during the Enlightenment (1650–1800). rhythmic forms of poetry. In literature, neoclassicism developed parody A work that mocks its target most fully in France, with playwrights by humorously, satirically, or ironically protagonist The chief character in Molière and Jean Racine writing imitating and exaggerating its least a story or narrative; the person to comedies and tragedies respectively effective elements. whom the story happens. that adhered to the classical unities. In Britain, major proponents included pathetic fallacy First coined by realism The accurate depiction of life poet Alexander Pope and satirist Victorian critic John Ruskin in 1856, as it is lived by ordinary people. Often Jonathan Swift. the term describes a literary device by specifically referring to the literary which human emotions are attributed approach that was adopted in France New Journalism A form of to nature or the environment, in such (particularly in the novels of Gustave nonfiction writing that uses stylistic a way that nature seems to offer a Flaubert) in the 19th century, which devices from fiction to achieve a reflection of a character’s inner state. stressed material facts and sociological heightened literary effect, dramatizing insight in reaction to the emotional events rather than sticking to objective picaresque novel From the Spanish nature of Romantic literature. journalistic truth. Key practitioners word pícaro, meaning “rogue” or included Hunter S. Thompson, Truman “rascal,” an episodic prose narrative rhyme A repetition of the same sound Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan about a disreputable but likeable hero. in two or more words; when this occurs Didion. The name derives from the 1973 at the end of lines in a poem it creates book by American author Tom Wolfe. plot The main story, or the sequence an effect, which poets use to achieve and interrelationship of crucial events, various ends (for example to enhance nonfiction A work of prose in which in a work of literature. meaning, to round off a poem, or simply nothing is made up, and which is about for harmony). and based on facts and real events (as poetry Literary writing of concentrated opposed to fiction). expression, intended to evoke a greater rhyme scheme The pattern of the resonance than prose. Poetry uses a rhymes in a poem. Certain types of novel A sustained work of prose wide variety of devices, including poem have strict rhyme schemes, such fiction, usually of several hundred alliteration, rhyme, metaphor, and as terza rima, the Shakespearean pages, and typically containing rhythm, to achieve its effects. Different sonnet, and the Keatsian ode. characters and a plot. The novel form forms of poetry include the epic, the developed gradually from the 16th ballad, the sonnet, and, more recently, roman à clef A work in which real century onward. the less structured form of free verse. people and events are presented in fictionalized form. From the French novella A work of prose fiction that postcolonial literature A branch meaning “novel with a key.” is shorter than a novel, but longer than of writing, especially novels, that a short story. A novella can touch on developed in former colonies around romance In the 16th to 18th centuries, themes almost as broad in scope as the world in the mid-20th century, a work of fiction that contained a full novel, although it retains some of dealing with the aftermath of extraordinary adventures or fanciful the compact unity of the short story. colonization and examining issues elements. In contemporary fiction, such as oppression and freedom, a genre whose narrative and plot novel of manners A literary style that cultural identity, and diaspora. focus on romantic love. examined (often satirically) the values and contradictions of society through postmodernism In literature, a Romanticism In literature, a Europe- the domestic scenarios of the middle movement that began after World War wide literary movement that began in and upper classes, and in which II, developing from the experimentation the late 18th century, in which writers literary realism was a key element. of the Modernist era. Postmodernist rejected the Enlightenment ideals Developed partly in reaction to the works exhibit differing approaches, of objective reason, and wrote only gothic novels of the late 18th century but often mock previous traditions by from their own personal perspective. and the excesses of Romanticism. parody, pastiche, and the mixing of Rationality and restraint were replaced elements of high and low art; they use by inspiration and subjectivity. Themes ode A usually rhyming lyric poem techniques of metafiction to draw included intense emotional experiences written as an address to (often in attention to a work’s artificiality. and the sublime beauty of nature.

GLOSSARY 343 saga A narrative from Iceland or science fiction, the term now signifies a troubadour A traveling composer Norway written in the Middle Ages, loose genre of work that deals with the and singer in the courts of medieval mainly in the Old Norse language, and question “What if?” through science Europe. The troubadours were usually principally dealing with the founding fiction, horror, fantasy, mystery, and artists of noble birth who sang tales of Iceland (family sagas), the kings of other genres, sometimes all at the about courtly love, rather than tales of Norway (kings’ sagas), and legendary same time. bloody and heroic deeds. or heroic exploits (sagas of antiquity). Although written in prose, the saga stream of consciousness A key trouvère A composer of epic poems shares characteristics with the epic. experimental technique used by in northern France, operating roughly Modernist writers, which tries to from the 11th to the 14th centuries. satire Born out of the comedies of portray a character’s thoughts, feelings, ancient Greece, this is a literary form and perceptions as they actually occur, unities, the The three rules that that uses such elements as irony, often jumbled and unfinished, instead governed the structure of neoclassical sarcasm, ridicule, and wit to expose or of in formal, composed sentences. Its drama, following Aristotle’s notes on attack human failings or vices, often proponents include James Joyce, ancient Greek drama. They are unity of with the intent of inspiring reform. Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. action (a single plot or story line), unity of time (a single day), and unity of place science fiction Writing that explores Sturm und Drang “Storm and urge,” (a single location). the possibility of scenarios that are a German literary movement of the at the time of writing technologically late 18th century that overturned utopia A theoretical perfect society in impossible, extrapolating from present- Enlightenment conventions, and which all people live a harmonious day science; or that deal with some reveled in extremes of individuality, existence. Taken from the name of the form of speculative science-based violence, and passionate expression. 1516 work by the English humanist and conceit, such as a society (on Earth or The young Johann Wolfgang von statesman Sir Thomas More. another planet) that has developed in Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller wholly different ways from our own. were two of its main exponents. vernacular The language of a specific country; ordinary language as it is slave narrative A nonfiction terza rima A form of poetry that uses actually spoken, as opposed to formal narrative told by a slave who has three-line verses with an interlocking literary language. escaped captivity or been granted rhyme scheme, so that the first and freedom. Necessarily quite rare third lines rhyme with each other, and Victorian literature British literature (because education was denied to the middle line rhymes with the first written during the reign of Queen slaves), they were used by anti-slavery and third lines of the next verse. Victoria (reigned 1837–1901), which campaigners to bring the slaves’ plight Developed (although not invented) by often consisted of long and highly to wider public attention, helping to the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. ambitious novels depicting broad end European trading in slaves and the cross-sections of society and often abolition of slavery in North America. tragedy One of two types of play containing a moral lesson. Key authors created in ancient Greece (the other were Charles Dickens, George Eliot, soliloquy A device in a play in being comedy), in which events move and William Makepeace Thackeray. which a character speaks his or her toward a catastrophic conclusion, and innermost thoughts aloud, which has which shows characters brought low Weimar Classicism A German the effect of sharing them directly and experiencing terrible suffering, literary movement that lasted from with the audience. often because of a tragic flaw. the 1780s to 1805, named after the German city of Weimar, home of its sonnet A type of poem created in tragic flaw In Greek tragedy, the principal authors, Johann Wolfgang medieval Italy, having 14 lines of a set element of a protagonist’s character von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller. number of syllables, and following a that leads to his or her downfall. These authors used the structure of specific rhyme scheme. The two classical Greek drama and poetry most common types are the Petrarchan transcendentalism A 19th-century to create works of aesthetic balance (or Italian) and the Shakespearean (or movement in the US whose adherents and harmony. English) sonnet. saw a divine beauty and goodness in nature that they tried to express world literature Literature that has speculative fiction First used in 1947 through literature. Its most famous developed an audience and had an by American science fiction writer writers were Henry David Thoreau influence beyond its original culture Robert A. Heinlein as a synonym for and Ralph Waldo Emerson. and language.

344 INDEX Numbers in bold refer to main entries. Anglo-Saxon literature 19, 42–43, “The Ballad of the Brown Girl” Borges, Jorge Luis 245 48, 219 A Universal History of Infamy 302 38th parallel 330 (Cullen) 235 Ficciones 245, 282, 298, 299 2666 (Bolaño) 339 Animal Farm (Orwell) 245, 248, 252, Balzac, Honoré de 151 “Pierre Menard, Author of the 253, 320 Quixote” 81 A The Black Sheep 152 Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 149, 178, Bradbury, Ray, Fahrenheit 451 252, 287 Abe, Ko¯ bo¯ , The Woman in the Dunes 200 The Chouans 122, 151 Brave New World (Huxley) 243, 252, 263 Annals (Ennius) 40 La Comédie humaine 156, 160 261 Abu al-Alahijah 44 Annie Allen (Brooks) 259 Old Goriot 151 Brecht, Bertolt, Mother Courage and Abu Nuwas 44 antinovel 249, 274–75 banned books 243, 260–61, 322 Achebe, Chinua 269 Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare) Her Children 238, 244–45 Bao Town (Wang) 310 Bright Lights, Big City (McInerney) 313 Things Fall Apart 248, 266–69 87, 89 Barcas trilogy (Vicente) 103 Brink, André, A Dry White Season Acker, Kathy 313 Apuleius, The Golden Ass 40, 56 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 339 Ariel (Plath) 276 Barrett Browning, Elizabeth 131 333–34 Ariosto, Ludovico, Orlando Furioso Broch, Hermann, The Sleepwalkers Half of a Yellow Sun 266, 339 Barrie, J. M., Peter Pan 169 Purple Hibiscus 269, 339 63 234 The Adventures of Caleb Williams Aristophanes 90 Bartleby & Co. (Villa-Matas) 274 The Broken Commandment (Godwin) 166 The Clouds 36 Bartleby, the Scrivener (Melville) 140 (Shimazaki) 209 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Wasps 55 Brontë, Charlotte 129 Wealth 39 Bashar ibn Burd 44 (Twain) 145, 157, 188–89, 270 Aristotle, Poetics 39, 90 Jane Eyre 109, 118, 128–31, 137 The Adventures of Pinocchio (Collodi) The Armies of the Night (Mailer) 291 Basho¯, Matsuo, The Narrow Road to Villette 128 Ars Amatoria (Art of Love) (Ovid) 57 the Interior 61, 92 Brontë, Emily 131, 134 168 Arthurian chivalric romance 19, Wuthering Heights 69, 109, 128, Aeneid (Virgil) 19, 40–41, 62 Baudelaire, Charles 157 Aeschylus 18, 37, 54 50–51 Les Fleurs du mal 165 132, 134–37, 192, 271 As You Like It (Shakespeare) 85, 88, 89 Bronze Age 20 Oresteia 54–55 Asbjørnsen, Peter Christen, beat generation 243, 248, 249, Brooke, Rupert, “The Dead” 212 aestheticism 157, 194 264–65, 288 Brooks, Gwendolyn, Annie Allen 259 The Aesthetics of Resistance (Weiss) Norwegian Folktales 116 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) Asturias, Miguel Angel The Beautiful and Damned 333 149, 178, 200–01, 210 “The Afternoon of a Faun” (Mallarmé) Men of Maize 282 (Fitzgerald) 230 Brown, Dan, The Da Vinci Code 261 Mr. President 282 Buddenbrooks (Mann) 194, 227 165 At Swim-Two-Birds (O’Brien) 274 Beckett, Samuel, Waiting for Godot Bukowski, Charles 313 Against Nature (Huysmans) 194 Atwood, Margaret 14, 327 210, 248, 262 “The Agony” (Herbert) 91 The Blind Assassin 271, 295, Ham on Rye 256 Ah Cheng, Romances of the Bel Ami (Maupassant) 160 Bulawayo, NoViolet, We Need New 326–27 The Bell Jar (Plath) 185, 256, 290 Landscape 310 The Edible Woman 327 Beloved (Morrison) 145, 294, 306–09 Names 339 Al-Mu’allaqat 44 The Handmaid’s Tale 252, 327, 335 Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Alas, Leopolda, La Regenta 201 Auden, W. H. 117 Ben Jelloun, Tahar, The Sand Child 223 The Alchemist (Jonson) 75 Collected Poetry 277 Beowulf 14, 19, 42–43 Margarita 290–91 Alcott, Louisa May, Little Women Auschwitz, literature after 258 Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim’s Progress Austen, Jane 14, 90, 119, 131, 317 Berlin Alexanderplatz (Döblin) 207, 169, 199 Pride and Prejudice 12, 108, 234 330 Alencar, José de, The Guarani 164 Burgess, Anthony, A Clockwork Alfonso X 57 118–19 “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (Fitzgerald) Auster, Paul 336 Orange 252, 270, 289 Cantigas de Santa María 57 230 Burroughs, William S 265, 313 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland The New York Trilogy 298, 336 Bhagavad Gita (Vyasa) 24, 25 Austerlitz (Sebald) 338 Naked Lunch 260, 264 (Carroll) 156, 168–71 Australian writing 311 The Big Sleep (Chandler) 207, Buson, Yosa 92 allegorical satire 295, 320–21 The Awakening (Chopin) 203 236–37 The Butcher Boy (McCabe) 313 Allende, Isabel, The House of The Butler, Octavia E., Kindred 126 B Bildungsroman 128, 206–07, 224–27 Byatt, A. S., Possession: A Romance Spirits 302, 334 The Black Sheep (Balzac) 152 Almayer’s Folly (Conrad) 197 Ba Jin, The Family 222 Blake, William 105 318 Amadis of Gaul (Montalvo) 102–03 Bâ, Mariama, So Long a Letter 334 Byron, Lord 120, 124, 185 American black humor 276 Baif, Jean Antoine de, Mimes, Songs of Innocence and American Psycho (Ellis) 261, 270, 313 Experience 105, 110 Don Juan 110 American voices 188–89 Lessons, and Proverbs 74 Amis, Kingsley, Lucky Jim 318 Baihua literature 222 Bleak House (Dickens) 109, 134, C Amis, Martin 331 Baldwin, James, Go Tell It on the 146–49, 166, 195, 208 Andersen, Hans Christian, Fairy Cain, James M. Mountain 259, 306 Bleeding Edge (Pynchon) 296, 331 Double Indemnity 236 Tales 45, 151, 169 Ballard, J. G. 332 The Postman Always Rings Twice Angelou, Maya 307 The Blind Assassin (Atwood) 271, 236 Crash 313, 332 295, 326–27 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Empire of the Sun 332 The Cairo Trilogy (Mahfouz) 223 259, 291 Blindness (Saramago) 295, 320–21 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, Life is a The Bloody Chamber (Carter) 116, Dream 78 333 Call to Arms (Lu) 207, 222 The Bluest Eye (Morrison) 307, 309 Boccaccio, Giovanni 14, 71 The Decameron 60, 68, 72, 102 Bolaño, Roberto, 2666 339 The Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe) 149 Book of Changes 18, 21 The Book of Disquiet (Pessoa) 216, 244 Book of Odes (Shijing) 46 The Book of Songs (Heine) 111

INDEX 345 The Call of the Wild (London) 240 Chekhov, Anton 203 Cooper, James Fenimore 109 Defoe, Daniel 14, 94, 156 Calvino, Italo 295, 299 Uncle Vanya 203 The Last of the Mohicans 122, 150 Robinson Crusoe 61, 94–95, 196 “Leatherstocking Tales” 122, 150, The Castle of Crossed Destinies 274 Children’s and Household Tales 188 DeLillo, Don 328, 335 (Grimm) 45, 108, 116–17, The Pioneers 122, 188 Falling Man 331 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler 168–69 Underworld 296, 335 69, 294, 298–99 Corneille, Pierre 61 White Noise 335–36 China’s four great classical novels Le Cid 103 Camões, Lúis de, The Lusiads 62, 103 61, 66–67 Psyché 90 Demirkan, Renan, Schwarzer Tee mit campus novel 318 drei Stuck Zucker 324 Chopin, Kate, The Awakening 203 The Corrections (Franzen) 182, 295, Camus, Albert 177, 211 The Chouans (Balzac) 122, 151 328–29, 331 Desai, Kiran, The Inheritance of Loss The Outsider 211, 245, 262 Chrétien de Troyes 48, 50 314, 317 Cortázar, Julio, Hopscotch 249, Candide (Voltaire) 61, 96–97, 260 Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart 274–75, 282 detective fiction 207, 208 19, 50–51 The Devil to Pay in the Backlands Cane (Toomer) 235 The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas) Christie, Agatha 207 146, 152–53 (Guimarães Rosa) 288 cantar de gesta poetry 48 The Mysterious Affair at Styles Dhu al-Rummah 44 Cantar de Mio Cid 56–57 208 The Counterfeiters (Gide) 242 Diamond Sutra 19 The Country of the Pointed Firs The Diary of a Superfluous Man The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer) 60, Chu¯ shingura (Imuzo, Sosuke, and 68–71 Shoraku) 93 (Jewett) 188 (Turgenev) 124 Crane, Stephen 191 Dias, Gonçalves, I-Juca-Pirama 164 Cantigas de Santa María (Alfonso X) civil rights movement 235, 259, 272, Díaz, Junot, Drown 306 57 273, 295, 306, 309 The Red Badge of Courage 190, Dickens, Charles 135–36, 137, 147, 202 Cantos ( Pound) 213 Clarissa (Richardson) 100, 104 157, 166, 168, 182, 185 classical Arabic literature 44–45 Crash (Ballard) 313, 332 A Tale of Two Cities 198 Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red classical Greek drama 18–19, 34–39 Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky) Bleak House 109, 134, 146–49, Claude’s Confession (Zola) 191 Chamber 66 Clelia (Scudéry) 185 14, 156, 172–77, 178 166, 195, 208 Capote, Truman 279, 319 A Clockwork Orange (Burgess) 252, Crow (Hughes) 291 David Copperfield 94, 153, 225, 226 Cry, the Beloved Country (Paton) Great Expectations 198 In Cold Blood 249, 273, 278–79 270, 289 Little Dorrit 109, 166 Cloud Atlas (Mitchell) 69 286, 322 Martin Chuzzlewit 186 The Caretaker (Pinter) 262 The Clouds (Aristophanes) 36 The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) 276, The Old Curiosity Shop 146 Coetzee, J. M. 323 Oliver Twist 134, 151 Carey, Peter 290, 296 Our Mutual Friend 166 Oscar and Lucinda 311 Disgrace 295, 322–23 Cullen, Countee, “The Ballad of the The Pickwick Papers 146, 147 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Dickinson, Emily 125, 131, 213 The True History of the Kelly Gang Brown Girl” 235 A Dictionary of Maqiao (Han) 310 Lyrical Ballads 108, 110 Diderot, Denis 311 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner D Encyclopédie 61, 96 Caribbean writing 294, 312 Jacques the Fatalist 96, 105 144 The Da Vinci Code (Brown) 261 Digenis Akritas 56 Carpentaria (Wright) 311 Collected Poetry (Auden) 277 “Daffodils” (Wordsworth) 192 “Digging” (Heaney) 277 Collins, Suzanne, The Hunger Games Dahl, Roald, Charlie and the The Discomfort Zone (Franzen) 329 Carpentier, Alejo 302 Discourse on the Arts and Sciences 320 Chocolate Factory 171 The Kingdom of this World 312 Collins, Wilkie 198, 207 d’Alembert, Rond, Encyclopédie 61, 96 (Rousseau) 98 Carroll, Lewis 171 A Dance of the Forests (Soyinka) 266 Disgrace (Coetzee) 295, 322–23 The Moonstone 146, 149, 198–99, Dance of the Happy Shades (Munro) Disraeli, Benjamin, Sybil 166 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 208, 271 The Divine Comedy (Dante) 41, 60, 156, 168–71 337 Collodi, Carlo, The Adventures of The Dancing Girl (O¯ gais) 209 62–65, 312 Carter, Angela 333 Pinocchio 168 Daniel Deronda (Eliot) 200 Döblin, Alfred, Berlin Alexanderplatz The Bloody Chamber 116, 333 Dante Alighieri 65, 71 colonial literature 157, 196–97, 207, 234 Nights at the Circus 302 248 The Divine Comedy 41, 60, Doctor Faustus (Marlowe) 60, 75 62–65, 312 Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak) 288 The Castle (Kafka) 211 The Color Purple (Walker) 306 A Doll’s House (Ibsen) 200 The Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare) Danticat, Edwidge, The Farming of Don Juan (Byron) 110 The Castle of Crossed Destinies Bones 306 Don Quixote (Cervantes) 51, 61, 67, 88, 89 (Calvino) 274 comedy of manners 13, 61, 90 Dao De Jing (Laozi) 54 76–81, 274, 298, 320 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 69, 157, 207 A Dark Night’s Passing (Naoya) 209 Doña Barbara (Gallegos) 242 The Castle of Otranto (Walpole) 120 Dark Romanticism 140–45, 152 Donne, John, “A Nocturnal Upon St. The Hound of the Baskervilles Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Castle Rackrent (Edgeworth) 122 206, 208 Lucy’s Day” 91 Species 156, 190 Dos Passos, John, U.S.A. trilogy 230 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Williams) 272 The Lost World 184 David Copperfield (Dickens) 94, 153, Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 174, 211 Catch-22 (Heller) 249, 276 Sherlock Holmes stories 149 A Confederação dos Tamoios 225, 226 The Brothers Karamazov 149, 178, The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger) Davies, Robertson, Fifth Business 200–01, 210 248, 256–57, 271, 328 (Magalhães) 164 A Confederacy of Dunces (Toole) 272 326 Crime and Punishment 14, 156, Celan, Paul, Poppy and Memory 238, Confucianism 18, 21 The Day of the Locust (West) 276 172–77, 178 258 Conrad, Joseph 197 “The Dead” (Brooke) 212 Dead Souls (Gogol) 152 The Idiot 199 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Journey to Almayer’s Folly 197 The Death of Artemio Cruz (Fuentes) Double Indemnity (Cain) 236 the End of The Night 243 Heart of Darkness 157, 196–97, Douglass, Frederick 127 282, 290 “Cendrillon” (Perrault) 117 267, 271 Death of a Naturalist (Heaney) 277 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Cervantes, Miguel de 14, 78 Lord Jim 203 Death in Venice (Mann) 194, 207, Douglass 109, 126–27 Nostromo 240 Don Quixote 51, 61, 67, 76–81, contemporary African-American 224–25, 240 The Decameron (Boccaccio) 60, 68, 274, 298, 320 literature 294, 295, 306–09 72, 102 Césaire, Aimé 196 Conversation in the Cathedral (Vargas Llosa) 282 Return to My Native Land 312 Chamoiseau, Patrick, Texaco 336–37 Chandler, Raymond 236 The Big Sleep 207, 236–37 Chansons de geste 48, 50, 52 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl) 171 Chateaubriand, Francois-René, René 150 Chaucer, Geoffrey 14, 57, 71, 219 The Canterbury Tales 60, 68–71 Troilus and Criseyde 69

346 INDEX Dracula (Stoker) 157, 195 Eugene Onegin (Pushkin) 109, 124 frame narrative 23, 68–71, 102, 203 Gissing, George, New Grub Street 190 Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao) 66 Eugenides, Jeffrey, The Virgin Frankenstein (Shelley) 108, 120–21, The Glass Bead Game (Hesse) 234 “The Dream of the Rood” 42 The Glass Palace (Ghosh) 314, 317 Dream Story (Schnitzler) 194 Suicides 328 184, 192 Glenarvon (Lamb) 185 Dreiser, Theodore 191 Euripides 18, 37 Franz Sternbald’s Wanderings (Tieck) Go (Holmes) 264 Go Set a Watchman (Lee) 273 Sister Carrie 203 Medea 55 224 Go Tell It on the Mountain (Baldwin) Drown (Díaz) 306 Evenings on a Farm near the Dikanka Franzen, Jonathan 329 A Dry White Season (Brink) 333–34 259, 306 Du Fu 19, 46 (Gogol) 178 The Corrections 182, 295, The God of Small Things (Roy) 314, Dubliners (Joyce) 216 Exeter Book 42 328–29, 331 The Duchess of Malfi (Webster) 75 existentialism 210–11 317 Dujardin, Édouard, Les Lauriers sont Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close The Discomfort Zone 329 Godwin, William, The Adventures of The French Lieutenant’s Woman coupés 216 (Safran Foer) 295, 331 Caleb Williams 166 “Dulce et Decorum Est” (Owen) 206, (Fowles) 291 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 99, F French neoclassicism 90, 103–04 212 French realism 156, 158–63 115, 183 Dumas, Alexandre 123 Fables (La Fontaine) 90 French symbolists 165 Faust 98, 108, 109, 112–15 The Faerie Queene (Spenser) 63, 103 Fuentes, Carlos, The Death of The Sorrows of Young Werther 98, The Count of Monte Cristo 146, Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury) 252, 287 152–53 Fairy Tales (Andersen) 45, 151, 169 Artemio Cruz 282, 290 105, 256 Falling Man (DeLillo) 331 Fujiwara no Shunzei, Senzaishu¯ Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship The Three Musketeers 109, The Family (Ba) 222 122–23 The Famished Road (Okri) 269 (Collection of a Thousand Years) 224–25 Far From the Madding Crowd (Hardy) 47 Gogol, Nikolai 152 Duras, Marguerite, The Lover 335 Fuller, Margaret 125 dysfunction in the modern family 190, 200 Futon (Katai) 209 Dead Souls 152 The Farming of Bones (Danticat) 306 Evenings on a Farm near the 295, 328–29 Faulkner, William 243 G dystopian literature 250–55 Dikanka 178 The Sound and the Fury 188, 216, Gaddis, William, The Recognitions Golden Age of Latin literature 40–41 E 242–43, 271 328 The Golden Ass (Apuleius) 40, 56 The Goldfinch (Tartt) 328 Early Gothic 120–21 Faust (Goethe) 98, 108, 109, 112–15 Galgut, Damon, The Good Doctor Golding, William 287 Eça de Queirós 202 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 322 Lord of the Flies 287 The Maias 202 (Thompson) 332 Galland, Antoine 45 Goldsmith, Oliver 90 Eddur 52 Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina 78 Gallegos, Rómulo, Doña Barbara 242 The Good Doctor (Galgut) 322 Edgeworth, Maria, Castle Rackrent Ficciones (Borges) 245, 282, 298, 299 Gao Xingjian 310 Goodbye, Columbus (Roth) 276 fictional autobiography 94–95 García Márquez, Gabriel 15, 284, Goodison, Lorna, To Us, All Flowers 122 Fielding, Henry 61, 81, 156 The Edible Woman (Atwood) 327 287 Are Roses: Poems 312 Effi Briest (Fontane) 202 Tom Jones 94, 104, 182 The General in His Labyrinth 122 Gordimer, Nadine 322 Egyptian Book of the Dead 20, 54 Fifth Business (Davies) 326 Love in the Time of Cholera 335 Ekwensi, Cyprian, People of the City Fight Club (Palahniuk) 313 One Hundred Years of Solitude July’s People 261 Findley, Timothy, The Last of the The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) 266 249, 280–85, 302 El Cantar de mio Cid 48 Crazy People 326 Garcilaso Inca de la Vega 78, 164 188, 189, 244 Eliot, George 109, 183 Finnegans Wake (Joyce) 206, 216 Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais) Grass, Günter 271 Fires on the Plain (O¯ oka) 263 Daniel Deronda 200 First Folio (Shakespeare) 14, 61, 82–89 60, 61, 72–73, 260 The Tin Drum 249, 270–71, 302 Middlemarch 130–31, 156, 174, Fitzgerald, F. Scott 230, 256, 319 Gaskell, Elizabeth 153 Gravity’s Rainbow (Pynchon) 294, 182–83 The Beautiful and Damned 230 Mary Barton 153, 166 295, 296–97 The Mill on the Floss 128 “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” 230 North and South 153 Great American Novel 145 Eliot, T. S. 65 The Great Gatsby 145, 207, The Gaucho Martín Fierro Great Expectations (Dickens) 198 “The Love Song of J. Alfred The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) 145, 228–33 (Hernandez) 199 Prufrock” 213 Tender is the Night 233 Gautier, Théophile, Enamels and 207, 228–33 The Waste Land 192, 206, 213, This Side of Paradise 230 Greek epic 26–33 Five Classics 18, 21 Cameos 165 Green Grass, Running Water (King) 216, 230, 232 Five Weeks in a Balloon (Verne) 184 The General in His Labyrinth (García Ellis, Bret Easton, American Psycho Flaubert, Gustave 14, 160 337 Madame Bovary 81, 146, 156, Márquez) 122 Green Henry (Keller) 224 261, 270, 313 Genet, Jean, Les Nègres 262 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm 117 Ellison, Ralph 249 158–63, 190 Geneva Bible 84 Sentimental Education 163, 199, German Romanticism 99, 111, 115 Children’s and Household Tales Invisible Man 145, 259, 306, 309 Germinal (Zola) 157, 163, 166, 45, 108, 116–17, 168–69 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 13, 108–09, 125 225 Empire of the Sun (Ballard) 332 The Temptation of Saint Anthony 190–91 The Groves of Academe (McCarthy) Enamels and Cameos (Gautier) 165 Ghosh, Amitav, The Glass Palace 318 encyclopedic novel 296–97 161 Encyclopédie (d’Alembert/Diderot) folklore collections 116–17 314, 317 The Guarani (Alencar) 164 Fontane, Theodore, Effi Briest 202 Gibran, Khalil, The Prophet 223 Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the 61, 96 Forster, E. M., A Passage to India Gibson, William, Neuromancer The English Patient (Ondaatje) 336 Attic 131 English Romantic poets 110 196, 241–42 334–35 The Guest (Hwang) 295, 330 Enheduanna 20 The Fountainhead (Rand) 245 Gide, André, The Counterfeiters 242 Guillaume de Lorris, Romance of the Ennius, Quintus, Annals 40 Fowles, John, The French Gilbert, Sandra M., The Madwoman The Epic of Gilgamesh 13, 18, 20, 28 Rose 57 epistolary novel 15, 100–01, 104, Lieutenant’s Woman 291 in the Attic 131 Guilleragues, Gabriel-Joseph de, Frame, Janet, The Lagoon and Other Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, “The 105, 174 Letters of a Portuguese Nun Ethan Frome (Wharton) 240 Stories 286 Yellow Wallpaper” 128, 131 100 Ginsberg, Allen 265 Guimarães Rosa, João, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands 288 Howl and Other Poems 248, 261, Gulliver’s Travels (Swift) 61, 94, 95, 264, 288 104, 270, 321 Gustavus Vassa, the African 126

INDEX 347 H Hesperides (Herrick) 91 I-Juca-Pirama (Dias) 164 Journey to the West (Wu) 66 Hesse, Hermann I-novel 209 Joyce, James 216 Habila, Helon, Waiting for an Angel Ibsen, Henrik 200 266 The Glass Bead Game 234 Dubliners 216 Siddhartha 241 A Doll’s House 200 Finnegans Wake 206, 216 haiku and haibun 92, 209 Hildebrandslied 56 Icelandic sagas 19, 52–53 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Haley, Alex 307 Hilsenrath, Edgar, The Nazi and the The Idiot (Dostoyevsky) 199 If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler Man 217, 225, 241, 256 Roots 306, 333 Barber 258 Ulysses 206, 214–21, 241, 260 Half of a Yellow Sun (Adichie) 266, historical novel 122–23 (Calvino) 69, 294, 298–99 Jude the Obscure (Hardy) 202 History (Morante) 332 Iliad (Homer) 18, 26–33, 41, 54, 62, Julie, or the New Heloise (Rousseau) 339 The Hobbit (Tolkien) 171, 287 Ham on Rye (Bukowski) 256 Hoffmann, E. T. A. 109 294, 312 100 Hamid, Mohsin, The Reluctant imperial Chinese poetry 46 Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) 87, 88, Nachtstücke 111, 120 Imuzo, Takedo, Chu¯ shingura 93 Fundamentalist 331, 339 “The Sandman” 111, 120 “In the Apartments of Death” (Sachs) 89 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88, Hölderlin, Friedrich, Hyperion 111 July’s People (Gordimer) 261 Holmes, John Clellon, Go 264 258 The Jungle Book (Kipling) 157, 168, 144, 174, 221 Holocaust 258 In the Castle of My Skin (Lamming) Hammett, Dashiell Homer 28 202 Iliad 18, 26–33, 41, 54, 62, 294, 312 The Jungle (Sinclair) 166 The Maltese Falcon 236 In Cold Blood (Capote) 249, 273, Red Harvest 236 312 K Hamsun, Knut, Hunger 202 Odyssey 18, 28, 33, 41, 54, 62, 278–79 Han Shaogong, A Dictionary of In the Miso Soup (Murakami) 319 Kabuki and Bunraku theatre 93 220–21, 312 In Search of Lost Time (Proust) 216, Kafka, Franz 211 Maqiao 310 Hopscotch (Cortázar) 249, 274–75, The Handmaid’s Tale (Atwood) 252, 240 – 41 The Castle 211 282 In the Skin of a Lion (Ondaatje) 324 Letter to His father 211 327, 335 Horace 28, 40, 74 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Metamorphosis 206, 210–11, 234 hard-boiled detective fiction 207, Hosseini, Khaled, The Kite Runner 338 The Trial 211, 242 The Hound of the Baskervilles (Conan (Jacobs) 126 Kafka on the Shore (Murakami) 302, 236–37, 336 Indian English writing 294, 295, Hardy, Thomas 193 Doyle) 206, 208 319 A House For Mr Biswas (Naipaul) 314–17 Kalevala (Lönnrot) 116, 151 Far From the Madding Crowd Indianism/Indianismo 164 Kalidasa 19 190, 200 289 Infinite Jest (Wallace) 296, 337 Karlamagnús saga 48 The House of Mirth (Wharton) 118 The Inheritance of Loss (Desai) 314, Katai, Tayama, Futon 209 Jude the Obscure 202 The House of the Seven Gables Kawabata, Yasunari, Snow Country Tess of the d’Urbervilles 157, 317 (Hawthorne) 140 Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri) 338 286 192–93 The House of The Spirits (Allende) invention of childhood 168–71 Keats, John 256 Harlem Renaissance 235 Invisible Man (Ellison) 145, 259, 306, Harmonium (Stevens) 213 302, 334 “Ode to a Nightingale” 110 Harry Potter (Rowling) 170, 261 Howl and Other Poems (Ginsberg) 309 Keller, Gottfried, Green Henry 224 The Hawk in the Rain (Hughes) 277 Ionesco, Eugène, Rhinocéros 262 Kemal, Yasar 288 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 141 248, 261, 264, 288 Irving, Washington, The Sketch Book Hughes, Langston, The Ways of Memed, My Hawk 288 The House of the Seven Gables 150 Keneally, Thomas, Schindler’s Ark 140 White Folks 235 Islamic Golden Age 19, 44–45 Hughes, Ted Issa, Kobayashi, The Spring of My 311 The Scarlet Letter 140, 153 Kerouac, Jack 265 Heaney, Seamus Crow 291 Life 92 The Hawk in the Rain 277 Ivanhoe (Scott) 122, 150 On the Road 185, 248, 264–65 Death of a Naturalist 277 Hughes, Thomas, Tom Brown’s Jacobethan theater 75 Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the “Digging” 277 Jacobs, Harriet 109 Heart of Darkness (Conrad) 157, School Days 169 Cuckoo’s Nest 271, 289 Hugo, Victor 122, 157, 167, 181, 182 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Kindred (Butler) 126 196–97, 267, 271 126 King Lear (Shakespeare) 88, 144 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Les Miserables 156, 166–67, 182 King, Thomas, Green Grass, Running The Human Stain (Roth) 318 Jacques the Fatalist (Diderot) 96, (McCullers) 272 Hunger (Hamsun) 202 105 Water 337 The Heart of Redness (Mda) 322 The Hunger Games (Collins) 320 The Kingdom of this World The Heartless (Yi) 241 Hurston, Zora Neale, Their Eyes Were James, Henry 177, 183, 187, 217 Heian court, Japan 19, 47 The Portrait of a Lady 157, 174, (Carpentier) 312 Heidi (Spyri) 169 Watching God 207, 235 186–87 Kingsley, Charles, The Water Babies Heine, Heinrich, The Book of Songs Hussein, Taha, A Man of Letters 223 The Turn of the Screw 203, 271 Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World 168 111 Jane Eyre (Brontë) 109, 118, 128–31, Kipling, Rudyard 196 Heller, Joseph, Catch-22 249, 276 243, 252, 261 137 Hemingway, Ernest 188–89, 286 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, Against Nature The Jungle Book 157, 168, 202 Jean de Meun, Romance of the Rose Kitchen (Yashimoto) 319 The Old Man and the Sea 287 194 57 The Kite Runner (Hosseini) 338 The Sun Also Rises 186, 230, 264, Hwang Sok-yong Kivi, Aleksis, Seven Brothers 199 Jewett, Sarah Orne, The Country of Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian von, 286 The Guest 295, 330 the Pointed Firs 188 Henry IV (Shakespeare) 75, 88, 89 The Shadow of Arms 330 Sturm und Drang 98 The Heptameron (Marguerite de Hymns (Ronsard) 74 Jewish Holocaust 258 Kokinshu¯ poetry collection 47 Hyperion (Hölderlin) 111 Johannes von Tepl, Ploughman of Konjaku monogatari 47 Navarre) 68 Koran (“Recitation”) 44 Herbert, George, “The Agony” 91 IJ Bohemia 72 Kundera, Milan 334 Herder, Gottfried 112, 113 Johnson, Samuel 91 Hernandez, José, The Gaucho Martín I Am a Cat (So¯ seki) 209 Jonson, Ben 61, 84 The Unbearable Lightness of I Ching 21 Being 334 Fierro 199 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings The Alchemist 75 A Hero of Our Time (Lermontov) 124, Works 84, 85–86 Kyd, Thomas, The Spanish Tragedy (Angelou) 259, 291 Journey to the Center of the Earth 75 151–52 Herrick, Robert, Hesperides 91 (Verne) 184 Hesiod, Theogony 28, 54 Journey to the End of The Night (Céline) 243

348 INDEX L Letters of a Portuguese Nun McCullers, Carson, The Heart Is a A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Guilleragues) 100 Lonely Hunter 272 (Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88–89 La Celestina (Fernando de Rojas) 78 La Comédie humaine (Balzac) 156, Levi, Primo, Survival in Auschwitz 258 McEwan, Ian 331 The Mill on the Floss (Eliot) 128 Levy, Andrea, Small Island 324 McInerney, Jay, Bright Lights, Big Miller, Henry, Tropic of Cancer 243, 160 Lewis, C. S., Narnia series 171 La Fayette, Madame de, The Princess Lewis, Matthew, The Monk 121 City 313 260 L’homme rapaillé (Miron) 332 Madame Bovary (Flaubert) 81, 146, Milton, John 61, 103 of Cleves 104 Li Bai 19, 46 La Fontaine, Jean de, Fables 90 Life is a Dream (Calderón de la Barca) 156, 158–63, 190 Paradise Lost 62, 103, 144 La Jalousie (Robbe-Grillet) 288–89 Madame de Treymes (Wharton) 186 Mimes, Lessons, and Proverbs (Baif) La Regenta (Alas) 201 78 The Madwoman in the Attic (Gilbert Laclos, Pierre Choderlos de 101 The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes 78 74 Life of Pi (Martel) 270, 338 and Gubar) 131 Miron, Gaston, L’homme rapaillé 332 Les Liaisons dangereuses 13, Life A User’s Manual (Perec) 333 Magalhães, Gonçalves de, A The Misanthrope (Molière) 90 100–01 literature Miscellaneous Poems (Marvell) 91 Confederação dos Tamoios 164 Mishima, Yukio, The Temple of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Lawrence) definition and literary canon The Magic Mountain (Mann) 206–07, 260 12–13 Golden Pavilion 263 224–27 Mitchell, David, Cloud Atlas 69 The Lagoon and Other Stories global explosion 15 magic realism 15, 234, 294, 295, Mo Yan, Red Sorghum 310 (Frame) 286 story of 13–14 Moby-Dick (Melville) 109, 138–45, 296 vocabulary, expanded 15 302–05 Modern Arabic voices 223 Lahiri, Jhumpa 317, 338 Little Dorrit (Dickens) 109, 166 Mahabharata (Vyasa) 13, 18, 22–25, 28 Modernism 15, 69, 200, 206–07, 224, Interpreter of Maladies 338 The Little Prince (Saint-Exupéry) Mahfouz, Naguib, The Cairo Trilogy 235 Lamb, Lady Caroline, Glenarvon 185 207, 238–39 223 Modernist poetry 213, 232 Lamming, George, In the Castle of Little Women (Alcott) 169, 199 The Maias (Eça de Queirós) 202 Moe, Jørgen, Norwegian Folktales 116 Lolita (Nabokov) 186, 248, 260–61, 270 Mailer, Norman 291 Molière 13, 61 My Skin 312 London, Jack 191 Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart The Armies of the Night 291 The Misanthrope 90 The Call of the Wild 240 Mallarmé, Stéphane 157 Psyché 90 (Chrétien de Troyes) 19, 50–51 Lönnrot, Elias, Kalevala 116, 151 The Monk (Lewis) 121 Lancelot-Grail cycle (Vulgate Cycle) Lope de Vega, New Rules for Writing “The Afternoon of a Faun” 165 Montalvo, Garci Rodríguez de, Malory, Sir Thomas, Le Morte 50 Plays at this Time 78 Amadis of Gaul 102–03 The Land (Park) 330 Lord of the Flies (Golding) 287 d’Arthur 50, 51, 102 Montesquieu, Persian Letters 96 Laozi, Dao De Jing 54 Lord Jim (Conrad) 203 The Maltese Falcon (Hammett) 236 Monzaemon, Chikamatsu, The Love Larkin, Philip, Whitsun Weddings 277 The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) 287 A Man of Letters (Hussein) 223 L’Assommoir (Zola) 166 Lost Generation literature 207, The Man Without Qualities (Musil) Suicides at Sonezaki 93 The Last of the Crazy People The Moonstone (Collins) 146, 149, 228–33 234, 243 (Findley) 326 The Lost World (Conan Doyle) 184 Mann, Thomas 227 198–99, 208, 271 The Last of the Mohicans (Cooper) “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” Morante, Elsa, History 332 Buddenbrooks 194, 227 More, Thomas, Utopia 252 122, 150 (Eliot) 213 Death in Venice 194, 207, 224–25, Morrison, Toni 295, 309 Latin American Boom 282–85 The Love Suicides at Sonezaki Lawrence, D. H. 241 240 Beloved 145, 294, 306–09 (Monzaemon) 93 The Magic Mountain 206–07, The Bluest Eye 307, 309 Lady Chatterley’s Lover 260 Love in the Time of Cholera (García Song of Solomon 307, 309 Sons and Lovers 192, 240 224–27 Sula 307 Lazarillo de Tormes 78 Márquez) 335 Marguerite de Navarre, The Moses Ascending (Selvon) 324 Le Cid (Corneille) 103 The Lover (Duras) 335 Mother Courage and Her Children Le Morte d’Arthur (Malory) 50, 51, Love’s Labour’s Lost (Shakespeare) Heptameron 68 Marlowe, Christopher 61, 89, 114 (Brecht) 238, 244–45 102 87, 88 Mr. President (Asturias) 282 “Leatherstocking Tales” (Cooper) Lu Xun Doctor Faustus 60, 75 Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf) 182, 217, 242 Martel, Yann, Life of Pi 270, 338 multiculturalism 294–95, 324–25 122, 150, 188 Call to Arms 207, 222 Martin Chuzzlewit (Dickens) 186 Munro, Alice 337 Leaves of Grass (Whitman) 109, 125 Old Tales Retold 222 Marvell, Andrew, Miscellaneous Lee, Harper 273, 278 Lucky Jim (Amis) 318 Dance of the Happy Shades 337 Luo Guanzhong 66 Poems 91 Selected Stories 337 Go Set a Watchman 273 Romance of the Three Kingdoms Mary Barton (Gaskell) 153, 166 Too Much Happiness 326 To Kill a Mockingbird 249, 271, The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) Murakami, Haruki 60, 66–67 Kafka on the Shore 302, 319 272–73 The Lusiads (Camões) 62, 103 290–91 Norwegian Wood 319 Lermontov, Mikhail 108 lyric poetry 49 Maupassant, Guy de, Bel Ami 160 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 319 Lyrical Ballads (Wordsworth/ Mda, NoZakes, The Heart of Redness Murakami, Ryu, In the Miso Soup A Hero of Our Time 124, 151–52 Leroux, Gaston, The Phantom of the Coleridge) 108, 110 322 319 Measure for Measure (Shakespeare) Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji Opera 195 M Les Amours de Cassandre (Ronsard) 87, 88 19, 47, 61, 174 Maalouf, Amin, The Rock of Tanios Medea (Euripides) 55 The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Poe) 74 337 Melville, Herman 140 Les Fleurs du mal (Baudelaire) 165 208 Les Lauriers sont coupés (Dujardin) Mabinogion 56, 116 Bartleby, the Scrivener 140 Musäus, Johann Karl August 116 Macbeth (Shakespeare) 85, 87, 88, Moby-Dick 109, 138–45, 296 Musil, Robert, The Man Without 216 Memed, My Hawk (Kemal) 288 Les Liaisons dangereuses (Laclos) 144 Men of Maize (Asturias) 282 Qualities 234, 243 McCabe, Patrick, The Butcher Boy metafiction 295, 298–99, 302–03 My Name is Red (Pamuk) 338 13, 100–01 Metamorphoses (Ovid) 40, 55–56, The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe) Les Miserables, (Hugo) 156, 166–67, 313 McCarthy, Mary, The Groves of 84 120 182 Metamorphosis (Kafka) 206, 210–11, The Mysterious Affair at Styles Les Nègres (Genet) 262 Academe 318 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, Nathan 234 (Christie) 208 Metaphysical Poets 91 the Wise 96 Middlemarch (Eliot) 130–31, 156, Letters Concerning the English 174, 182–83 Nation (Voltaire) 97 Midnight’s Children (Rushdie) 227, 271, 294, 300–05, 314, 315