Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisJohn Burt Foster, Jr., is University Professor of English and Cultural Studies at George Mason University, USA. He is the author of Heirs to Dionysus: A Nietzschean Current in Literary Modernism (Princeton University Press, 1981) and Nabokov's Art Memory and European Modernism (Princeton University Press, 1993) and the editor, with Wayne J. Froman, of Dramas of Culture: Theory, History, Performance (Lexington Books, 2008). He is the past editor of The Comparatist and of Recherche littéraire / Literary Research, the journal of the International Comparative Literature Association.Trade ReviewTransnational Tolstoy is a welcome and groundbreaking addition to Tolstoy studies, and to the transnational reading of Russian literature generally … In this rewarding volume, John Burt Foster has updated and extended the exhausted genres of ‘Tolstoy and the West’ and ‘Tolstoy and World Literature.’ … Transnational Tolstoy provokes consideration … and plays an exemplary role in opening Tolstoy’s complex position ‘between the west and the world’ to new and productive approaches. -- William Nickell, University of Chicago * Slavic and East European Journal *Transnational Tolstoy is unlike any other current work on Tolstoi today. It provides a refreshing and thought-provoking look at one of the major figures of Russian literature and the dialogues he inspired and initiated around the globe. -- Justin Weir, Harvard University * Slavic Review *Foster ... clearly has a gift for condensing his arguments into self-contained, well-expressed units. He also writes with a stylistic finesse and an apparent aversion to generating critical antipathy; his focus is always on saying things as well and persuasively as possible. Judging by his wide cultural knowledge, refined style, and pleasing attitude, he could have been a diplomat. * Cambridge Quarterly Review *Foster's book is a laudable venture into a new critical method of reading great fiction transnationally ... [He] works with splendid erudition and ingenuity ... [to provide] a refreshing and welcome method of reading and understanding Tolstoi. * Modern Language Review *Transnational Tolstoy is a tour de force of old-fashioned comparative literature, taking in, as it does, such a wide selection of authors from such a wide selection of cultures and nations. * The European Legacy *Foster's engaging study makes a crucial point: that, far from being a monologist or solipsist or hegemonic universalist, Tolstoi developed an ever more nuanced recognition of the incredibly complex interplay of different influences on which any cultural product must depend . . . To have returned this magnificently plural Tolstoi to us, as Foster has in lucid and mercifully jargon-free prose, is a substantial achievement. -- Jeff Love, Clemson University, US * Slavonic and East European Review *I immensely enjoyed reading John Burt Foster's Transnational Tolstoy, a monumental work that puts Tolstoy at the very heart of world literature, relating his work, and especially War and Peace, Anna Karenina and Hadji Murad, to that of immediate predecessors such as Stendhal, contemporaries like Flaubert, and successors including Malraux and Lampedusa, Premchand and Mahfouz. Fully informed by the most recent thinking on comparative and world literature, yet always wearing its learning lightly, Transnational Tolstoy stands as a guide and an inspiration for literary scholars worldwide. -- Theo D'haen, Professor of English & Comparative Literature, University of Leuven, Belgium, and author of The Routledge Concise History of World LiteratureIn Transnational Tolstoy: Between the West and the World John Burt Foster, Jr., offers a new framework for reading the works of Lev Tolstoy. Often viewed as one of the pillars of 'western' literature, Tolstoy’s works now receive a thorough consideration from a fresh perspective, defining Tolstoy’s art through the concepts of 'transnational' writing and 'global' literature. Foster uses these concepts effectively to open up intriguing sides of Tolstoy’s art and to encourage readers to think differently about Tolstoy. Foster probes the middle-aged and aged Tolstoy’s views of himself as non-Western. Finally, he investigates the ways in which twentieth-century non-Western writers of various stylistic bents—modernist, postmodernist, and postcolonial; imagist and magical realist—have engaged with Tolstoy’s art. The result is a stimulating read for literary scholars and the educated public alike. -- Edith W. Clowes, Brown-Forman Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia, USA, and author of Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet IdentityTransnational Tolstoy is a consistently illuminating and lucidly written examination of Tolstoy as a central figure in the fluid movement of culture around the world. More broadly, this wonderful book is also a methodologically innovative, provocative, and inspiring example of how to conduct literary study in the twenty-first century. -- Vladimir Alexandrov, B. E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Director of Graduate Studies, Yale University, USATable of ContentsIntroduction: Transnational Tolstoy and the New Comparatism Part One: Facing West 1. "Occidentalism" in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Culture Shock on European Visits 2. Vengeance is Mine: Anna Karenina and Stendhal's Italy 3. Napoleonic Anniversaries: War and Peace and Flaubert's Sentimental Education 4. From Worldliness to World Literature: Tolstoy between Goethe and Proust Part Two: Outside the Soviet Canon 5. Realism as Imagism: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and Modernist Fiction 6. Toxic Nationalism: From Tolstoy and Stendhal to Malraux and Lampedusa 7. Felt History: From Anna Karenina to Magical Realism Part Three: Into the World 8. What is Art?, Hadji Murad, and World Literature 9. Dialogues with Tolstoy: Premchand and Mahfouz 10. "Show Me the Zulu Tolstoy": Who Owns War and Peace? 11. Postcoloniality and Islamic Identity in Hadji Murad Conclusion: Between the West and the World Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRobert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His previous publications include Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students.Martin McQuillan is Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Kingston University, UK, and Co-Director of the London Graduate School.Trade ReviewRobert Eaglestone and Martin McQuillan’s collection of essays on Rushdie attempts to rethink his work with respect to postcolonialism, postmodernism, and what Eaglestone identifies as the paradoxical in Rushdie’s work. [The book features] a useful chronology and further reading section. * The Year's Work in English Studies *Table of ContentsPreface Kenan Malik \ Series Editors' Preface \ Contributors \ General Introduction Robert Eaglestone and Martin MacQuillan \ 1. Rushdie's Early Fiction and the Rise of Postcolonialism Ellie Byrne \ 2. Revisiting The Satanic Verses: The Fatwa and its Legacies Anshuman Mondal \ 3. Rushdie after 9/11 Martin MacQuillan \ 4. Salman Rushdie and the Post-Colonial Folk and Fairy Tale Andrew Teverson \ 5. Interview: Homi Bhabha with Robert Eaglestone and Martin McQuillan \ 6. Postcolonial Secularism and Literary Form in Salman Rushdie's Fiction Stephen Morton \ 7. The Authentic in Salman Rushdie Robert Eaglestone \ 8. Rushdie Writing and Rewriting the Canon Ankhi Mukerjee \ 9. Rushdie's Non-fiction Daniel O'Gorman \ Further Reading \ Index

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Book SynopsisThe first biography to examine Mailer''s life as a twisted lens, offering a unique insight into the history of America from the end of World War II to the election of Barack Obama.Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, firstly in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and again in 1980 for The Executioner''s Song, Norman Mailer's life comes as close as is possible to being the Great American Novel: beyond reason, inexplicable, wonderfully grotesque and addictive.The Naked and the Dead was acclaimed not so much for its intrinsic qualities but rather because it launched a brutally realistic sub-genre of military fiction Catch 22 and MASH would not exist without it. Richard Bradford combs through Mailer's personal letters to lovers and editors which appear to be a rehearsal for his career as a shifty literary narcissist, and which shape the characters of one of the most widely celebrated World War II novels.Bradford strikes again with a merciless biograTrade ReviewBradford offers a solid sense that Mailer could be unpleasant. * Publishers Weekly *British academic Bradford seems to thrive [...] when sniping, deriding perceived flaws of style and soul. * Kirkus Reviews *absorbing […] Bradford draws from myriad sources to craft an indelible portrait of the artist as a fascinating, never-boring man. * Booklist *... the book’s very existence attests to a more complicated reality. It would be naïve to suppose that the renewed attention on Mailer has nothing to do with the scandals attached to his name. It would also be naïve to pretend that he was not a great American writer. * The New Yorker *... if this lively biography ends up being a damning speech for the prosecution, well, pugilistic old Norman is simply receiving a dose of his own medicine. You can imagine Mailer’s ghost becoming suitably energised to rise from his sulphurous grave to box Bradford’s lights out. * The Times *compulsively readable…[a] solid multifaceted critique of Mailer * The National Review *... there are some interesting asides and neat apercus. * The SundayTelegraph *Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer brings the life of an epic personality down to earth for a modern-day re-evaluation. Author Richard Bradford writes of Mailer’s storied life in a fair and objective manner, leaving the reader to judge Mailer’s words and actions […] Bradford’s book is as fascinating and awe-inspiring as his subject * City Book Review *the story itself is so gripping (even jaw-dropping) * Readers Digest *the book [does a] careful investigation into the subtle, emotional aspects of power between men. * New Statesman *Tough Guy adequately charts the controversies, the scandals, the successes, and the failures — in literature and in life — of its complicated subject * The Washington Independent Review of Books *A good illustration of the risks of elevating Mailer to sainthood is found in a new biography. Richard Bradford’s Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer is a slender volume that tends to summarize huge amounts of information in single pages… Bradford’s hasty approach … has the advantage of plainly and clearly stating Mailer’s profound limitations…he has a gift for making Mailer look and sound preposterous — and rightly so. * Washington Examiner *Bradford’s book has all the personal info you want to know… * Truthdig *“Tough Guy” is well-written and lurid, its subject a cautionary tale… [it] will hold your attention. * Pittsburg Post-Gazette *[H]e has a penchant that’s incredibly refreshing in the 21st century because it’s so rare: he sometimes allows himself to dislike his subjects. This makes Tough Guy a bracing reading experience… his analyses are also superb… Norman Mailer would certainly have sued Richard Bradford over this book, and that should stand as its strongest recommendation. * Open Letters Review *queasily compelling … a colourful and bracing read … memorably scathing * The Business Post Ireland *Tough Guy makes a sturdy case for Mailer as, if not a great guy, the author of era-defining books and a cultural force worth reckoning with... Veteran biographer Bradford reliably illuminates how Mailer's work reflected his life at the time… Bradford is unsparing in his criticism of Mailer. * Shelf Awareness *Bradford is a fluent narrator and provides a useful refresher on the salient details of a long and interesting life. Tough Guy will satisfy salacious appetites as it explores Mailer’s relational dynamics and sexual proclivities, his alcohol and drug use, his penchant for fisticuffs. … Efficient and gossipy, Tough Guy does ample justice to Mailer the charismatic self-marketer, one of the baddest of the bad boys of postwar American literature. * Art Fuse *... told in forensic detail by Richard Bradford... * Oldie *This may be the best biography Mailer deserves: for after all the best possible things have been said about Mailer, it’s hard to feel he made the most of his talent. * The New Republic *Table of ContentsAbbreviations and Referencing Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Brooklyn Boy 2. Odd Man Out 3. Pacific Grim 4. Waiting For Fame 5. Back Home 6. The Deer Park 7. Norman Mailer: The Death of the Novel 8. ‘The White Negro’ 9. How Not To Murder Your Wife 10. Time For Something Different? 11. Apocalypse Now 12. Politics and the Women 13. The Biographer’s Song 14. Pharaohs and Tough Guys 15. A Clandestine World Revealed 16. Retirement: With Picasso, Oswald, Christ and Hitler Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis''Muse, tell me of a man: a man of much resource, who was made to wander far and long, after he had sacked the sacred city of Troy. Many were the men whose lands he saw and came to know their thinking: many too the miseries at sea which he suffered in his heart, as he sought to win his own life and the safe return of his companions.'' Recounting the epic journey home of Odysseus from the Trojan War, The Odyssey - alongside its sister poem The Iliad - stands as the well-spring of Western Civilisation and culture, an inspiration to poets, writers and thinkers for thousands of years since. This authoritative prose translation by Martin Hammond brings Homer''s great poem of homecoming to life as Odysseus battles through such familiar dangers as the cave of the Cyclops, the call of the Sirens and his hostile reception back in his native land of Ithaca.Trade ReviewAn excellent version... it may well prove the translation for this and the next generation. * Sir Roger Tomkys, Anglo-Hellenic Review *Hammond’s admirable translation….is remarkably successful in combining accuracy with a lively and highly readable style * A.F.Garvie, Classical Review *Martin Hammond’s new version is clearly a labour of love and a wonderful achievement as it has none [of the faults of other versions] and although it is in prose, if read aloud the prose transforms itself into poetry. It is as close to the Greek as it is possible to get and keeps all the formulaic patterns so that the music of the original shines out and rings in the ear…..It is instilled with magic Mediterranean light…..I have now read it seven times and find I get more from each re-reading * William Cookson, AGENDA *Hammond's precise and highly readable translation embraces not only the immediate human appeal of the Odyssey but also much of what is alien to modern literary culture: 'modes of speech, insistent narrative sequencing, the wealth of formulaic repetition' ... [It] offers Anglophone readers a faithful and direct experience of the style and manner of Homer's great poem. * The Classical Review *Overall this is a highly professional production, to be seriously considered for textbook use in the classroom. * Journal of Classics Teaching *Hammond succeeds admirably in presenting a translation that is easy and enjoyable to read and faithful to Homer * D.M.Goldstein, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *This is a magnificent piece of work….I enjoyed reading [Hammond’s] Odyssey enormously. It is more years than I care to think since I read the work from end to end. Hammond’s translation moved me to do so within a day, and that is a tribute indeed. This is a first-class work which should give pleasure to both those who read Greek and those who do not – and deserves to attract many to read Homer for whom that is as yet a pleasure in store * Dr John Moore, Conference and Common Room *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction by Jasper Griffin Suggestions for further reading A note on the Greek text Book I: The Gods, Athene and Telemachos Book II: Telemachos and the Suitors Book III: Telemachos in Pylos Book IV: Telemachos in Sparta Book V: Odysseus and Kalypso Book VI: Nausikaa Book VII: Odysseus in Phaiacia Book VIII: Phaiacian Games and Song Book IX: The Cyclops Book X: Kirke Book XI: The Underworld Book XII: Skylla and Charybdis Book XIII: Return to Ithaka Book XIV: Odysseus and Eumaios Book XV: Telemachos Returns Book XVI: Odysseus and Telemachos Book XVII: Odysseus Comes to His House Book XVIII: Odysseus As Beggar Book XIX: Eurykleia Recognises Odysseus Book XX: Insults and Omens Book XXI: The Trial of the Bow Book XXII: The Suitors Killed Book XXIII: Odysseus and Penelope Book XXIV: The Underworld, Laertes, Peace Index

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Book SynopsisNow in its seventh edition, Studying the Novel is an authoritative introduction to the study of the novel at undergraduate level. Updated throughout to reflect the profound impact of e-reading and digital resources on the contemporary study of literature, the book also now includes a wider range of international examples to reflect the growing field of world literature.Providing a complete guide to studying the novel in one easy-to-read volume, the book covers: The form of the novel The history of the novel, from its earliest days to new electronic forms Realism, modernism and postmodernism Analysing fiction: narrative, character, structure, theme and dialogue Critical approaches to studying the novel Practical guidance on critical reading, secondary criticism, electronic resources and essay writing Versions and adaptationsStudying the Novel also includes a number of features to help readers navigate the book and find key information quickly, including chapter summaries tTrade ReviewAn excellent resource, not only for students studying the novel at university, but for trainee teachers teaching the novel in schools. * Michaela Smith, Edge Hill University, UK *Table of ContentsIntroduction to the seventh edition 1. Fiction and the Novel 2. History, Genre, Culture 3. Shorter Fiction 4. Realism, Modernism, Postmodernism 5. Fiction and Electronic Media 6. Analysing Fiction 7. Studying the Novel 8. Versions and Adaptations 9. Critical Approaches to Fiction Timeline of the Novel Glossary of Terms Bibliography Index

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Book Synopsis''I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I''ve read in years. It''s likely the best memoir published in years.'' Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and EngFrom the bestselling author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, a shocking, big-hearted memoir about his bizarre upbringing in California in the 1970s and how he survived it. Glen David Gold grew up rich on the beaches of 1970s California, until his father lost a fortune and his parents divorced when he was ten.Glen and his English mother moved to San Francisco, where she was fleeced by a series of charming con men and turned increasingly wayward. When he was twelve, she took off for New York without telling him, leaving him to fend for himself. On midnight streets and at drug-fuelled parties, wise-cracking his way through an alarming adult world, Glen watched his mother''s countless, wild attempts to reinvent herself. In this exceptioTrade ReviewRemarkable . . . The product of nine years of work and a lifetime of reflection, the book is full of humour, unflinching reflection and flashes of horror. And it exudes tremendous empathy for his mother . . . Gold's book is funnier and more hopeful than any story about a child's abandonment and a parent's descent into terrifying chaos has a right to be. * The Times *Gold's heartbreaking, brave book deals with his tangled, troubled and troubling relationship with his tempestuous mother and, with insightful introspection, he reveals how it has affected all his other relationships. It's a shocking read, describing a shattered childhood, a complicated adolescence and an adulthood that finds him happy and whole. * Book of the Month, Psychologies *Gold's sentences reflect the surface of the 1970s perfectly . . . Gold's novelistic handling of these moments is brilliant . . . It's a dazzlingly insightful account how the smart children of emotionally 'shattered' adults attempt to hold themselves and their parents together as they grow . . . Gold says he is finally happy. He's achieved this state by letting go of his need to explain and save his mother. He broke the bonds of her 'terrible love'. And like his muse, Houdini, Gold has made a moving public spectacle of his escape. -- Helen R. Brown * Spectator *An extraordinary memoir . . . It's a tale of a boy's moral and sentimental education, with all the febrile moods and heart-stopping lurches of a Donna Tartt epic . . . There's something painfully sweet about this memoir, particularly the way Gold wills himself to extract something of value from the pain inflicted by irresponsible adults . . . smart, generous, and gripping until the very last pages. It's one of the best books I've read in 2018. -- Joanna Thomas-Corr * New Statesman *Remarkable . . . It's a tale of disintegrating relationships, bad choices, guilt, panic, hurt and weighty sadness so well told, with such lucidity and honesty, it's almost frightening to read . . . Gold wears his wisdom and novelist's powers of observation lightly, remaining beguilingly modest and likeable to the end. -- Jane Graham * Big Issue *Equally subtle and shocking, as clear-eyed about how the sins of the parent are visited on the child as it is generous and loving . . . It touches lightly on the set pieces, bizarre incidents and bravura descriptions that readers of Gold's bestselling novels, Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, will treasure . . . it never feels over-worked or weighed down with detail . . . You cannot read it and remain unchanged. -- Maria Farrell * Irish Times *Imagine Home Alone with a kid who is part Salvador Dali, part Holden Caulfield . . . an extraordinary book about growing up in California . . . Gold's childhood is much more than merely interesting; it is riveting . . . [his] knack for devastating insights are a marvel to read . . . an audacious, boundary-shattering work that will be talked about for a very long time. * Los Angeles Times *Ambitious and brave * New York Times *One helluva ride . . . in his capable hands even the smallest events seem revelatory. Each dimwitted move his mother makes reads as more bonkers (and undeniably sad) than the last. Each time Gold throws himself into love, it's like Orpheus trying to win back Eurydice. When combined with his deadpan delivery and wry sense of humor, each obstacle to overcome or hoop to jump through takes on a life of its own . . . wickedly intelligent, wildly imaginative (well, in some ways) and everything in between. * San Francisco Chronicle *A banquet of vivacity, shrewdness and wit, a soiree of heart-wreck wised up by humour. . . One of the myriad delights of this memoir is its revealing vista onto the ethos of San Francisco in the 70s and Los Angeles in the '80s, deleted worlds in which outrageous characters stagger and strive. . . Gold is a dynamic writer outfitted in wisdom and verve, one whose sentences you'll want to remember. -- William Giraldi * Washington Post *Dazzling . . . Beautiful and deft, witty and searing, like a playful song with a persistent bass line of unresolved grief. I can't stop thinking about it. * Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and White Oleander *We expect the story of a boy and his mother ought to go a certain way. I Will Be Complete goes in ways you'd never expect. The people shatter, reassemble themselves, and shatter all over again. The prose is crystalline, hard as real diamonds, flashing, revealing. The story is simple, just a boy and his mother's long disintegration, but the journey is darkly complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful as hell * Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA *Glen David Gold is one of the best storytellers working today. He could write about anything and make it gripping. As it turns out, he also has one hell of a story to tell. * Joseph Fink, author of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE *An extraordinary account of an extraordinary life. Gold captures with stunning clarity the emotional chaos he grew up in, and that made him the brilliant writer he is now. * Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS *I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years. Gold's a novelist and this book reads like the best fiction. It's exciting, beautiful, and clear-eyed in a way most memoirs aren't. Oh, and you'll never forget this charming, intelligent, unique narrator. * Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND ENG *A fine, funny, discomfiting book. And very candid. -- Teddy Jamieson * Sunday Herald *

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Book Synopsis''I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I''ve read in years. It''s likely the best memoir published in years.'' Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life and Chang and EngFrom the bestselling author of Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, a shocking, big-hearted memoir about his bizarre upbringing in California in the 1970s and how he survived it. Glen David Gold grew up rich on the beaches of 1970s California, until his father lost a fortune and his parents divorced when he was ten.Glen and his English mother moved to San Francisco, where she was fleeced by a series of charming con men and turned increasingly wayward. When he was twelve, she took off for New York without telling him, leaving him to fend for himself. On midnight streets and at drug-fuelled parties, wise-cracking his way through an alarming adult world, Glen watched his mother''s countless, wild attempts to reinvent herself. In this exceptioTrade ReviewDazzling . . . Beautiful and deft, witty and searing, like a playful song with a persistent bass line of unresolved grief. I can't stop thinking about it. * Janet Fitch, author of The Revolution of Marina M. and White Oleander *I Will Be Complete is the best memoir I've read in years. It's likely the best memoir published in years. Gold's a novelist and this book reads like the best fiction. It's exciting, beautiful, and clear-eyed in a way most memoirs aren't. Oh, and you'll never forget this charming, intelligent, unique narrator. * Darin Strauss, author of HALF A LIFE and CHANG AND ENG *We expect the story of a boy and his mother ought to go a certain way. I Will Be Complete goes in ways you'd never expect. The people shatter, reassemble themselves, and shatter all over again. The prose is crystalline, hard as real diamonds, flashing, revealing. The story is simple, just a boy and his mother's long disintegration, but the journey is darkly complicated, heartbreaking, beautiful as hell * Mark Childress, author of CRAZY IN ALABAMA *Glen David Gold is one of the best storytellers working today. He could write about anything and make it gripping. As it turns out, he also has one hell of a story to tell. * Joseph Fink, author of WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE *An extraordinary account of an extraordinary life. Gold captures with stunning clarity the emotional chaos he grew up in, and that made him the brilliant writer he is now. * Lev Grossman, author of THE MAGICIANS *Gold's heartbreaking, brave book deals with his tangled, troubled and troubling relationship with his tempestuous mother and, with insightful introspection, he reveals how it has affected all his other relationships. It's a shocking read, describing a shattered childhood, a complicated adolescence and an adulthood that finds him happy and whole. * Book of the Month, Psychologies *Remarkable . . . The product of nine years of work and a lifetime of reflection, the book is full of humour, unflinching reflection and flashes of horror. And it exudes tremendous empathy for his mother . . . Gold's book is funnier and more hopeful than any story about a child's abandonment and a parent's descent into terrifying chaos has a right to be. * The Times *One helluva ride . . . in his capable hands even the smallest events seem revelatory. Each dimwitted move his mother makes reads as more bonkers (and undeniably sad) than the last. Each time Gold throws himself into love, it's like Orpheus trying to win back Eurydice. When combined with his deadpan delivery and wry sense of humor, each obstacle to overcome or hoop to jump through takes on a life of its own . . . wickedly intelligent, wildly imaginative (well, in some ways) and everything in between. * San Francisco Chronicle *Imagine Home Alone with a kid who is part Salvador Dali, part Holden Caulfield . . . an extraordinary book about growing up in California . . . Gold's childhood is much more than merely interesting; it is riveting . . . [his] knack for devastating insights are a marvel to read . . . an audacious, boundary-shattering work that will be talked about for a very long time. * Los Angeles Times *A banquet of vivacity, shrewdness and wit, a soiree of heart-wreck wised up by humour. . . One of the myriad delights of this memoir is its revealing vista onto the ethos of San Francisco in the 70s and Los Angeles in the '80s, deleted worlds in which outrageous characters stagger and strive. . . Gold is a dynamic writer outfitted in wisdom and verve, one whose sentences you'll want to remember. -- William Giraldi * Washington Post *Gold's sentences reflect the surface of the 1970s perfectly . . . Gold's novelistic handling of these moments is brilliant . . . It's a dazzlingly insightful account how the smart children of emotionally 'shattered' adults attempt to hold themselves and their parents together as they grow . . . Gold says he is finally happy. He's achieved this state by letting go of his need to explain and save his mother. He broke the bonds of her 'terrible love'. And like his muse, Houdini, Gold has made a moving public spectacle of his escape. -- Helen R. Brown * Spectator *Remarkable . . . It's a tale of disintegrating relationships, bad choices, guilt, panic, hurt and weighty sadness so well told, with such lucidity and honesty, it's almost frightening to read . . . Gold wears his wisdom and novelist's powers of observation lightly, remaining beguilingly modest and likeable to the end. -- Jane Graham * Big Issue *Equally subtle and shocking, as clear-eyed about how the sins of the parent are visited on the child as it is generous and loving . . . It touches lightly on the set pieces, bizarre incidents and bravura descriptions that readers of Gold's bestselling novels, Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, will treasure . . . it never feels over-worked or weighed down with detail . . . You cannot read it and remain unchanged. -- Maria Farrell * Irish Times *An extraordinary memoir . . . It's a tale of a boy's moral and sentimental education, with all the febrile moods and heart-stopping lurches of a Donna Tartt epic . . . There's something painfully sweet about this memoir, particularly the way Gold wills himself to extract something of value from the pain inflicted by irresponsible adults . . . smart, generous, and gripping until the very last pages. It's one of the best books I've read in 2018. -- Joanna Thomas-Corr * New Statesman *A fine, funny, discomfiting book. And very candid. -- Teddy Jamieson * Sunday Herald *Ambitious and brave * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisRepresentations of animality continue to proliferate in various kinds of literary and cultural texts. This pioneering volume explores the critical interface between animal and animality studies, marking out the terrain in relation to 20th-century literature and film.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first critical edition of the works of Andrew Lang, the Scottish writer whose enormous output spanned the whole the range of late-nineteenth century intellectual culture: from literary criticism to anthropology, magic to archaeology, folklore to Scottish history.

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Book SynopsisKatherine Mansfield had a lifelong interest in literatures in translation and in literary translating. From her early notebooks until letters written just before her death, she records the joy of learning foreign languages, often using transformative, inter-lingual games of her own as a source of creativity.

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Book SynopsisZoe Beenstock examines the relationship between two major traditions which have not been considered in conjunction: British Romanticism and social contract philosophy. Her reading offers a new understanding of canonical accounts of retreat by some of British Romanticism's most dominant voices.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of 14 essays asks how Georges Perec has continued to influence of Media and Communication at us after his death. Swinburne University ofTechnology. What do Perec's descriptions of the minutiae of everyday life reveal about our use of information and communications technologies?.

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Book SynopsisFrom the Prime Meridian Conference of 1884 to the celebration of the millennium in 2000; from the fiction of Joseph Conrad to the novels of William Gibson and W.G. Sebald, 'Reading the Times' offers fresh insight into modern narrative.

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Book SynopsisTaking Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project as an inspiration, this book offers a project that opens a dialogue between phenomenology, philosophy and the Dickensian representation of the city in all its forms. It provides dual focus on methodology and the historicity of Dickensian urban consciousness.

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Book SynopsisIn this book, Keith Williams explores Victorian culture's emergent 'cinematicity' as a key creative driver of Joyce's experimental fiction, showing how Joyce's style and themes share the cinematograph's roots in Victorian optical entertainment and science.

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Book SynopsisA substantial essay explores the complex early publication history of the novel Weir of Hermiston on both sides of the Atlantic, and exceptionally full explanatory notes and other background information are provided.

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Book SynopsisInvestigates the latent and manifest traces of the East in Pre-Raphaelite literature and culture.

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Book SynopsisWritten from various critical standpoints by international scholars, Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion interrogates the ways in which the concepts of the Gothic and Scotland have intersected and been manipulated from the mideighteenth century to the present day.

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Book SynopsisEngaging with the critical frameworks of cultural geography, cartography, and the burgeoning field of oceanic studies Radical Romanticsreformulates theories of colonization and empire in the Romantic period.

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Book SynopsisPlacing literary creativity within a changing cultural and political context that saw the end of Margaret Thatcher and rise of New Labour, this book offers fresh interpretations of mainstream and marginal works from all parts of Britain.

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Book SynopsisThese 11 newly commissioned essays represent the evolution, or coevolution, of Woolf studies in the early 21st-century.

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Book SynopsisThis volume views Doris Lessing's writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived.

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Book SynopsisThe present collection of 16 original essays offers fresh perspectives on Orlando through a unique attention to Woolf's sentences.

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Book SynopsisThrough a robust analysis of several 'new-consciousness' novels by award winning authors the book highlights their unconventional, yet coherent undertakings to foreground the marginal experiences of the Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, women and sexual minority populations in Egypt.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines late 19th-century feminism in relation to technologies of the time, marking the crucial role of technology in social and literary struggles for equality.

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Book SynopsisIn line with the recent surge of critical interest in early psychology, the contributors of this volumeread Mansfield's work alongside figures like William James and Henri Bergson, opening up new perspectives on affect in her work.

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Book SynopsisBy contextualising White's life-writing and fiction within the contexts of manic-depression and narrative identity, 'Antonia White and Manic-Depressive Illness' proposes a new model for reading White.

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Book SynopsisWithout a consideration of periodical poetry, Victorian poetry studies is quite simply anachronistic

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Book SynopsisThe study of Arabic literary texts is blossoming and this book provides a comprehensive theoretical framework to help research this highly prolific and diverse production of contemporary literary texts.

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Book SynopsisThis book changes the terms of scholarly discussion and discovers how the social structures of theatre afforded Milton resources for poetic and polemical representation and uncovers the precise contours of Milton's interest in theatre and drama.

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Book SynopsisThe Dissolution of Character in Late Romanticism' studies texts written by contemporary poets, novelists, essayists, journalists, philosophers, phrenologists, sociologists, gossip-mongers and anonymous correspondents.

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Book SynopsisThis book provides innovative readings of literary works of British Romanticism and its influence on twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literary culture and thought.

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Book SynopsisPost-Soviet Russia was a period of linguistic liberalisation, instability and change with varied attempts to regulate and legislate language usage. This book looks at how these debates featured in literature and illustrates the discussion through six interpretive readings of post-Soviet Russian prose.

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Book SynopsisDrawing on Woolf's novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual's connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context.

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Book SynopsisBeginning with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), this study positions feminine genres such as the Gothic romance and Bluestocking poetry, usually seen as outliers in a masculine Age of Reason, as essential to understanding emotion's role in Enlightenment narratives of progress.

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Book SynopsisMasculinity in American Fiction of the Mid-Twentieth CenturyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: anxiety, conformity and masculinity 1. ‘Organisation Man’, domestic ideology and manhood 2. ‘Everything in him had come undone’: violent aggression, courage, and masculine identity 3. Representing sexualities and gender 4. Identity and assimilation in Jewish-American fiction 5. African-American identity and masculinity Afterword Works cited and consulted Index

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Book SynopsisThe American Short Story Cycle spans two centuries to tell the history of a genre that includes both major and marginal authors, from Washington Irving through William Faulkner to Jhumpa Lahiri.

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Book SynopsisExplores revolutionary politics in the work of one of America's most important avant-garde writers.

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Book SynopsisThis new Companion surveys the traditions and conventions of the dark side of American culture

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Book SynopsisReturning to the range of historical fiction written before Scott, Reinventing Liberty challenges this view by returning us to the rich range of historical novels written in the late eighteenth-century. It explores how these works participated in a contentious debate concerning political change and British national identity.

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Book SynopsisEngaging with the critical frameworks of cultural geography, cartography, and the burgeoning field of oceanic studies 'Radical Romantics 'reformulates theories of colonization and empire in the Romantic period.

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Book SynopsisFilling in a blank spot in the history of twentieth-century women's writing, Carole Sweeney examines the work of five experimental writers, whose writing has been neglected in accounts of the development of post-1945 British literature.

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Book SynopsisImagining Surveillance presents the first full-length study of the depiction and assessment of surveillance in literature and film. Focusing on Utopian genre, the book offers an in- depth account of which the most creative writers, filmmakers and thinkers have envisioned alternative worlds in which surveillance in various forms plays a key concern.

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Book SynopsisModernism, Fashion and Interwar Women Writers' demonstrates how five female novelists of the interwar period engaged with an emerging fashion discourse that concealed capitalist modernity's economic reliance on mass-manufactured, uniform-looking productions by ostensibly celebrating originality and difference.

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Book SynopsisIn 1960s Egypt a group of writers exploded onto the literary scene, transforming the aesthetic landscape.This bookexplores how this literary generation presents a marked shift in the representation of rural, urban and exilic space, reflecting a disappointment with the project of the postcolonial nation-state in Egypt.

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Book SynopsisTwo hundred years after the massacre of protestors in Manchester, known as Peterloo, distinguished scholars of Romantic-era literature join together in this commemorative volume to assess the implications of the violence.

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Book SynopsisAs calls mount for resistance to recent political events, Simon Morgan Wortham rethinks how psychoanalysis, political thought and philosophy can be brought together. He explores the political implications and complexities of a psychoanalytic resistance through close readings of authors from within and outwith the psychoanalytic tradition.

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