Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisIn spite of the fact that detective fiction has been the most popular genre utilised by Spanish authors over the last thirty or so years, the female detective has appeared in such works on relatively rare occasions. Less frequent are Spanish female authors of detective fiction who employ a female detective as their main character. One author who has broken this stereotype is Reyes Calderón, with her female juez de instrucción (examining magistrate), originally created because the author was convinced that one popular, female, main character detective that did exist was simply "a man who was wearing a skirt" (interview with author). With the creation of her Basque character who, over the series, evolves from law-school professor to member of the Spanish Supreme Court, Calderón is able to "design a normal woman who confronts abnormal situations" (interview with author). Through such, Reyes Calderón aptly portrays both how far Spanish women have come since the days/restrictions of the Franco dictatorship but yet how remnants of conservative thought still pervade their mindset. She thus uses the most popular of genres to make a myriad of cultural observations concerning her native country and the women of "her generation". This book focuses on the female detective in Hispanic literature; the Lola MacHor Series, where via the main character Lola, Calderón is conducting a cultural studies experiment/explanation of modern-day Spain; concomitant issues of characterisation and Calderón's debt to Naturalism; Spanish novel writing and narrative style; and the pervading conservative/feminist dichotomy as it transpires in Spanish social commentary and moralising.

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Book SynopsisThomas Hardy's The Dynasts and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace are both works which defy attempts to assign them to a particular genre but might seem to have little else in common apart from being set in the same period of history. This study argues that there are important similarities between these two works and examines the close correspondence between Hardy's and Tolstoy's thinking on themes relating to war, ideas of the heroic and the concept of free will. Although coming from very different backgrounds, both writers were influenced by their experiences of war, Tolstoy directly, by involvement in the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and Hardy indirectly, by the events of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Their reaction to these experiences found expression in their descriptions of the wars fought against Napoleon at the beginning of the century. Hegel saw Napoleon as the great world-historical man of his time, and this work considers the ways in which Hardy and Tolstoy undermine this view, portraying Napoleon's physical and mental decline and questioning the role he played in determining the outcomes of military actions. Both writers were deeply interested in the question of free will and determinism and their writings reveal their attempts to understand the nature of the force which lies behind men's actions. Their differing views on the nature of consciousness are considered in the light of modern research on the development of the conscious brain.

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Book SynopsisJohn Hughes explores Hardys claim that his art sought to intensify the expression of things through three main sections on music, the body, and voice. These offer intersecting and mutually informing discussions of the central drama of inexpression and expressivity in Hardys work, as it affects the various personae of the text, including the reader. Throughout, the book draws on themes in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell to reveal how Hardys fiction and poetry express and represent the affective and physical conditions of mind, and their conflicts with social fictions of identity. The first main section on music incorporates three chapters that examine how Hardys writing stages musical experience as an expression of human desire and individuality at odds with the constraints of rationality, Victorian fiction form, and social convention. Intricate and extensive readings are linked also to larger contextual and theoretical issues in order to show how music as a theme and motif highlights the kinds of creativity and ethical cruxes that characterise Hardys work throughout his career. The second section -- on embodiment and sensation shows how close attention to Hardys writing on the topics of facial and bodily expression (and affectivity) reveal much about the sources of his inspiration, and its philosophical conditions and implications. The third section on voice offers three chapters, each of which centrally employs a close metrical reading of an important Hardy poem within its larger biographical and inter-textual contexts. These readings demonstrate how fundamental were Hardys innovations in meter to the power and originality of his work, and to its expressive treatment of his abiding preoccupations with love, grief, childhood, and the loss of faith.

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Book SynopsisThis book is a series of original, critical meditations on short stories and novels from Central America between 1995 and 2016. During the Cold War, literary art in Central America, as in Latin America in general, was strongly over-determined by the politics of the Cold War, which gave rise to popular struggle and three major armed civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The period produced intense literary activity with political ideology central, personified by social denunciation in the testimonial novel and revolutionary poetry. Since then, though themes of violence are still at much of its core, Central American fiction has become more complex. We have witnessed a resurgence of literary writing and criticism with a focus squarely on the artistic side of narrative art: writing aware of its own figurative manoeuvres and inventiveness, its philosophical and affective dimensions, and its carefully crafted syntax. This collection of essays by Jeffrey Browitt attempts to trace some of the contours of this new literature and the contemporary subjectivities of its writers through close readings of Guatemalas Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Eduardo Halfon and Denise Phe-Funchal; Nicaraguas Franz Galich and Sergio Ramirez; Belizes David Ruiz Puga; El Salvadors Jacinta Escudos and Claudia Hernandez; and Costa Ricas Carlos Cortes. Key themes are gender, subjectivity and affect as these intersect with the deconstruction of the family, hegemonic masculinity, motherhood, revolutionary romanticism, and the relationship of humans with animals.

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Book SynopsisThis book begins with the question: How are literary fragments defined as such? As a critical term, fragment is more of a starting-point than a definition: Is part of the manuscript missing? Is it grammatically incomplete, using unfinished sentences? Is it made to look unfinished? Fragment and fragmentation have been used to describe damaged manuscripts; drafts; notes; subverted grammatical structures; the emergence of vers libre from formal verse; texts without linear plots; translations; quotations; and works titled Fragment regardless of how formally complete they might appear. This book offers a phenomenological reading of modernist literary fragments, arguing that fragments create states of conflicted embodiment in which mind and body cannot cleanly separate. Drawing on the concept of aestheticism as an overstimulated body, each chapter connects fragments to experiences of physical and emotional ambiguity, exploring difficulties in speaking, writing and translating; spasms of laughter; and disrupted vision.The author introduces fragmentation as an aspect of what Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous term ecriture feminine, and offers new readings of the texts that Stephane Mallarme struggled to finish, associating his fragmentation with translation and the Crise (Crisis) of vers libre. The author then considers the fragmentary affects of humour, ranging from Henri Bergson to Mina Loy and T. S. Eliot. Urban fragmentation is explored in Hope Mirrlees Paris: A Poem, John Maynard Keynes The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Felix Feneons Nouvelles en trois lignes, Apollinaires Zone, and Walter Benjamins Arcades Project. The author ultimately weighs the claim of literary fragmentation as an ethical commitment to detail, embedded in the living body, against a view of fragments as more numbed traces or disembodied remnants.

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Book SynopsisThomas Hardy's The Dynasts and Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace are both works which defy attempts to assign them to a particular genre but might seem to have little else in common apart from being set in the same period of history. This study argues that there are important similarities between these two works and examines the close correspondence between Hardy's and Tolstoy's thinking on themes relating to war, ideas of the heroic and the concept of free will. Although coming from very different backgrounds, both writers were influenced by their experiences of war, Tolstoy directly, by involvement in the wars in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and Hardy indirectly, by the events of the Anglo-Boer Wars. Their reaction to these experiences found expression in their descriptions of the wars fought against Napoleon at the beginning of the century. Hegel saw Napoleon as the great world-historical man of his time, and this work considers the ways in which Hardy and Tolstoy undermine this view, portraying Napoleon's physical and mental decline and questioning the role he played in determining the outcomes of military actions. Both writers were deeply interested in the question of free will and determinism and their writings reveal their attempts to understand the nature of the force which lies behind men's actions. Their differing views on the nature of consciousness are considered in the light of modern research on the development of the conscious brain.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is a series of original, critical meditations on short stories and novels from Central America between 1995 and 2016. During the Cold War, literary art in Central America, as in Latin America in general, was strongly over-determined by the politics of the Cold War, which gave rise to popular struggle and three major armed civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The period produced intense literary activity with political ideology central, personified by social denunciation in the testimonial novel and revolutionary poetry. Since then, though themes of violence are still at much of its core, Central American fiction has become more complex. We have witnessed a resurgence of literary writing and criticism with a focus squarely on the artistic side of narrative art: writing aware of its own figurative manoeuvres and inventiveness, its philosophical and affective dimensions, and its carefully crafted syntax. This collection of essays by Jeffrey Browitt attempts to trace some of the contours of this new literature and the contemporary subjectivities of its writers through close readings of Guatemalas Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Eduardo Halfon and Denise Phe-Funchal; Nicaraguas Franz Galich and Sergio Ramirez; Belizes David Ruiz Puga; El Salvadors Jacinta Escudos and Claudia Hernandez; and Costa Ricas Carlos Cortes. Key themes are gender, subjectivity and affect as these intersect with the deconstruction of the family, hegemonic masculinity, motherhood, revolutionary romanticism, and the relationship of humans with animals.

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Book SynopsisQualifying as a doctor in 1815 at the tender age of nineteen, John Polidori was employed less than a year later by the poet, Lord Byron, as his travelling physician. The precocious medic was seemingly destined for a bright future that would enable him to combine his profession with a love of literature. In His Masters Reflection, the authors follow Polidoris footsteps as he accompanies Byron through Europe to Switzerland where they eventually meet the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont. Fulfilling his fathers prophecy, the fateful summer will prove to have a devastating impact on Polidoris life and legacy. Byrons keen wit and elevated status would leave the sensitive doctor feeling isolated and undervalued. Fuelled by acerbic comments from the poets friends, Byron finally releases Polidori from his contract, leaving the penniless medic to wander over the Alps on foot to Italy, his fathers homeland. Despite attempts at establishing himself as a doctor to the expatriate community, he has to admit defeat and return to England. Still harbouring literary ambitions, his one chance at fame is cruelly denied when The Vampyre, the story he had written in Geneva, is attributed to Byron. Gossip and retelling of events have cast Polidori in the role of a petulant plagiarist. Concussion from a riding accident deeply affected Polidoris temperament and behaviour, leaving questions surrounding his death, which history has recorded as suicide by prussic acid, despite the coroners verdict of visitation by God. The authors delve into his final years in an attempt to redress the balance. The handsome Polidori was more than just his masters reflection.

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Book SynopsisThis book begins with the question: How are literary fragments defined as such? As a critical term, fragment is more of a starting-point than a definition: Is part of the manuscript missing? Is it grammatically incomplete, using unfinished sentences? Is it made to look unfinished? Fragment and fragmentation have been used to describe damaged manuscripts; drafts; notes; subverted grammatical structures; the emergence of vers libre from formal verse; texts without linear plots; translations; quotations; and works titled Fragment regardless of how formally complete they might appear. This book offers a phenomenological reading of modernist literary fragments, arguing that fragments create states of conflicted embodiment in which mind and body cannot cleanly separate. Drawing on the concept of aestheticism as an overstimulated body, each chapter connects fragments to experiences of physical and emotional ambiguity, exploring difficulties in speaking, writing and translating; spasms of laughter; and disrupted vision.The author introduces fragmentation as an aspect of what Julia Kristeva and Helene Cixous term ecriture feminine, and offers new readings of the texts that Stephane Mallarme struggled to finish, associating his fragmentation with translation and the Crise (Crisis) of vers libre. The author then considers the fragmentary affects of humour, ranging from Henri Bergson to Mina Loy and T. S. Eliot. Urban fragmentation is explored in Hope Mirrlees Paris: A Poem, John Maynard Keynes The Economic Consequences of the Peace, Felix Feneons Nouvelles en trois lignes, Apollinaires Zone, and Walter Benjamins Arcades Project. The author ultimately weighs the claim of literary fragmentation as an ethical commitment to detail, embedded in the living body, against a view of fragments as more numbed traces or disembodied remnants.

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Book SynopsisContestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The essays in Queer Universes investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. Queer Universes opens with Wendy Pearson’s award-winning essay on reading sf queerly and goes on to include discussions about ‘sextrapolation’ in New Wave science fiction, ‘stray penetration’ in William Gibson’s cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ. In addition, Queer Universes offers an interview with Nalo Hopkinson and a conversation about queer lives and queer fictions by authors Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge.Trade ReviewTimely, smart, and innovative, this vital collection ensures that our conception of sf is fuller and healthier. * Science Fiction Studies, vol.36 *Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Queer Universes - Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon Part I: Queering the Scene Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer - Wendy Gay Pearson War Machine, Time Machine - Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge Part II: Un/Doing History Sextrapolation in New Wave Science Fiction - Rob Latham Towards a Queer Genealogy of SF - Wendy Gay Pearson Sexuality and the Statistical Imaginary in Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton - Guy Davidson Stray Penetration and Heteronormative Systems Crash: Queering Gibson - Graham J. Murphy

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Book SynopsisThe Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written work produced at the time, by Haitians? This book is the first to present an account of a specifically Haitian literary tradition in the Revolutionary era. Beyond the Slave Narrative shows the emergence of two strands of textual innovation, both evolving from the new revolutionary consciousness: the remarkable political texts produced by Haitian revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and popular Creole poetry from anonymous courtesans in Saint-Domingue's libertine culture. These textual forms, though they differ from each other, both demonstrate the increasing cultural autonomy and literary voice of non-white populations in the colony at the time of revolution. Unschooled generals and courtesans, long presented as voiceless, are at last revealed to be legitimate speakers and authors. These Haitian French and Creole texts have been neglected as a foundation of Afro-diasporic literature by former slaves in the Atlantic world for two reasons: because they do not fit the generic criteria of the slave narrative (which is rooted in the autobiographical experience of enslavement); and because they are mediated texts, relayed to the print-cultural Atlantic domain not by the speakers themselves, but by secretaries or refugee colonists. These texts challenge how we think about authorial voice, writing, print culture, and cultural autonomy in the context of the formerly enslaved, and demand that we reassess our historical understanding of the Haitian Independence and its relationship to an international world of contemporary readers.Trade ReviewColonial and postcolonial studies will gain significant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson’s Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Deeply committed to improving present-day conditions in Haiti, Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of current problems and for hope in the future. Doris Y. KadishTable of ContentsIntroduction Race and Voice in the Archives: Mediated Testimony and Interracial Commerce in Saint-Domingue PART ONE: Voicing the Political Sphere Chapter 1 Toussaint Louverture, “Spin Doctor”? The Politics of Media in the Haitian Revolution Chapter 2 Dessalines’ American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence Chapter 3 Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A French-Language Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism Chapter 4 Dessalines’ Anticolonial Imperialism: Santo Domingo, Trinidad, Venezuela Chapter 5 Kidnapped Narratives: The Lost Heir of Henry Christophe and the Imagined Communities of the African Diaspora PART TWO: Voicing the Libertine Sphere Chapter 6 Traumatic Indigeneity: The (Anti)Colonial Politics of “Having” A Creole Literary Culture Chapter 7 Mimetic Mastery and Colonial Mimicry: The Candio in the Popular Creole Literary Tradition Chapter 8 Dissing Rivals, Love for Sale: The Cocotte’s Rap and the Not-So Tragic Mulatta

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. Historically and contemporarily, politically and literarily, Haiti has long been relegated to the margins of the so-called 'New World.' Marked by exceptionalism, the voices of some of its most important writers have consequently been muted by the geopolitical realities of the nation's fraught history. In Haiti Unbound, Kaiama L. Glover offers a close look at the works of three such writers: the Haitian Spiralists Frankétienne, Jean-Claude Fignolé, and René Philoctète. While Spiralism has been acknowledged by scholars and regional writer-intellectuals alike as a crucial contribution to the French-speaking Caribbean literary tradition, the Spiralist ethic-aesthetic not yet been given the sustained attention of a full-length study. Glover's book represents the first effort in any language to consider the works of the three Spiralist authors both individually and collectively, and so fills an astonishingly empty place in the assessment of postcolonial Caribbean aesthetics. Touching on the role and destiny of Haiti in the Americas, Haiti Unbound engages with long-standing issues of imperialism and resistance culture in the transatlantic world. Glover's timely project emphatically articulates Haiti's regional and global centrality, combining vital 'big picture' reflections on the field of postcolonial studies with elegant close-reading-based analyses of the philosophical perspective and creative practice of a distinctively Haitian literary phenomenon. Most importantly perhaps, the book advocates for the inclusion of three largely unrecognized voices in the disturbingly fixed roster of writer-intellectuals that have thus far interested theorists of postcolonial (Francophone) literature. Providing insightful and sophisticated blueprints for the reading and teaching of the Spiralists' prose fiction, Haiti Unbound will serve as a point of reference for the works of these authors and for the singular socio-political space out of and within which they write.Trade ReviewKaiama Glover’s stunning elucidation of Haitian Spiralist literature is a tour-de-force... If Spiralism itself constitutes the most magnificent cultural artifice of Haitian dystopia, Glover’s groundbreaking study is essential reading for those interested in exploring the limits of Caribbean expression achieved by these superb writers, and the volcanic intensity of the literary movement that has perhaps most fully expressed the ‘schizophonic’ beauty and horror of Haitian reality.In this compelling book, Glover charts the association of Caribbean stories with the performative interpersonal dimensions of krik krak, with the revisiting of epic historical memories in the present or the future, and with figures and fractured revenants like the zonbi, the schizophrenic, or conflictual marasa or twins. The spiral is a chameleon-like form: it can be conceptualized as a literary form or genre, as the hybrid African/New World cultural space of the genesis and reception of creole, or as the evanescence of ideological heroism into a fog of disputed memories. * Research in African Literatures, Volume 43 Number 3 *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements Preface Part I Introduction: The Consequences of Ex-Centricity Part II Shifty/Shifting Characters 1. Beings Without Borders 2 Zombies Become Warriors 3. Productive Schizophrenia Part III Space-Time of the Spiral 4. Haiti Unbound? 5. Present-ing the Past 6. Haiti in the Whirl/World Part IV Showing vs. Telling 7. The Stylistics of Possession 8. Framing the Folk 9. Schizophonic Solutions Part V Conclusions: No Lack of Language Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisContestations over the meaning and practice of sexuality have become increasingly central to cultural self-definition and critical debates over issues of identity, citizenship and the definition of humanity itself. In an era when a religious authority can declare lesbians antihuman while some nations legalise same-sex marriage and are becoming increasingly tolerant of a variety of non-normative sexualities, it is hardly surprising that science fiction, in turn, takes up the task of imagining a diverse range of queer and not-so-queer futures. The essays in Queer Universes investigate both contemporary and historical practices of representing sexualities and genders in science fiction literature. Queer Universes opens with Wendy Pearson’s award-winning essay on reading sf queerly and goes on to include discussions about ‘sextrapolation’ in New Wave science fiction, ‘stray penetration’ in William Gibson’s cyberpunk fiction, the queering of nature in ecofeminist science fiction, and the radical challenges posed to conventional science fiction in the work of important writers such as Samuel R. Delany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Joanna Russ. In addition, Queer Universes offers an interview with Nalo Hopkinson and a conversation about queer lives and queer fictions by authors Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge.Trade ReviewReview of hardback: Timely, smart, and innovative, this vital collection ensures that our conception of sf is fuller and healthier. * Science Fiction Studies, vol.36 *Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Queer Universes - Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon Part I: Queering the Scene Alien Cryptographies: The View from Queer - Wendy Gay Pearson War Machine, Time Machine - Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge Part II: Un/Doing History Sextrapolation in New Wave Science Fiction - Rob Latham Towards a Queer Genealogy of SF - Wendy Gay Pearson Sexuality and the Statistical Imaginary in Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton - Guy Davidson Stray Penetration and Heteronormative Systems Crash: Queering Gibson - Graham J. Murphy

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Book SynopsisThis book is about the human desire to experiment with empire. In the past it was done with real soldiers and expeditions and slaves and trade and misery and force. In the future it will be done with generation ships and off-world pioneers, robots and invasion, electronic sheep and people who just don’t want to be pushed around any more. Beginning with a discussion of who ‘we’ are (hopefully, the good guys) and who ‘they’ are (anyone who isn’t us), this narrative scans the lights of science fiction looking at the places where humans try to touch a variety of futures. Is SF designed to purge our dark imperialistic fantasies, or is it a laboratory of mind-experiments: carefully considered trials of political, social and economic scenarios? Which tomorrow are we more likely to accept – where the blood of empire is red or read ? Examining such classic SF texts as Lasswitz’s Two Planets and Wells’ The War of the Worlds, this book investigates Asimov’s Robots and Heinlein’s Moon, as well as Robinson’s Mars and Banks’ postcolonial Culture. We see the rise-and-fall of empire through the eyes of Miller, Clarke and Wyndham, and the apparently inevitable failure of the imperial project as discussed in Solaris, The Dispossessed and The Forever War. This book offers an insight into the darkest power abuses of mankind; where the oppression, silencing and marginalisation of those who are not-us continues and flourishes. Who are the monsters of our future – the Others invading from another planet, or the unseen and unrecognised Other within?Trade ReviewScience Fiction and Empire is thought-provoking and insightful, ... the kind of large-scale postcolonial work that sf has needed for quite some time. * Science Fiction Studies, vol.45 *Table of Contents Introduction 1. The Self and Representations of the Other in Science Fiction 2. Resistance Is Futile: Silencing and Cultural Appropriation 3. The word for world Is Forest: Metaphor and Empire in Science Fiction 4. Things Fall Apart: Relativity, Distance and the Periphery 5. Moments of Empire: Perceptions of Lasswitz and Wells 6. Exoticising the Future: American greats 7. The Shape of Things to Come: Homo futuris and the Imperial Project 8. A Postcolonial Imagination: kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars 9. Beyond Empire: Meta-empire and Postcoloniality Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe Haitian Revolution has generated responses from commentators in fields ranging from philosophy to historiography to twentieth-century literary and artistic studies. But what about the written work produced at the time, by Haitians? This book is the first to present an account of a specifically Haitian literary tradition in the Revolutionary era. Beyond the Slave Narrative shows the emergence of two strands of textual innovation, both evolving from the new revolutionary consciousness: the remarkable political texts produced by Haitian revolutionary leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and popular Creole poetry from anonymous courtesans in Saint-Domingue's libertine culture. These textual forms, though they differ from each other, both demonstrate the increasing cultural autonomy and literary voice of non-white populations in the colony at the time of revolution. Unschooled generals and courtesans, long presented as voiceless, are at last revealed to be legitimate speakers and authors. These Haitian French and Creole texts have been neglected as a foundation of Afro-diasporic literature by former slaves in the Atlantic world for two reasons: because they do not fit the generic criteria of the slave narrative (which is rooted in the autobiographical experience of enslavement); and because they are mediated texts, relayed to the print-cultural Atlantic domain not by the speakers themselves, but by secretaries or refugee colonists. These texts challenge how we think about authorial voice, writing, print culture, and cultural autonomy in the context of the formerly enslaved, and demand that we reassess our historical understanding of the Haitian Independence and its relationship to an international world of contemporary readers.Trade ReviewColonial and postcolonial studies will gain significant new breadth and depth with the publication of Deborah Jenson’s Beyond the Slave Narrative: Sex, Politics, and Manuscripts in the Haitian Revolution. This pathbreaking book brings to light the rich but largely neglected Francophone record of black literacy from the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Rectifying the anglocentric view that slave narratives were the only or most authentic form of black voices from the past, Jenson provides probing analyses of Creole poetry, political discourse, and other materials. Deeply committed to improving present-day conditions in Haiti, Jenson finds in the cultural heritage of the past the basis for a fuller understanding of current problems and for hope in the future. Doris Y. KadishTable of ContentsIntroduction Race and Voice in the Archives: Mediated Testimony and Interracial Commerce in Saint-Domingue PART ONE: Voicing the Political Sphere Chapter 1 Toussaint Louverture, “Spin Doctor”? The Politics of Media in the Haitian Revolution Chapter 2 Dessalines’ American Proclamations of the Haitian Independence Chapter 3 Before Malcolm X, Dessalines: A French-Language Tradition of Black Atlantic Radicalism Chapter 4 Dessalines’ Anticolonial Imperialism: Santo Domingo, Trinidad, Venezuela Chapter 5 Kidnapped Narratives: The Lost Heir of Henry Christophe and the Imagined Communities of the African Diaspora PART TWO: Voicing the Libertine Sphere Chapter 6 Traumatic Indigeneity: The (Anti)Colonial Politics of “Having” A Creole Literary Culture Chapter 7 Mimetic Mastery and Colonial Mimicry: The Candio in the Popular Creole Literary Tradition Chapter 8 Dissing Rivals, Love for Sale: The Cocotte’s Rap and the Not-So Tragic Mulatta

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Book SynopsisVietnam and Beyond: Tim O’Brien and the Power of Storytelling is a comprehensive, in-depth study of one of the most thought-provoking writers of the Vietnam war generation. This volume breaks away from previous readings of O’Brien’s development as a trauma artist and an outspoken chronicler of the American involvement in Vietnam: its thematic, rather than chronological, approach contextualizes O’Brien’s work beyond the confines of war literature. The necessary exploration of O’Brien’s recurrent engagement with the conflict in Vietnam leads to a thorough discussion of the writer’s revision of key American (and western) ideas and concerns: the association between courage, heroism and masculinity, the celebration of the pioneering spirit in the frontier narrative, the sense of superiority in the encounter with foreign civilizations, the fraught relationship between power and truth, or reality and imagination, and the attempt and the right to speak about unspeakable events. All these themes, as Ciocia illustrates, highlight O’Brien’s compelling preoccupation with the role and the ethical responsibility of the storyteller. With his clear privileging of ‘story-truth’ over ‘happening-truth’, O’Brien makes a bold, serious investment in the power of fiction, as testified by his formal experimentations, metanarrative reflections and sustained meditations on matters such as individual agency, moral accountability and authenticity. Approached from this fresh perspective, O’Brien emerges as a figure deserving to find a wider audience and demanding renewed scholarly attention for his remarkable achievements as a contemporary mythographer, an acute observer of the human condition and a sharp critic of American culture.Trade ReviewReviews'Argumentatively comprehensive and original ... a book that really does take discussion about Tim O’Brien as a world writer to the next level.' Philip D. BeidlerTable of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Introduction 2. The Courage of Authenticity 3. Remapping the National Landscape 4. Trauma, Gender and the Poetics of Uncertainty 5. The Power of Storytelling Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisThis book suggests that James Joyce, like Yeats and his fellow Revivalists, was attracted to the west of Ireland as a place of authenticity and freedom. It shows how his acute historical sensibility is reflected in Dubliners, posing new questions about one of the most enduring collections of short stories ever written. The answers provided are a fusion of history and literary criticism, using close readings that balance techniques of realism and symbolism. The result is an original study that shines new light on Dubliners and Joyce’s later masterpieces.Trade Review'This is a sparklingly written and unflaggingly enjoyable book, founded on a deep and wide-ranging knowledge of Joyce and his times.' Bernard O'Donoghue'Who would think that a new study of James Joyce's first book could break fresh ground? Frank Shovlin has done it. His riveting book on 'Dubliners' shows that Joyce began at his best. After the power and beauty of his short stories, Joyce had nowhere to go except into complexity and length.' Brenda Maddox, Times Literary Supplement * Times Literary Supplement *'Shovlin’s book functions as an act of cultural memory in its retrieval of social and historical narratives attached to phrases, names, places, and songs that Joyce deploys. Journey Westward thus is part of a growing area in Joyce studies with cultural memorial concerns.' Oona Frawley, James Joyce QuarterlyTable of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: 'The journey westward' 1. 'Endless stories about the distillery': Joyce and Whiskey 2. 'Their friends, the French': Joyce, Jacobitism and the Revival 3. 'He would put in allusions': The Uses and Abuses of Revivalism Conclusion: Protestant Power and Plates of Peas Select Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. If Houellebecq is unique in contemporary French writing, it is thanks not only to his extraordinary success, but to the unparalleled scope of his narrative ambition. In the work which most forcefully marked his breakthrough to the mainstream – Les Particules élémentaires – Houellebecq made a significant appeal to the science-fiction genre in order to undergird his critique of contemporary society. For Houellebecq presents humanity – at least modern, western humanity – as in a terminal state of decadence and decline and ripe for replacement by its post-human successor. His novels narrate a metaphysical mutation or paradigm shift through which humanity as we know it ceases to be the over-riding value or focus of our world when it comes into conflict with a competitor in the form of a post-human or neo-human species. It is the aim of this book to appraise the global significance of Houellebecq’s novelistic visions while at the same time situating them within the context of French literature, culture and society.Trade ReviewHouellebecq is a critically divisive figure in the French literary landscape. Morrey’s study of some of the most provocative aspects of his work is conducted dispassionately and, as such, is not clouded by authorial provocation. As a result, this is an important and enlightening examination of the social dimension of Houellebecq’s novels. Russell Wiliams, French Studies, vol 68, no 1 * French Studies, vol 68, no 1 *Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1. Sex and Politics 2. Work and Leisure 3. Science and Religion Conclusion: Humanity and its Aftermath Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.This is the first critical study in English to focus exclusively on the work of Marie NDiaye, born in central France in 1967, winner of the Prix Femina (2001), the Prix Goncourt (2009), shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize (2013), and widely considered to be one of the most important French authors of her generation. Andrew Asibong argues that at the heart of NDiaye’s world lurks an indefinable ‘blankness’ which makes it impossible for the reader to decode narrative at the level of psychology or event. NDiaye’s texts explore social stigmata and familial disintegration with a violence unmatched by any of her contemporaries, but in doing so they remain as strangely affectless and ‘unrecognizable’ as their dissociated protagonists. Considering each of NDiaye’s works in chronological order (including her novels, theatre, short fiction and writing for children), Asibong assesses the aesthetic, emotional and political stakes of NDiaye’s portraits of impenetrable selfhood. His book provides an original and provocative framework within which to read NDiaye as a simultaneously hybrid and hyper-French cultural figure, fascinating and fantastical practitioner of the postmodern – and reluctantly postcolonial – ‘blank arts’.Trade ReviewAndrew Asibong’s 'Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition' is the authoritative study of one of France’s most intriguing and pioneering contemporary authors, indeed of an author whose work compels us at every turn to rethink the ways in which identity, literature, and nationality have heretofore been conceptualized. Dominic Thomas, UCLAA highly intelligent and distinguished book that will be seen as a milestone in the well-deserved critical recognition of a major writer. Michael SheringhamAndrew Asibong’s erudite and spirited book will be a landmark in studies of Marie NDiaye’s writing. Asibong writes with verve, and with an involvement which is contagious. His book is the product of a fervent personal engagement with the unnerving cruelty of NDiaye’s vision. He is courageous enough to let this surface in ways which serve only to strengthen the value of his study and the pleasure to be derived from it. It seems fitting that the first extended monograph on this major writer should offer such a sharply responsive account of her work, and that its own winning obsessiveness should match that of its subject. Shirley Jordan, Modern Language ReviewMarie Ndiaye: Blankness and Recognition is a beautifully written book, obviously inspired, with analysis which makes you want to read all of the work of Ndiaye. Lydie Moudileno, French Review'Marie NDiaye: Blankness and Recognition is an essential read for anyone who studies or intends to work on NDiaye’s dark, disturbing, but also appealing literary production.'Katarzyna Peric, Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century LiteratureTable of Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations ‘C’est justement qu’il n’y a rien!’: introducing NDiayean blankness 1. Blankness / (dis)integration: the first novel cycle 2. Blankness / (re)generation: the second novel cycle 3. Ghouls, ghosts and bloodless abuse: NDiaye’s undead theatre 4. Little baby nothing: framing the invisible child Conclusion: A beam of intense blankness (prière pour le bon usage de Marie NDiaye) Appendix: Plot synopses Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe success of the Caine Prize for African Writing and the growth of online publishing have played key roles in putting the short story in its rightful place within the study and criticism of African literature. African writers have, much more than the critics, recognized the beauty and potency of the short story. Always the least studied in African literature classrooms and the most critically overlooked genre in African literature today, the African short story is now given the attention it deserves. Contributors here take a close look at the African short story to re-define its own peculiar pedigree, chart its trajectory, critique its present state and examineits creative possibilities. They examine how the short story and the novel complement each other, or exist in contradistinction, within the context of culture and politics, history and public memory, legends, myths and folklore. Ernest Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA; the editorial board is composed of scholars from US, UK and African universities Nigeria: HEBNTable of ContentsEditorial Article - Ernest N. Emenyonu 'Real Africa'/'Which Africa?': the Critique of Mimetic Realism in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Short Fiction - Eve Eisenberg Writing Apartheid: Miriam Tlali's Soweto Stories - Mary Jane Androne Articulations of Home & Muslim Identity in the Short Stories of Leila Aboulela - Lindsey Zanchettin Ugandan Women in Contest with Reality: Mary K. Okurutu's A Woman's Voice & the Women's Future - Iniobong I. Uko Snapshots of the Botswana Nation: Bessie Head's The Collector of Treasures & other Botswana Village Tales as a National Project - Louisa Uchum Egbunike Widowhood: Institutionalized Dead Weight to Personal Identity & Dignity: A Reading of Ifeoma Okoye's The Trial & Other Stories - Regina Okafor Feminist Censure of Marriage in Islamic Societies: A Thematic Analysis of Alifa Rifaat's Short Stories - Juliana Daniels Diaspora Identities in Short Fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie & Sefi Atta - Rose A. Sackeyfio Exposition of Apartheid South African Violence & Injustice in Alex la Guma's Short Stories - Blessing Diala-Ogamba Locating a Genre: Is Zimbabwe a Short Story Country? - Tinashe Mushakavanhu Mohammed Dib's Short Stories on the Memory of Algeria - Imene Moulati Ama Ata Aidoo's Short Stories: Empowering the African Girl Child - Hellen Roselyne L. Shigali Interview with Ama Ata Aidoo - Maureen N. Eke and Vincent O. Odamtten Reviews - James Gibbs

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 ALA Book of the Year Award - Scholarship Examines the ways in which space and spatial structures have been constituted, contested and re-imagined in Francophone and Anglophone West African literature since the early 1950s. From the "imaginative geographies" of conquest identified by Edward Said to the very real and material institution of territorial borders, regions and geographical amalgamations, the control, administration and integration of space are known to have played a central and essential role in the creation of contemporary "Africa". Space continues to be a site of conflict, from separatist struggles to the distribution of resources to the continued absorption ofAfrican territories into the uneven geographies of global capitalism. In this book, Madhu Krishnan examines the ways in which the anxieties and conflicts engendered by these phenomena are registered in a broad set of literarytexts from British and French West Africa. By placing these novels in dialogue with a range of archival material such as territorial planning documents, legislative papers, records of liberation movements and development projects, this book reveals the submerged articulations between spatial planning and literary expression, generating new readings of canonical West African texts as well as analyses of otherwise under-researched material. MadhuKrishnan is a Senior Lecturer in 20th/21st Century Postcolonial Writing in the Department of English at the University of Bristol. She is author of Contemporary African Literature in English: Global Locations, Postcolonial Identifications(2014) and Contingent Canons: African Literature and the Politics of Location (2018)Trade ReviewFor any critic who has been frustrated by the persistence of old stereotypes about African literatures, however, Krishnan offers an important recasting of the spatial relations organizing discourse around the continent. At a time when academic and popular interest in Africa and its societies grow ever stronger, this reframing of the worldliness of African literatures is no doubt the book's most salient achievement, one on which Africa scholars can draw for many years to come. * JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERARY INQUIRY *[.] the quality, quantity and range of research, both archival and contemporary, shines through, with African and diasporic figures [.] * AFRICA BOOK LINK *Krishnan has published a highly interesting book. It offers a pedagogic approach to researchers, teachers, and students of African literature to grasp an overview of the selected novels by applying their knowledge of history to the themes of the novels with a view to understanding the contemporary issues of West Africa in detail. * African Studies Quarterly *Table of ContentsIntroduction Spatiality from Empire to Independence Post-independence Disillusionment and Spatial Closures Social Space Beyond the Public Sphere: Women's Writing and Contested Hegemonies Cosmopolitanism, Migration and Neoliberalism in the Wake of Structural Adjustment Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE ASAUK FAGE & OLIVER PRIZE 2016 The author meticulously contextualises the experiences of Achebe and his peers as students at Government College Umuahia and argues for a re-assessment of this influential group of Nigerian writers in relation to the literary culture fostered by the school and its tutors. Maps the literary awakening of the young intellectuals who became known as Nigeria's "first-generation" of postcolonial writers: Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi, Chike Momah, Christopher Okigbo, Chukwuemeka Ike, Gabriel Okara, Ken Saro-Wiwa and I.C. Aniebo. The author provides fresh perspectives on Postcolonial and World literary processes, colonial education in British Africa, literary representations of colonialism and Chinua Achebe's seminal position in African literature. She demonstrates how each of the writers used this very particular education to shape their own visions of the world and examines the implications for African literature as a whole. Supplementary material is available online of some of the original sources. See: http://boybrew.co/9781847011091_2 Terri Ochiagha is a Teaching Fellow in the History of Modern Africa at King's College, London and a Honorary Research Fellowat the Department of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. She was previously a British Academy Newton Fellow at the University of Sussex.Trade ReviewOchiagha's book on the school and its prodigies is well researched and engagingly readable. She displays the precision of an archaeologist, the pedantic nature of a historian, the intuition of an anthropologist and the vivid, engaged imagination of a literary critic in her writing. The dedication she shows, in building up the lives of these iconic writers from various sources, including their school assignments, is extremely impressive...Ochiagha has done literary history a great service. * THE JOHANNESBURG REVIEW OF BOOKS *I can think of no better book to introduce the 3rd and 4th generation of African writers .than this great work. * BORDERS *Table of ContentsLaying the Foundation: The Fisher Days, 1929-1939 "The Eton of the East": William Simpson and the Umuahian Renaissance Studying the Humanities at Government College, Umuahia Young Political Renegades: Nationalist Undercurrents at Government College, Umuahia, 1944-1945 "Something New in Ourselves": First Literary Aspirations The Dangerous Potency of the Crossroads: Colonial Mimicry in Ike, Momah & Okigbo's Reimaginings of the Primus Inter Pares Years An Uncertain Legacy: I.N.C. Aniebo and Ken Saro-Wiwa in the Umuahia of the 1950s The Will to Shine as One: Affiliation and Friendship beyond the College Walls Appendices

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Book SynopsisA critical examination of the engaging voice and multiple stories of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on war, feminism, art, ideology, hair, complex human identities and the challenges of multicultural existence. Easily the leading and most engaging voice of her era and generation, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has bridged gaps and introduced new motifs and narrative styles which have energized contemporary African fiction since her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). With Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) and The Thing Around Your Neck - Short Stories (2009), she established herself as a preeminent story-teller. Americanah (2013), with ingeniouscraftsmanship addresses the sensitive themes of passionate love, independence, freedom and moral responsibility with extravagant and versatile narrative innovations. Through her writings, she has made herself relevant topeople of all ages - across racial and linguistic boundaries. Her talks, blogs, musings on social media, essays and commentaries, workshop-mentoring for budding young writers, lecture circuit discourses, all enrich her imaginativecreativity as they expand and define her mission as a writer. "We Should All be Feminists" she proclaimed in an essay, giving feminism a "tweak and twist" and suggesting new outlooks in literary theory. Her contributionsto African, Diasporic and World literatures deserve serious analyses, commentaries and interpretations, and this Companion to her work critically examines her creative outputs from her art and ideology, from feminism to war, to matters of myth and perception, and the challenges of multicultural existence and complex human identities.Trade ReviewWith her rising profile and importance as one of the major world writers, this Companion on Adichie could not have come at a better time. * AFRICA BOOK LINK *A tremendous energy pervades this collection...a portrait of a writer deeply engaged with ideology, actively exploring, critiquing, questioning and challenging dominant narratives through her work. Discussions of race, gender, immigration, class, war (both the Biafran War and the Nigerian war novel) and history predominate, alongside an excellent chapter by Cristina Cruz-Gutierrez on the politics of hair. * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *A much-needed critical reassessment of [Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's] literary and intellectual production as a whole...Silvana Carotenuto's reflections on Adichie's responsibility as a writer (169-184), or the analysis of 'hair politics' in Americanah by Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez (245-62) are only some examples of the brilliant critical moves being made in the volume. * TRANSNATIONAL LITERATURE *It powerfully illustrates the creative complexity and bold humanity of Adichie's fiction... A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie represents a vital milestone in the literary scholarship of this most widely-cited and intriguing of 21st-century authors. * AFRICA IN WORDS *Whether you are an ardent Adichie lover or a novice to her world of literature, this book is equipped to be a beacon of light as you devour the words to make sense of the world. * AFRICAN STUDIES QUARTERLY *Table of ContentsIntroduction - Ernest N. Emenyonu Narrating the Past: Orality, History & the Production of Knowledge in the Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Louisa Uchum Egbunike Deconstructing Binary Oppositions of Gender in Purple Hibiscus: A Review of Religious/Traditional Superiority & Silence - Janet N. Ndula Adichie & the West African Voice: A Focus on Women & Power in Purple Hibiscus - Jane Duran Reconstructing Motherhood: A Mutative Reality in Purple Hibiscus - Iniobong I. Uko Ritualized Abuse in Purple Hibiscus - Edgar Fred Nabutanyi Dining Room & Kitchen: Food-Related Spaces & their Interfaces with the Female Body in Purple Hibiscus - Jessica C. Hume The Paradox of Vulnerability: The Child Voice in Purple Hibiscus - Oluwole Coker "Fragile Negotiations": Olanna's Melancholia in Half of a Yellow Sun - Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo The Biafran War & the Evolution of Domestic Space in Half of a Yellow Sun - Janice Spleth Corruption in Post-Independence Politics: Half of a Yellow Sun as a Reflection of A Man of the People - Chikwendu PK Anyanwu Contrasting Gender Roles in Male-Crafted Fiction with Half of a Yellow Sun - Carol Ijeoma Njoku "A Kind of Paradise": Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Claim to Agency, Responsibility & Writing - Silvana Carotenuto Dislocation, Cultural Memory & Transcultural Identity in Select Short Stories from The Thing Around Your Neck - Maitrayee Misra Dislocation, Cultural Memory & Transcultural Identity in Select Short Stories from The Thing Around Your Neck - Manish Shrivastava "Reverse Appropriations" & Transplantation in Americanah - Gichingiri Ndigirigi Revisiting Double Consciousness & Relocating the Self in Americanah - Rose A. Sackeyfio Americanah: A Migrant Bildungsroman - Mary Jane Androne "Hairitage" Matters: Transitioning & the Third Wave Hair Movement in "Hair", "Imitation" & Americanah - Cristina Cruz-Gutiérrez Appendix: The Works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Book SynopsisExplores the ways in which African writers have approached speculative fiction through in-depth articles on the use of language, terminology and the genealogy of the works. Over the past two decades, there has been a resurgence in the writing of African and African diaspora speculative and science fiction writing. Recent discussions around the "rise of science-fiction and fantasy" in Africa have led to a push-back, in which writers and scholars have suggested that science fiction and fantasy is not a new phenomenon in African literature, but that the deep past of the African world and its complex and mysterious foundations still register in burgeoning modern literary productions. Such influences can be seen in early twentieth-century writers such as D.O. Fagunwa's classic novel (1938) Ogboji Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale (The Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter's Saga), the mythopoeia of Elechi Amadi's The Concubine (1966) as well as the dystopian writing of Buchi Emecheta in The Rape of Shavi (1983). This volume shows this long tradition of speculative literature in examining African classics such as Kojo Laing's Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) and the oeuvre of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The volume also critically examines modern African texts from writers including Nnedi Okorafor, Namwali Serpell and Masande Ntshanga, as well as critically looking at the terms 'Afrofuturism' and 'Africanfuturism' vis-à-vis their particular cultural aesthetics and suitability in describing tradition rooted African speculative arts. This volume also includes a Literary Supplement. Guest Editors: LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE (Associate Professor in African and Caribbean Literature, Durham University) and CHIMALUM NWANKWO (Writer-in-Residence, Department of English and Literary Studies, Veritas University, Abuja, Nigeria). Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu (Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint) Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma (Fellow, Department of English University of Central Florida).Trade ReviewThis constructive volume 39 of African Literature Today arrives with absorbing focus on the inherently speculative nature of African writing. The articles, interviews, literary supplements comprising short fiction, poetry and reviews will enchant lovers of black speculative fiction. [...] This is truly a worthwhile read. * Aurealis *Table of ContentsEDITORIAL ARTICLE Introduction: Science & Speculative Fiction - What is Past and Present . . . and What is Future? LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE and CHIMALUM NWANKWO ARTICLES 'Being very human in one of the most inhuman cities in the world': Lagos as a Site of Africanfuturist Invasion in Lagoon and Godhunter JANELLE RODRIQUES Southern Africannearfutures: black-tech, ambivalence, and speculation in Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift and Masande Ntshanga's Triangulum JEFFREY G. DODD Woman of the Aeroplanes and the Prediction of the Future CHUKWUNONSO EZEIYOKE Re-membering the Past: Black Panther, Sovereignty, and the Cultural Politics of Africanfuturism KAYODE ODUMBONI African Counter-utopias: from Counter-narratives to the Presentification of Alternative Worlds ERIC TSIMI Shifting the Frame: Re-imagining Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God as Speculative Narratives CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI Contemporary Ugandan Speculative Fiction: A Passing Fad or an Emerging Canon? EDGAR NABUTANYI Moving the Centre: Positions and Locations of African Speculative Fiction JAMES ORAO FEATURE ARTICLE Reimagining Transracial Intimacy: The Cartography of Decolonial Love in Leila Aboulela's Something Old, Something New' and Tomi Adeaga's 'Marriage and Other Impediments' GABRIEL BAMGBOSE INTERVIEWS With Chigozie Obioma LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE With Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o KADIJA GEORGE With Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu KUFRE USANGA LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Poison for the Dogs' (Short Story) ESHITIKA L. LUTOMIA 'Wherever Something Stands Something Else Must Stand Beside It' (Short Story) A. ONIPEDE HOLLIST 'The Song-Warrior' (Short Story) REGINALD OFODILE 'Answers that will not be swallowed' (Poem) 'When a bitch eats her young' (Poem) 'This is how' (Poem) 'A Daughter, Coming Undone' (Poem) 'Crumbs' (Poem) 'Not Crying' (Poem) IQUO DIANAABASI 'The String of Discord' (Poem) "Destiny's Dish" 'Tasha' (Poem) AISHA UMAR 'African Children' (Poem) TIJANI ABDULLAHI OLANIYI 'Nun's Twilight Call' (Poem) CLARA IJEOMA OSUJI 'To Mokwugo Okoye - A Forsaken Freedom Fighter' (Poem) IFEOMA OKOYE REMEMBERING ELDRED JONES (1925-2020) Farewell, Othello's Countryman NIYI OSUNDARE Professor Eldred Jones: A Humanist and Critic ELIZABETH I.A. KAMARA TRIBUTE Chukwuemeka Ike: An Administrator with a Cinematic Imagination AUSTINE AMANZE AKPUDA REVIEWS Sakui Malakpa, Black Professor, White University OBI NWAKANMA Daria Tunca (ed), Conversations with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie KATE HARLIN Ernest Emenyonu, The Literary History of the Igbo Novel: African Literature in African Languages KUFRE USANGA Jack Mapanje, Greetings from Grandpa OLUFEMI DUNMADE Ada Uzoamaka Azodo & Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (eds), Resident Alien and Other Stories: An Anthology of Immigrant Voices from Africa and the African Diaspora INI UKO

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Book SynopsisExplores and interrogates the many and diverse perspectives of the new frontiers of African literary studies. Publication of the seminal volume African Literature Comes of Age, by C.D. Narasimhaiah (India) and Ernest N. Emenyonu (Nigeria), in 1988 generated the consciousness that African literature had attained maturity by the evolution of diverse concerns among scholars, critics, and researchers over the decades following the publication, in the English language, of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart in 1958. Since the publication of the first volume of African Literature Today (ALT) in the 1970s, the writings of Africans across the continent have spread across the globe, constituting refreshing and hitherto unimaginable epistemologies. This 40th volume provides a serious critical response to those changing horizons and reflects African literature's maturity, diversity, scope, spread, and above all, relevance. The topics discussed range from sickle cell disease to the animalization of humans, new feminisms and stereotypes of womanhood, the different shades of black masculinity, and political exploitation in creative works. Reaching across boundaries, recent fictions are seen to suggest a widening of conventional literary genres, and new forms that change the known trajectories of dramatic theatre. The substance, freshness, and vitality that characterize the articles in this volume of African Literature Today bring a welcome perspective to the continent's rich creative life. Funded by the Knowledge Unlatched Select 2023 collection, this title is available as an Open Access ebook under the Creative Commons License: CC BY NCTable of ContentsEDITORIAL ARTICLE African Literature Comes of Age ERNEST N. EMENYONU ARTICLES Of Literature & Medicine: Narrating Sickle Cell Disease in a Nigerian Novel KAZEEM ADEBIYI-ADELABU Posthumanism & Speciesism in African Literature: Animals & the Animalized in Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness CHIKWURAH DESTINY ISIGUZO Manifestations of Masculinities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Novels: Initiating a Talk on Black Masculinity Studies PARAMITA ROUTH ROY Transformative Female Narratives & New Visions in African Women's Writing: A Re-reading of NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah NONYE CHINYERE AHUMIBE Religion, Capitalism & Politics: The Revolutionary Imagination in the Plays of Nawal El Saadawi H. OBY OKOLOCHA Approaching Gang Violence on the Cape Flats in Rehana Rossouw's What Will People Say? ALEXANDRA NEGRI The Denunciation of Religious Collusion with Colonization in Devil on the Cross & Matigari CHRISTOPHE SÉKÈNE DIOUF The Weapons of Subjugation in Imbolo Mbue's How Beautiful We Were BENEDICTA ADEOLA EHANIRE Abrogating Aesthetic Boundaries in Contemporary Nigerian Poetry: A Reading of Femi Abodunrin's Poetry as Drama SANI GAMBO The End of Robert Mugabe: On Knowledge Production & Political Power TINASHE MUSHAKAVANHU The Text & Textual Fields of African Popular Literature: The Agency of Nigerian Stand-Up Comedy JOHN UWA LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Ezuga' (Short Story) KASIMMA Four Poems: 'Mis/Identity'; 'Portable Longing'; 'Darkling Shores'; 'Mea Culpa' EUGEN M. BACON TRIBUTES Remembering Professor Charles R. Larson (14 January 1938-22 May 2021) TIJAN M. SALLAH The End of an Era: A Tribute to Nawal El Saadawi (27 October 1931-21 March 2021) RAZINAT T. MOHAMMED REVIEWS Kasimma, All Shades of Iberibe NONYE CHINYERE AHUMIBE Ikechukwu Otuu Egbuta and Nnenna Vivien Chukwu, World on the Brinks: An Anthology of Covid-19 Pandemic ISIDORE DIALA Evelyn N. Urama, The Writer in the Mirror: Conversations with Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo LOUISA UCHUM EGBUNIKE Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 'Zikora' IJEOMA IBEKU-NGWABA Isidore Diala (ed), Obumselu on African Literature: The Intellectual Muse AFAM EBEOGU Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers IJEOMA IBEKU-NGWABA Tijan Sallah, Saani Baat: Aspects of African Literature and Culture OBI NWAKANMA

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Book SynopsisOxford held a special place in Evelyn Waugh’s imagination. So formative were his Oxford years that the city never left him, appearing again and again in his novels in various forms. This book explores in rich visual detail the abiding importance of Oxford as both location and experience in his literary and visual works. Drawing on specially commissioned illustrations and previously unpublished photographic material, it provides a critically robust assessment of Waugh’s engagement with Oxford over the course of his literary career. Following a brief overview of Waugh’s life and work, subsequent chapters look at the prose and graphic art Waugh produced as an undergraduate together with Oxford’s portrayal in Brideshead Revisited and A Little Learning as well as broader conceptual concerns of religion, sexuality and idealised time. A specially commissioned, hand-drawn trail around Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford guides the reader around the city Waugh knew and loved through locations such as the Botanic Garden, the Oxford Union and The Chequers. A unique literary biography, this book brings to life Waugh’s Oxford, exploring the lasting impression it made on one of the most accomplished literary craftsmen of the twentieth century.Trade Review'A decent guide for those longing to fall in love with the Brideshead dream for the first time.' - The Times 'A fascinating exploration of the effect which man and city had on each other.' - The Tablet 'An enjoyable and informative introduction to the Oxford of AP's years … highly recommended.' - Anthony Powell Society Newsletter 'Handsomely produced volume … Superlatively well illustrated … its overall effect is to emphasise Waugh's talent as a comic draughtsman.' - The Oldie 'This succinct and highly perceptive book …, although not part of the Oxford Complete Works, can be regarded as a useful companion volume to it, or can simply be enjoyed on its own.' - British Art Journal

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Book SynopsisA full exploration of Galdós's treatment of questions relating to the creation and distribution of wealth in the modern money-centred society of Restoration Spain. Winner of the 2017 Peter Bly Award of the Asociación Internacional de Galdosistas Rich and Poor follows Galdós's narrative of the ascent of the bourgeoisie in the speculative climate which resulted from the economic policies of the liberal State. The book also considers the way he portrays the consequences of these policies on the people left behind by the development of capitalism in Spain. Ridao Carlini brings recent scholarshipon nineteenth-century Spanish history together with a wealth of contemporary material--journalism, essays, pamphlets and costumbrista sketches of manner. In this way Galdós's novels are shown to participate in the varied currentsof critical thought - both conservative and socially radical--which questioned the theoretical basis of the Spanish liberal system from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. To this day no other critical work on Galdós has analysed the financial and economic aspects of Galdós's mature novels in the depth they deserve. Ridao Carlini shows that these aspects are central, both to the novels' narrative and to Galdós's understanding of Spanish society as the nineteenth century drew to a close. She also reveals Galdós's perception--one which he shares with other contemporary authors--that he was living through a time of unforeseeable social transformation. Galdós's work appears particularly relevant to us today, since we, like him, live in a time marked by a perception of social and economic uncertainty. Inma Ridao Carlini is a Teaching Fellow in Hispanic Studies, University of Leicester.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Changing Fortunes and the Financial World in Galdós's Lo prohibido From Usurer to Marqués: Lending and Social Advancement in the Torquemada Novels Revolution and the Politics of Religion in Ángel Guerra The cuestión social in Misericordia Afterword Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA comprehensive inquiry into the literary representation of the convulsive social and political changes introduced by the Bolivarian Revolution. La novela venezolana del siglo XXI se ha erigido como un observatorio creativo de la inmediatez política. Las intervenciones críticas que recoge este libro revelan un amplio abanico de corrientes temáticas y estrategias estéticasa través de las cuales se articula el tratamiento ficcional de la crisis del proyecto revolucionario y su impacto social. A través de la lectura de novelas publicadas entre 2002 y 2015, la autora examina cómo el conflicto político ha permeado la actual narrativa venezolana para trazar los orígenes y consecuencias de una contemporaneidad turbulenta. Estos dispositivos creativos de resistencia desafían los discursos oficiales, al tiempo que denuncian los antecedentes y consecuencias de la fractura del orden institucional y contribuyen al balance histórico de uno de los periodos más convulsos de la nación. Patricia Valladares-Ruiz es profesora asociada de literaturaslatinoamericanas y caribeñas en la Universidad de Cincinnati. This book explores the intersections of cultural policies, social changes, political conflict, and fiction writing in modern-day Venezuela. The study as awhole consists of two interrelated sections. The first section provides an analysis of the relationship between the discursive goals of the Bolivarian cultural policies and how authors work within and respond to them. The secondsection introduces a series of case studies of a comprehensive corpus of novels published between 2002 and 2015. Narrativas del descalabro closes a gap in current Venezuelan literary studies by offering a comprehensive inquiry into the literary representation of the convulsive social and political changes introduced by the Bolivarian Revolution. Patricia Valladares-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean literatures at theUniversity of Cincinnati.Table of ContentsPresentación Agradecimientos Campo cultural y narrativas disidentes del periodo revolucionario La narración del mal: Violencia, crisis moral e institucional en la novela venezolana del siglo XXI País sin retorno: La experiencia migratoria en narrativas del periodo revolucionario Alegorías la inmediatez política Reescritura de la historia política venezolana en novelas del periodo revolucionario Bibliografía Índice de autores, títulos y temas

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Book SynopsisThis book aims to develop a broader view of the trajectory of Hispanic modernity, tracing a motif of recurring impasse, first seen in peninsular Baroque texts and continuing into Latin American colonial and modern literature. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's notion of constellation, this book draws on theories of Latin American modernity to investigate the Spanish literary Baroque and its repetitions as a historical-cultural predicament in Latin American colonial and modern texts. Inca Garcilaso, Borges, Carpentier, Rulfo, Darío and a range of Latin American "Post-Symbolist" poets (Agustini, Pizarnik, Sosa, Lienlaf and Huinao) are juxtaposed with the Lazarillo, the Quijote, Fuenteovejuna and Góngora's Soledades to produce original readings on topics of violence, rape, frustrated pilgrimage, and the truncated ambitions of colonized peoples and confessional minorities. In turn, Benjamin is juxtaposed with Mallarmé to recast the aesthetic dynamics of modernity in political terms, in order to understand the Baroque within a more broadly historicized concept of the avant-garde. Generous in scope, this book addresses the community of Spanish and Latin American criticism as well as emerging and pressing theoretical concerns within the field of comparative literature.Trade ReviewAll chapters of the book are meticulously researched and centered on informative close readings. [...] a significant scholarly achievement. * Calíope *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Baroque, Symbolism and Hispanic Modernity: A Benjaminian Meditation on the Construction of History Góngora and the Colonial Body Politic: Moriscos, Amerindians and Poetry as Protest Violence and "The Tremulous Private Body" in Lazarillo de Tormes, Fuenteovejuna, and the Soledades Trauma, Body and Machine in Don Quijote Góngora and Darío in Constellation: On the Poetics of Rape, Colonialism and Modernity Pilgrimage into the Trauma of History: Continuities of Góngora in Carpentier, Rulfo and Vallejo Signposts in a Genealogy of Post-Symbolism in Latin American Poetry Afterward Appendix I: On Mallarmé's "Un Coup de dés" Appendix II: The Annales School and Maravall's La cultura del barroco

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Book SynopsisIn the last two decades, the glorification of sewing - whether involving needlework, tailoring, or fashion design - has thrived in Latin American and Iberian cultural works, particularly literature. In the last two decades, the glorification of sewing - whether involving needlework, tailoring, or fashion design - has thrived in Latin American and Iberian cultural works, particularly literature. While fast fashion has relegated the handicraft to maquiladoras in the Global South, Spanish and Latin American authors have created protagonists whose skill with needle and thread allows them to break out of culturally confining roles and spaces. In this fictional realm, seamstresses and tailors enter exciting adventures as spies, peacemakers, or explorers, all facilitated by their artistry and expertise. This book examines the depiction of women and the textile arts in contemporary Hispanic and Brazilian literature. Employing space and gender theories, the book explores how sewing, traditionally viewed as respectable only if practiced at home, gives agency and encourages self-reflection and mobility,allowing protagonists to transgress physical and socially prescribed limits. Texts analyzed include María Dueñas's El tiempo entre costuras (2009), César Aira's La costurera y el viento (1994), Pedro Lemebel's Tengo miedo torero (2001), Frances Ponte de Peebles's The Seamstress (2009), and children's literature. Encouraging readers to look behind garments to the agents of production, the book shows how contemporary authors, through their celebrations of an age-old skill, help to renew interest in sewing, tailoring, upcycling, and embroidery.Trade ReviewDelving into diverse texts that bring together several disciplines, Saunders documents the cultural power of fashion hegemony within the framework of global capitalism. Ultimately this insightful and beautifully written book locates new spaces from which to re-affirm the tensions inherent to fashion, gender and agency in the acquisition of cultural power. -- REGINA A. ROOT, Professor of Hispanic Studies and Specialist in Latin American Fashion, William & MaryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Glorifying the Needle and Thread On Pins and Needles: Hypermodernity and Hyperclothing Ourselves The Perfect Pattern: Dressmaking as a Political Tool in María Dueñas's El tiempo entre costuras Lining with Surrealism: Spaces and Stitches in César Aira's La costurera y el viento Unraveling Gender and Sexual Confinements in Pedro Lemebel's Tengo miedo torero An Honest Measuring Tape: Peripheral Places in Frances de Pontes Peebles's The Seamstress Tailoring Peace and Purpose: Sartorial Representations in Children's Literature Conclusion: Final Notations: Toward Consumer Consciousness

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Book SynopsisHow are contemporary authors reimagining the idea of 'Ecuador' following the worst financial crisis in the nation's history, and how do countries on the periphery of the global literary market challenge and enrich World Literature? Winner of the 2020-21 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize In March 1999, in an effort to stave off financial collapse, the Ecuadorian government suspended all banking operations and froze all bank accounts in the country for a period of five days. This episode, the Feriado Bancario, represents the peak of the worst financial crisis in the nation's history and one which had far-reaching and long-last effects on society, politics, the economy, and cultural production. The very idea of 'Ecuador' was transformed, as Ecuador became a country marked by constant interaction with the world beyond its borders. This book explores how contemporary Ecuadorian authors are reimagining the nation following the Feriado Bancario. Starting from a rereading of Ecuador's national novel, Jorge Icaza's Huasipungo (1930), which saw the nation as rooted in the land, the book examines post-crisis fiction which offers an image of Ecuador as a transnational space. It posits that these novels - Eliécer Cárdenas' El oscuro final del Porvenir (2000), Leonardo Valencia's Kazbek (2008), Carlos Arcos' Memorias de Andrés Chiliquinga (2013), and Gabriela Alemán's Humo (2017) - both reflect and explain the new reality of Ecuador as a nation that can no longer be defined by its territory. At the same time, the book uses the Ecuadorian case to challenge the conceptualisation of Latin American literature as 'post-national' and to show how countries on the periphery of the global literary market can, from the very fact of their minoritarian position, enrich and better define World Literature.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction I: Land, History, Nation II: Crisis, Fiction, Transformation III: Reimagining Ecuador Transnationally IV: Latin America, Ecuador, the World Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisWho doubts, my reader, that you will be amazed that a woman has the audacity not only to write a book, but to send it for printing, which is the crucible in which the purity of genius is tested'? A pioneer of early modern feminism, María de Zayas y Sotomayor wrote poetry, drama and prose but is best known for two page-turning collections of short stories: Exemplary Tales of Love (1637) and Tales of Disillusion (1647). This book provides an engaging introduction to Zayas and her work. It begins by relating what we know of her life, placing her in her socio-political and economic context and addressing the issue of women's literacy. Following chapters examine her use of sexual desire, violence and humour in her tales; her narrative structures; and her oral style. The book then turns to identity construction in her tales and in society, analysing questions of gender, class, family and 'race', and to her treatment of religion, magic and the supernatural. The final chapters explore Zayas's status as a proto-feminist; her early modern reception in Spain and elsewhere; and various critical readings of her work.Table of ContentsPreface Chapter I: Zayas: Her Life and Times Chapter 2: Exemplary Tales of Love: A Contradiction? Chapter 3: Settings, Styles and Models: Zayas's Literary Context Chapter 4: Turning the Tables on Men in Exemplary Tales of Love Chapter 5: Bodies in Pain: Tales of Disillusion Chapter 6: Identifying the Subject Chapter 7: I Believe: Religion, Magic, the Supernatural Chapter 8: Zayas on Women Conclusion: Zayas's Afterlives Appendix: Plot Summaries

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Book SynopsisA lively and accessible introduction to Machado de Assis and his work Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is a world-class writer and arguably the greatest of Brazilian literature. Susan Sontag deemed him "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America," and Harold Bloom, "the supreme black literary artist to date." John Updike called him a "master," and Carlos Fuentes, a "miracle." This book guides the reader through Machado's biography, times, and critical reception and examines his various personas - the translator, poet, playwright, critic, cronista, short story writer, and novelist - paying particular attention to his fictional prose, which most clearly conveys his acerbic criticism of Brazilian society and his deft view of the human condition. The book closes with an updated list of Machado's works available in English translation and a selection of further critical studies.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations A Note on Translations Acknowledgments Chapter One: "Better than Borges" Chapter Two: Machado de Assis: Life and Ethos Chapter Three: Translation, Poetry, and Drama: The Quest for Greatness Chapter Four: Criticism and Crônica: The Quest for Greatness Continues Chapter Five: Short Stories: The Dialectical Other Chapter Six: Novels: Lights! Camera! Digression! Chapter Seven: The World Keeps Changing to Remain the Same Chapter Eight: The Machado Dictionary Appendix One: Machado de Assis in English Appendix Two: On Machado de Assis in English Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA detailed and lively discussion and analysis of the novels, short stories, newspaper columns, and other works of one of the most important and popular writers in Spain today. This book provides the most comprehensive study to date of the full range of Marías' writing, including discussion and analysis of his literary and intellectual formation, his development as a novelist and short story writer, andhis unique perspective offered in nearly twenty-five years of newspaper columns on topics ranging from religion to football. Above all, Marías is examined as a writer of fictions. As a translator of several canonical works from English to Spanish, Marías came to appreciate the preciseness of words as well as their ambiguity, their capacity to represent as well as their propensity to distort. The author examines Marías's constant awareness of how languagecan be used to construct stories as the foundation for engaging the world as well as for imagining it. The nature of Marías's storytelling, and the way in which he imagines, form the principal focus of this Companion. David K. Herzberger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of California, Riverside.Trade ReviewVery good insights ... a very sound in-depth study of Marías' work ... Should be sought after by all with a scholarly interest in Marías' work. * BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES *A splendid overview [...] the most comprehensive analysis to date on the narrative of Javier Marias. The book is informative, illuminating and admirably clear. * HISPANIA *Table of ContentsIntroduction Writing in the Newspapers: Everything Under the Sun Two Early Novels: Dominios del lobo and Travesías del horizonte Two Transitional Novels: El siglo and El hombre sentimental On Oxford, Redonda, and the Practice of reading: Todas las almas and Negra espalda del tiempo Two Shakespearean Novels Tu rostro mañana Other Writings Suggested Further Reading Bibliography

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Book SynopsisHow have sociopolitical fears been enacted, represented and performed in societies marked by repression, conflict and abuse of power? And how has this emotion shaped aesthetic and ideological discourses and cultural productions? Violencia, poder y afectos: narrativas del miedo en Latinoamérica ofrece una contribución crítica al estudio de las representaciones de los miedos sociopolíticos en la literatura y el cine contemporáneos. Este volumen estudia las consecuencias inmediatas y de larga duración de la violencia y el terror en las sociedades latinoamericanas desde varias perspectivas teóricas. Los capítulos del libro abordan dos preguntas centrales: ¿cómo se han asumido, asimilado y representado los diversos temores sociopolíticos que caracterizan a unas sociedades marcadas por el conflicto, la represión y el abuso de poder? y ¿cómo este afecto ha marcado los discursos estéticos e ideológicos de las producciones culturales? Mediante el estudio de las obras de escritores y productores culturales contemporáneos incluso Mónica Ojeda, Cristina Rivera Garza, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Alonso Cueto y Manlio Argueta, los colaboradores de este libro examinan el clima de terror y ansiedad provocados por las guerras civiles en Guatemala, El Salvador y Perú; la guerra de las drogas en México; la invasión estadounidense a Panamá en 1989; así como las dinámicas de desigualdad de clase y género en Ecuador y México. Violencia, poder y afectos: narrativas del miedo en Latinoamérica offers a critical contribution to studies of the representation of socio-politically inflicted fears in contemporary literature and film. This volume looks at the immediate and long-lasting consequences of violence and terror in Latin American societies from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Chapters of the book engage with two central questions: How have sociopolitical fears been enacted, represented and performed in societies marked by repression, conflict and abuse of power? And how has this emotion shaped aesthetic and ideological discourses and cultural productions? Looking at contemporary writers and cultural producers including Mónica Ojeda, Cristina Rivera Garza, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Alonso Cueto and Manlio Argueta, the contributors of this volume examine the climate of terror and anxiety resulting from the civil wars in Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru; the war on drugs in Mexico; the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; and dynamics of class and gender power imbalances in Ecuador and Mexico.Table of ContentsLista de illustraciones Lista de autores Introducción Narrativas del miedo: consideraciones históricas y definiciones conceptuales Marco Ramírez Rojas Ecuador 1. En la boca del miedo: violencias afectivas y éticas perversas en Mandíbula, de Mónica Ojeda Marta Pascua Canelo El Salvador 2. Desde el miedo hasta la liberación en Un día en la vida del salvadoreño Manlio Argueta Bradley Hilgert y Zachary Dehm Guatemala 3. Espectros subversivos y miedos neoliberales en La llorona de Jayro Bustamante Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo 4. El miedo como condición crónica y la desactivación política del sujeto en El material humano de Rodrigo Rey Rosa Magdalena Perkowska México 5. Cartografías del miedo en la narrativa mexicana contemporánea Ester Bautista y Daniela Pérez 6. Los trabajos del miedo: el terror, el horror y la ruina en la narrativa sobre la guerrilla mexicana de los años 70 José Lara 7. El miedo en un México neoliberal: El papel de las narco-narrativas seriales y las impredecibles formas de coexistencia Blanca Judith Martínez 8. Figuras del miedo en El buscador de cabezas de Antonio Ortuño Margarita Remón-Raillard Panamá 9. Heterofonía del miedo y trauma nacional: La primera novela de la invasión a Panamá en 1989 David Rozotto Perú 10. Memoria, espacio y niñez: Las formas de lo gótico en Las malas intenciones Rosana Díaz-Zambrana 11. Una historia contada dos veces: Los residuos del miedo en La Hora Azul y La Pasajera de Alonso Cueto Marco Ramírez Rojas Índice onomástico

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Book SynopsisCombining a rich depiction of historical customs with genuine admiration for the Muslim legacy of Andalucia, El ferí de Benastepar is a previously unknown novel by Spanish writer José Miguel Hué y Camacho (1803-1841) that relates the doomed romance between Castilian lady Elvira de Castro and the eponymous ferí de Benastepar, Abenamet, a morisco chief.Trade ReviewThis previously unedited novel is a significant contribution to our knowledge of nineteenth-century writers like Miguel Hué y Camacho who opted to reimagine the relations between Christians and Moors during the Morisco rebellions following the fall of Granada. Luckily, El ferí de Benastepar has found itself in the capable hands of editors Javier Muñoz de Morales Galiana and Daniel Muñoz Sempere, who offer us a wide window into the originality and multiple sources of the novel. -- Lou Charnon-Deutsch * Emeritus Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University *Table of ContentsIntroducción Autoría de la novela: José Miguel Hué y Camacho, 'el Andaluz' (1803-1841) Fuentes de la novela: El orientalismo romántico y la segunda vida de la novela morisca Temas, estructura y personajes Amor romántico y literatura fronteriza Nota al texto El ferí de Benastepar, o los moros de Sierra Bermeja

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Book SynopsisNuruddin Farah is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated voices in contemporary world literature. Michel Foucault is revered as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, with his discursive legacy providing inspiration for scholars working in a range of interdisciplinary fields. The Disorder of Things offers a reading of the Somali novelist through the prism of the French philosopher. The book argues that the preoccupations that have remained central throughout Farah’s forty year career, including political autocracy, female infibulation, border conflicts, international aid and development, civil war, transnational migration and the Horn of Africa’s place in a so-called ‘axis of evil’, can be mapped onto some key concerns in Foucault’s writing most notably Foucault’s theoretical turn from ‘disciplinary’ to ‘biopolitical’ power.In both the colonial past and the postcolonial present, Somalia is typically represented as an incubator of disorder: whether in relation to internecine conflict, international terrorism or contemporary piracy. Through his work, both fictional and non-fictional, Farah strives to present alternative stories to an expanding global readership. The Disorder of Things analyses the politics and poetics that underpin this literary project, beginning with Farah’s first fictional cycle, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (1979-1983), and ending with his Past Imperfect trilogy (2004-2011). Farah’s writing calls for a more refined, substantial reading of our current geo-political situation. As such, it both warrants and compels the kind of critical engagement foregrounded throughout The Disorder of Things.This book will appeal to students, academics and general readers with an interest in the interdisciplinary study of literature. Its engagement with theorists, drawn from postcolonial, feminist and development studies, set against the backdrop of a host of philosophical and sociological discourses, shows how such intellectual cross-fertilisation can enliven a single-author study.Trade Review... an important addition to the study of the oeuvre of Nuruddin Farah, one of this continent's leading and most original novelists. The study will be of great interest to scholars specialising in contemporary African literature [...] whilst being accessible to general readers with an especial interest in Foucault; in African politics and social developments; or in assessing the contribution of an intriguing but 'difficult' author. -Annie Gagiano, University of StellenboschTable of ContentsTaking On Foucault and Fleshing Out Farah - Opportunities for Dialogue and Reflections on Method; Quivering at the Heart of the Variations Cycle - Labyrinths of Loss in Sweet and Sour Milk; So Vast the Prison - Agonistic Power Relations in Sardines; Through the Maze Darkly - Incarceration and Insurrection in Close Sesame; From the Carceral to the Biopolitical - The Dialectical Turn Inwards in Maps; 'A Call to Alms' - Gifts and the Possibilities of a Foucauldian Reading; Trajectories of Implosion and Explosion - The Politics of Blood and Betrayal in Secrets; Bringing It All Back Home - Theorising Diaspora and War in Yesterday, Tomorrow and Links; A Woman Apart - Entanglements of Power, Disintegration and Restoration in Knots; Conclusion: Pirates of the Apocalypse - Where Next?

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Book SynopsisRichard Moore Rive (1930–1989) was a writer, scholar, literary critic and college teacher in Cape Town, South Africa. He is best known for his short stories written in the late 1950s and for his second novel, ’Buckingham Palace‘, District Six, in which he depicted the well-known cosmopolitan area of District Six, where he grew up. In this biography Shaun Viljoen, a former colleague of Rive’s, creates the composite qualities of a man who was committed to the struggle against racial oppression and to the ideals of non-racialism but was also variously described as irascible, pompous and arrogant, with a ’cultivated urbanity‘. Beneath these public personae lurked a constant and troubled awareness of his dark skin colour and guardedness about his homosexuality. Using his own and others’ memories, and drawing on Rive’s fiction, Viljoen brings the author to life with sensitivity and empathy. The biography follows Rive from his early years in the 1950s, writing for Drum magazine and spending time in the company of great anti-establishment writers such as Jack Cope, Ingrid Jonker, Jan Rabie, Marjorie Wallace, Es’kia Mphahlele and Nadine Gordimer, to his acceptance at Magdalene College, Oxford, where he completed his doctorate on Olive Schreiner, before returning to South Africa to resume his position as senior lecturer at Hewat College of Education. This biography will resurface Richard Rive the man and the writer, and invite us to think anew about how we read writers who lived and worked during the years of apartheid.Trade ReviewI found the clarity of the exposition, the informed speculation, and the warp and weft of intimate portrait and contextual embedding to be exceptional. The book's mode - adhering broadly to the conventions of biographical writing and then disrupting them in creative, cogent and intellectually persuasive ways - makes it the most compelling biography of a South African writer that I have read. - Michael Titlestad, University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgTable of ContentsAcknowledgements. List of Photographs. 1930-1960. 1960-1970. 1970-1980. 1980- 1990. Addenda. Short Chronology. List of Interviewees.

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Book SynopsisMendele Mocher Sefarim's seven novels constitute the most important and influential body of work in modern Jewish prose fiction written prior to the First World War. These novels-five of which he wrote twice, once in Yiddish and once in Hebrew-are devastating satiric portraits of Jewish life in nineteenth-century Russia. They are permeated by Mendele's passion for social change, and an often equally passionate contempt for his own people for failing to achieve it. David Aberbach, exploring these passions in terms of the psychology of prejudice and self-hate, provides the first full-length analysis of the tension between realism and caricature in Mendele's descriptions of his fellow-Jew. At the same time, his analysis conveys Mendele's fascinating social and psychological insights into the forces which led to the mass emigration of Jews from Russia before the First World War, to the rise of Zionism, and to Jewish involvement in the socialist and revolutionary movements in Russia at the turn of the century. The picture is broadened through references to contemporary Russian literature so as to portray these forces in the context of Russian society at the time. Aberbach's skilful presentation allows the reader to gain access to Mendele's works through many tantalizing excerpts, with some of the key passages provided in Hebrew and Yiddish as well as in Aberbach's lively translation. He also makes available the considerable body of Mendele scholarship that has been published in Hebrew in recent years. From this fascinating and lucid work, scholars and general readers alike will gain a new understanding not only of the social realities of Jewish life in tsarist Russia but also of how the self-image of an ethnic minority may be affected and even determined by the character and social problems of the majority culture.Trade Review'A useful introduction ... Aberbach is rightly critical of, as well as enthusiastic about, his author. Transliterations of Hebrew and translations of Yiddish help the non-specialist.' Forum for Modern Language Studies 'There is much in this book on Mendele's confused psychological state of mind, even seeking to interpret the dreams described in his stories as indicative of that state ... This book will do much to take readers beyond the stereotypical image of Mendele as the amusing satirist of shtetl mores and provoke interest in him as a key figure in modern Jewish literature.' Barry Davis, Jewish Book News & Reviews 'Considerable achievement in making Mendele's writing more accessible to English readers.' Risa Domb, Jewish Chronicle 'Aberbach has now performed the difficult and vastly important feat of rendering a mass of remote material accessible to the general public, offering an account of the sources and their versions, summarizing their contents, and also making it available to the English-speaking reader. There are also very valuable extracts presented in the original languages, together with an account of the editions.' Leon I. Yudkin, Journal of Semitic StudiesTable of ContentsNote on transliteration Map: The World of Mendele Mocher Sefarim Introduction 1 The Five Twice-Told Novels 2 Mendele and Abramowitz: Anatomy of Self-Caricature 3 Antisemitism and Jewish Self-Hate in Mendele 4 Mendele's Realism and the Struggle for Change 5 Loss and Wandering in Mendele Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA lucid and balanced appraisal of some of the best Czech fiction of the twentieth century.Trade Review"... important, useful. Students will love it. Afficionados of Czech literature even more. Arnost Lustig

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Book SynopsisAlthough Camus was called the "conscience of his age", no writer has continued to be both more vilified and exalted in the West. His writings are not only a devastating critique of Western philosophy, but Camus' cultural horizons are infused with heartfelt insights of Eastern wisdom. Western culture is vulnerable to dilemmas of existence because it seeks to make abstract certain absolutes: The West has failed to come to grips with our finite existential condition. Indian thought distinguishes social, political, scientific and philosophical views of Reality from Reality itself. And this distinction evokes a hope, humility and spirituality that promotes a courage to live with truths not faced by the West. This book is a gateway to investigating whether Camus' ideal of living without conceptual absolutes is an attainable goal. Intriguingly, his writings touch upon a freedom from the anxiety of living that raise a spectre of Eastern philosophical horizons. Camus' insights in terms of the East are present in his fictional illustrations of alienated twentieth-century outsiders (The Stranger); the pursuit of truths that are not immutable and absolute (The Myth of Sisyphus); plays that highlight the absurdity of irrational views of Reality (Caligula); culminating in The Rebel, which warned of illusory dogmas of absolutist philosophies.Trade Review"A fine explanation of the various meanings of Camus' concept of the absurd. A useful introduction to Camus' thought." -- Choice.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Experience of the Absurd; Logic that Reassures; The Absurdity of Existence; From Existential to Logical Absurdity; An Absurdity of Excessive Logic; Living Without an Excess of Logic; Disquietude that Cannot be Distilled; Maintaining a Tension of Existence; Existential Conflict; Conflict and Metaphysical Why; A Metaphysical Answer; Answers and Nostalgia for the Absolute; Camus' Own Revolt Against Absurdity; Absurdity in the Absence of Conflict?; Conflict and the Search for Meaning; The Meaning of Nothingness; Politeness and Politics; Politeness: The First Degree of Justice; Loving Abstract Humanity; A Contagion of Group Think; Self-Refuting Political Thought; Utopias Which Destroy Themselves; The Longing to be Free From Pain; A Politicised Existentialism; Flirtation and Revulsion; Intoxicating Paradoxes at a Cafe; From Paradox to Moral Anarchy; Ensuing Orthodoxies of Modernism; An Aftermath of Postmodernism; Rise of the Bourgeois Bohemians; A Mean Between Extremes; An Extremism of Success; Sacrifice to the Ever-Pressing They'; Bourgeois Anxiety and Existential Angst; Experience Defined Rationally; Contrast to an Eastern Position; Nostalgia for the Absolute; Quest for an Absolutist Epistemology; From Epistemology to Political Ideology; Rationalism Par Excellence; Independence of the World for Intelligibility; A Search for Intelligibility Ends in Paradox; A Paradox of the One over Many; From the Many to a Critique of Pure Reason; Reason and Absolutism in the Final Analysis; Need Reality Conform to Reason?; Psychological and Logical Thirst for Reality; Reality and Verbal Limitations; Limitations in terms of the Madhyamika; The Madhyamika and Misunderstanding; Misunderstanding an Eastern Existentialism; From the Existential to the Logical; Logical Consequences; Beyond the Conceptual and Linguistic; Index.

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Book SynopsisAlthough Camus was called the "conscience of his age", no writer has continued to be both more vilified and exalted in the West. His writings are not only a devastating critique of Western philosophy, but Camus' cultural horizons are infused with heartfelt insights of Eastern wisdom. Western culture is vulnerable to dilemmas of existence because it seeks to make abstract certain absolutes: The West has failed to come to grips with our finite existential condition. Indian thought distinguishes social, political, scientific and philosophical views of Reality from Reality itself. And this distinction evokes a hope, humility and spirituality that promotes a courage to live with truths not faced by the West. This book is a gateway to investigating whether Camus' ideal of living without conceptual absolutes is an attainable goal. Intriguingly, his writings touch upon a freedom from the anxiety of living that raise a spectre of Eastern philosophical horizons. Camus' insights in terms of the East are present in his fictional illustrations of alienated twentieth-century outsiders (The Stranger); the pursuit of truths that are not immutable and absolute (The Myth of Sisyphus); plays that highlight the absurdity of irrational views of Reality (Caligula); culminating in The Rebel, which warned of illusory dogmas of absolutist philosophies.Trade Review"A fine explanation of the various meanings of Camus' concept of the absurd. A useful introduction to Camus' thought." -- Choice.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Experience of the Absurd; Logic that Reassures; The Absurdity of Existence; From Existential to Logical Absurdity; An Absurdity of Excessive Logic; Living Without an Excess of Logic; Disquietude that Cannot be Distilled; Maintaining a Tension of Existence; Existential Conflict; Conflict and Metaphysical Why; A Metaphysical Answer; Answers and Nostalgia for the Absolute; Camus' Own Revolt Against Absurdity; Absurdity in the Absence of Conflict?; Conflict and the Search for Meaning; The Meaning of Nothingness; Politeness and Politics; Politeness: The First Degree of Justice; Loving Abstract Humanity; A Contagion of Group Think; Self-Refuting Political Thought; Utopias Which Destroy Themselves; The Longing to be Free From Pain; A Politicised Existentialism; Flirtation and Revulsion; Intoxicating Paradoxes at a Cafe; From Paradox to Moral Anarchy; Ensuing Orthodoxies of Modernism; An Aftermath of Postmodernism; Rise of the Bourgeois Bohemians; A Mean Between Extremes; An Extremism of Success; Sacrifice to the Ever-Pressing They'; Bourgeois Anxiety and Existential Angst; Experience Defined Rationally; Contrast to an Eastern Position; Nostalgia for the Absolute; Quest for an Absolutist Epistemology; From Epistemology to Political Ideology; Rationalism Par Excellence; Independence of the World for Intelligibility; A Search for Intelligibility Ends in Paradox; A Paradox of the One over Many; From the Many to a Critique of Pure Reason; Reason and Absolutism in the Final Analysis; Need Reality Conform to Reason?; Psychological and Logical Thirst for Reality; Reality and Verbal Limitations; Limitations in terms of the Madhyamika; The Madhyamika and Misunderstanding; Misunderstanding an Eastern Existentialism; From the Existential to the Logical; Logical Consequences; Beyond the Conceptual and Linguistic; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the theme of gambling in a wide range of nineteenth-century English novels. It examines the representation of gambling in the novels themselves and the role that gambling played in the lives of the individual novelists. It also considers the significance of gambling in the novels within the wider context of the development of Victorian society. Following an historical overview, the book comprises individual chapters on: Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Anthony Trollope and George Moore. Gambling in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel not only provides fresh readings of established texts within a distinctive social and cultural context, but is also a comprehensive barometer of the social history of the time as attitudes towards leisure changed. It is essential reading for all those interested in the development of English society and culture in the Victorian era. Gambling occurred in all strata of society and was a national pastime. The pursuit of gambling took many forms: from after-dinner cards to pugilism, and indeed Stock Exchange transactions were considered by many to be gambling at its worst.

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Book SynopsisKaren Blixen's works are explored in the light of a passionate insistence on living out a double nature of the divine and the demonic. The 'aristocratic' is examined as her depiction of a conduct of life that is faithful to destiny: the aristocratic viewpoint is in tune with eternity, and places no obstructive morality between self and life. Vitality has its source in direct access to the ocean of inexhaustible opportunities with which life presents us. The 'world' of Africa, for example, plays a key role as the consummate illustration of an aristocratic culture. The aesthetic guidelines for literary form (as well as art) as advocated by KB are discussed, and her view of art is similarly defined and explained as 'aristocratic'. Her private correspondence (including the recently published Karen Blixen in Denmark: Letters, 1931-62) is drawn upon to shed new light on her life and work.

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Book SynopsisIn "Search of the Sorcerer's Apprentice" is the first book in English to be devoted to Lucian's "Philopseudes or Lover of Lies" (ca. 170s AD). It comprises an extensive discussion, with full translation, on this engaging and satirical Greek text with its ten tales of magic and ghosts. One of these is the famous story of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", and this conveys the flavour of the rest. In other tales a plague of snakes is blasted with a miraculous scorching breath, a woman is drawn to her admirer by an animated cupid doll, and a haunted house is cleansed of its monstrous ghost. The Philopseudes stands at the intersection of three of the liveliest fields in the study of antiquity: magic, traditional narratives, and the Lucianic oeuvre itself. Ogden's cross-fertilising expertise in all three of these fields enables him to build sophisticated analyses for each of the tales and to place them sensitively in their historical, cultural and literary contexts. Among the themes of the work are Lucian's methods of adapting motifs from traditional narratives, and the text's overlooked Cynic voice.

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Book SynopsisApuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, our only complete Latin novel, tells the story of Lucius, a young man turned into a donkey by magic because of his unfettered curiosity. After many adventures he is finally saved by the goddess Isis, whose follower he becomes. The famous first book of the novel introduces the protagonist's character, his interest in magic and his gullibility, but also important themes of the novel such as metamorphosis from man into beast. Lucius listens to stories about magic and witchcraft told to him on his journey to ancient Thessaly and narrates them to the reader. A substantial part of the first book accordingly concentrates on the self-contained tale about a certain Socrates and his unhappy experiences with murderous Thessalian witches. Apuleius himself had been put on trial for allegedly using erotic magic to make his future wife fall in love with him, a theme which also appears in Metamorphoses 1. Throughout the novel, Apuleius portrays Lucius as an unreliable first person narrator and thus implicates the reader of the novel in the same character fault that drives its protagonist: curiosity. This edition of Book I presents the Latin text with a modern translation, substantial introduction and accompanying commentary. The author Apuleius is discussed in the literary environment of the second century AD together with key themes of the first book and the novel as a whole. Special attention is given to ancient magic, the roles of philosophy and the goddess Isis in the novel as well as the extensive reception of the first book in literature up to modern times. The commentary illustrates Apuleius' text as a densely constructed literary work and explains literary allusions as well as philosophical, historical and religious contexts.Trade ReviewReviews'This is a useful volume for students and readers who wish to know more about the Metamorphoses, without having to face the breathtaking flood of modern scholarship on Apuleius and the Roman novel.'Bryn Mawr, Classical Review'An impressive and learned book that makes original contributions to Apuleian scholarship and presents complex issues in a clear manner.'Bryn Mawr, Classical Review'On the whole, the amount of detail provided is appropriate both for scholarly consultation and for graduate level instruction.'Luca Graverini, Journal of Roman Studies Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionBibliographyMetamorphoses or The Golden Ass Book 1 (Text and Translation)CommentaryIndex

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Book SynopsisApuleius' Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass, our only complete Latin novel, tells the story of Lucius, a young man turned into a donkey by magic because of his unfettered curiosity. After many adventures he is finally saved by the goddess Isis, whose follower he becomes. The famous first book of the novel introduces the protagonist's character, his interest in magic and his gullibility, but also important themes of the novel such as metamorphosis from man into beast. Lucius listens to stories about magic and witchcraft told to him on his journey to ancient Thessaly and narrates them to the reader. A substantial part of the first book accordingly concentrates on the self-contained tale about a certain Socrates and his unhappy experiences with murderous Thessalian witches. Apuleius himself had been put on trial for allegedly using erotic magic to make his future wife fall in love with him, a theme which also appears in Metamorphoses 1. Throughout the novel, Apuleius portrays Lucius as an unreliable first person narrator and thus implicates the reader of the novel in the same character fault that drives its protagonist: curiosity. This edition of Book I presents the Latin text with a modern translation, substantial introduction and accompanying commentary. The author Apuleius is discussed in the literary environment of the second century AD together with key themes of the first book and the novel as a whole. Special attention is given to ancient magic, the roles of philosophy and the goddess Isis in the novel as well as the extensive reception of the first book in literature up to modern times. The commentary illustrates Apuleius' text as a densely constructed literary work and explains literary allusions as well as philosophical, historical and religious contexts.Trade ReviewReviews'This is a useful volume for students and readers who wish to know more about the Metamorphoses, without having to face the breathtaking flood of modern scholarship on Apuleius and the Roman novel.'Bryn Mawr, Classical Review'An impressive and learned book that makes original contributions to Apuleian scholarship and presents complex issues in a clear manner.'Bryn Mawr, Classical Review'On the whole, the amount of detail provided is appropriate both for scholarly consultation and for graduate level instruction.'Luca Graverini, Journal of Roman Studies Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionBibliographyMetamorphoses or The Golden Ass Book 1 (Text and Translation)CommentaryIndex

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