Description
Book SynopsisJames Dawes defines a new, dynamic American literary genre, which takes as its theme a range of atrocities at home and abroad. This vibrant and modern genre incorporates key debates within the human rights movement in the U.S. and in turn influences the ideas and rhetoric of that discourse.
Trade ReviewJames Dawes is one of the founders of the interdiscipline of literature and human rights, with his important
That the World May Know and
Evil Men. His new book provides a map for traveling the complex paths laid out by the evolving human rights project and by literary artists who represent both rights violations and remedies in their work.
The Novel of Human Rights is a landmark. -- Elizabeth Swanson, Babson College
Human rights and literature scholars have worked around the edges of genre issues, but this book establishes an entirely new conceptual framework. It builds the case that the human rights novel is a definable genre, produced by deep and wide social, political, and cultural forces. Dawes’s insightful analysis of individual works and the genre advances our understanding of those forces, why we face the ethical dilemmas we face in contemporary local and global politics, and how we might think our way through these dilemmas to a better future. -- Greg Mullins, Evergreen State College
Argues persuasively that one of the places we might still find vibrant and critical human rights is in the contemporary American novel…A welcome example of slow reading, hard thinking and the value of reality-testing in dire political times. * Times Higher Education *
