Search results for ""author harold b. segel""

For nearly half a century, the Iron Curtain obscured from Western eyes a vital group of national and regional writers. Seen as a whole, the literatures of Eastern Europe during the second half of the twentieth century are extraordinarily rich, and in recent years many Eastern European novelists, poets, and playwrights have attracted wider attention and broader publication in the West. And yet no reference work, embracing all the countries of this region, including the former East Germany, has brought synoptic analysis to bear on these literatures-until now. Featuring lucid analyses of the works of Ivo Andric', Milan Kundera, Wislawa Szymborksa, Ismail Kadare, Czeslaw Milosz, Christa Wolf, Imre Kertesz, and Nina Cassian, among nearly 700 others, The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945 is an indispensable reference to the literatures of the former Soviet bloc: Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former republics of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and East Germany. Marked by geographical proximity and the shared experience of communism and its collapse, these countries are home to writers whose works have illuminated many of the critical ideas and key events of the latter half of the twentieth century. Compiled by a leading scholar who has a working knowledge of all the languages of the region, the Guide includes an analytical overview of literary themes and trends in historical context, ranging from World War II to the disintegration of Yugoslavia; an A-Z section of almost 700 entries on those writers whose literary debuts or major literary activity came after the war, with lists of works about the authors and of works by the authors available in English translation; a general bibliography; and an author index. The author entries-the heart of the book-provide the most salient information about the writers and concise interpretations of their works. The two-part general bibliography lists references to books and articles only in English. The first part contains works of a general nature on Eastern Europe, primarily but not exclusively after 1945. The second cites works, listed by country, that fall into four categories: histories, literary histories, anthologies, and monographs on genres and movements.

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Covering Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine, Harold B. Segel, a longtime scholar of Slavic literatures and of comparative literature, writes a clear, concise, and balanced history of Eastern European literature. Segel not only examines the literary response to the quasi-colonial oppression that stretched across Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1991 but also details the impact of the downfall of communism and the way in which the challenges of the postcommunist period are being met. Segel's history follows a unique chronological-topical approach that begins with the treatment of World War II in Eastern European fiction and follows with such topics as the postwar imposition of Soviet-style literary controls, primarily in the form of socialist realism; literary responses to the brutal campaign of collectivization after 1945; the impact of the death of Stalin and expectations of change; exile and creativity; strategies of literary evasion and subterfuge; writing born from the experience of prison and labor camps; and the rise of solidarity in Poland. He also handles varieties of postmodernism throughout the region; poetry by women and the continued struggle for freedom of expression; the resonance of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s on imaginative literature; Eastern European writers and their relationship to America; and the major postcommunist trends of new urbanism, nostalgia, emigration, and minority concerns.

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