The two novels Peter Weiss (1916–82) wrote relatively early in his career, Leavetaking and Vanishing Point (Fluchtpunkt, 1962) are ambitious and unsettling works of prose fiction, styled, in terms of genre, in a Proustian manner of fictionalized autobiography, though charged… Read More ›
Land tells an epic saga of the Choi family’s ups and downs during the turbulent period of modern Korean history from 1897 to 1945. The setting ranges from Pyongsa-ri, Hadong, a typical farming village in the southern region of South… Read More ›
The prodigious French Nobel laureate André Gide (1869–1951) originally published Lafcadio’s Adventures in La Nouvelle Revue Française in four installments, from January through April 1914; it appeared as a book later the same year. In 1933 Gide adapted it for… Read More ›
Kokoro by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) is one of the great classics of Japanese literature. A translation of the title produces a wide range of meanings: “heart,” “soul,” “spirit,” “feelings,” and “the heart of things.” Kokoro is divided into three parts:… Read More ›
Considered by many to be the best novel by France’s François Mauriac (1885–1970), A Knot of Vipers contains those recurring central themes of alienation, error, and delusion, or simply “sin,” seen in most of his stories. The work also reveals… Read More ›
Kitchen, the debut novel by Banana Yoshimoto (1964– ), was a phenomenal success, catapulting the young author into instant celebrity status in her native Japan. The novel quickly won three literary prizes: Kaien magazine’s New Writer’s Prize, the Umitsubame first… Read More ›
The novel Kiss of the Spider Woman by Argentina’s Manuel Puig (1932–90) has become the author’s most popular work due in large part to its successful screen adaptation in 1985. Kiss of the Spider Woman depicts the evolving relationship between… Read More ›
The Kingdom of This World, the second novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier (1904–80), deals with the events surrounding the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). The novel is divided into four sections, each of which chronicles an important stage in the country’s… Read More ›
Originally published in Russian in 1928 under the penname Sirin, King, Queen, Knave is the second novel by famed author Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977). The work was translated into English in 1968 after its publication in Germany. Unlike his first novel,… Read More ›
The 1932 publication of the cynical and darkly comic Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) sent immediate shock waves into a French literary world still reeling from the social and artistic disruptions of World War… Read More ›
The series of four biblical novels by renowned German author Thomas Mann (1875–1955) chronicles the ancient history of the Jews and evolves as a refutation of prolific racist mythmaking during the Nazi era. Mann wrote the tetralogy over a 16-year… Read More ›
Born in Brest, France, into a family with a strong background in the sciences, Alain Robbergrillet (1922–2008) was an agricultural engineer by training but became one of the leading exponents of what was known as the nouveau roman, or “new… Read More ›
The third novel by Italian author Umberto Eco (1932–2016), The Island of the Day Before is another extended meditation on the subjective nature of reality that demonstrates the deceptive nature of all signs and metaphors. Eco presents his historical romance… Read More ›
Inspired by his fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, Adolfo Bioy Casares’s novel The Invention of Morel is on one level a stoic evocation of the pains and frustrations of romantic love and on another level a profound metaphysical… Read More ›
The novel Nausea (Le nausée, 1938) and the collection of short stories and novellas The Wall (Le mur, 1939), which includes Intimacy, brought the French author Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) immediate recognition and success as a writer and philosopher. Previously, he… Read More ›
The Interpreters is the first of two novels written by the prominent Nigerian intellectual Wole Soyinka (1934– ). He is best known for his prolific career as a playwright, already well established at the time of the publication of The… Read More ›
The reclusive French writer Marcel Proust, now considered by many scholars as the greatest novelist of the 20th century, labored for more than 14 years and died while still adding to what would eventually be a seven-volume masterpiece. The novel… Read More ›
Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s book “Infante’s Inferno” (1984) is a masterfully crafted, chronological account of a young man’s journey into adulthood in prerevolutionary Havana, Cuba. The author vividly depicts both the triumphant and disastrous aspects of his experiences, interweaving his trademark… Read More ›
This novel—published after Leafstorm (1955) and No One Writes to the Colonel (1957)— was begun earlier in 1956, completed as This Shitty Town by 1959, and, in a shortened form (purged of “Faulknerisms”) and under its current title In Evil… Read More ›
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