Author Archives
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Analysis of Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales’s The President
The most popular novel by Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales (1899–1974), The President is a classic of Latin American literature. The novel examines the political phenomenon of dictatorship by exploring the ways in which authoritarian regimes oppress subjects… Read More ›
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Analysis of Albert Camus’s The Plague
The Plague was written by Albert Camus (1913–60), one of the most gifted and influential writers and philosophers in the French language of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957. Camus was born in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The late 20th-century novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders) by Patrick Süskind (1949– ) is probably the best-known German literary text to appear in the last half of the century. It is a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo
Pedro Páramo was voted by literary critics in the Spanish newspaper El País (May 5, 2001) as the most important book written in Spanish in the 20th century. It is generally understood that the technique of the novel of the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Władysław Reymont’s The Peasants
The Peasants is undoubtedly the greatest narrative achievement by the Polish author Władysław Reymont (1867–1925). The four volumes of the novel, titled after the four seasons, were serialized in a weekly magazine for nearly a decade and finally earned him… Read More ›
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Analysis of André Gide’s The Pastoral Symphony
La symphonie pastorale, translated as The Pastoral Symphony (1931), but just as often called by its French title by English-speaking critics, is part of a group of firstperson narratives called récits. Récits are characterized by a simple and ironic text… Read More ›
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Analysis of Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa
The Danish author Karen Blixen (1885–1962) wrote Out of Africa originally in English, publishing this novelistic memoir in Denmark, Sweden, and England in 1937, and in the United States in 1938. This was her second book, following Seven Gothic Tales…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers
The novel Our Lady of the Flowers was written by Jean Genet (1910–86) in 1942 at Fresnes prison but not published until 1944. Genet in this novel addresses three major themes: homosexuality, thievery, and murder, with a focus on the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Gao Xingjian’s One Man’s Bible
The second novel of Nobel Prize–winning novelist Gao Xingjian (1940– ), first published in Taipei in 1999, One Man’s Bible is often considered as a companion to his celebrated Soul Mountain (Ling shan). As autobiographical as Soul Mountain, One Man’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 was interested in exposing the flaws of Stalinism for political purposes; when the editor of Novyi Mir brought him a copy of the manuscript by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), Khrushchev approved of its publication. Soon… Read More ›
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Analysis of Carlos Fuentes’s The Old Gringo
The first novel by a Mexican author to make the New York Times best-seller list, The Old Gringo both discusses and exemplifies the conflicting streams of influence between American and Latin American authors. Written by longtime novelist and former diplomat… Read More ›
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Analysis of Isabel Allende’s Of Love and Shadows
Originally published in Spain as De amor y de sombra in 1984, Of Love and Shadows continues the interest of Isabel Allende (1942– ) in both transcendent romantic love and devastating social oppression. The first of her novels written after… Read More ›
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Analysis of José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of the Night
The fourth novel by Chilean writer José Donoso (1924–96), The Obscene Bird of the Night, is widely regarded as his masterpiece. His other significant novels include Coronation (Coronación, 1957), This Sunday (Este Domingo, 1966), The Space without Limits (El lugar… Read More ›
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Analysis of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
These evocative, atmospheric—sometimes paranoid and hallucinatory, sometimes rhapsodic—vignettes and reflections of a young dispossessed, dislocated, and disconsolate Danish poet carried the original working title The Journal of My Other Self. As a reflexive account of the alter ego of Rainer… Read More ›
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Analysis of Marguerite Duras’s The North China Lover
The North China Lover was published late in the French author’s life (1914–96). The short novel primarily revisits the events of Marguerite Duras’s 1984 celebrated novel The Lover (L’Amant), and tells of a pivotal love affair between an unnamed teenage… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elie Wiesel’s The Night Trilogy
This work consists of Elie Wiesel’s first three books—the memoir Night (1958), the novel Dawn (L’aube, 1961), and the fictional work Day (Le jour, 1962), also called The Accident. Although Wiesel has published more than 20 books, these three—originally published… Read More ›
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Analysis of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Night Flight
This work marks the second novel written by France’s long-loved author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–44). The author’s first novel, Southern Mail (Courrier sud), appeared in 1929. His masterpiece, The Little Prince (Le petit prince) was published a year before the author’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Paul Bourget’s The Night Cometh
Prominent among his later fiction, Paul Bourget’s (1852–1935) The Night Cometh takes as its focus competing worldviews of life and the burden of death. Set in a World War I-era hospital, the novel’s narrator, Marsal, is a doctor who cannot… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre ‘s Nausea
Nausea is the first novel by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), one of the most renowned novelists, dramatists, and philosophical writers in the French language of the 20th century. Sartre received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1964, although he refused to… Read More ›
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Analysis of Hermann Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund
Although Narcissus and Goldmund investigates the notion of reaching death through love and art, the novel by the esteemed Swiss-German author Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) is a rather serene work, built on bipolar, contrasting patterns. Hesse’s previous great novels, Demian (1922)… Read More ›
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