Author Archives
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Analysis of Natsume Sōseki’s I Am a Cat
A satire on human foibles from the standpoint of a cat, I Am a Cat is one of the most original novels of the Wagahai wa Neko de aru, one of the best loved works by the Japanese writer Natsume… Read More ›
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Analysis of Maryse Condé’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
With her controversial 1986 novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, one of the most respected of Guadeloupe’s several powerful writers, Maryse Condé 1934– ) has produced one of the African diaspora’s literary classics. I, Tituba explores the interwoven psychosocial,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Augusto Roa Bastos’s I, the Supreme
I, the Supreme is based on the life of Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1766–1840). Francia came to power in 1811, and in 1814 he designated himself “perpetual dictator.” He ruled Paraguay with a stern hand and violent… Read More ›
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Analysis of Carlos Fuentes’s The Hydra Head
As a major literary figure and significant contributor to not only literature of the developing world but to world literature in general, Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012 ) is a vital literary tour de force, providing the world outside of Latin America… Read More ›
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Analysis of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits
The first novel by the Chilean writer Isabel Allende (1942– ), The House of the Spirits remains the author’s best-known and most popular work, despite the subsequent success of her following novels, memoirs, and children’s books. Although the book received… Read More ›
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Analysis of Kawabata Yasunari’s House of the Sleeping Beauties
In House of the Sleeping Beauties, by the Japanese Nobel Prize–winning author Kawabata Yasunari (1899– 1972), the protagonist, 67-year-old Eguchi, visits an inn where old men pay to spend a chaste night with beautiful young women who have been drugged…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch
Hopscotch is not only Julio Cortázar’s most celebrated literary achievement, it stands alongside Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of the most important and influential novels of the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s. Referring… Read More ›
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Analysis of Max Frisch’s Homo Faber
The life of 50-year-old engineer Walter Faber is suddenly disrupted by a series of odd but intertwining coincidences in the splendid novel Homo Faber by the Swiss author Max Frisch (1911–1991). The novel opens with the protagonist on a flight… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Mann’s The Holy Sinner
The novel immediately following the publication of the epic work Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), The Holy Sinner led Mann and his readers through an entirely different literary experience. Published four years before the author’s death, The Holy Sinner… Read More ›
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Analysis of Camilo José Cela’s The Hive
The Hive was the second great success in the career of one of the most influential Spanish writers of the 20th century, Camilo José Cela (1916– 2002). Written in the bitter aftermath of the Spanish civil war (1936–39), the novel… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mihail Sadoveanu’s The Hatchet
Romanian novelist Mihail Sadoveanu’s The Hatchet is the most widely translated Romanian novel, except perhaps for Mircea Eliade’s works, though the latter’s audience was tremendously increased by the author spending most of his life in the Western world and by… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alejo Carpentier’s The Harp and the Shadow
The Harp and the Shadow (1979) is the fifth novel by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (1904–80). Carpentier, a master of the modern Latin American novel, is credited with coining the term magic realism. As implied by its title, the novel… Read More ›
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Analysis of Heinrich Böll’s Group Portrait with Lady
The German author Heinrich Böll’s (1917–85) Group Portrait with Lady is widely considered one of his most important novels because it was likely the deciding work in his selection for the 1972 Nobel Prize in literature. Though the text reaches… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Green House
Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Green House won the Crítica Prize in Spain (1966), and the Rómulo Gallegos Prize in Venezuela (1967), the latter being most important literary prize in Hispanic America. The novel was inspired by a trip that Vargas… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ngugi wa Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat
Following the shocked response in Britain to the author’s two first novels, Weep Not, Child (1964) and The River Between (1965), and in response to what he considered distorting revisions, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (then writing as James Ngugi) abandoned his master’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier
The most famous novel by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923), The Good Soldier Schweik and His Fortunes in the World War was published in sections from 1921 until the author’s death in 1923. The book is actually a third… Read More ›
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Analysis of Carlos Fuentes’s The Good Conscience
A follow-up to the first novel by legendary Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), Where the Air is Clear (1958), The Good Conscience is a taut character study of a young man: Jamie Ceballos, who hails from the provinces of Mexico,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ousmane Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood
God’s Bits of Wood is the third and most famous novel of award-winning author and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), who was born in Ziguinchor, Senegal, then a French colony. God’s Bits of Wood, a panoramic novel of social realism, chronicles… Read More ›
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Analysis of Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game
The last novel by the Swiss German author Hermann Hesse (1877–1962), The Glass Bead Game is a serene bildungsroman conceived in the form of a “eutopia” (positive, happy utopia) set in the year 2200, somewhere in the German-speaking areas of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift
The Gift is the final and most important Russian novel (English translation, 1963) by Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977). The semi-autobiographical story of a young Russian émigré writer living in Berlin in the 1920s, The Gift was first serialized in the Paris… Read More ›
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