Author Archives
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Analysis of J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun
Based on Ballard’s childhood experiences in a Japanese concentration camp outside Shanghai, this autobiographical novel became a successful film adaptation for director Steven Spielberg in 1985. The story unfolds in three parts, opening in Shanghai on the eve of the… Read More ›
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Edwardian Era
Named for King Edward VII, this era begins in the late 19th century, when Edward was Prince of Wales, and lasts through the first decade of the 20th century, covering the fin de siècle culture of England and the British… Read More ›
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Analysis of Bernice Rubens’s The Elected Member
A deeply sympathetic and acutely realistic study of mental illness, The Elected Member won the Booker Prize in 1970, the second year the prize was awarded. The story unfolds through the point of view of a third-person omniscient narrator, allowing… Read More ›
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Analysis of Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers
A novel of epic scope, Earthly Powers follows the careers of two dissimilar but parallel men of ambition: Kenneth Toomey, a pessimistic homosexual writer of popular works, and Carlo Campanati, a priest—and a brother-in-law to Kenneth—who rises to the position… Read More ›
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Analysis of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Winner of the Booker Prize in 1999—an event that made Coetzee the first author to win that award twice—Disgrace presents the elegiac story of a professional and personal disaster in the life of a scholar during his transition from middle… Read More ›
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Analysis of Charles Williams’s Descent into Hell
The plot of this novel occurs one summer during the late 1930s in Battle Hill, a suburb of London. The story’s events take place during the preparation and production of a play; as the narrative unfolds, Battle Hill serves as… Read More ›
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Analysis of Robertson Davies’s Deptford Trilogy
The three volumes of this series include Fifth Business (1970), mainly devoted to Dunstan Ramsay; The Manticore (1972), mainly devoted to Boy Staunton; and World of Wonders (1975), mainly devoted to Paul Dempsey in his professional guise as Magnus Eisengrim…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall
This novel of satire was the first published by Evelyn Waugh, one of the great English satirists of the 20th century, and many scholars consider it to be his best. The narrative unfolds through a third-person omniscient point of view… Read More ›
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Analysis of Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart
Constructed with a third-person omniscient narrator, but interleaved with first-person diary entries and letters, this novel scrutinizes the emotionally empty lives of the prestigious and wealthy Quayne household through the eyes of Portia, the 16-year-old half-sister of Thomas Quayne. Portia… Read More ›
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Analysis of Paul Scott’s The Day of the Scorpion
The second volume in The Raj Quartet, this novel resumes the story of Britain’s last days of colonial control over the territory that became India and Pakistan. Where the first volume, The Jewel in the Crown, had opened with a… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon
When this novel was published, it provided an explanation that the rest of the world could understand of the infamous Moscow purge trials. In the Soviet Union, which had not yet entirely withdrawn from the international stage to the secrecy… Read More ›
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Analysis of John Galsworthy’s The Dark Flower
A three-part novel about the three great romances in the life of its protagonist, the sculptor Mark Lennan, this novel was one of its author’s particular favorites. The third-person omniscient narrator delivers an intimate view of the emotion of passion… Read More ›
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Analysis of Barbara Vine’s A Dark-Adapted Eye
This novel of mystery and detective fiction features a first-person narrator, Faith Severn, who is the niece of the hanged murderess, Vera Hillyard, twin to Faith’s father, John Longley. The story is set after World War II but looks back… Read More ›
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Analysis of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country
A protest by a white South African writer against the repressive policy of apartheid in his native country, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic of the literature of racial injustice. A third-person omniscient narrator relates the story of the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River
This experimental novel includes aspects of both realism and antirealism, and it mixes several narrative strands using different strategies and varying the point of view from one section of the novel to another. The novel opens with a kind of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow
Using the unifying device of a weekend party at Crome, the country house of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wimbush, Huxley creates a sharp satire on the futile isolation of the human ego. Huxley’s protagonist, the poet Denis Stone, observes the… Read More ›
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Analysis of J.G. Ballard’s Crash
This controversial novel, excoriated by some critics for the violent behavior and perverse desires of some of the characters, was the basis of the 1996 film of the same name, also quite controversial, directed by David Cronenberg. The novel features… Read More ›
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Analysis of P. D. James’s Cover Her Face
In this example of mystery and detective fiction, the author introduces her recurring investigator, Inspector Adam Dalgleish of Scotland Yard, who returns for many more subsequent adventures. In his first appearance, he is faced with a crime that at first… Read More ›
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Analysis of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls
This trilogy was published in a single volume with added material (Epilogue) in 1986; it originally appeared as the separate volumes The Country Girls (1960), which was the author’s first published novel; The Lonely Girl (1962); and Girls in Their… Read More ›
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Analysis of C. P. Snow’s Corridors of Power
Volume nine in Snow’s 11-volume series Strangers and Brothers, Corridors of Power follows The Affair and precedes the elegiac closing volumes of The Sleep of Reason and Last Things. The first-person narrator of the series, Lewis Eliot, has achieved a… Read More ›
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