Author Archives
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Analysis of Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars
Dictionary of the Khazars is the first novel and first international success of the contemporary Serbian writer Milorad Pavić (1929–2009). A resident of Belgrade, Pavic´ gained an international reputation with his highly imaginative fiction. Pavic´’s novels break from traditional notions… Read More ›
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Analysis of Han Shaogong’s A Dictionary of Maqiao
Written in the form of a dictionary, A Dictionary of Maqiao, by Chinese novelist Han Shaogong (1953– ), consists of 150 independent entries, each in length from a paragraph to a few pages, and not arranged alphabetically. The entries are… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s Diary of a Mad Old Man
The Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965) began his career as a writer of sensational, rather diabolical tales influenced in part by Western writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Oscar Wilde. Celebrated for his masterful plotting and psychological… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the Cross
Devil on the Cross was written during the year that the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1938– ) spent in prison. During this same imprisonment, Ngugi put on a performance of the Gikuyu play Ngaahika Ndeenada (I Will Marry When… Read More ›
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Analysis of François Mauriac’s The Desert of Love
One of François Mauriac’s first novels, establishing his literary fame, The Desert of Love exhibits a recurring concern in his works, that of the tortures of the flesh and its world of loneliness and separation, as suggested by the title…. Read More ›
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Analysis of Hermann Hesse’s Demian
The intense psychoanalytical novel Demian was published by the German Swiss novelist Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) in 1919. It was translated into English in 1923 under an English pseudonym (Emil Sinclair), at first in a series hosted by the cultural review… Read More ›
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Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Defense
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) wrote The Defense, his third novel, in Berlin in 1929 and published it serially under the penname Sirin in the Paris-based Russian journal Sovremennye zapiski (Notes from the fatherland). The novel was first published in Russian in… Read More ›
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Analysis of José María Arguedas’s Deep Rivers
Generally regarded as the finest novel of José María Arguedas (1911–69), Deep Rivers marks a break with his earlier work, for in it the Peruvian author abandons conventional realism in favor of a lyrical manner more appropriate for communicating the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Shūsaku Endō’s Deep River
The Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō (1923– 96) was a Christian author who embraced a faith that combined both Eastern and Western spirituality. The novel Deep River centers on a visit to India by a group of Japanese tourists. The novel… Read More ›
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Analysis of Carlos Fuentes’s The Death of Artemio Cruz
The third novel by internationally acclaimed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), The Death of Artemio Cruz distills the history of postrevolutionary Mexico into one man’s personal journey. Fuentes published this novel after he had established his reputation in communications and… Read More ›
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Analysis of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice
The Nobel Prize–winning author Thomas Mann (1875–1955) stands out as one of the most important figures of early 20th-century literature. Influenced by German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, Mann’s fiction serves as a model of subtle philosophical examination of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mario Vargas Llosa’s Death in the Andes
Written three years after the author’s defeat in the 1990 presidential election in Peru, Death in the Andes won for Mario Vargas Llosa (1936– ) the Planeta Prize, one of the most important literary awards in the Hispanic world. This… Read More ›
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Analysis of Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune
Like all other novels by Isabel Allende (1942– ), Daughter of Fortune was first written and published in Spanish. In some ways, this story represents a return to the motifs and themes of the author’s earlier works, including her first… Read More ›
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Analysis of Arnold Zweig’s The Crowning of a King
The Crowning of a King is the concluding novel in a sixwork magnum opus, The Great War of the White Man, by German author Arnold Zweig (1887–1968). Zweig called the series of novels about World War I “a literary document… Read More ›
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Analysis of Erico Verissimo’s Crossroads
Crossroads is the second of 12 novels written by the Brazilian writer Erico Verissimo (1905–75). In contrast to the writer’s debut novel, Clarissa (1933), in which a teenager’s life is told in a romantic, rather rosy tone, Crossroads is the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Maryse Condé’s Crossing the Mangrove
Crossing the Mangrove has been regarded as one of the most self-reflective works of the Guadeloupean-born Maryse Condé (1937– ), particularly in the way the author explores the cultural identity of the Caribbean people. The author’s conscious inclusion of Creole,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Shahriar Mandanipour’s The Courage of Love
This important work by the Iranian author Shahriar Mandanipour (1956– ) is a two-volume novel about love, war, earthquake, and pre- and postrevolution Iran. It opens with a prologue entitled “The Four Mothers of Separation.” Four angels—Gabriel, Michael, Seraphim (the… Read More ›
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Analysis of André Gide’s The Counterfeiters
The Counterfeiters was first published in Paris in 1926, although its French author, André Gide (1869–1951), began the three-part novel in 1922. A winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in literature, Gide considered The Counterfeiters his only true novel. Its… Read More ›
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Analysis of Paul Bourget’s Cosmopolis
The French novel Cosmopolis, written in 1893 and translated into English the same year, is indicative of the earlier fiction of Paul Bourget (1852–1935), telling the story of a complicated love triangle set against the backdrop of Rome as the… Read More ›
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Analysis of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics
Cosmicomics is a collection of linked short narratives written by the celebrated Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923–85). The stories prove to be a unified meditation on scientific theories of the inception and evolution of the universe as seen through the… Read More ›
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