Author Archives
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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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Analysis of André Breton’s Nadja
Written when the French writer André Breton (1896–1966) was 32 years old, Nadja is a novel that lies between poetry and fiction and thus embodies, as do all of Breton’s writings, what he set out to reveal in his Manifesto… Read More ›
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Analysis of Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red
My Name Is Red, the recipient of the International Impac Dublin Literary Award in 2003, is perhaps the most celebrated book by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (1952– ), who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2006. The novel,… Read More ›
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Analysis of Amos Oz’s My Michael
My Michael was Israeli writer Amos Oz’s second novel and first translated work. The Hebrew edition was published in Israel in 1968, shortly after the Six-Day War (ArabIsraeli War) in 1967, and in English with translator Nicholas de Lange in… Read More ›
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Analysis of Georges Simenon’s My Friend Maigret
A man is murdered on the island paradise of Porquerelles, located off the southern French coast in the Mediterranean Sea, in this novel by the Belgium-born author Georges Simenon (1903–89). Maigret, the famous detective, is notifi ed, and decides to… Read More ›
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Analysis of A. B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani
Mr. Mani is the masterwork of the 20th-century author A. B. Yehoshua (1936–2022), an Israeli novelist considered the most outstanding literary figure of his generation. The author’s fourth novel, Mr. Mani achieved instant acclaim upon publication. A rich, dense narrative… Read More ›
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Analysis of Maxim Gorky’s The Mother
Among the important novels by Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), The Mother remains the best known and, ironically, one of the most flawed aesthetically. Gorky wrote the novel while on a trip to the United States in 1906, when the defeat of… Read More ›
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Analysis of Marin Preda’s The Morometes
The Morometes, Marin Preda’s signature book, makes a remarkable contribution to 20th-century Romanian literature, redefining the tools of the rural fiction genre. Masterfully crafted, The Morometes explores the radical transformation of the southern Romanian village before and after World War… Read More ›
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Analysis of Cesare Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires
The Moon and the Bonfires is the famed Italian author Cesare Pavese’s (1908–50) last novel. Published in June 1950 by the Italian publishing house Einaudi (where Pavese held a prominent position), the novel met immediate critical and commercial success. “To… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala
Published to great critical acclaim under the French title Mission terminée, Mission to Kala, by Mongo Beti (1932–2001), echoes the European forms of the picaresque novel and the bildungsroman in describing the experiences of its “hero,” Jean-Marie Medza. This protagonist… Read More ›
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Analysis of Jean Genet’s The Miracle of the Rose
The French novel The Miracle of the Rose was written by Jean Genet (1910–86) in 1943 while the author was imprisoned in La Santé penitentiary in Paris for theft. Published in 1946, this autobiographical work is based on the author’s… Read More ›
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Analysis of Mao Dun’s Midnight
This is an important political and cultural novel by famed Chinese author Mao Dun (1896–1985). The story surrounds the business tycoon Wu Sun-fu and his struggles in China during the great changes in the country during the 1930s. The novel… Read More ›
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Analysis of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
“As Gregor Samsa awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect.” So begins The Metamorphosis, a sinister allegory of dehumanization and hopelessness in the modern world by Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Once rendered an… Read More ›
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Analysis of Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun
The novel Men in the Sun is the first and perhaps best-known novel by Ghassan Kanafani (1936–72). Kanafani is widely considered today as one of the most influential Palestinian writers of the 20th century. Before being killed by a car… Read More ›
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