Historically and politically important, this novel by Mario Vargas Llosa (1936– ) is based on the social conditions in Peru during the eight-year dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría. Lima, the capital of Peru, is the central stage of the narrative,… Read More ›
The works of Thomas Mann (1875– 1955), a distinguished literary figure of the 20th century, epitomize the modern writer. The German author towered above the times in which he lived and has continued to be universally acclaimed, with readers today… Read More ›
Confessions of a Mask, a post war autobiographical novel, subverts the conventions of the traditional and dominant Japanese “I” novel of the 20th century. This book, Yukio Mishima’s (1925–70) first commercial success, received praise from the Japanese literary elite and… Read More ›
Cold Night is one of the representative works by Ba Jin (1904–2005), a highly respected Chinese novelist. It was finished in the middle of 1940s, when the author changed his literary style from fervid emotionalism to a more dispassionate analysis… Read More ›
The second book in a two-novel set about life on the remote and isolated Ulvaskog farm in the early 1920s, Clenched Fists describes a time period and a geographical setting very familiar to novelist Karl Artur Vilhelm Moberg (1898–1973). Clenched… Read More ›
The most celebrated, controversial, and critically acclaimed series of novels by Abdelrahman Munif (1933–2004) merits the title of epic by way of the work’s time span covering many years, the endless chain of memorable characters, and the many plot threads. A… Read More ›
A tragicomedy, Chronicle of a Blood Merchant relates the story of how Xu Sanguan, a silk factory worker, faces physical pain and sacrifice for the survival of his family. The novel by the Chinese author Yu Hua (1960– ) is… Read More ›
The Italian author and painter Carlo Levi (1902–75) wrote Christ Stopped at Eboli while hiding in a room looking onto Florence’s Palazzo Pitti during the final years of World War II. An Italian Jew, a painter with a degree in… Read More ›
The sixth novel by Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012), A Change of Skin demonstrates his use of nonlinear and irregular time regarding narrative structure. Published in Spanish and in English in 1967, it is considered a complementary text to Fuentes’s Terra Nostra… Read More ›
Long before the 20th century, prison literature was an old and varied genre ranging from the Consolations of Philosophy by the late Roman Empire writer Boethius to Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot. Thus, while it is not new or unique to… Read More ›
The popular author Colette (1873–1954) was born on January 28, 1873, in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Burgundy, France. Author of more than 50 novels and numerous short stories, and articles for periodicals, she wrote from her early 20s through her mid-70s. This acclaimed… Read More ›
The Castle is the last novel written by Czech author Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Kafka began to write the book in 1922 in a village and not, as it is tempting to imagine, in the shadow of Prague’s legendary castle. A… Read More ›
Cassandra was the fifth and final lecture of a series Christa Wolf (1929–2011) presented in 1982. Shortly thereafter, the draft was reworked and published in 1983 with Jan Van Heurck’s English translation appearing in 1984. Cassandra is a retelling of… Read More ›
German author Arnold Zweig (1887–1968) wrote his most famous novel, The Case of Sergeant Grischa, as an account of World War I. Upon its publication in Germany in 1927, the novel’s readers acclaimed the story as the most moving account… Read More ›
This intriguing novel by Russia’s esteemed author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) begins with a family’s fretful abandonment of the pompous, self-serving apparatchik judge Pavel Nikolayevich Rusanov at a Soviet oncology ward, where he is cut off from his customary power and… Read More ›
Canaima takes place along the Orinoco River, deep in the Venezuelan jungle of the early 20th century. It poetically illustrates the region’s exotic natural beauty while telling a story that is at once as romantic as it is political. The… Read More ›
Beginning in 1958 with Where the Air Is Clear, Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) has written several major novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, and numerous critical essays. With The Campaign, Fuentes recounts the history of the Americas and, more important, the origins… Read More ›
Camel Xiangzi is one of the most touching and successful novels by the Chinese writer Lao She (1899–1966). Lao She, a patriotic people’s writer, is a pseudonym of Shu Qingchun. The novel is based on the author’s fi rsthand knowledge… Read More ›
The first great family saga of modern Arabic literature, The Cairo Trilogy tells the story of patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family over the course of more than 30 years, from World War I to eight years before… Read More ›
The works of the 20th-century modernist Jorge Amado (1912–2001), one of the most famous Brazilian writers of the 20th century, have been read around the globe. He is particularly remembered for his books Cacao and Dona Flor and Her Two… Read More ›
You must be logged in to post a comment.