If it is true that writers and artists should spend their entire lives and careers investigating, examining, and trying to understand the same themes, then Haruki Murakami (born January 12, 1949) is a prime example of how to do this… Read More ›
Novel Analysis
Analysis of Günter Grass’s Novels
Although Günter Grass’s (1927 – 2015) novel The Tin Drum forms the first part of the Danzig Trilogy and shares some characters, events, and themes with Cat and Mouse and Dog Years, the novel was conceived independently and can be discussed… Read More ›
Analysis of Albert Camus’s Novels
Two persistent themes animate all of Albert Camus’s writing and underlie his artistic vision: One is the enigma of the universe, which is breathtakingly beautiful yet indifferent to life; the other is the enigma of man, whose craving for happiness… Read More ›
Analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Novels
A common link among Kazuo Ishiguro’s (born 8 November 1954) novels is the prominence of the first-person narrator, through whose meandering thoughts the story unfolds. Readers soon discover, however, that these central voices are rather unreliable in their accounts of… Read More ›
Analysis of Anita Desai’s Novels
Anita Desai’s (born 24 June 1937) novels reveal certain recurring patterns in plots, settings, and characterizations. The plots of her novels fuse two opposing propensities—one toward the gothic mystery and the other toward the philosophical novel. The gothic orientation, which Desai… Read More ›
Analysis of Salman Rushdie’s Novels
Many Western readers, ignorant of Islam and Hinduism, the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan, the India-Pakistan war of 1965, and the Pakistani civil war of 1974, may tend to read Salman Rushdie’s (born 19… Read More ›
Analysis of Gabriel García Márquez’s Novels
Gabriel García Márquez (1927 – 2014) denies that the fictional world he describes in his novels is a world of fantasy. In an article about fantasy and artistic creation in Latin America, he concludes: “Reality is a better writer than… Read More ›
Analysis of Milan Kundera’s Novels
None of Milan Kundera’s novels fits into the traditional concept of the novel. Each is an experimental foray into the unknown, although well prepared and supported by the literary legacy of Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Capek, and Vancura. This is particularly… Read More ›
Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Novels
The “Dickens World,” as Humphrey House calls it, is one of sharp moral contrast, a world in which the selfseeking— imprisoned in their egotism—rub shoulders with the altruistic, freed from the demands of self by concern for others; a world… Read More ›
Analysis of Samuel Beckett’s Novels
It was a matter of some pleasure to Samuel Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) that his work resists explication. His most important novels and plays are artfully constructed contemplations on their own form rather than commentaries on… Read More ›
Analysis of Simone de Beauvoir’s Novels
Analysis Simone de Beauvoir’s novels are grounded in her training as a philosopher and in her sociological and feminist concerns. She Came to Stay, The Blood of Others, All Men Are Mortal, and The Mandarins all revolve around the questions… Read More ›
Analysis of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote
Many critics maintain that the impulse that prompted Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616) to begin his great novel was a satiric one: He desired to satirize chivalric romances. As the elderly Alonso Quixano the Good (if that is his… Read More ›
Analysis of Jane Austen’s Novels
Jane Austen’s (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) novels—her “bits of ivory,” as she modestly and perhaps half-playfully termed them—are unrivaled for their success in combining two sorts of excellence that all too seldom coexist. Meticulously conscious of her artistry… Read More ›
Analysis of Charlotte Brontë’s Novels
The individualism and richness of Charlotte Brontë’s (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) work arise from the multiple ways in which Brontë’s writing is personal: observation and introspection, rational analysis and spontaneous emotion, accurate mimesis and private symbolism. Tension… Read More ›
Analysis of Bessie Head’s Novels
Bessie Head’s (6 July 1937 – 17 April 1986) writing occupies a transitional place in African literature between the domestic, village-centered writing of the 1950’s and 1960’s and the more overtly political and urban writing—much of it written by exiles in… Read More ›
Analysis of Franz Kafka’s Novels
The name Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) conjures up images of a world without a center, of people alienated both from society and from themselves. Kafka lived at the threshold of the modern technological world, and… Read More ›
Analysis of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is constructed around a series of dialectic motifs that interconnect and unify the elements of setting, character, and plot. An examination of these motifs will give the reader the clearest insight into the central meaning of the novel…. Read More ›
Analysis of Chinua Achebe’s Novels
Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) is probably both the most widely known and the most representative African novelist. He may very well have written the first African novel of real literary merit—such at least is the opinion of Charles Larson—and he deals… Read More ›
Young Adult Fiction Works and Writers
A distinctive literature about childhood has existed since the Victorian era, but not so about adolescence as a stage of life with its own integrity, concerns, and distinct problems. Teachers, librarians, and parents argue that the classics of world literature… Read More ›
Fantasy Novels and Novelists
The term “fantasy” refers to all works of fiction that attempt neither the realism of the realistic novel nor the “conditional realism” of science fiction. Among modern critics, the primacy of the realistic novel is taken for granted. Realistic novels… Read More ›
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