Considered Venezuela’s “national novel,” Doña Bárbara vividly depicts the classic struggle between civilization and nature. Its author, Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969), was an important statesman, educator, and public figure during the first half of the 20th century, and his political service… Read More ›
In Dog Years, the German novelist Günter Grass (1927–2015) gives his readers a panoramic view of German mentality before, during, and after World War II. The third book of the Danzig Trilogy, this work, following The Tin Drum and Cat and… Read More ›
The Doctor’s Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi (1931–86) gives a fictional account of the life of Hanaoka Seishū, who lived from 1760 to 1835 and performed the first known operation under anesthesia in 1805, 37 years before the use of ether… Read More ›
The creative portrayal of Germany’s descent into evil comes to life in the pages of the acclaimed postwar novel by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer, Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend. This complex novel… Read More ›
Divided Heaven, the second novel by German author Christa Wolf (1929–2011) became an immediate best seller and a critical success upon publication: The initial 160,000 copies and 10 editions sold out within a few months. Divided Heaven chronicles Rita Seidel’s… Read More ›
The Disciple, one of Paul Bourget’s (1852–1935) greatest literary achievements and his most famous novel, marked a change in the author’s literary development. Prior to this work, his fiction consisted of highly dramatic tales set in high society; with The… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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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