Recently added articles from International Fiction Review:
Myth and ritual in Liam O'Flaherty's short story "Spring Sowing".
Jan 01, 2007; Panaghis, Afroditi ... The aim of this article is to read the short story "Spring Sowing" (1924), written by the renowned Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty, in the context of psychology as well as myth and ritual. In the process, it will become apparent that the story depicts not only the annual agricultural rites ...
Creating the rogue hero: literary devices in the picaresque novels of Martin Amis, Richard Russo, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Safran Foer, and Steve Tesich.
Jan 01, 2007; McCulloch, Jamie ... What is it about The Catcher in the Rye that makes me wish I had written it? Perhaps I should start with the fact that Holden Caulfield is as charming as anyone I've ever met--on or off the page. Why is it that whenever I reread Catcher, I never want it to end? I find myself slowing down ...
Secrecy and self-invention: Philip Roth's postmodern identity in The Human Stain.
Jan 01, 2007; Neelakantan, G. ... Philip Roth's The Human Stain (2000), a fitting final part of the novelist's recent trilogy comprising American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), dramatizes powerfully the interplay of secrecy and self-transformation that determines human identity. Identity in its varied ...
A narrative of migration: Gabrielle Alioth's Die Erfindung von Liebe und Tod.
Jan 01, 2007; Falkner, Silke R. ... With her fifth novel, Die Erfindung von Liebe und Tod (The Invention of Love and Death), (1) the Swiss writer Gabrielle Alioth intensifies her "technique of concealment and disguise" (2) beyond that reached in Die stumme Reiterin (The Silent Rider), (3) and continues to address questions ...
Performing identity in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land.
Jan 01, 2007; Chen, Fu-Jen ... In this essay, I first examine the new mode of subjectivity in the postmodern-global-capitalist era through illustrating the way characters in Gish Jen's Mona in the Promised Land engage in the free play of identity performance. Next I argue that their identity as a set of performances is ...
Challenging conventional recreations of the western past: Frank Bergon's Shoshone Mike.
Jan 01, 2007; Rio, David ... The rise to prominence of "new western history" since the late 1960s promoted an increasing demand for truth, fact, and credibility in postfrontier western writing. Despite the extraordinary popularity of traditional views of the myth of the West, an important group of contemporary ...
Orality and subversion in Jack Mapanje's Of Chameleons and Gods.
Jan 01, 2007; Chirambo, Reuben Makayiko ... Jack Mapanje, one of Malawi's leading poets, was arrested and detained without charge from September 1987 to May 1991 by former president for life and dictator Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). At the time of his arrest, Mapanje was serving as Chair of the ...
The embrace of the rosebush: anti-Hebraism in modern Jewish literature.
Jan 01, 2007; Aberbach, David ... Among the consequences of modernization is an unprecedented tendency among Jewish writers, especially those writing in English, to denigrate or caricature Hebrew and generally give a limited and distorted picture of the Hebrew language and of Jewish education and culture. Until the ...
Andrei Bitov on "Russian Wealth".
Jan 01, 2007; Simmons, Cynthia ... Great Russian thinkers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin, Fedor Dostoevsky, Lev Tolstoy, and Others) mused about the dilemmas of late imperial Russia. Some of them penned specific proposals as to what should be done--Herzen's novel What Is ...
"Subterranean fires" and the "weeds" of Asian modernity in Lu Xun, Yosano Akiko, and Oba Minako.
Jan 01, 2007; Gabrakova, Dennitza ... It [the first edition of Leaves of Grass] is very close to the primitive magma. It has the appearance of a flow of lava which nothing could stop and which has remained formless. --Roger Asselineau [Yecao (Weeds) is] genuine poetry in embryo: images imbued with strong ...
Toni Morrison's quarrel with the Civil Rights Ideology in Love.
Jan 01, 2007; Neelakantan, G. ... Toni Morrison's Love, (1) in critiquing the American Civil Rights Movement, problematizes both American and African-American history and also uncovers the vexatious interrelationship of history and black identity, a concern that has been in the novelist's foreground since the publication ...
Socialist realism and the success of Famous All Over Town.
Jan 01, 2007; Bohm, Arnd ... The novel Famous All Over Town, first published in 1983, used to be a highly regarded contribution to Chicano literature. (1) The poignancy and realism of the coming-of-age story were heightened because it was told in the first person and by someone who had personally experienced life on ...
Jeffrey J. Folks: In A Time of Disorder: Form and Meaning in Southern Fiction from Poe to O'Connor.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Knoenagel, Axel ... Jeffrey J. Folks In A Time of Disorder: Form and Meaning in Southern Fiction from Poe to O'Connor New York: Peter Lang, 2003. Pp. 146. $22.95 Coming to terms with modernity was the central cultural challenge for the American South after the Civil War. Rebuilding the South ...
Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray: Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." A Reference Guide.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Raser, Timothy ... Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." A Reference Guide Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Pp. 182 + xlii. $54.95 To the Greenwood Guides to Fiction has been added a guide to Madame Bovary by Laurence Porter and Eugene Gray, and now the ...
Duncan Petrie: Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and the Novel.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Miller, Gavin ... Duncan Petrie Contemporary Scottish Fictions: Film, Television and the Novel Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Pp. 224. $32.50 Although Duncan Petrie has published extensively on Scottish film and TV culture, his latest book ...
Anne Tyler: Back When We Were Grownups.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Stovel, Nora Foster ... Anne Tyler Back When We Were Grownups Toronto: Penguin, 2002. Pp. 309. $10.99 Anne Tyler, author of fifteen novels--If Morning Ever Comes, The Tin Can Tree, A Slipping-Down Life, The Clock Winder, Celestial Navigation, Searching for Caleb, Earthly Possessions, Morgan's Passing, ...
Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa, eds.: Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Fadda-Conrey, Carol ... Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa, eds. Dinarzad's Children: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2004. Pp. 336. $24.95 In 1990, in her introduction to Food for Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and ...
Alan Freeman: Imagined Worlds: Fiction by Scottish Women 1900-1935.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Miller, Gavin ... Alan Freeman Imagined Worlds: Fiction by Scottish Women 1900-1935 Frankfurt/M: Lang, 2005. Pp. 247 US $50.95 Imagined Worlds is a study of the female Scottish novelists whose work in the early part of the twentieth century was drowned out by what Freeman aptly terms "the louder ...
John Clement Ball: Imagining London: Postcolonial Fiction and the Transnational Metropolis.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Edwards, Justin D. ... John Clement Ball Imagining London: Postcolonial Fiction and the Transnational Metropolis Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Pp. 295. $45.00 Recent work on postcolonialism and urban space has identified the city as part of a place-based struggle to express a sense of ...
Robert Walser: The Robber.(Book review)
Jan 01, 2007; Schmidt, Josef ... Robert Walser The Robber Trans. and introd, by Susan Bernofsky Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. Pp. 141. US $15.00 In an informative introduction, the translator Bernofsky sets out the pragmatic context of this writer and his work: a novel published posthumously in ...