International Fiction Review articles

Recent articles from International Fiction Review

Myth and ritual in Liam O'Flaherty's short story "Spring Sowing".
January 1, 2007... 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.
January 1, 2007... 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 and...

Secrecy and self-invention: Philip Roth's postmodern identity in The Human Stain.
January 1, 2007... 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.
January 1, 2007... 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.
January 1, 2007... 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...