International Fiction Review articles from January 1 2004

International Fiction Review archives from January 1 2004

Saad E. A. Elkhadem: 1932-2003.(In Memoriam)(Obituary)
January 1, 2004... Late in 2003 we lost Saad Elkhadem, Professor Emeritus of the University of New Brunswick and founding member of the International Fiction Review. Saad was born in Cairo, Egypt, where he began his education followed by graduate studies in...

Moby-Dick and Schopenhauer.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... For it is the case with regard to everything, that each man can only prize that which to a certain extent is analogous to him and for which he has at least a slight inclination.--Arthur Schopenhauer In his last years, Herman Melville...

Reading Amy Tan's hologram: the Hundred Secret Senses.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.--Amy Tan In Amy Tan's novel The Hundred Secret Senses (1995), the world of yin and the world of yang are presented adjacently...

Using the heart: the symbolism of individual change in Bessie Head's Maru.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... Bessie Head's commentary in Maru (1971) is delivered at the personal level, though it purports a solution to the racism suffered by the Masarwa people. The novel traces the symbolic change of Dilepe village (Botswana) and, by extension, that of...

"Flowers in all their colours": natios and communities in Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... How has the neocolonial nation been defined in fiction? Representations vary from depictions of barren wastelands run by corrupt rulers in Ousmane Sembene's Xala (1974) to isolated outposts ruled by megalomaniacal army generals in Gabriel...

"Musak": the office and the language of madness.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... There are certain works of fiction that one repeatedly revisits. I, for instance, find myself constantly going back to the short stories of Mario Benedetti (Uruguay, 1920). What fascinates me about Benedetti's short fiction is the way he...

Gunter Grass's tribute to Uwe Johnson.
January 1, 2004... The friendship between Gunter Grass and Uwe Johnson was a significant factor in their lives and, in regard to Grass, in his work. The high esteem Grass accorded his fellow novelist and close friend has been aptly demonstrated by Grass's having...

Textual dynamics in Chinua Achebe's Home and Exile and No Longer at Ease.(Critical Essay)
January 1, 2004... In this paper, I use Chinua Achebe's nonfiction work Home and Exile (2000) and his novel No Longer at Ease (1960) as reference points for arguing that the application of intertextual theory to postcolonial literature in such groundbreaking...

Temples and tabernacles: alternative religions in the fictional microcosms of Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro.
January 1, 2004... Some of the greatest Canadian novelists are regionalists who convey Canadian identity through developing fictional microcosms. Robertson Davies, Margaret Laurence, and Alice Munro follow in the tradition of novelists such as Walter Scott,...

Aldous Huxley in the age of global literary studies.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Dana Sawyer. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002. Pp. 208. Nicholas Murray. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002. Pp. 496. C. C. Barfoot, ed. Aldous Huxley: Between...

Tahar Djaout: the Last Summer of Reason.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Tahar Djaout The Last Summer of Reason Trans. by Marjolijn de Jager Foreword by Wole Soyinka St. Paul, MN: Ruminator Books, 2001. Pp. 145. $19.00 On 9 June 1992 Egypt lost its most courageous secularist, the writer Farag Fouda, to Islamic...

Laura Zigman: HER.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Laura Zigman HER New York: Knopf, 2002. Pp. 210. US $22.00 CAN $33.00 Laura Zigman's novel HER is the latest In the recent rash of intelligent and amusing fictions by New York journalists and editors, beginning with Melissa Bank's witty...

Wolfgang Iser: the Range of Interpretation.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Wolfgang Iser The Range of Interpretation New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Pp. 206. $27.50 Twenty years ago the Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory opened with Harold Bloom's The Breaking of the Vessels. Over these two...

Carol Shields: Unless.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Carol Shields Unless Toronto: Random House, 2002. Pp. 321. $35.95 Unless, the latest novel by award-winning Canadian novelist Carol Shields, author of The Stone Diaries (1993), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Governor General's...

Gunter Grass: My Century.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Gunter Grass My Century Trans. from the German by Michael Henry Heim Toronto: Harcourt, 1999. Pp. 280. $25.00 During the 1930s, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler loudly proclaimed his "Thousand Year Reich." In today's chastened Germany,...

Jeffrey J. Folks: From Richard Wright to Toni Morrison: Ethics in Modern and Postmodern American Narrative.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Jeffrey J. Folks From Richard Wright to Toni Morrison: Ethics in Modern and Postmodern American Narrative New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Pp. 199. $29.95 During the last few decades, literary criticism has been dominated largely by...

Joanna Trollope: Girl from the South.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Joanna Trollope Girl from the South Toronto: McArthur, 2002. Pp. 311. $24.95 What do we academics read for pleasure when anything too trashy offends our refined sensibilities but when anything too worthy is a possible candidate for a...

Jennifer M. Jeffers: the Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Jennifer M. Jeffers The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power New York: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. 208. $49.95 Literary scholar Jennifer M. Jeffers's book does not aim at an overall discussion of contemporary...

Margaret Drabble: the Seven Sisters.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Margaret Drabble The Seven Sisters Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2002. Pp. 307. $24.49 Reviewed by Nora Foster Stovel Does the novel The Seven Sisters take its title from a constellation named for "The Seven Daughters of Atlas" (267),...

Freeman G. Henry, ed.: Beginnings in French Literature.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Freeman G. Henry, ed. Beginnings in French Literature Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002. Pp. 213. US $40.00 Taking Edward W. Said's influential Beginnings: Intention and Method as their theoretical foundation, the volume's fifteen essays (including...

Emeka Aniagolu: Black Mustard Seed.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Emeka Aniagolu Black Mustard Seed Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension, 2002. Pp. 312. 11.95 [pounds sterling] US $19.95 In Black Mustard Seed, Emeka Aniagolu employs a traditional romance plot to examine how forms of cultural nationalism in...

Anthony Dawahare: Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars: a New Pandora's Box.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Anthony Dawahare Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Pp. 161. US $37.00 The first African-American texts that left a lasting impression...

Catherine Wynne: the Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism, and the Gothic.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Catherine Wynne The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism, and the Gothic Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. Pp. 248. $61.95 In her introduction to The Colonial Conan Doyle, Catherine Wynne outlines the tensions...

Christiane Schonfeld, ed.: Commodities of Desire: the Prostitute in Modern German Literature.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Christiane Schonfeld, ed. Commodities of Desire: The Prostitute in Modern German Literature Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. Pp. 270. $59.00 As countless modernist artistic representations show, no other subject seems to signify the...

Scott Lee: Traces de l'exces. Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Scott Lee Traces de l'exces. Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac Romantisme et modernites Series Paris: Champion, 2002. Pp. 180. EUR 37.00 The novellas and short stories that Balzac categorized as "philosophical" are less well...

Ian McEwan: Atonement.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ian McEwan Atonement Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002. Pp. 372. $21.00 British writer Ian McEwan--author of such novels as The Cement Garden, The Comfort of Strangers, The Child in Time, The Innocent, Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, Enduring Love,...

Justin D. Edwards: Exotic Journeys: Exploring the Erotics of U.S. Travel Literature, 1840-1930.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Justin D. Edwards Exotic Journeys: Exploring the Erotics of U.S. Travel Literature, 1840-1930 Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001. Pp. 201. $22.95 In his study of the notoriously unwieldy literature of travel, Justin Edwards...

Alexa Alfer and Michael J. Noble, eds.: Essays on the Fiction of A. S. Byatt: Imagining the Real.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Alexa Alfer and Michael J. Noble, eds. Essays on the Fiction of A. S. Byatt: Imagining the Real Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2001. Pp. 240. $69.95 A. S. Byatt is one of England's best-known writers, but even the English are more likely to have...

A.S. Byatt: a Whistling Woman.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... A. S. Byatt A Whistling Woman London: Chatto and Windus, 2002. Pp. 422. $38.95 A Whistling Woman concludes the quartet of novels which A. S. Byatt began in 1978 with The Virgin in the Garden. The first novel introduced the Potter family...

Ben Stoltzfus: Valley of Roses.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... Ben Stolzfus Valley of Roses Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2003. Pp. 152. Pb. $22.95 At once striking and revelatory, Ben Stoltzfus's novel Valley of Roses bursts forth in a combination of poetic style, metaphoric profusion, and elegiac tone....

New titles.
January 1, 2004... Two-page reviews of the following titles are invited Alber, Charles J. Enduring the Revolution: Ding Ling and the Politics of Literature in Guomindang China. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. Pp. 242. $64.95 Alexander, Goldie. Body and...