Product Description: J. M. Coetzee's work addresses some of the key critical issues of our time: the relationship between postmodernism and postcolonialism, the role of history in the novel, and, repeatedly, how the author can combine a political consciousness with a commitment to the novel as a work of fiction...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The South African novelist and Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee is widely studied around the world and attracts considerable critical attention. With the publication of Disgrace Coetzee began to enjoy popular as well as critical acclaim, but his work can be as challenging as it is impressive...read more

The modernist period saw a revolution in fictional practice, most famously in the work of novelists such as Joyce and Woolf. Dominic Head shows that the short story, with its particular stress on literary artifice, was a central site for modernist innovation. Working against a conventional approach and towards a more rigourous and sophisticated theory of the genre, using a framework drawn from Althusser and Bakhtin, he examines the short story's range of formal effects, such as the disunifying function of ellipsis and ambiguity. Separate chapters on Joyce, Woolf and Katherine Mansfield highlight their strategies of formal dissonance, involving a conflict of voices within the narrative. Finally, Dominic Head's challenging conclusion takes the implications of his study into the age of postmodernism.

Part of the Blackwell Manifestos series, The State of the Novel offers a lively, yet rigorous investigation into the state and future of the contemporary British novel written by an expert in the field. Evaluates the state of the ‘serious literary’ novel and novel criticism Prominent treatment is paid to the ‘internationalization’ of the novel in English Offers a manifesto on contemporary fiction from an expert in this field; Dominic Head is best known for his Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction 1950-2000 Establishes the shared interests of contemporary theorists of the novel, cultural commentators, and novel consumers An ideal supplementary text for students and faculty interested in the novel and contemporary fiction

Product Description: In this survey Ian McEwan emerges as one of those rare writers whose works have received both popular and critical acclaim. His novels grace the bestseller lists, and he is well regarded by critics, both as a stylist and as a serious thinker about the function and capacities of narrative fiction...read more

A reference guide to world literature in English includes information on writers, works, genres, and movements.

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Product Description: In this study, which may be used as an introduction as well as by those already familiar with Gordimer's work, Dominic Head discusses each of Nadine Gordimer's novels in detail, examining the texts both as a reflection of events and situations in the real world, and as evidence of her constant rethinking of her craft...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)