Contemporary+Non-American+Authors+-+Novels+with+Literary+Criticism

Novels by Contemporary Non-American Authors
//Example:// Coelho, Paulo (1947-) Brazilian, The Alchemist, 1998
 * Booklist Description:** All titles below have ample __literary criticism__, either in books in the WHS library or in the online databases WHS students can currently access. In 2011-2012, students will have access to Bloom’s Literary Reference Online, which should provide additional critical support to these titles. The order of the titles is based on the nationality of the authors. The introductions and suggested themes included below are from Novels for Students published by Gale, volumes and page numbers are noted below. The following information is provided for each author:
 * Author's name
 * Date of Birth - Date of Death
 * Nationality
 * Title
 * Publication Year

//Introduction:// The story concerns a young Andalusian shepherd boy who has a recurring dream of treasures, and the people that he meets on his journey to Egypt, where he knows his treasurer is to be found. Deeply allegorical, his adventure introduces him to an ancient king from the Old Testament; a gypsy; a hard-working Muslim crystal merchant; an intellectual; the love of his life; and of course, the alchemist of the title, who has lived for centuries and has been waiting for the boy to show up so that he may guide the boy’s spiritual growth. In the course of seeking his Persona Legend, the boy learns that it is the journey, not the reward that makes a quest like his worthwhile. (NS, Vol. 29, p.21)
 * Coelho, Paulo (1947- ), Brazilian, The Alchemist, 1988[[image:Alchemist2.jpg align="right"]]**


 * Themes:** Fortune and luck; wealth; love.

//Introduction:// McEwan is known for his stories about dysfunctional relationships. Beginning in what appears to be an English idyllic country setting, where wealth and camaraderie seem to prevail, the author slowly introduces his readers to the darker side of a situation, one in which everything is turned upside down. Innocence is entangled with guilt, and falsehood obscures truth. At the center of this trauma is a thirteen-year-old girl named Briony, the youngest of the Tallis siblings. Briony wants to impress and is eager to call attention to herself. She also uses her broad imagination to twist circumstantial evidence into charges against her perceived enemies. Before the night is over, and innocent man will be marked for life. A guilty man will not be judged. And Briony will carry the weight of her actions and their consequences into adulthood. She will spend the rest of her life searching for atonement, a way to be forgiven for her wrongdoings. (NS, Vol. 32, p. 1)
 * McEwan, Ian (1948- ), British, Atonement, 2001**


 * Themes:** Guilt and forgiveness; truth; family dysfunction.

//Introduction:// Farewell My Concubine has left an impressive mark in both the Eastern and Western worlds—at least, the film version of Lilian Lee's novel has done so. The novel itself has largely been overshadowed by the international success of the film adaptation. Although the book was first published in Chinese in 1992, the English translation did not reach the United States until 1993, the same year that the film—which is widely acknowledged as a revolutionary Chinese film—was released. Yet, even though the film dominates discussions about the story, the book stands on its own merits. Lee's novel takes readers deep inside the world of Peking opera during the twentieth century. The story, which centers on a love triangle involving two opera singers and a former prostitute, provides an emotionally charged lens through which to view the major historical events in China during the century, most notably the oppressive communist rule of Chairman Mao. Using the historical context of this time period to provide the novel's structure, Lee explores themes of survival, sex, and love. In the end Lee uses the transformation of Cheng Dieyi—a man who is effeminate as a boy and who, through specific opera training, is trained to think and act like a woman—to demonstrate the power and limitations of art in the real world. While Lee is a bestselling novelist in her native Hong Kong, Farewell My Concubine is the only major in-print English translation for which she is known. (NS, Vol. 19, p. 181)
 * Lee, Lilian (unknown), Chinese, Farewell my Concubine, 1992**


 * Themes:** Survival; sex and love.

//Introduction:// Waiting is based on a true story that Jin heard from his wife when they were visiting her family at an army hospital in China. At the hospital was an army doctor who had waited eighteen years to get a divorce so he could marry his long-time friend, a nurse. But now his second marriage was not working. Jin thought that this situation would make a good plot for a novel, and he began working on Waiting in 1994. The plot revolves around the fortunes of three people: Lin Kong, the army doctor; his wife Shuyu, whom he has never loved; and his girlfriend at the hospital where he works, the nurse Manna Wu. Beginning in 1963 and stretching over a twenty-year period, Waiting is set against the background of a changing Chinese society. It contrasts city and country life and shows the restrictions on individual freedoms that are a routine part of life under communism. But Waiting is primarily a novel of character. It presents an in-depth portrait of a decent but deeply flawed man, Lin Kong, whose life is spoiled by his inability to experience strong emotions and to love wholeheartedly. (NS, Vol. 25, p. 276)
 * Jin, Ha (1956- ), Chinese, Waiting, 1999**


 * Themes:** Duty versus desire; city versus country.


 * Note:** In 1985, Jin came to the United States to begin a Ph.D. program in the English Department at Brandeis University. When he first came to the United States, Jin had every intention of returning to China on completion of his studies. But when he saw on television what happened in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989, he decided to remain in the US. His books are written in English.

//Introduction:// This book has been published in more than thirty countries, was named the 1993 book of the year by both Time and Entertainment Weekly, spent twenty-six weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and was made into a film by Danish director Bille August in 1997. In addition to this remarkable popular success, the novel has won favor among literary critics, who note Høeg's careful attention to setting and culture. As Thomas Satterlee notes, "In many of his novels Høeg explores Danish society by deliberately including characters from a wide range of social classes." Smilla's Sense of Snow is notable for its treatment of Danish culture, Greenlandic culture, and the inevitable clash of values brought about by the shift from a colonial to postcolonial relationship between the two. In addition, Høeg examines that strange land of the person caught between cultures in the characters of Smilla and Isaiah. Finally, Høeg plays with conventions and expectations in his use and subversion of the murder mystery/suspense novel genre. Smilla's Sense of Snow is a complicated and rich novel, a fast-paced thriller, a love story, an anthropological exploration, and a philosophical treatise all in one book. Høeg's accomplishment with this novel has moved him to the top of the list of Danish writers publishing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (NS, Vol. 17, p. 191)
 * Høeg, Peter (1957- ) Danish Smilla’s Sense of Snow 1992**


 * Themes:** Mathematics; Colonialism; alienation.

//Introduction:// In Babylon focuses on sixty-year-old Nathan Hollander during the four days he spends with his niece in the family's old hunting lodge in a forest outside Rotterdam, Holland, cut off from the world by a raging blizzard. As the two struggle to stay warm, Nathan tells Nina the story of their family, tracing it back four hundred years to his great-great-grand-uncle Chaim Levi and up through the recent death of their uncle Herman, who collapsed after having sex with a prostitute. Nathan's story is occasionally interrupted by strange voices, booby-trapped doors, and ghostly visits from family ancestors. The two come to believe that the house may be haunted by the ghost of Nathan's brother Zeno, who is also Nina's father. By the end of the four days, Nathan and Nina question their connection to their family as well as their knowledge of themselves. As Möring expertly interweaves ghost stories, fairy tales, myths, and family history, he explores the tensions between past and present, fantasy and reality, and the compelling need to discover a clear sense of self and place. (NS, Vol. 25, p. 192)
 * Möring, Marcel (1957- ) Dutch, In Babylon, 1997**


 * Themes:** Time and regret; religion and the search for meaning.

Introduction: Stones from the River is the story of a dwarf who lives in the fictional small town of Burgdorf, Germany, through the first half of the twentieth century. The novel is an intimate look at what it was like for ordinary people to live through the rise of Adolf Hitler and the devastation wrought by the Third Reich. The novel conveys the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust as these become apparent in the small town. The advent of Nazism provides the context for an in-depth analysis of certain universal psychological tendencies, chief among which are the search for identity through group membership, the desire for social acceptance, and the fear of ostracism. The novel demonstrates the nature of difference and how policies of exclusion divide a community. It also exposes the ways in which the Catholic Church and the fascist state engendered fear and promoted discrimination. Townspeople are persuaded by beliefs about community solidarity and outsider status, and the plot enumerates the diverse human impulses and choices at work when various people live in close proximity over decades, weathering global conflict twice in their lives. The novel exposes the little-known reality as it was experienced by the small-town German population. It addresses the common question about how decent Germans could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. (NS, Vol. 25, p. 251)
 * Hegi, Ursula (1946- ) German, Stones from the River, 1994**


 * Themes:** Difference; anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church.


 * Note:** Hegi was born in West Germany, she moved to the United States when she was 18.

Introduction: The Dew Breaker consists of nine linked stories. The stories are set either in the Haitian-American communities in New York City, or in Haiti during the time of the brutal dictatorships of François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, who ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986, during which time thousands of people were tortured and killed. The torturers, members of the Duvaliers’ militia known as the Tonton Macoutes, were also known as dew breakers because of their practice of coming for their victims before dawn. The novel focuses on one dew breaker in particular, a man who committed horrible crimes in Haiti in the 1960s and who has since lived an unremarkable life in New York with his wife and daughter. But as the novel shows, the crimes he committed have left a terrible legacy that still haunts the Haitian-American community in New York so many years later. Is it possible that he could ever be forgiven or redeemed? Danticat’s subtle treatment of this theme makes The Dew Breaker a compelling exploration of the mind of a torturer and the limits of compassion. (NS, Vol. 28, p. 77)
 * Danticat, Edwidge (1969- ), Haitian, The Dew Breaker, 2004**


 * Themes:** Redemption and the weight of the past; the struggles of Haitian immigrants.


 * Note:** Danticat was born in Port au Prince Haiti. Her parents immigrated to the United States when she was a toddler. She moved to the United States herself when she was 12. Raised speaking Creole and French, she felt very isolated attending high school in Brooklyn and took to writing about her homeland as a way of escape.

Introduction: This novel was published in 1954, less than a decade after India won its independence from Britain. Nectar in a Sieve is clearly influenced by this event, portraying some of the problems encountered by the Indian people as they dealt with the changing times. Markandaya never mentions a specific time or place, however, which gives the story universality. Some of the struggles that the main character, Rukmani, faces are the result of the changing times, but they are the kinds of struggles (poverty, death, loss of tradition) that are experienced by many people for many reasons. Far beyond its political context, the novel is appealing to modern readers for its sensitive and moving portrayal of the strength of a woman struggling with forces beyond her control. It is a story about the resilience of the human spirit and the importance of values. (NS, Vol. 13, p. 170)
 * Markandaya, Kamala (1924-2004), Indian Nectar in a Sieve, 1954**


 * Themes**: Change; adversity.

Introduction: The God of Small Things rapidly became a world-renowned literary sensation after it was published in New Delhi in 1997. Immediately recognized as a passionate, sophisticated, and lushly descriptive work, it won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize and launched its author to international fame. The novel tells the story of the Kochammas, a wealthy Christian family in a small village in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Based loosely from the perspective of Rahel Kochamma, who has returned to her hometown to see her twin brother, it pieces together the story of the dramatic events of Rahel’s childhood that drastically changed the lives of everyone in the family. The God of Small Things is an ambitious work that addresses universal themes ranging from religion to biology. Roy stresses throughout the novel that great and small themes are interconnected, and that historical events and seemingly unrelated details have far-reaching consequences throughout a community and country. The novel is therefore able to comment simultaneously on universal, abstract themes, and a wide variety of ideas relating to the personal and family history of the members of the Kochamma family as well as the wider concerns of the Kerala region of India. Some of the novel’s most thoroughly developed themes are forbidden love, Indian history, and politics. It is in love and politics that Roy’s carefully constructed, multifaceted narrative tends to dwell, and it is when love, politics, and history combine that Roy is able to communicate her most profound authorial insights. (NS, Vol. 22, p. 154)
 * Roy, Arundhati (1961- ), Indian, The God of Small Things, 1997**


 * Themes:** Indian history and politics; class relations and cultural tensions; forbidden love

Introduction: India is home to many religious groups, including Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims. It also has a history of political strife among those groups, exacerbated by the interference of British colonialism and modern globalization. Desai, like other Indian writers in English, combines these elements of India’s traditions and history with a secular emphasis on storytelling. Her work explores the toll that these cultural divides have taken on India’s population. Desai’s work in know for it rich and colorful language, and detailed presentations of setting and character. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard presents a fictitious small town called Shahkot in North India. The town has a mixed culture of traditional Indian social norms and of modern life, wherein the runaway Sampath Chawla, who just wants to be left alone, is forced into being a holy man in spite of himself. (NS, Vol. 28, p. 147)
 * Desai, Kiran (1971- ), Indian, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, 1998**


 * Themes:** Freedom from the mundane; the joys and sorrows of imagination; tradition versus modernity; the limitations of point of view.


 * Note:** Desai lived in India until she was 15 when her mother, also a writer, accepted a teaching position in England. Eventually they moved to the United States where Desai attended high school and college. She currently resides in New York City.

//Introduction:// The plot of Kyoko Mori's first novel, Shizuko's Daughter, published in New York in 1993, follows a story line very similar to the author's own life. The female protagonist of the story experiences very difficult and often traumatic experiences as she is growing up; such as the suicidal death of her mother and the harsh treatment she receives from her father and stepmother. The novel explores the challenging reality of a young, pubescent girl who is living in Japan and who rebels against the strict discipline imposed upon her by her father and the Japanese culture. For many reasons, she is often alone throughout the story. One cause of her loneliness is that she does not relate to others who accept their status in life without questioning it. The idea of the novel began as a short story that Mori wrote during the summer while she was in graduate school. In an article titled "Staying True to the Story," for The Writer, Mori states that this short story was "the first story in which I was able to write about what I knew but didn't understand." She explains that at first she used to write about things that she understood "all too well." This, however, bored her. "There was no mystery in it for me, let alone for my readers," she writes. So she began by thinking about her grandmother's life, about her relationship with her grandmother, about what her mother's life might have been like, and finally about what her own life would have been like if she'd done things just a little differently. It was from these considerations that Shizuko's Daughter was born. (NS, Vol. 15, p. 237)
 * Mori, Kyoko (1957- ), Japanese, Shizuko’s Daughter, 1993**


 * Themes:** Death; traditions versus nonconformity; loss.

//Introduction:// Kobo Abe, one of Japan’s most celebrated and frequently translated authors and playwrights, is often compared to the Czech writer, Franz Kafka, because both writers created novels that were built upon nightmarish allegories. Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes is a prime example. With this novel, one of Abe’s more popular works, Abe takes the reader into a very strange and isolated world in order to make a statement about the condition of modern civilization. His statement is fascinating, but not very glorifying, as the protagonist becomes trapped in a world of ceaseless and mindless labor. The Woman in the Dunes catapulted Abe into the international realm. After the popular success of this novel, Abe’s works became the most often translated fiction of Japanese literature. And long since its publication, The Woman in the Dunes, which in 1960 won the Yomiuri Prize for literature, continues to retain its classification of being not only the best of Abe’s extensive life work, but also one of the classic examples of modern Japanese fiction. The story begins with a character, Niki Jumpei, who seems all but totally unaware of who he really is. He often describes himself and his actions as if he were a detached observer of his own actions. His imprisonment in a hole in the sand dunes tempers his psyche, however, and in the end he comes to an awakening in which he grasps a better understanding of his basic psychological makeup. (NS, Vol. 22, p. 286)
 * Abe, Kobo (1924-1993), Japanese, The Woman in the Dunes, 1962**


 * Themes:** Alienation; loss of identity; impotency; submission; misunderstanding.

//Introduction:// An autobiographical novel about the author’s escape from North Korea narrated by nine-year-old Sookan, who is of Korean heritage. For as long as Sookan can remember, the Japanese invaders have occupied her country and have attempted to strip away all aspects of Korean culture. Sookan’s father and older brothers have not had contact with Sookan; her youngest brother, Inchun; and her mother in several years. In order to survive, Sookan’s mother has been forced to run a sock factory in a building on her property. The Japanese soldiers demand a certain production quota each day. If Sookan’s mother does not meet it, her food rations, which are already skimpy, are cut back even further. In time, a series of dramatic events changes Sookan’s life forever. (NS, Vol. 29, p. 312)
 * Choi, Sook Nyul (1937- ), Korean, Year of Impossible Goodbyes, 1991**


 * Themes:** Loss of culture, enslavement, lack of parental love

//Introduction:// The Bone People is an unusual story of love. It is unusual in the telling, the subject matter, and the form of love that the story depicts. This is in no way a romance; it is filled with violence, fear, and twisted emotions. At the story’s core, however, are three people who struggle very hard to figure out what love is and hot to find it. The Bone People has been praised for its story and for the way it is written, which is said to reflect the intonation and style of the Maori language. (NS, Vol. 24, p. 1)
 * Hulme, Keri (1947- ), New Zealander, The Bone People, 1984**


 * Themes:** Child abuse; relationships; a sense of going home as cure.

Introduction: The Bride Price (1976) tells the story of the clash between the traditional customs of a small Ibo village in Nigeria and the ever-encroaching influence of Africa's European colonizers, as seen through the eyes of a young girl. The bride price, a fee that is traditionally paid by the prospective husband's family for the prospective wife, is a theme that weaves its way throughout the novel. Emecheta uses this practice of bride price to literally, as well as symbolically, represent women's submission to men in African culture. Male domination is not the only theme of this book. Emecheta also looks at the caste system in Nigerian culture that discriminates against descendents of slaves. Slavery in Africa consisted of one tribe kidnapping people from another tribe, then holding them captive and forcing them to work. Sometimes slaves were buried alive with their masters when their masters died. Descendents of slaves, although they were eventually freed under colonial rule, were never considered members of their adopted villages no matter how long they lived there, or how successful they became. The Bride Price, although fictional, is somewhat autobiographical. The book draws on the events that Emecheta witnessed growing up in Nigeria. It is the third book that Emecheta has published, but it is the first one in which Emecheta offers a hint of hope that both the African woman as well as the descendents of slaves might overcome the potentially debilitating restrictions of their culture. Although Emecheta does not overtly criticize the traditional customs of her culture in The Bride Price, her writing has been criticized by male African writers for its negative portrayal of Nigerian customs. Despite this, Emecheta has become one of Africa's best-known women writers, and her books continue to investigate the themes of gender discrimination and the effects of caste that were initiated in The Bride Price. (NS, Vol. 12, p. 65)
 * Emecheta, Buchi (1944- ), Nigerian, The Bride Price, 1976**


 * Themes:** Gender roles; slavery and oppression; defiance and resistance; culture clash.

//Introduction:// The story is a deceptively simple tale of a boy coming of age in a Nigerian village, but Emecheta uses the tale as a commentary on war, as well as on relationships between generations and the need for everyone to have productive work. Emecheta retains the strong storytelling tradition of her Nigerian homeland; The Wrestling Match is told in simple yet vivid language, and makes readers feel as if they're in "an open clearing in which children and old people sat, telling stories and singing by the moonlight," as the narrator of the book notes. Many of Emecheta's works deal with poverty and the oppression of women; in this sense, The Wrestling Match is a departure, as it tells the story of a young man and his uncle, and the women in it are marginal characters who retain their traditional roles as wives or wives-to-be. (NS, Vol. 14, p. 321)
 * Emecheta, Buchi (1944- ), Nigerian, The Wrestling Match, 1983**


 * Themes:** Generational conflict; tradition versus change; futility of war.

//Introduction:// Jerzy Kosinski's harrowing narrative, The Painted Bird, earned accolades from critics, yet also stirred a great deal of controversy when it was published in the United States in 1965. The novel, based on Kosinski's own experiences in Poland during World War II, centers on a young, unnamed boy's struggle to survive during the war by hiding in several remote villages in an Eastern European country. His parents had sent him to live with a foster mother while they hid from the Nazis, but when the foster mother dies; the boy is forced to wander alone from village to village. Due to his dark eyes and complexion, the villagers suspect he is a Jew or a gypsy and so continually torment him. While some critics have found the novel's violence excessive, most applaud its realistic depiction of the horrors of World War II. Andrew Field in Book Week defends the novel, admitting: So awful … is this book that I can scarcely 'recommend' it to anyone, and yet, because there is enlightenment to be gained from its flame-dark pages, it deserves as wide a readership as possible. Kosinski suffered years of torment after the novel's publication. The book was banned in Poland, his homeland, and he and his family suffered continual verbal and physical attacks by Eastern Europeans who considered the book slanderous to their culture. The novel endures, however, because of its powerful statement on the nature of cruelty and survival. In the Afterward of the second edition of The Painted Bird, Kosinski notes the impetus for the novel and for much of his writing: when his parents described their experiences during the war and their witnessing of "young children being herded into the trains," he writes, "it was therefore very much for their sakes and for people like them that I wanted to write fiction which would reflect, and perhaps exorcise the horrors that they had found so inexpressible." (NS, Vol. 12, p. 195)
 * Kosinski, Jerzy (1933-1991), Polish, The Painted Bird, 1965**


 * Themes:** Coming of age; change and transformation; alienation and loneliness; strength and weakness; violence and cruelty.

//Introduction:// Blindness raises questions about the frailty of social structures and the strengths and weaknesses of human nature. The central question is: What would happen if everyone suddenly went blind? To imagine an answer to this question, Saramago writes a story about an epidemic that creates chaos in the capital city of an unknown country in the late twentieth century. It is a worst-case scenario of government and social failure in which the best and worst in humankind is portrayed. This tale has no specific setting, no names for the characters, and no chapter titles. It is written in Saramago’s unique style that uses little punctuation, long sentences that can continue for a paragraph and paragraphs that can run for pages. (NS, Vol. 27, p. 30)
 * Saramago, José (1922-2010), Portuguese, Blindness, 1995**


 * Themes:** Response to crisis’; worst and best in human nature; social disintegration.


 * Note:** Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for Blindness in 1998.

//Introduction:// When Rain Clouds Gather is a story about people as well as about a land. The people in the book come from varied walks of life, with many of them being refuges from places that did not appreciate them. The main characters are looking for newer and better lives. The land is in the southern African country of Botswana, a harsh, mostly desolate place. As the characters work with the land they are living on, they study it in hope of discovering what the land is capable of producing. In many ways, the characters are similarly studying themselves sand their own abilities. That narrative that involves the agricultural processes, far from being a dry exploration of technical terms, reflects present-day concerns about the preservation and sustainability of the land. (NS, Vol. 31, p. 302)
 * Head, Bessie (1937-1986), South African, When Rain Clouds Gather, 1969**


 * Themes:** Tribalism versus progress; poverty and oppression

//Introduction:// Loosely based on Courtney’s own life, The Power of One follows a small, weak, English-speaking white child as he navigates a world where the strong dominate the weak, where the white population keeps the black population in a state of semi-slavery, and where the two major white ethnic groups, the English and the Afrikaans-speaking Boer, are locked in a struggle for power. (NS, Vol. 32, p. 147)
 * Courtenay, Bryce (1933- ) South African The Power of One 1989**


 * Themes**: Identity; violence; nature

Introduction: The English Patient tells the stories of four individuals whose lives come together at the end of World War II in an abandoned Italian villa: Hana, a 20-year-old nurse from Canada who seeks refuge from the proliferation of wartime death; Kirpal (Kip) Singh, a 25-year-old "sapper," or bomb dismantler, from India who is a member of the British Army; David Caravaggio, a friend of Hana's father who worked as a spy during the war and was severely disfigured while a captive of the Germans; and Hana's patient, a severely burned man whose identity is the mystery at the heart of this novel. Each of these characters finds him or herself far away from home, displaced by the war, and each of them finds a quiet refuge in the abandoned Italian villa to reconstruct their lives. While Hana and Kip eventually develop a romantic relationship, Caravaggio becomes more and more obsessed with the patient's true identity: Caravaggio believes that the patient may not be English, as everyone assumed, but a Hungarian who worked as a spy for the Germans. Interspersed into the story of the lives of these characters together in Italy are each character's clear recollections of the past, including the patient's hallucinatory memories of a torrid love affair, of desert exploration, and of friendship and betrayal. The novel becomes a collage of memories that explores themes of war, nationality, identity, loss, and love. (NS, Vol. 23, p. 20)
 * Ondaatje, Michael (1943- ), Sri Lankan, The English Patient, 1992**


 * Themes:** War; nationhood and identity; trauma, personal grief, and healing; geography


 * Note:** Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka but moved to England in 1954. He relocated to Canada in 1962 where he currently resides. He is sometimes referred to as a Canadian author or a Sri Lankan-Canadian. The English Patient was the recipient of the Booker Prize.

//Introduction:// Set in Istanbul, the capital city of the powerful Ottoman Empire, in 1591, the novel functions at many different levels. Covering a period of about a week, it is at once a murder mystery, a love story, and an examination of the cultural tensions between East and West. These tensions center around different theories of art. The Ottoman Sultan has commissioned an illustrated book to celebrate the power of his empire, and he has ordered that the paintings employ the techniques of the Italian Renaissance, in which the use of perspective and shadow create realistic portraits that are quite different from the stylized representations of Islamic tradition. The use of the new style creates fear amongst the artist commissioned to produce the book, and two murders are the result. Black, an artist who has just returned to Istanbul and is courting the beautiful Shekure, is told by the Sultan that he must solve the case within three days or he and the other master artists will be tortured. With its theme of East-West conflict, and its examination of what happens when Western ideas creep into a restrictive Islamic society, My Name is Red, although set four hundred years ago, has much relevance for the cultural conflicts of today. (NS, Vol. 27, p. 202)
 * Pamuk, Orhan (1952- ) Turkish, My Name is Red, 2001**

//Themes:// The clash between East and West; blindness.


 * Note:** Pamuk received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006

Introduction: Tessa Bridal's The Tree of Red Stars takes place during a time of dire political upheaval in Uruguay. Most of the story centers on the activities that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s in Montevideo, Uruguay's capital. Although a fictionalized account, Bridal makes a statement in the front pages of her book that the story was inspired by real people and real events. It was during these troubled times in Uruguay that a citizen's group of urban guerillas, the Tupamaros, was formed to protest the dictatorship government that had set itself in power. The Tree of Red Stars tells the story of a young, outspoken girl, Magda, who comes of age in the midst of all this social, political, and economic chaos. Her older friends and some of their parents are secretly involved with the Tupamaros, and as the young girl matures into womanhood, she too takes up the fight against the corruption that has invaded her life and the lives of her family and friends. (NS, Vol. 17, p. 259)
 * Bridal, Tessa (unknown), Uruguayan, The Tree of Red Stars, 1997**


 * Themes:** Oppression; coming of age; love.

//Introduction:// Paradise of the Blind, by Vietnamese novelist Duong Thu Huong, was first published in Vietnam in 1988 and translated into English in 1993. It was the first novel from Vietnam ever published in the United States and gave American readers authentic insight into the poverty and political corruption that characterized Vietnam under the communist government from the 1950s to the 1980s. Although to most Americans the name Vietnam conjures up images of the Vietnam War, the novel does not concern itself with what the Vietnamese call the American War. It begins in Russia in the 1980s, as Hang, a young Vietnamese woman, travels to Moscow to visit her uncle. As she travels, she recalls incidents from her childhood and adolescence in Hanoi and also tells of life in her mother's village during the communists' disastrous land reform program that took place in the mid-1950s. The novel, which was banned in Vietnam, is essentially the story of three women from two generations whose family is torn apart by a brother who insists on placing communist ideology above family loyalty. The exotic setting and descriptions of the lives of ordinary Vietnamese people in rural and urban areas, combined with the story of young Hang's struggle to forge her own path in life, make for a compelling story. (NS, Vol. 23, p. 192)
 * Duong Thu Huong (1947- ), Vietnamese Paradise of the Blind, 1988**


 * Themes**//:// Failure of communication; loneliness, love, and the bonds of the family

Introduction: Ever since Jamaica Kincaid's work began appearing in The New Yorker magazine, it has excited critics and enthralled readers. Kincaid has been praised for her ability to tell the story of a girl attaining womanhood with all the emotion and beauty it deserves. Simultaneously, Kincaid expresses the significance and politics involved in that transition. Her second book, Annie John (1985), is comprised of short stories that first appeared in The New Yorker. Some critics consider Annie John a novel because the compilation of interwoven stories uncover the moral and psychological growth of the title character. This bildungsroman (coming-of-age story) has become Kincaid's best-known work to date. Through Annie, Kincaid has brilliantly brought girlhood in the West Indies to literature as a masterful work of art. That art is a prose blend of European, American, and Caribbean folk forms of expression. The result is an effective rendering of a girl's struggle to discover her own identity. Annie is a girl growing up in an idyllic garden setting. At first she is the sole figure in that Eden—she has only her parents and Miss Maynard to interact with—and she maintains her sense of singularity when she finally begins mixing with others. Her omnipotent mother keeps the powers of the world and of death at a distance. Gradually, however, her mother introduces death and separation in order to mature Annie and prepare her for the world. The story of the mother creating the daughter is not unlike the works of Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) or John Milton (Paradise Lost) in the sense that the created becomes more than the creator intended. (NS, Vol. 3, p. 24)
 * Kincaid, Jamaica (1949- ), West Indian, Annie John, 1985**


 * Themes:** Death; identity; post-colonialism.


 * Note:** Jamaica Kincaid was born and raised in Antigua. She came to New York at 17 to work as a nanny.

//Introduction:// Set over a period of about ten years, from the 1960s to the early 1970s, Nervous Conditions takes place in Zimbabwe before the country had attained official independence from Britain and while it was still known as Southern Rhodesia or simply Rhodesia. The novel is semiautobiographical; the author draws on her own experience of growing up in Rhodesia during that period. Nervous Conditions centers around the experience of several female characters as they either challenge, or come to terms with, the traditional patriarchal structure of their society. The young narrator, Tambu, must show great determination as she overcomes all the obstacles to her progress in life. She also has to learn how to understand, largely through the difficult experiences of her cousin Nyasha, the negative effects that British colonialism has had on her society. One of the few novels written by a black Zimbabwean about this transitional time in Zimbabwe’s history, Nervous Conditions gives valuable insight into the traditional life of the country’s native Shona-speaking people. The novel is an important contribution to postcolonial literature, a term that refers to works by authors from countries formerly colonized by European governments. (NS, Vol. 28, p. 171)
 * Dangarembga, Tsitsi (1959- ), Zimbabwean Nervous Conditions, 1988**


 * Themes:** Destructive effects of colonialism; challenging traditional gender roles.


 * Note:** Dangarembga was born in Southern Rhodesia, the country now known as Zimbabwe. She lived in Britain between the ages of two and six, but returned to Rhodesia. She returned to England in the 1970s to study at Cambridge University, but became homesick and returned to her home country in 1980. Nervous Conditions was the first novel to be published in English by a black woman from Zimbabwe.