The International Novel

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Yale University Press, Sep 30, 2014 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages
Annabel Patterson here turns her well-known concern with political history in early modern England into an engine for investigating our own era and a much wider terrain. The focus of this book is, broadly, nationalism and internationalism today, approached not theoretically but through the lens of fiction. Novels are uniquely capable of dealing with abstract problems by embodying them in the experience of persons, thereby rendering them more “real.” Patterson takes twelve novels from (almost) all over the world: India, Africa, Turkey, Crete, the Balkans, Palestine, Afghanistan, South America, and Mexico, novels which illustrate the dire effects of some of the following: imperialism, partition, annexation, ethnic and religious strife, boundaries redrawn by aggression, the virus of dictatorships, the vulnerability of small countries, and the meddling of the Great Powers. All are highly instructive, and excellent reads.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
A Passage to India
23
The Bridge on the Drina
39
The Costs of Being Small
57
The Autumn of the Patriarch
79
The Worst Boundary Problem in the World
99
A Bend in the River
111
Maps
131
The Trouble with Crete
151
The Satanic Verses
163
Snow
181
Apocalypse in a Border Town
205
And Some Conclusions
223
Notes
243
Index
251
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About the author (2014)

Annabel Patterson is Sterling Professor Emeritus of English at Yale University. She has written over a dozen books on early British literature, portraits, politics, parliamentary history, and law. She lives in Connecticut.

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