Jukka Mikkonen (Tampere): Assertions in Literary Fiction. Maxine E. Walker (PLNU): Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love in a Secular Age. From the International Journal of Zizek Studies, Federico Bellini (Siena): Beckett’s Ticklish Characters: Reading Beckett through Zizek; and Etienne Poulard (Cardiff): Shakespeare’s Politics of Invisibility: Power and Ideology in The Tempest. From Limina, a review of Strange Concepts and the Stories They Make Possible: Cognition, Culture, Narrative by Lisa Zunshine; and a review of Why are Critics Afraid of Dragons? Understanding Genre Fantasy by Kim Selling. From NYRB, a review of books on and by John Cheever (and more at Bookforum by Matthew Price) The new Henry Miller speaks out: An interview with Eric Miles Williamson, author of Welcome to Oakland. A review of Shakespeare, Sex & Love by Stanley Wells (and more). From Axess, literary scholars often believe that texts can be studied outside their historical context, but in order to comprehend the modernist current, one must understand that its predecessor comprised utopists who wanted to see a new society and a new humankind; many think that modernism is the opposite of classicism, but modernists like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were disgusted by the excesses of Romanticism and thus sought out more austere, classical forms of expressions; and modernism has its background in theosophy — understandably, adherents today are not keen to talk about this. An 800-year-old manuscript is shedding new light on one of the hidden jewels of Arabic literature, The One Hundred and One Nights. A review of Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue. A review of Fiction across Borders: Imagining the Lives of Others in Late Twentieth-Century Novels by Shameem Black.
