I Suffer, Therefore I Am: Engaging with Empathy in Contemporary French Women’s Writing
Kathryn Robson
Research Monographs in French Studies 56•23 April 2019

  • ‘In this concise, fascinating book, Kathryn Robson explores text/reader relationships in a range of contemporary French women’s writing, including memoirs, fictional, and autofictional texts that relate to narratives of suffering--in particular, anorexia (chapter one), the death of a child (chapter two), and maternal filicide (chapter three), with chapter four focusing on autofictional narratives... Robson shows that it is all too easy to assume empathy, and that empathy can itselfdo damage to the other. Her study is important because it deals with why readers may feel uncomfortable towards narratives of suffering and, in interrogating empathy, offers some pointers towards newly negotiated ethical empathetic responses. We should read these narratives and try to approach others’ suffering, but we need to interrogate our responses to them and take responsibility for our readings. This is a wonderful, sensitive book, beautifully and thoughtfully written, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to t’ — Gill Rye, H-France 20.34, January 2020
  • ‘A stimulating, innovative, and insightful discussion of empathy and the reading process in relation to narratives of suffering. Furthermore, as well as considering the limits of empathy, Robson also challenges the limits of the reader by compelling him/her to engage with and reflect on difficult narrative themes such as parental grief and filicide. This study will appeal to a wide range of readers and researchers from diverse areas such as French Studies, Women’s Writing, Affect Studies, Trauma Writing, and Feminist Theory.’ — Julie Rodgers, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 734-35 (full text online)
  • ‘In this outstanding analysis on the representations of pain and suffering in contemporary French women's writing, Robson challenges the notion of empathy as a way of putting oneself in someone else's shoes, destabilizing at the same time the reader's fixed positions. In doing so, she invites us to rethink empathy as a possibility for creating alternative approaches and challenges our ways of approaching others' pain.’ — Didem Alkan, Women in French Studies 28, 2020, 149-150 (full text online)
  • ‘This fascinating book provides a thoughtful and incisive reflection on empathetic engagement in narratives of suffering in contemporary women’s writing in French. Kathryn Robson’s brilliant analysis assembles an impressive range of contemporary authors around a selection of themes that have been startlingly prominent in recent years — anorexia, child loss, and infanticide —, offering patient, nuanced, and original readings.’ — Amaleena Damlé, French Studies 74.3, July 2020, 489–490 (full text online)

Pepetela and the MPLA: The Ethical Evolution of a Revolutionary Writer
Phillip Rothwell
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 36•30 April 2019

  • ‘The result is a deft, nuanced and accomplished analysis not only of Pepetela and his most important works, but of contemporary Angola and the way that the MPLA has wielded its power... It is a landmark work of scholarship from one of the field’s most accomplished critics, and essential reading for scholars of Lusophone African cultures, Angolan social history and Luso-Brazilian and African literatures.’ — Lanie Millar, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.6, 2020, 1069-1070

Women and Nationhood in Restoration Spain 1874-1931: The State as Family
Rocío Rødtjer
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 34•23 April 2019

  • ‘This is a fine and important book that will hopefully convince those critics prone to discounting the contributions of conservative women writers (Asensi and de los Ríos) to make the effort to read them, keeping in mind Rødtjer’s suggestive arguments.’ — Alda Blanco, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.3, March 2020, 440-41

José Saramago: History, Utopia, and the Necessity of Error
Mark Sabine
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 23•19 December 2016

  • ‘Beyond providing a rigorous, detailed and elegant analysis of those novels, Sabine offers a model for reading Saramago that will serve as reference point for any future work.’ — Paulo de Medeiros, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 95, 2018, 579-80
  • ‘This volume is of tremendous use to both seasoned scholars of Saramago and those who, like many in the English-speaking world, are familiar only with his later novels.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 377
  • ‘Likely to be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists looking for a critical grounding in the author’s initial and decisive novels of the 1980s.’ — Ana Paula Ferreira, Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.2, 2019, 299-301 (full text online)
  • ‘From a broad perspective which accepts the idea of an inherent political project and its utopian message, this book excellently resumes the possible justifications, together with scholarly well founded contextualizations, thus offering an outstandingly solid basis from which to depart towards further fruitful debates.’ — Burghard Baltrusch, Portuguese Studies 36.1, July 2020, 115-19 (full text online)

Broken Glass, Broken World: Glass in French Culture in the Aftermath of 1870
Hannah Scott
Research Monographs in French Studies 46•19 December 2016

  • ‘Perhaps due to glass’s ubiquity in the urban landscape, Parisians did not fully realize its fragile underpinning of Paris until Prussian bombing quite literally shattered glass’s transparency as urban phenomenon. It was through glass’s destruction that it became a privileged object manifesting the devastation of the année terrible for Parisians. Scott’s ingenuity lies in making glass visible, but especially in proposing broken glass as another ruin of Paris that both fascinated and disturbed contemporaries.’ — Colin Foss, H-France 18, March 2018, no. 53
  • ‘Scott’s incredible historical precision within a compact monograph has tremendous benefits to the field and raises even larger questions about the relationship between the Third Republic’s emphasis on glass and the social roles played by glass today, especially in the ecological arena. One wonders how the windowpanes, glass aquariums, and wine glasses of the post-industrial era gave way to the plastic wrapping and electronic screens that now serve as barriers between ourselves, the rest of humanity, and the planet as a whole.’ — Claire Nettleton, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 46.3-4, 2018
  • ‘This book is an outstanding contribution to an increasingly important field of study: the activating relationship between material culture and literary texts. Substantial and innovative chapters are devoted to Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans, prefaced by a richly informative account of the proliferation of glass objects and structures, from the monumental to the miniscule, in nineteenth-century France.’ — Robert Lethbridge, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 456-57
  • ‘This engaging and perceptive monograph is a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarship that resituates nineteenth-century literature within its material environment... A remarkably original work, one which is grounded in material research but which manages, nonetheless, to be rightly a work of primarily literary criticism.’ — Natasha Ryan, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 661-62 (full text online)

Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination
Elisa Segnini
Studies In Comparative Literature 56•26 July 2021

  • ‘The wide-ranging approach of the book, which also engages with recent debates in decadence and early modernist studies, openly challenges the “abrupt separation between authors associated with the ‘half-mock interlude of decadence’ and those considered exponents of symbolism, and thus part of early modernism”... The author keeps steady command of her arguments while navigating and scrutinising several artifacts from different cultures, though of course each case study shows its own fine tuning.’ — Giulio Milone, Synergies 2, 2021, 65-68 (full text online)
  • ‘Elisa Segnini leads her readers on a journey through fin-de-siècle Europe with one extra stop in Japan. The universe unveiled by Segnini is populated by uncanny mask makers, men in drag, grotesque masquerades, deathly plaster casts, gruesome masks of exceptional men, criminals, and deviants... A distinctive contribution to a field that can only benefit from engaging with the anthropological, medical, and legal discourse that underlies the artistic production of the fin de siècle.’ — Alessandra Crotti, Rivista di studi vittoriani 53, 2022, 121-25

The French Art Novel 1900-1930
Katherine Shingler
Research Monographs in French Studies 43•19 December 2016

  • ‘An extremely informative and enjoyable study, which takes the reader on a rich and detailed tour of the early twentieth-century French artist’s world, “far beyond the form and concerns of the genre’s nineteenth-century foundational texts”. Clear, compelling, lucid, well researched, and beautifully written, Shingler’s book is an important and welcome sequel to scholarship written on the romantic art novel.’ — Dominique Jullien, H-France 18, May 2018, No. 111
  • ‘Shingler uncovers an approach to twentieth-century novels that bears pursuing further. Shingler investigates gender issues thoroughly and with great clarity, but she also locates other anxieties in the work of these writers.’ — Alexander Dickow, French Studies 72.2, April 2018, 305–306 (full text online)
  • ‘Il genere letterario dell’art novel viene de nito da Katherine Shingler come un genere in cui la nzione è strettamente connessa all’arte, nel senso che il focus della narrazione è rivolto a problematiche legate alle arti visive e i personaggi, perlopiù nel ruolo di protagonisti, sono degli artisti.’ — Michela Gardini, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 356-57
  • ‘A well-documented volume offering in-depth analyses of a well-chosen corpus, which comprises the expected classics as well as less familiar novels. The book will be useful and illuminating for readers of art novels and for literature and art students and scholars alike.’ — Emilie Sitzia, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 879-80 (full text online)

Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging
Rosalind Silvester
Research Monographs in French Studies 57•28 September 2020

  • ‘A refreshingly original and in-depth contribution that should be enthusiastically welcomed not only by scholars working in the specialist field of Franco-Chinese studies, but also by those who are more broadly interested in contemporary Québec literature, Chinese diasporic literature, migrant writings, and transcultural studies... A strong, lucid, and convincing line of enquiry.’ — Shuangyi Li, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies 12.1, Summer 2021, 16-17

Balzac's Love Letters: Correspondence and the Literary Imagination
Ewa Szypula
Research Monographs in French Studies 52•19 December 2016

  • ‘Balzac the inveterate re-reader forces his own readers into their own, creative, re-readings of his texts. How fortunate, then, that so many of Balzac’s own letters, not least those to Mme Hanska, have been preserved for our own reading and re-reading, and are thus able to give rise to this subtle, sophisticated, original — and eminently readable — new study.’ — Owen Heathcote, H-France 17, November 2017
  • ‘On en saluera en n l’originalité, la nesse d’analyse, et l’attention subtile prêtée à l’écriture de Balzac, à ses tactiques comme à son tact, à sa volonté de maîtrise comme à sa délicatesse.’ — Thomas Conrad, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 335-36
  • ‘Szypula treats the letters as texts in their own right, arguing persuasively that they can be analysed in much the same way as we might read and interpret Balzac’s fiction... As Szypula argues compellingly, the themes of writing and rereading assume special importance in the 1844 novel Modeste Mignon, in which Balzac can be seen to reflect on the limitations of rereading, particularly when a letter-writer is insincere. The study concludes with an Afterword that examines Mme Han ska’s attempts at revising Balzac’s letters following his death, a process that shows — as Szypula does so refreshingly in this volume — that this correspondence has never truly closed, but instead remains intriguingly open to rereading and re-interpretation.’ — Andrew Watts, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 610-11

Queer Genealogies in Transnational Barcelona: Maria-Mercè Marçal, Cristina Peri Rossi, and Flavia Company
Natasha Tanna
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 37•30 December 2019

No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa
Maria Tavares
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 32•30 September 2018

  • ‘An excellent scholarly contribution that is both clear and accessible. It must be critically addressed byprofessors, students, and researchers both in and beyond the Lusophone academic sphere.’ — Sandra I. Sousa, Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.1, 2019, 328-30 (full text online)

Brute Meaning: Essays in Materialist Criticism from Dickens to Hitchcock
David Trotter
Selected Essays 9•28 September 2020

  • ‘Not a single essay here but is interesting in its own way. Many, as with ‘Dickens and Frith’ (Essay 4) take a minor topic and make something special from it. The essay on Middlemarch (Essay 5) seems a major contribution... All the essays are likeable and thoughtful, exhibiting an astonishingly wide reading.’ — Jeremy Tambling, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 474-76 (full text online)

Affective Spaces: Migration in Scandinavian and German Transnational Narratives
Anja Tröger
Germanic Literatures 24•26 July 2021

  • ‘Anja Tröger’s 2021 monograph Affective Spaces: Migration in Scandinavian and German Transnational Narratives examines twelve novels whose fairly recent publication dates are bookended by Vigdis Hjorth’s Snakk til meg (2011) and Zeshan Shakar’s Tante Ulrikkes vei (2017)... twelve very compelling transnational narratives that are well worth the engagement.’ — Thomas Herold, German Studies Review 46.2, May 2023, 328-30

Theorizing Medieval Race: Saracen Representations in Old French Literature
Victoria Turner
Research Monographs in French Studies 55•23 September 2019

  • ‘She has created new paradigms for thinking about race and representation in the Middle Ages that should become part of the critical conversation. While Turner’s book focuses exclusively on French material, it is applicable to the European Middle Ages more widely and is particularly worthwhile because 1) she elaborates a comprehensive and sophisticated critical framework for her interrogation of medieval racial representation, and 2) her textual interpretations are original and imaginative, not simply repetitions of previous scholarly consensus.’ — Margaret Aziza Pappano, Speculum 98.1, January 2023, 339 (full text online)

Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel
Margarita Vaysman
Legenda (General Series) •26 July 2021

  • ‘Vaysman’s valuable work [...] encourage[s] further and more general scholarly accounts of the ways in which metapoetics worked as part of realism—and, more broadly, as part of the metapoetic aspect in the Russian cultural tradition.’ — Konstantine Klioutchkine, Russian Review 81.4, October 2022, 753-54
  • ‘Vaysman has carried out an original investigation into a neglected subject, defining her work as a contribution to current discussion of realist writing as a transnational phenomenon and arguing that classical Russian literature was exceptionally rich in self-conscious narrative at a time when such narrative was rare in the French and English realist traditions.’ — Derek Offord, Slavonic and East European Review 100.3, July 2022, 533-35
  • ‘Vaysman convincingly demonstrates that [nineteenth-century Russian novel] uses sophisticated narrative strategies that emphasize an uneasy relationship between the fictional worlds of literary texts and social reality [...]. Our hope is that the future of literary studies belongs to exactly this kind of studies: sophisticated and free from stereotypical approaches to its subjects.’ — Kirill Zubkov, Russian Literature 130, 2022, 95–109 (full text online)
  • ‘A well-researched, innovative analysis of metafiction in the nineteenth-century Russian realist novel... Overall, Vaysman’s engaging, timely study should be considered essential reading for scholars who seek to understand nineteenth-century Russian literature more thoroughly, as well as for anyone who is interested in the complex correlation between politics and aesthetics.’ — Melissa L. Miller, Modern Language Review 2024, 119.1, 172-74 (full text online)

Depicting the Divine: Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann
Olga G. Voronina
Studies In Comparative Literature 47•23 April 2019

  • ‘Olga G. Voronina’s careful comparative study brings to light many of the parallel narrative strategies in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers... What sets Bulgakov and Mann apart from the mainstream, as Voronina convincingly shows, is their decision to engage polemically with biblical texts.’ — Thomas Seifrid, Comparative Literature Studies 57.3, 2020, 559-62
  • ‘В заключение хочу сказать, что книга Ольги Ворониной инновативна в постановке исследовательской проблемы и плодотворна в ее решении. Завершаю рецензию на книгу цитатой из другого булгаковского романа: «Она дышит! Она живет!».’ — Irina Belobrovtseva, Scando-Slavica 67.2, 2021, 287-94 (full text online)
  • ‘Voronina has created a convincing, far-researching, unique and engaging study of Bulgakov's and Mann's poetic versions of biblical narratives, which both de- and re-mythologize the source text and are characterized by syncretism and rich intertextuality. The book is undoubtedly interesting and inspiring not only for Slavic and German scholars but also for any reader who is interested in a different and innovative approach to the study of comparative literature. The spiritual, scientific, and scholarly merits of this book perfectly complement one another.’ — Natalia Kaloh Vid, Slavic Review full text online)
  • ‘The first comparative study of The Master and Margarita and Joseph and His Brothers, and an important and original contribution to research on Bulgakov’s and Mann’s novels as well as on biblical literature in more general terms.’ — Sarah Fengler, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation 30 September 2021
  • ‘Depicting the Divine is a meticulously researched, impressive close reading of two novels... a valuable contribution to literary studies. In her nuanced close readings and thorough research of the two novels Voronina applies a specialist’s insight to both Bulgakov and Mann, paying attention to linguistic subtleties in the two languages and explaining them well to the English reader.’ — Eric Laursen, Russian Review 80.4, October 2021, 713-14 (full text online)

Pascal Quignard: Towards the Vanishing Point
Léa Vuong
Research Monographs in French Studies 48•19 December 2016

  • ‘Léa Vuong’s succinct and insightful book addresses the work of French writer Pascal Quignard through the lenses of absence and disappearance. As Vuong argues, the reception of Quignard in the Anglo-Saxon world remains somewhat limited, while his work within the Hexagon has been the subject of extensive discussions and wide critical recognition. This first thorough study of Quignard’s work in the English language fills a gap while offering a perspective that connects Quignard to a constellation of structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers, in particular with the work of Jacques Lacan and Maurice Blanchot.’ — Étienne Lussier, Modern and Contemporary France 4 Oct 2017 (full text online)
  • ‘A well-written, well-documented analysis that manages to give a good glimpse into a voluminous literary production (Quignard’s publications are now nearing eighty books), while reporting on several important, and less studied, aspects of Quignard’s oeuvre.’ — Jean-Louis Pautrot, H-France 17, December 2017, no. 236
  • ‘Both specialists and those not very familiar with Quignard will find something of value here... the range of texts considered, which help the author trace broad points of commonality across an immense and still growing body of work, and the generally compelling characterization and descriptions of the text, will be helpful to those seeking an introduction to Quignard.’ — Joseph Acquito, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 664-66 (full text online)
  • ‘Di questo dibattito, l’autrice traccia nella «Conclusio- ne» un lucido bilancio, tra accuse di parisianisme e riconoscimento in patria, moltiplicarsi delle traduzioni e interesse ancora limitato da parte della critica in altre lingue, sottolineando la sotterranea portata sovversiva di una scrittura che ostenta la propria inattualità, che ritorce il fascino esercitato dal linguaggio contro il potere euristico della parola, che ingloba il meta-discorso che suscita, condannando talora il commentatore alla parafrasi o all’imitazione.’ — Stefano Genetti, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 367-68

The Novels of Carmen Laforet: An Aesthetics of Relief
Caragh Wells
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 29•29 April 2019

  • ‘Caragh Wells's seminal exploration of the psychological and aesthetic underpinning of Laforet’s novels is a must-read for anyone interested in such aspects of literature, Hispanic and global.’ — Lilit Žekulin Thwaites, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research March 2020 (full text online)
  • ‘A required tome for any serious scholar or student of Carmen Laforet. It is a carefully researched and thoughtfully written study that should place Caragh Wells among the elite Laforetian scholars of the day.’ — Mark P. Del Mastro, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.3, March 2020, 444-45

Sublime Conclusions: Last Man Narratives from Apocalypse to Death of God
Robert K. Weninger
Studies In Comparative Literature 43•29 September 2017

  • unsigned notice, The Year's Work in English Studies 98.1, 2019, 657-58

The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction 1860-1917: Deciphering Stories of Detection
Claire Whitehead
Legenda (General Series) •10 September 2018

  • ‘An intricately researched and fascinating exploration of the origins and development of a forgotten genre... Whitehead’s re- evaluation of Dostoevskii’s novels (including Brothers Karamazov) as crime literature is rewarding and insightful. Even more valuable, however, is her analysis of Dostoevskii’s forgotten peers, who created the landmarks of this fluid and reactive genre.’ — Muireann Maguire, Slavonic and East European Review 90.4, October 2020, 767-69 (full text online)
  • ‘Яркая книга Клер Уайтхед убедительно демонстрирует, что отечественные исто- рики литературы напрасно не обращают внимания на чрезвычайно интересный, причем не только в тематическом плане, но и в идейном, и в плане поэтики, кри- минальный жанр русской литературы. Это (как и игнорирование отечественных фантастики, оккультной прозы, колониального романа, романа о городских жули- ках и мошенниках и т.д.) значительно обедняет картину русской литературы XIX — начала XX в. Кроме того, рассмотрение «Преступления и наказания» Достоевского и «Шведской спички» Чехова в контексте уголовной прозы позволило исследова- тельнице внести ценный вклад в интерпретацию этих произведений. И наконец, для отечественных литературоведов книга может послужить своего рода путево- дителем по современной англоязычной нарратологии.’ — A. I. Reitblat, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 175, May/June 2022, 343-50

Unidentified Narrative Objects and the New Italian Epic
Kate Elizabeth Willman
Italian Perspectives 42•25 February 2019

The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France
Steven Wilson
Research Monographs in French Studies 62•28 September 2020

  • ‘One of the book’s strongest points is its effort to highlight critical traditions that are rarely brought into the conversation. Wilson regularly offers helpful summaries and clarifications on the different critical currents discussed.’ — Alexandre Wenger, Metascience 23 October 2021 (full text online)
  • ‘Wilson’s study contributes significantly to an emerging area of research acknowledging the centrality of syphilis to broader social, medical, and hygienic anxieties, while employing methodologies from the critical medical humanities to focus specifically on the diseased body and its relationship to the language of disease... As we are constantly reminded of the importance of quarantine, contagion, and transmission, Wilson’s approach to the body and language raises questions for future study on how the diseased or sick body shapes and generates language, and how this language shapes our understanding of the body.’ — Beatrice Fagan, Modern Language Review 117.1, January 2022, 127-28 (full text online)
  • ‘Steven Wilson’s The Language of Disease makes a significant contribution to ongoing efforts to de-anglicize the medical humanities... While Wilson’s book is, by his own admission, but 'one study of [the language of] one disease in one country at one particular time,' there is no doubt that the approach it adopts will be of considerable value to future explorations of the linguistic dimension of disease.’ — Jordan Owen McCullough, Literature and Medicine 39.1, Spring 2021, 180-84 (full text online)
  • ‘Wilson constructs a compelling argument in favour of the medical humanities considering both the critical value of expanding its preoccupation with contemporary medicine, and the importance of taking a more global approach... Wilson’s book is brimming with information, fresh critical perspectives, and compelling close readings that ensure that it will become an important reference for scholars of nineteenth-century French studies in search of this most elusive of diseases.’ — Sarah Jones, Irish Journal of French Studies 21, 2021, 150-51
  • ‘Steven Wilson’s book is guided by a question which is at once both extraordinarily timely and yet timeless: how does the diseased body shape language and what, in turn, are the effects of language in shaping our understanding of the diseased body? ... This important book thereby provides a fresh perspective on nineteenth-century writing on syphilis, allowing the reader to realize the urgency of a truly critical, comparative, and transnational medical humanities.’ — Anna Magdalena Elsner, French Studies 76.2, April 2022, 298-99 (full text online)

A Modernist in Exile: The International Reception of H. G. Adler (1910-1988)
Edited by Lynn L. Wolff
Studies In Comparative Literature 42•23 April 2019

  • ‘A very impressive collection of moving and thought-provoking essays... Because the contributors to this book have such detailed and specialized knowledge of H. G.’s life and work, and such a masterly ability to contextualize his wide-ranging achievement and relate their new work to earlier critical work, they set a new standard in Adler scholarship. Consequently this fascinating volume will doubtless enhance H. G.’s reputation both as an intellectual and as a writer of prose fiction, and become necessary reading for anyone who has any kind of interest in him and his work.’ — Richard Sheppard, Journal of European Studies 50.3, Autumn 2020, 295–301 (full text online)
  • ‘This volume dedicated to H.G. Adler will prove edifying to seasoned scholars and newcomers alike... In contrast to Adorno, who - similar to many postmodernists - collapses traditions of value into barbarity and admits no distinction between the two, Adler struggles to maintain, describe, and explain the possibility of human goodness in the face of overwhelming evil. It is certainly true for Adler that in the world of the camps much, if not most, of the ability for ethical action was destroyed - but not all. And since this is true, Adler’s work challenges his readers to face the truth in its entirety and to define the scale of human value they will adhere to in the face of barbarity.’ — Traci S. O’Brien, Monatshefte 112.4, Winter 2020, 747-50

The Rhetoric of Exile: Duress and the Imagining of Force
Vladimir Zorić
Studies In Comparative Literature 39•19 December 2016

  • ‘Since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and down to the exodus of Jews from Germany triggered by Kristallnacht, followed most recently by the flight of millions from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, exile has constituted a basic experience of human history and myth, summoning forth a library of commentary... Zorić has taken a rich and fascinating topic and exposed it fruitfully to various theoretical analyses.’ — Theodore Ziolkowski, Modern Language Review 113.2, April 2018, 363-64 (full text online)
  • ‘The book has something of the virtues of classical philology, such as erudition and close reading of the overall European literary tradition in original languages. It is equally commendable for widening its scope to the literary depictions of exilic experience in often overlooked East and Central European literatures, thus escaping the rather common fault of essentially reducing European intellectual and imaginative experiences to its Western parts.’ — Aleksandar Pavlović, European History Quarterly 48.2, 402-03