Tag: world literature

contemporary Fiction, Fiction Reviews

On the Footsteps of Rashomon: A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson

Crime or legal thrillers, which I rarely read, are written to be exciting and to keep you the reader guessing who the  perpetrator is or, if she’s identified early in the story, whether she is in fact guilty. Crime thriller, I think, is one genre in which the plot is primary. Characterization may not be well-rounded and it focuses on what motivates a crime. How … Continue reading On the Footsteps of Rashomon: A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson

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Fiction Reviews, historical fiction

One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Literary Chameleon About Life

MANY YEARS LATER as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of twenty adobe houses, built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones, which were white and enormous, like prehistoric eggs. The world … Continue reading One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Literary Chameleon About Life

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contemporary Fiction, Fiction Reviews

Adam Johnson’s North Korea: Fiction as Trauma Narrative 

Disbelief. That’s my initial reaction as I follow the life of orphan master’s son, Jun Do, in Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize. Is this really what life is like in North Korea? Lives subjected to unrelenting propaganda from its one radio station, and unrelenting trauma, probably almost from birth if you’re an orphan? As he grows up, Jun … Continue reading Adam Johnson’s North Korea: Fiction as Trauma Narrative 

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contemporary Fiction, Fiction Reviews

Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind

Shadow of the Wind. I’ve puzzled over this title. Technically, a wind would not have a shadow. Or, maybe, it does; but we need a sixth sense to see it. If so, this title is the best anyone could give this novel, although I must confess, I did not feel that way until I got almost towards the end of the book, 358 pages later, … Continue reading Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s Shadow of the Wind

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