"The novel, Brink argues, is not about representation but the
self-conscious play of language. From its inception, he suggests,
the genre has been about the act of writing and self-reflection.
This thesis is not new but is part of the currency of postmodern
literary theory. Brink, himself a noted South African novelist, the
author of some 12 books, including "A Dry White Season" (1984), and
a university professor, brings the insight of an insider. He
surveys 15 celebrated novels, historically arranged from "Don
Quixote" and "La Princesse de Cleves" to A.S. Byatt's "Possession"
and Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter Night a Traveller" examining
each in terms of its play with writing and language. His
discussions are marked by clarity, insight, and comprehension. A
valuable book."
"--Thomas L. Cooksey, Library Journal"
"What a treat to explore the novel as a genre through the lucid
eyes of AndrA(c) Brink, himself one of the world's foremost
novelists! I particularly enjoyed the way in which the most
traditional novels were revealed as contemporary and entirely
relevant."
"--Ariel Dorfman"
The postmodernist novel has become famous for the extremes of
its narcissistic involvement with language. In this challenging and
wide-ranging new study, AndrA(c) Brink argues that this
self-consciousness has been a defining characteristic of the novel
since its inception. Taking as his starting point "the propensity
for story" embedded in all language, he demonstrates that the old
familiar novels may be the more startlingly modern, while
postmodernist texts remain more firmly rooted in convention.
From the beginnings of the genre with Don Quixote, through
"classic" novels of theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries and
modern and postmodern texts of the twentieth, Brink performs a
sweeping analysis of 500 years of the novel, including "Moll
Flanders," "Emma," "Madame Bovary," "The Trial," "One Hundred Years
of Solitude," and "Possession," As an internationally recognized
novelist, he brings a unique critical eye and enthusiasm to his
exploration of the genre, offering the reader a refreshing and
rewarding introduction to the novel and narrative theory.
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