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The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century

2017; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 91; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2017.0009

1945-8134

Will H. Corral,

South Asian Cinema and Culture

of public sight, these two privileged women are bestowed with the freedom and honor of asylum and naturalization. Jelinek often contrasts the poverty of the refugees with the privilege of these two women throughout her play. When speaking about these two women and the extreme contrasts in their struggles for asylum, the chorus’s tone becomes decidedly angry about the blatant favoritism based on wealth. By using a chorus as her protagonist, in the tradition of an ancient Greek tragedy , Jelinek employs several dramatic techniques to get her point across emphatically about the desperate and sad plight of the refugees. For instance, as is common in ancient tragedy, the chorus in Charges repeats itself, in a rhythmic way, circling back often to the same themes and topics . In addition, punctuation and connectives are dispensed with in order to give their speech a vehemence that conveys the deplorable hardships which the refugees have suffered and continue to suffer: “We lie on the cold stone floor, but this comes hot off the press, here it is irrefutably, irreconcilably, poured into this brochure like water that instantly runs down and out instantly, like water thrown from cliff to cliff, turned into water as well, sinking like statues, almost elegantly, with raised hands, no, no, from dam to dam, into the bottomless, into the micro power plant, down, down it goes for years, we vanish . . .” Jelinek has brilliantly adopted the medium of the ancient Greek poets in order to enlighten us about those who have been exiled from their homes and cannot return safely. Although she uses the scenario that takes place in her hometown as the backdrop for her drama, Jelinek chooses not to mention Vienna or other specific place names in her text; she makes her themes of displacement, fear, and privilege universal, ones that can be applied to any of the current refugee crises we see playing out on a daily basis in various parts of the world. By speaking about their hardships and abuses in one loud, emphatic, emotional voice, the chorus of refugees in Charges delivers the timely message that we should treat the displaced with dignity, kindness, and generosity instead of with disgust and xenophobia and recognize that this has become a human rights crisis of epic proportions. Melissa Beck Woodstock Academy, Connecticut Adam Kirsch. The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century. New York. Columbia Global Reports. 2016. 112 pages. WLT readers are attuned to the complexities of what makes a novel global and of the limitations of strictly academic ripostes on the topic. Adam Kirsch’s exemplary, succinct , and patently foundational view of the genre vis-à-vis worldliness subtly negotiates both conditions. The novelists this justly acclaimed interpreter of literariness and criticism examines are usually marshaled Birgitte Possing Understanding Biographies: On Biographies in History and Stories in Biography Trans. Gaye Kynoch University Press of Southern Denmark In light of a surge of interest in biographies in recent years, Danish historian Birgitte Possing examines the genre to reveal the multiplicity of styles and methods within the field. Wielding her expertise in history and precise language, Possing digs to the center of biography and its place in society, both currently and historically. Sergio Pitol The Magician of Vienna Trans. George Henson Deep Vellum The final volume in his “Trilogy of Memory,”The Magician of Vienna is Mexican author Sergio Pitol’s partly fictional autobiography of a life steeped in literature. Through lyrical prose that spins with all the mastery of an acrobat, this book is a rebellion against a degenerative neurological condition that affects him even as he writes it. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 87 in larger studies, and accordingly three of the six chapters scrutinize known authors of presumably different literary traditions for truly original findings that are an essential report to the comparatist academy. The novels Kirsch analyzes are not overly concerned with global perils but rather with clashes or escapes that alter personal reckonings, a choice that implies observing global novels as rooted in a way that is new to the readers but not to the authors. Testing present interpretative currents, the first chapter is triggered by the discontents assumed for world literature...