Download or read book Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction written by Alice Bennett and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-07-06 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afterlife and Narrative explores why life after death is such a potent cultural concept today, and why it is such an attractive prospect for modern fiction. The book mines a rich vein of imagined afterlives, from the temporal experiments of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to narration from heaven in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones .

Download or read book Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction written by Alice Bennett and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-07-06 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afterlife and Narrative explores why life after death is such a potent cultural concept today, and why it is such an attractive prospect for modern fiction. The book mines a rich vein of imagined afterlives, from the temporal experiments of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to narration from heaven in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones .

Download or read book Utopia and the Contemporary British Novel written by Caroline Edwards and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how the experience of time in contemporary British novels reveals the persistence of the utopian imagination today.

Download or read book Postmortem Postmodernists written by Laura E. Savu and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book scrutinizes the genre of the author-as-character with respect to three broad issues--authorship, the posthumous, and cultural revisionism--that arise in reading such works from a contemporary perspective. Late twentieth-century fiction "postmodernizes" romantic and modern authors not only to understand them better, but also to understand itself in relation to a past (literary tradition, aesthetic paradigms, cultural formations, etc.) that has not really passed. Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, Peter Ackroyd's The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde and Chatterton, Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, Michael Cunningham's The Hours, Colm Toibin's The Master, and Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence--"the mighty dead" (Harold Bloom) are brought back to life, reanimated and bodied forth in new textual bodies that project a post-modern understanding of the author as a historically and culturally contingent subjectivity constructed along the lines of gender, sexual orientation, class, and nationality. Laura E. Savu is a lecturer at the University of Bucharest.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature written by W. Michelle Wang and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Death and Literature seeks to understand the ways in which literature has engaged deeply with the ever-evolving relationship humanity has with its ultimate demise. It is the most comprehensive collection in this growing field of study and includes essays by Brian McHale, Catherine Belling, Ronald Schleifer, Helen Swift, and Ira Nadel, as well as the work of a generation of younger scholars from around the globe, who bring valuable transnational insights. Encompassing a diverse range of mediums and genres – including biography and autobiography, documentary, drama, elegy, film, the novel and graphic novel, opera, picturebooks, poetry, television, and more – the contributors offer a dynamic mix of approaches that range from expansive perspectives on particular periods and genres to extended analyses of select case studies. Essays are included from every major Western period, including Classical, Middle Ages, Renaissance, and so on, right up to the contemporary. This collection provides a telling demonstration of the myriad ways that humanity has learned to live with the inevitability of death, where “live with” itself might mean any number of things: from consoling, to memorializing, to rationalizing, to fending off, to evading, and, perhaps most compellingly of all, to escaping. Engagingly written and drawing on examples from around the world, this volume is indispensable to both students and scholars working in the fields of medical humanities, thanatography (death studies), life writing, Victorian studies, modernist studies, narrative, contemporary fiction, popular culture, and more.

Download or read book The Afterlife of Holocaust Memory in Contemporary Literature and Culture written by R. Crownshaw and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bold intervention into the debate over the memory and 'post-memory' of the Holocaust both scrutinizes recent academic theories of post-Holocaust trauma and provides a new reading of literary and architectural memory texts related to the Holocaust.

Download or read book Ruptured Voices Trauma and Recovery written by Karen O’Donnell and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Modern Book of the Dead written by Ptolemy Tompkins and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern, all-encompassing exploration of what happens after death combines spirituality with philosophy, history, and science, all of which guide readers toward the timeless truth that human consciousness lives on after death.

Download or read book Atlantic Afterlives in Contemporary Fiction written by S. Ahlberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atlantic Afterlives in Contemporary Fiction offers fresh readings of what has been called "transatlantic literature". In selected twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts it discovers a shift from oceanic, place-based knowledge to an atmospheric, placeless circulation of information. Consonant with the displacements of the Information Age, this book reads contemporary narrative as it imagines and navigates today's virtual spaces. An important conclusion of the book is that intellectual resources are finite and should be used sustainably. Thus, arguing against a conventional comparative approach, this book proposes reading practices that resist the tendency toward an oversupply of reworked literary contexts that seems bent on matching the reach of the World Wide Web. Instead, the book reimagines place as a practice in the way it is communicated and narrated. Ultimately, this book empowers the reader to reimagine a future for narrative in the Information Age.

Download or read book Lincoln in the Bardo written by George Saunders and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-02-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented Named One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade • Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end? “A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review “A masterpiece.”—Zadie Smith

Download or read book The Afterlives written by Thomas Pierce and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Ridiculously good” (The New York Times) author Thomas Pierce's debut novel is a funny, poignant love story that answers the question: What happens after we die? (Lots of stuff, it turns out). Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age thirty. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what--if anything--awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love. Funny, fiercely original, and gracefully moving, The Afterlives will haunt you. In a good way.

Download or read book American Afterlife written by Kate Sweeney and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2014-03-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning writer explores the patchwork American cultural history of grieving the departed. One family inters their matriarch’s ashes on the floor of the ocean. Another holds a memorial weenie roast each year at a green-burial cemetery. An 1898 ad for embalming fluid promises, “You can make mummies with it!” while a leading contemporary burial vault is touted as impervious to the elements. A grieving mother, 150 years ago, might spend her days tending a garden at her daughter’s grave. Today, she might tend the roadside memorial she erected where her daughter was killed. One mother wears a locket containing her daughter’s hair; the other, a necklace containing her ashes. What happens after someone dies depends on our personal stories and on where those stories fall in a larger tale―that of death in America. It’s a powerful tale that we usually keep hidden from our everyday lives until we have to face it. American Afterlife by Kate Sweeney reveals this world through a collective portrait of Americans past and present who are personally involved with death: obit writers in the desert, an Atlantic funeral voyage, a fourth-generation funeral director―even a midwestern museum that shows us our death-obsessed Victorian progenitors. Each story illuminates details in another, revealing a landscape that feels at once strange and familiar, one that’s by turns odd, tragic, poignant, and sometimes even funny. “Sweeney’s quest for the “why” behind mourning rituals has given us a book in the best tradition of narrative journalism.”—Jessica Handler, author of Braving the Fire: A Guide to Writing about Grief and Loss

Download or read book Twenty First Century Fiction written by S. Adiseshiah and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively new volume of essays examines what happens now in 21st century fiction. Fresh theoretical approaches to writers such as Salman Rushdie, David Peace, Margaret Atwood, and Hilary Mantel, and identifications of 21st-century themes, tropes and styles combine to produce a timely critical intervention into genuinely contemporary fiction.

Download or read book British Women Short Story Writers written by Emma Young and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays tracing the evolving relationship between British women writers and the short story genre from the late Nineteenth Century to the present day.What is the relationship between the British woman writer and the short story? This collection examines what this versatile genre offers women writers, and what this can tell us about the society and culture they inhabit. From the rise of the modern printing press at the end of the Nineteenth Century through to the present digital age, these essays examine how the short story has been deployed and reworked by women writers and how they have influenced and shaped the genres development. Considering the effect of literary inheritances, societal and cultural change, and shifting publishing demands, this collection traces the evolution of the genre through to its continued appeal to women writing today. From the New Woman to contemporary feminisms, women's anthologies to microfiction, modernist writers to the contemporary works of Sarah Hall and Helen Simpson, the chapters in this collection investigate a crucial yet under-examined field of British literature.Key Features and Benefits12 chapters discussing a range of gender and genre issues since the fin-de-sic e to the present day.Sets out a clear trajectory to map both the historical and literary connections and divergences between British women short story writers. Offers a comprehensive account of the genres development to provide scholars with a unique insight into a largely neglected aspect of womens writing.Includes new readings of canonical authors alongside more recent theoretical approaches, innovations and lesser-discussed writers.

Download or read book The Catastrophic History of You And Me written by Jess Rothenberg and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An addictively page-turning romance for fans of Before I Fall and The Fault in Our Stars Brie is the “biggest, cheesiest, sappiest romantic” who believes that everyone will find their perfect someone. So when Jacob, the love of Brie's life, tells her he doesn't love her anymore, the news breaks her heart--literally. But now that she's D&G (dead and gone), Brie revisits the living world to discover that her family has begun to unravel and her best friend has been keeping an intimate secret about her boyfriend. Somehow, Brie must handle all of this while navigating through the five steps of grief with the help of Patrick, her mysterious bomber-jacketed guide to the afterlife. But how is she supposed to face the Ever After with a broken heart and no one to call her own? "The debut is a fast, twisty, highly dramatic read about the turbulent nature of love."--Romantic Times "Rothenberg exploes what happens in the afterlife when you aren't quite done with your life."--San Francisco Chronicle "The funniest, sweetest, most heartfelt, sigh-worthy and oh-so-romantic story I've ever read. You'll love it!"--Cynthia Leitich Smith, New York Times bestselling author of Eternal and Blessed

Download or read book Contemporary Fiction and Christianity written by Andrew Tate and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed exploration of the spiritual and religious contexts and subtexts of contemporary fiction.

Download or read book The City of Good Death written by Priyanka Champaneri and published by Restless Books. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go. Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India’s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the time is past, he tells them. Detach. After ten years in the timeless city, Pramesh can nearly persuade himself that here, there is no past or future. He lives contentedly at the death hostel with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant, and the constant flow of families with their dying. But one day the past arrives in the lifeless form of a man pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family’s wishes, a rift opens up between the cousins that he has long since tried to forget. Do not look back. Detach. But for Shobha, Sagar’s reemergence casts a shadow over the life she’s built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption. Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead. PRAISE FOR THE CITY OF GOOD DEATH “In Champaneri’s ambitious, vivid debut, the dying come to the holy city of Kashi to die a good death that frees them from the burden of reincarnation…. In sharp prose, Champaneri explores the power of stories—those the characters tell themselves, those told about them, and those they believe. . . . This epic, magical story of death teems with life.” —Publishers Weekly “Brimming with characters whose lives overlap and whose stories interweave, Champaneri’s exquisite debut delves into the consequences of the past, and how stories that are told can become reality even when they contain barely a shred of truth. As Pramesh discovers, the bitterness of past wounds can bring hope for redemption and life.” —Bridget Thoreson, Booklist “Lush prose evokes the thick, close atmosphere of Kashi and the intricate religious practices upon which life and death depend. Rumor and superstition hold sway over even the most level-headed people, twisting what’s explainable into something extraordinary—with tragic consequences. . . . The City of Good Death is a breathtaking, unforgettable novel about how remembering the past is just as important as moving on.” —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews, Starred Review "Champaneri’s Kashi is teeming and vivid . . . the book frequently charms, and it's as full of humor, warmth, and mystery as Kashi’s own marketplace." —Kirkus Reviews “The City of Good Death is the debut novel of Priyanka Champaneri but it has the confidence of a master storyteller. Drawing on the rich literary traditions of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, Champaneri’s epic saga will satisfy armchair travelers thirsty for adventure, and sick of looking out their windows.” —Chicago Review of Books "In intricate detail and with remarkable skill, Champaneri writes a powerful tale about the pull of the past and our aching need to understand the mysteries and misunderstandings that thwart our relationships. An atmospheric and immersive debut with a rich cast of characters you won’t soon forget." —Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop