Running In (and Out) the Family Postcolonial Family Novels in Perspective

The genre of the family novel can be identified in many postcolonial literary cultures. Initially, it was often read as an example of “national allegory” (Jameson 1986), thus considering family narrative in a tight relationship with postcolonial nation-building, but this theoretical framework has been later criticised from different perspectives, ranging from post-national to feminist critiques. Furthermore, the genre of the postcolonial family novel has been refashioned due to the emergence of diasporic narratives, leading to the diffusion of the “postcolonial fictions of adoption” (McLeod 2006). Nowadays, the high competition in the global literary market – namely, with family novels and sagas in the US literary market – drives this genre towards highly individualised, as well as hybridised, outcomes. While focusing, in particular, on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz and Lara ([1997] 2009) by Bernardine Evaristo, this survey of family novels across different literary traditions aims to show the intrinsic porosity, as well as the strenuous resistance, of the genre.

GERMAN RECEPTION OF MODERN MIGRANT PROSE OF THE AUTHORS FROM THE FORMER USSR

The literature of migrant authors from the former USSR became popular in the German literary market not only within the framework of the well-known international phenomenon of “new immigrant chic”, but also due to the specific character of German literary market, which is characterized by the demand for “narrative lightness” of modern literature. The main aspects of the promotion of writers on the literary scene in Germany are the role of the literary publisher in choosing marketing strategies for authors, the self-positioning of writers, and the interest of the readers in a biography that is exotic for German-speaking society. The interaction between different generations of migrant writers, the lack of success of migrant prose from the former Soviet Union in the Russian literary market as well as the current trend towards publishers’ creating a feigned image of the migrant writer with Russian roots are particularly relevant topics in this discussion.

How to Read the ‘Literary’ in the Literary Market

This essay argues that under contemporary capitalism, all literary production is, at first approximation, commodity production. This has consequences for our understanding of the work of literary studies. We are no longer able to easily recur to preformed theories of the ‘literary’ as a category at least in some way exempt from extrinsic pressures. Attention to the ‘literary market’ remains superficial when it insists on paying attention chiefly to so-called literary fiction on the understanding that it has prima facie higher claims to our attention than popular genre fiction—it does not. In fact, as this essay argues, appreciation of the thorough commodification of art under capitalism asks us to take seriously the need to break with our categories; to insist on the primacy of interpretative attention in determining what kinds of fiction we study.

The Melodramatic State

This chapter talks about what were considered bad books for bad readers. At the turn of the century, it was certainly not high-minded literary works that predominated in the Arabic literary marketplace. Rather, the market privileged thrilling and emotional works, the vast majority of which were in translation and which prioritized titillation and “scandal” over moral, civic, or religious progress. The new popular novels were accused of more than just portraying unrealistic foreign situations; more dangerously, they were seen as promoting unhealthy reading practices and cultivating excessive, nonrational emotions. Commentators worried about the prominent place of “bad books for bad readers” in the national literary market, and bad readers were above all figured as women readers. Bad books spoke to and — more frequently — about women. Translations redeployed excess popular emotion as political, and they do so in such a way as to test gendered national discourses, complicating some of the very New Woman ideas that elite writers were putting forth. The chapter reinserts these popular translated novels and their major figures — the oppressed wife, the bad female example, and the good criminal — into the national conversation and shows how they make social and political claims.

Dziedzictwo Słowackiego w poezji polskiej ostatniego półwiecza: 1918-1968

The book presents forms of influence of Juliusz Słowacki’s works on Polish poetry from 1918-1968. The basis of the thesis comprises a question of topicality of the great poet’s heritage in poetry from the period of fifty years starting with the debut of a generation which appeared in the literary market with the beginning of the second independence.

Censura y traducción al español de la novela lésbica en inglés: el caso de Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)

This article analyses the only translation into Spanish of Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle (1973), translated in Spain by Jorge Binaghi in 1979. In order to do so, the study reviews lesbian narrative in English during the 20th century and the social and political factors that might have influenced its translation in Spain. An overview on Francoist literary censorship is followed by a discussion on how the Spanish literary market has received English lesbian novels and the case of Rubyfruit Jungle. Despite being one of the first lesbian novels published in democracy in Spain, the analysis suggests that the Francoist ideological paradigms are still perpetuated and have altered the translation.

The novel of the Greek civil war in the twenty-first century: (post)memory and the weight of the past

Between the years 2000 and 2015 novels on the Greek civil war (1946–9) flooded the Greek literary market. This raises important questions as to why the burden of the civil conflict weighs heavily upon generations with no experiential connection to these events. This article begins by offering an interpretation for the literary upsurge of the civil war since the 2000s. Then it uses Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory to illustrate the authors’ ethical commitment to ‘unsilence’ and redress the past through the use of archival evidence and testimonies. The case studies of ThomasSkassis’Ελληνικόσταυρόλɛξο (2000), Nikos Davvetas’ Λɛυκή πɛτσέτα στορινγκ (2006),and SophiaNikolaidou's Χορɛύουνοιɛλέφαντɛς(2012) serve to illustrate my argument.