Encyclopedia Of Literature And Politics - 9780313329289

From Peter Abrahams, the South African black nationalist novelist, to Émile Zola the French novelist perhaps most famous for penning J'accuse, a letter objecting to the Dreyfus affair, the 506 entries presented by Booker (English, U. of Arkansas) in this three- volume work sketch the relationship between world literature and world politics. Other figures profiled, typically in page-long entries, include Chilean novelist Isabel Allende, American poet Amiri Baraka (formerly Leroi Jones), French feminist writer Simone De Beauvoir, German playwright Bertolt Brecht, philosopher Jacques Derrida, literary theorist Terry Eagleton, Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, recent Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, and Mao Zedong. In addition to these biographical entries are occasional entries profiling specific works, such as Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Plato's Republic, Mary Shelley's A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. Other entries, usually longer than the ones mentioned above, deal with major events, movements, and concepts important to the history of literature and politics, with typical examples including entries on Yugoslav literature, Romanticism, the Spanish Civil War, utopian fiction, and the Industrial Workers of the World. An effort has clearly been made to make the material as internationally representative as possible. Also included in the work are an extensive bibliography and a thorough index. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)