Category: World literature
By Peter on Feb 2, 2010 in Excellent book, Fiction Books, Herman Wouk, Historical Fiction, World literature, bestseller, book review | 1 Comment
The Winds of War (1971) told the story of the extended family of Captain Victor “Pug” Henry up to and including the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Captain Henry, is a military man, to some extent a scholar, a translator, and an advisor to Franklin Roosevelt and other statesmen. War and Remembrance picks up the [...]
By Peter on Jan 4, 2010 in Classical novel, D.H. Lawrence, Excellent book, Fiction Books, The World of Books, World literature, bestseller, book review | 0 Comments
Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a delightful novel and surely one of the most extraordinary literary works of the twentieth century. It is a book with a history – a previously banned book. It was banned in England and the United States after its initial publication in 1928 due to the once-shockingly explicit treatment of its [...]
By Peter on Dec 13, 2009 in World literature, e-book readers, e-books | 2 Comments
A new legal battle is brewing. This time between publishers and copyright owners over the right to digital versions, or e-book versions, of published titles. Facing declining book sales, both the family of William Styron and his publishers want to produce e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. [...]
By Peter on Nov 26, 2009 in Classical novel, Excellent book, Fiction Books, Jonathan Swift, The World of Books, World literature, book review, fantasy | 1 Comment
The world literature is full of treasures. One of them is Gulliver’s Travels, a truly remarkable and excellent book. It is a book everybody has read. But most have read it as a children’s book, and many in an edited version where some of the social critique and some of the sexual content in [...]
By Peter on Jul 24, 2009 in C. S. Forester, Classical novel, World literature, book review | 0 Comments
C. S. Forester is now mostly remembered for his Horatio Hornblower sea adventures. However, his novel The African Queen, filmed in 1951 by John Huston with stars Bogart and Hepburn, is very well worth remembering as well.
The setting is German Central Africa in the year 1914. At the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, the [...]
By Peter on Jul 11, 2009 in C. S. Forester, Classical novel, Excellent book, Historical Fiction, World literature, bestseller, book review | 0 Comments
This was the first book C. S. Forester wrote about Horatio Hornblower. However, in terms of the internal chronology of the series, it is the fifth. In England its title was The Happy Return.
In Beat to Quarters (the US title) we find Hornblower, having been promoted to Captain, on a secret mission to the Pacific [...]
By Peter on Apr 29, 2009 in Award winner, Classical novel, Crime Books, Excellent book, Fiction Books, Historical Fiction, The World of Books, Thomas Mann, World literature, book review | 0 Comments
Some works of art are almost logically impossible. Often literature and art capture and present phenomena in ways that contribute to their understanding. This most certainly is the case with the wonderful novel Buddenbrooks. If it is at all possible to convey 19th century German bourgeois atmosphere and culture in a single book, then [...]
By Peter on Jan 22, 2009 in Classical novel, Fiction Books, Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian Writer, World literature, book review | 0 Comments
Brand is the drama of absolute intransigence in support of the religious life as opposed to the hedonistic one. The motto of Brand, the main character, is “All or nothing”. He is a strong person, a very stubborn Norwegian, and he does not admit compromises nor expedients, but goes directly to his goal, over-riding [...]
By Peter on Jan 21, 2009 in Classical novel, Excellent book, Historical Fiction, Swedish writer, Vilhelm Moberg, World literature, book review | 0 Comments
The Emigrants (Utvandrarna) is an epic work of historical fiction. This beautifully written book of historical fiction was first published in the early nineteen fifties and met with rave reviews at the time.
The focus in The Emigrants is on the family, relatives, and friends of Karl Oscar Nilsson. Karl Oskar Nilsson grew up [...]
By Peter on Jun 15, 2008 in Classical novel, Norwegian Writer, World literature | 0 Comments
(Oslo : Aschehoug, 1932, New York : Knopf, 1933.) Ida Elisabeth marries Frithjof, her teenage sweetheart. They get four children together, but only two of them live to grow up. Soon Ida Elisabeth discovers that she has married a real shirker of a man.
When Frithjof embarks on an affair with another woman, Ida Elisabeth [...]
