If on a Winters Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The story If On A Winter's Night a Traveler is about the immersion of a reader within a story and his determination to go on with the plot and discover what happens. This is foiled within this story when the Reader constantly encounters with books that suddenly break off and have no ending. What...
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens(1860) - A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
This is a passage of a novel written by the famous author Charles Dickens during the great period described in the novel, the end of the nineteenth century. An adult remembers his experience, his first meeting with the other character when he was a child; so there is a question of remembering....
A perfect day for a banana fish
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
A perfect day for a banana fish is a short story written by JD Salinger in 1948, it deals with one day in the life of Seymour and his wife Muriel who are staying at a hotel in Florida near the beach. Through the story, we understand that Seymour is a veteran and has lost his mind after coming...
Clive Ponting's 'A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations'
Book review - 10 pages - Literature
"In state affairs, by foreseeing [problems] at a distance, which is only done by men of talents, the evils which might arise from them are soon cured ; but when, from want of foreseight, they are suffered to increase to such a height that they are perceptible to everyone, there is no longer any...
A review of 'The human web: A bird's-eye view of world history' by J.R. & W.H. McNeill
Book review - 8 pages - Literature
In this book, the authors propose to traverse the field of world history and 'to know how the world got to be the way it is' through the theory of webs of exchanges and communication. Schematically a web is 'a set of connections that link people to one another' and is...
Ernest Hemingway: A Pursuit Race - publié le 18/01/2012
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
‘A Pursuit Race' is a short story in Ernest Hemingway's ‘Men Without Women' which is narrated from an omniscient point of view and which incorporates more precisely a heterodiegetic narrator. Here, the author knows everything and reveals to us the motivations, thoughts and feelings,...
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Book review - 10 pages - Literature
John Rawls (1921-2002) was a major political philosopher of the twentieth century. He occupied several teaching positions in Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Oxford universities. In 1971, he published his most famous work - 'A Theory of Justice'. As one of the most commented and ambitious...
Magic realism in 'The Enchantress of Florence'
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Salman Rushdie's novel 'The Enchantress of Florence' is a powerful and multi-dimensional expression of the incarnation of globalization in literature. Important themes arise as relevant to globalization through the technical advantages of magic realism, which Rushdie employs as the key...
Temporal and Spatial divides and identity in 'Lucy'
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Jamaica Kincaid's novel 'Lucy' illustrates the story of a girl with desperate desire to manipulate her personal identity. With motives so deeply ingrained in her determinedly expendable past and their manifestations in her present, her quest propels her obsessions divides past from...
Repetition and Ambiguity in Narrative Structures of 'The Monk'
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
The narrative, structural, and linguistic intricacies in Matthew Lewis' Gothic novel 'The Monk' illustrate a complex network of patterns and sequences that expand and contract the influence of ambiguity as a Gothic convention in the text. The novel's narrative structure can be...
Thomas Nagel on death
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Let us assume for the time being that you believe cake to be a good, and find cake-eating emphatically positive. Now imagine that one day, when you go to your local bakery to eat your daily serving of cake, you find that cake no longer exists. They are out of cake indefinitely, they tell you,...
'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison: A comment
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison is a novel detailing an unnamed African-American's journey from the south to the streets of Harlem. The reader sees the main character attempt to find his place within the world, as well as within himself. In this novel written in 1947, there exists a...
The Underrated Backstory: Backstory as it 'Effects Our Nig' and 'Washington Square'
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The information provided in a backstory is often integral to the development of characters and plot within a narrative. In both 'Our Nig' and 'Washington Square', an account of the events prior to those of the central plot provide necessary context for a clear and cohesive tale....
'The Cult of True Womanhood Disassembled' by Kate Chopin and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: A review
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Through the oppressive times when women were meant to be no more than homemakers and pawns to their bread-winning men, the 'Cult of True Womanhood' symbolized everything that the females of America were supposed to be. It stated that they must be pure in mind, body, heart, and soul; for a...
Women and Space in the book Jane Eyre
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
Jane Eyre is an influential novel by Charlotte Bronte published in 1847 and is certainly one of the most famous classic texts of all time. It is obviously written from the person's point of view, besides, when it was initially published, the subtitle was “An autobiography”. Jane Eyre...
Adventure in "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is a novel written by Mark Twain, published in 1885 and which is regarded as one of the greatest American novels. The story follows Huck (a character first introduced by Mark Twain in the Adventures of Tom Sawyer) and his friend Jim (a slave running for...
Cinematic Analysis: Theories of prejudice in "Freedom Writers"
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Prejudice is prevalent in many aspects of the society. At some point in our lives, we will all come in contact with some sort of prejudice whether it is only witnessed or perhaps even a personal act. The movie "Freedom Writers" perfectly exemplifies the effects prejudice can have and how...
'Rebecca' as a Gothic Romance: Far from the classic Cinderella story
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Daphne Du Maurier's novel 'Rebecca' can be interpreted in various lights; for instance, for many, it is commonly held to follow the form of a fairy tale. While there is, no doubt, adequate ground for this interpretation, the novel's characteristics seem to embody more the elements of the...
Hejinian's 'My Life': A Poetic Autobiography of Multiplicity
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Lyn Hejinian's poetic autobiography 'My Life' crosses over the boundaries of genre and into an indefinable realm of its own. It contains elements of poetry, autobiography, personal narrative, and women's fiction, while simultaneously entering into a continuous dialogue with the nature of...
Analysis of 'The Birth of Tragedy'
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
In his work 'The Birth of Tragedy', Nietzsche argues that, “it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that the existence of the world is eternally justified (Sect. 5, p. 52)”. Simply put, Nietzsche maintains that, without the guidance and creation of art, the terrible truths of the...
Aristotle & the Hellenists
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In book I (The Object of Life) of 'Nicomachean Ethics', Aristotle sets out to determine what the concept of good represents for man and, more specifically, what the supreme good for man is. Aristotle asserts that, although there are many different relative goods that humans strive for,...
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Book Review
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
'Middlesex' is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Jeffrey Eugenides and published in 2002. By 2007, 1.3 million copies of the book had been sold. Jeffrey Eugenides is a half American, half Greek writer, born and raised in Detroit. He also wrote the best seller “Virgin...
The Scarlet Letter - A review
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The mind is truly valuable, intrinsic, secure and powerful. No entity can take the mind away from a person, nor can anyone control the way it functions. Thus, a society that seeks total control over its people will never flourish and thrive. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" articulates...
The significance of age and aging in One Hundred Years of Solitude
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
In the remote town of Mocondo which Gabriel Garcia Marquez vividly depicts in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, the process of aging plays an important role in the development of the characters, their development and in the plot as whole. Throughout the aging process, some characters'...
The Cause of Samuel Death in Grace Paley's "Samuel"
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The death of the young boy in Grace Paley's “Samuel” was caused by irresponsible behavior, not by the repetitive interference of the passengers in the games of young people. The brave men in the train did not convey a message of absolute disapproval towards the boys' dangerous games,...
"Flying Carpet", Steven Millhauser - "flying up to the sky"
Book review - 4 pages - Literature
Steven Millhauser is a writer of realist fiction. However, his work cannot be limited by labeling it only realistic. Another dimension is added to his short stories. They are full of interpretations. In Flying Carpet, though the story seems to be quite casual, even banal - a child trying to reach...
"From the Diary of an almost-four-year-old", Hanan Ashrawi (1988) - publié le 29/09/2010
Book review - 2 pages - Literature
The poem, 'From the Diary of an almost-four-year-old' was written by Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi, a Palestinian writer, in 1988. The speaker in this poem is an almost-four-year-old little girl who was fired at by a soldier, during the Israel-Palestine war. She lost an eye and she wonders about...
"They came for the Jews," Martin Niemoller, and "God loves you anyway" Harold Kushnersay - the care of others - publié le 29/09/2010
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
The first essay is a poem entitled 'First, They Came for The Jews', written by a German Pastor named Martin Niemoller. It talks about what happened in 1939-1945, during World War II, where many people died, due to the nazi government in Germany. The second essay is an extract of a book...
Catch-22 : black comedy or satire ? - publié le 29/09/2010
Book review - 5 pages - Literature
Catch-22, often considered as one of the literary masterpieces of the twentieth century, is also often analyzed as being either satirical, or characteristic of the theater of the absurd, or even both. At first sight, this appears to be totally irrelevant, given the subtle but still significant...
Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies - Overture (Chap. 1) "It was early" - "were lost forever" - publié le 29/09/2010
Book review - 1 pages - Literature
This text is an extract from the novel The Brooklyn Follies, written by Paul Auster and published in 2005. Earlier in the novel, we discovered the main character, Nathan Glass, a 60 year old man in remission from cancer. He was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn to...
