Ocean State Libraries

A collection of thirty-seven essays, reviews, and works of criticism includes discussions of key works by Sylvia Plath, Emily Brontë, and Ernest Hemingway.

An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century. Author David Shields argues that our culture is obsessed with "reality" precisely because we experience hardly any. The questions Reality Hunger explores--the bending of form and genre, the lure and blur of the real--play out constantly all around us. Think of the controversy surrounding the provenance and authenticity of the "real": A Million...

.What is the future of fiction in an age of globalization?
In The Global Novel, acclaimed literary critic Adam Kirsch explores some of the 21st century's best-known writers— including Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Mohsin Hamid, Haruki Murakami, Elena Ferrante, Roberto Bolano, Michel Houellebecq, and Margaret Atwood. They are employing a way of imagining the world that sees different places and peoples as intimately connected....