Courses

Critic James Wood has cast doubt on the accomplishment of those contemporary novelists who have tried to carry what Wood calls the "Dickensian" ambition of 19th-century realism to the higher geographical scale of today's globalized society. This seminar will try to assess both their ambition and their success. Readings by Kazuo Ishiguro, Roberto Bolaño, Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Chimimanda Ngozi Adicihie. 

This seminar proposes to read 5 works of important recent world fiction that are so long, so ambitious, and in some cases so forbidding that they are difficult to work into an ordinary syllabus. The seminar will give each one 2-3 weeks, thereby permitting students the time both to read them with care and to discuss them in detail.