Discuss major new work by today’s top writers, including emerging novelists, award-winners, and established favorites, all of whom are central to today's cultural conversation. We will investigate a variety of inventive narrative strategies, explore the psychology of numerous fascinating characters, and examine important topics within a context of changing times, changing lives and a changing world. Together we will explore a secret agent in a rural commune of French subversives; a health resort in the Silesian mountains in which “otherness watches from the shadows”; the big impact of small decisions in Montana’s Flathead Valley; a New Yorker who believes she is secretly an alien sent to study humans; war, love, friendship and art in a strangely Irish Ancient Greece; a journalist spends two months at sea with a mysterious, shape-shifting engineer; a 42-year old woman disappears just as she was close to completing her journey hiking the entire Appalachian Trail; in the Pacific Northwest a reclusive grandfather reenters the world when his grandchildren are kidnapped; the choices and compromises of a film director in Nazi Germany; an antiquarian bookseller trapped in a time warp in a cottage in France. Readings: Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake; Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium; Eric Puchner, Dream State; Ferdia Lennon, Glorious Exploits; Colum McCann, Twist;  Jess Walter, So Far Gone; Amity Gaige, Heartwood; Daniel Kehlmann, The Director; Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume I; Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland. 
Students should read Beautyland for the first class

 
Continuing Education Units (CEU) : 0

You'll walk away with

• Increased cultural literacy, including intercultural knowledge and competence
• An understanding of current contemporary fiction, including its themes, meanings, and historical and cultural contexts

Ideal for

• The curious and creative
• Professionals who use critical thinking