The Novel Today (Fall)

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 rich boy, a poor girl and a strange Chinese/American scientific experiment; two small time hooligans and a kidnapping in one of the wild houses of rural Ireland; a community in crisis in Red River Valley, North Dakota;  the dark legacy of World War II as it manifests in the tensions between two women living in the same house in the Dutch countryside; a young Libyan man’s resistance to both the dictator Muammar Qadaffi and to the demands of the age itself; a struggling London comedian blindsided by a bad breakup in Paris; a woman who leaves urban life for a life of seclusion and contemplation in New South Wales; a debt ridden striver, tennis lessons, and a wealthy gated community in Massachusetts; a murder mystery woven into the mysteries of  love, loss and the roads not taken in the little town of Crosby Maine; a teenager in tumult on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Readings: Rachel Khong, Real Americans;  Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red ; Colin Barrett, Wild Houses ; Hisham Matar, My Friends;  Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything ; Teddy Wayne, The Winner;  Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional ; Yael Van Der Wouden, The Safekeep ; Dolly Alderton, Good Material;  Adam Ross, Playworld .
Students should read Elizabeth Strout, Tell me Everything  for the first class.
 
 

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