Masterpieces of 20th-Century Literature

Discuss 20th century classics that have passed the test of time and are still relevant to today’s readers. Readings will include a novella of Dublin and its ghosts by Ireland’s most world-famous author; an investigation into the madness of love in La Belle Epoque by France’s most accomplished navigator of memory; novel chronicling the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that has been called the best political novel of all time; Love and betrayal in the depths of the second world war by one of the finest and strangest writers of fiction in English in the twentieth century; a devastating epic set during the Second World War that has been called the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century, whose author is often described as that country’s modern Tolstoy. Readings: James Joyce, The Dead; Marcel Proust, Swann in Love; Joseph Roth, The Radetzky March; Elizabeth Bowen, The Heat of the Day; Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate.

Students should read James Joyce,The Dead, for the first class.

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