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As Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Carl Jung, wrote: “history is not contained in thick books, but lives in our very blood”. Set mainly in Yorkshire and Tyneside, this historical novel deals with the descendants of the Byrne family, whose founder was a Danish Viking – Bjorne the Red. Trail of the Viking Finger follows the lives of the Byrne family over a 900-year period, from 1066 onwards. In particular, John Bean is interested in the shared DNA of the family and comments on how several behavioural characteristics, often violent, move between each generation. Although the story is fictitious, Trail of the Viking Finger uses much of John’s own family tree as a basis to this st...
The 1950s are in full swing, and the Adams family is blessed with many new additions. Chinese Lady now has so many grandchildren that even she can sometimes scarcely remember them all. Boots and Sammy are kept up-to-date by the Adams youngsters , some of whom are now working in the family business. But they also welcome newcomers , including the lovely Anneliese, whose German ancestry makes her less than popular with some of her South London neighbours, and Joe and Hortense , newly arrived from the West Indies and working hard for Matt and Rosie on their farm in Kent. Sammy, meanwhile, has trouble with the newly-formed trade union at his factory, and the shadows of the war continue to haunt the family when Felicity's hopes for an operation which will save her sight are threatened by an extraordinary revelation. But the Adams family is still full of hope and promise for the future.
This revised edition provides a way of understanding the vast universe of genre fiction in an easy-to-use format. Expert readers' advisor Joyce Saricks offers groundbreaking reconsideration of the connections among genres.
Configuring Memory in Czech Family Sagas: The Art of Forgetting in Generic Tradition explores how literature may configure family memory. Family sagas can be viewed as a structure helping us to share our memories. Special attention will be paid to crucial generic motifs within family sagas, as well as to elements of the narrative structure, which hold powerful memory-forming potential. The book proves that this potential can be fulfilled in two ways. The genre under analysis tends to strengthen the “bad family memory” and consider it as a burden, and to encourage one to forget their family past. Despite the prevalence of the saga as a cultural form right across mass media, the literary genre of the family saga has not attracted intensive critical acclaim. Readers of this book will not only learn more about the genre of family saga but also be encouraged to reflect on their own family memories.
Bringing together chapters on the bestseller, detective fiction, popular romance, science fiction and horror, this text provides an account of the cultural theories that have informed the study of popular fiction.
Focusing on modern-day fiction set in the Middle Ages or that incorporates medieval elements, this study examines storytelling components and rhetorical tropes in more than 60 works in five languages by more than 40 authors. Medievalist fiction got its "postmodern" start with such authors as Calvino, Fuentes, Carpentier and Eco. Its momentum increased since the 1990s with writers whose work has received less critical attention, like Laura Esquivel, Tariq Ali, Matthew Pearl, Matilde Asensi, Ildefonso Falcones, Andrew Davison, Bernard Cornwell, Donnal Woolfolk Cross, Ariana Franklin, Nicole Griffith, Levi Grossman, Conn Iggulden, Edward Rutherfurd, Javier Sierra, Alan Moore and Brenda Vantrease. The author explores a wide range of "medievalizing" tropes, discusses the negative responses of postmodernism and posits four "hard problems" in medievalist fiction.
A family shattered by war and secrets... But hope is on the horizon 1917. The First World War casts its shadow over the Harvey family of Ford Farm. One brother has already been killed, and Tristan now serves at the Front. Though newly engaged to pretty Emilia Rowse – a friend since childhood – younger brother Ben is desperate to serve his country. But a horrific injury causes him to be declared unfit, and Emilia's life becomes ever more difficult. Tensions mount on the family farm. Everyone, it seems, has closely guarded secrets... Can Emilia find happiness? Filled with a rich cast of unforgettable characters and packed with period detail, Touch the Silence is the brilliant opening to the Harvey Family sagas. For readers of Anne Baker, Maggie Hope and Daisy Styles.
This book addresses the narrative construction of places, the relationship between tradition communities and their environments, the supernatural dimensions of cultural landscapes and wilderness as they are manifested in European folklore and in early literary sources, such as the Old Norse sagas. The first section “Explorations in Place-Lore” discusses cursed and sacred places, churches, graveyards, haunted houses, cemeteries, grave mounds, hill forts, and other tradition dominants in the micro-geography of the Nordic and Baltic countries, both retrospectively and from synchronous perspectives. The supernaturalisation of places appears as a socially embedded set of practices that involv...
Boots Adams celebrates his 60th birthday in style with an old-fashioned Cockney knees-up, even if Gemma, James and the rest of the younger people insist that the music has to be rock and roll. The new generation of the family are growing up quickly - Philip and Phoebe are spending a lot of time together, and Maureen has ambitions to become a model, having her picture taken for the newspapers as she hopes for fame and fortune. Meanwhile, there are changes on the way. A local company wants to take over Adams Fashions, and Boots and Sammy have difficult decisions to make. Rosie and Matt are thinking about selling the farm, but worry about Joe and Hortense, their loyal workers. While Felicity has resigned herself to never regaining her sight, Polly sees a familiar face that she can't place - a mysterious stranger who is being sheltered in Walworth. Anneliese encounters someone she never wished to see again, and turns to Boots for help.
This innovative volume discusses the significance of home and global mobility in contemporary diasporic fiction written in English. Through analyses of central diasporic and migrant writers in the United Kingdom and the United States, the timely volume exposes the importance of home and its reconstruction in diasporic literature in the era of globalization and increasing transnational mobility. Through wide-ranging case studies dealing with a variety of black British and ethnic American writers, Home, Identity, and Mobility in Contemporary Diasporic Fiction shows how new identities and homes are constructed in the migrants’ new homelands. The volume examines how diasporic novels inscribe h...