The Facts on File Companion to the World Novel, 1900 to the Present by Michael D. Sollars

Presents an alphabetically arranged guide to the twentieth century novel with entries on major authors and novels, including plot summaries and analyses of main characters and literary themes.

Grade 10 Up—Focusing on non-English-speaking countries, this set offers both personal information about famous authors, such as Umberto Eco and Kahlil Gibran, and lesser-known figures, such as Patricia Grace and Knut Hamsun, as well as thematic critiques of their novels. Since the writers and their works are often treated in separate essays, substantial information can be found on familiar novels, such as Nigerian Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. The ethnic coverage is a bit lopsided: European authors account for the most entries, while African writers receive less coverage than Japanese authors, and there is only a smattering of South American and Middle Eastern representatives. Bibliographic citations appear at the end of each article and are collected in an appendix, there is an index of works by country, and the thorough subject index should prove useful. Libraries serving a diverse and extensive literature curriculum will benefit from this title.—Carol Fazioli, Gwynedd-Mercy College, Gwynedd Valley, PA
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These two alphabetically arranged volumes are the latest in the publisher’s Companion to Literature series, which describes and discusses the plays, short stories, novels, and poetry most central to high-school and college curricula. In this set, some 200 international contributors provide articles on “almost 600 novelists and novels.” “For the most part,” writes editor Sollars, associate professor of English at Texas Southern University, “authors had to write in a language other than English, though some exceptions were made for English-language authors from developing nations, such as Chinua Achebe and Amos Tutola.” Sollars hopes the set will “answer students’ immediate questions” and “engage them and encourage them to dig deeper” as well as “outline the emergence of what can be termed the geonovel, the novel as an artistic expression that exists outside defined political, cultural, or social borders and definitions.” Biographical entries provide, immediately after the birth and (sometimes) death dates, a capsule description, such as this for Elfriede Jelinek: “Austrian essayist, novelist, playwright, poet.” Indeed, most included authors are similarly multifaceted, and the biographical entries acknowledge this. It is left for the many entries on novels to focus on that aspect of the authors’ output. Among the many authors whose lives and works are covered are Isabel Allende, Dino Buzatti, Italo Calvino, Mircea Eliade, Witold Gombrowicz, Milan Kundera, Haruki Murakami, Marjane Satrapi, Mario Vargas Llosa, Yu Hua, and Stefan Zweig. Each entry concludes with a bibliography, largely of books (with a few journals) in English (and sometimes other languages). Volume 2 concludes with a breakdown of writers by region, a selected bibliography, a list of contributors and affiliations, and a lengthy index. As befits a companion, this set is not only informative but amiably leads the browser or researcher to new literary friends. Recommended for high-school, public, and academic libraries. --Craig Bunch