Hauptseminar First Novels by Young American Writers

This seminar shall deal with three beautiful debut novels written between 1998 and 2008. We will start with a poignant -bildungsroman-, Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World (1998) - a story of three people whose lives are complicatedly intertwined, as they seek love, take drugs, sleep with men and women, have a child and deal with death. We will also compare the novel to the movie of the same name. The hero of Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Everything is Illuminated (2002) is a young Jewish-American searching for his grandparents‘ past. A tragicomic unreliable narrator takes turns with magical realism, creating a unique style - amazing to think that Foer created this novel in his early twenties. A novel written in English and playing in Russia, Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov (2008) is about art, love and the love of art. After starting out as an avant-garde artist, Sukhanov marries the daughter of an iconic Soviet painter and becomes a critic, loyal to the regime. But dreams of his former life begin haunting him... Please buy - Olga Grushin's The Dream Life of Sukhanov ( ISBN-10: 0141024402) - Jonathan Safran Foer‘s Everything is Illuminated (ISBN-10: 0141008253) - Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World (ISBN-10: 0312424086) and read A Home at the End of the World before the first session. Anglistik Universität Duisburg-Essen WS 2010/11 alle Lehrämter, alle Lehrämter Dr. Berlina Alexandra