Lanie Schlessinger

The 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction decision was met with widespread concern regarding the committee’s criteria, opening up the question: do readers value bizarre literary innovation over genuine value in literature? Do we have to play on the page and make unorthodox

“Memoirs of an Anti-Semite” by Gregor von Rezzori is a novel disguised as a memoir. Divided into five parts, this troubling novel explores the nature of anti-Semitism in Europe leading into World War II. The main character and narrator, Bubi, journeys from

Atonement, by Ian McEwan, is an exploration of the human imagination and its ability to obscure reality. In particular, the novel demonstrates how one lays a film of imagination over the landscape of reality, forming a new picture so deceiving that one

“Notes from Underground” is commonly considered Fyodor Dostoevsky’s first great novel. Many of the themes in this novella are further developed in his later books, particularly in “Crime and Punishment.” As Swarthmore English professor Philip Weinstein noted in the lecture on “Notes

Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” is a disturbing tragedy that exposes the horror of the Congo in the late 19th century. Conrad writes from experience, since he was one of the representatives civilized societies, particularly Britain, sent to “civilize” the natives in