Product Description: Magical Realism in West African Fiction focuses on the cultural politics of magical realism, as exemplified in the fiction of Syl Cheney-Coker of Sierra Leone, Ben Okri of Nigeria and Kojo Laing of Ghana and contextualizes their fiction within current debates and theories around the 'postcolonial' globally. Providing a thoughtful introduction to magical realism as a genre, Brenda Cooper uses Cheney-Coker, Okri and Laing to discuss the particular and distinct intervention of magical realism in a West African context. She examines the narrative techniques of novels that mingle the dimensions of magic, myth and historical reality, and addresses their position in relation to the more explicitely nationalist agendas of the realism of Achebe and others.
From Booklist This new set in the Magill's Choice series presents summary and analysis of 180 books and series. Eight of the essays are new; the rest are taken from Salem's four-volume Magill's Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature (1996)!
Murder by the Book? is a thorough - and thoroughly enjoyable - look at the blossoming genre of the feminist crime novel in Britain and the United States. Sally R. Munt asks why the form has proven so attractive as a vehicle for oppositional politics; whether the pleasures of detective fiction can be truly transgressive; and when exactly it was that the dyke detective appeared as the new super-hero for today.
Spaceships travel through time at lightspeed, piloted by human clones and talking animals. Serious injuries are healed with the wave of a medical gizmo. The media makes it all look easy. Can scientists hope to accomplish such amazing feats in the real world, or are they merely flights of fancy? This book is a fun look at what can, and can't, be achieved with current technology in today's laboratory experiments. Fans of the Jetsons, Star Trek, and Star Wars will learn the facts behind the fiction through entires that describe the scientific inventions and procedures on the screen, and how they differ from the reality. Van Riper shows us who innovators like Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Isaac Newton really were before they were mythologized. He discusses how animals such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants are portrayed in books and films, and what we really know about animal intelligence. This book lifts the curtain on science fiction, revealing how and where scientific laws have been discarded for the sake of a good plot.
Margaret Atwood: Feminism and Fiction takes a new look at the complex relationship between Margaret Atwood's fiction and feminist politics. Examining in detail the concerns and choices of an author who has frequently been termed feminist but has famously rejected the label on many occasions, this book traces the influences of feminism in Atwood's work and simultaneously plots moments of dissent or debate.
