James Lawless 
Contemporary Book Reviews 

From their decisive emergence in the late eighteenth century, modernity and modern politics were long haunted by irony and paradox. Ours, however, is the age of the implosion of modernity. Modernity …

This book presents a range of analytical responses towards 9/11 through a critical review of literary, non-literary and cultural representations. The contributors examine the ways in which this event …

Treason and magic were first linked together during the reign of Edward II. Theories of occult conspiracy then regularly led to major political scandals, such as the trial of Eleanor Cobham Duchess …

Despite his towering presence in premodern Persian letters, Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz of Shiraz (d. 1390) remains an elusive and opaque character for many. In order to look behind the hyperbole …

The Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies provides scholars and students of American Studies with theoretical and applied essays that help to define Transnational American Studies as …

Postcolonial studies took shape in response to the nationalist and decolonization movements of the twentieth century. Today, a resurgent interest in world literature reflects an increased awareness …

Salman Rushdie and the Genesis of Secrecy is the first book to draw extensively from material in the Salman Rushdie archive at Emory University to uncover the makings of the British-Indian writer“s …

This volume is about studies of Shen Congwen (1902–1988), one of the most important writers in modern China, but more importantly, it is about how Shen Congwen has been received in and beyond Mainlan …

What is the point of living? If we are all going to die anyway, if nothing will remain of whatever we achieve in this life, why should we bother trying to achieve anything in the first place? Can we …

Plato“s philosophical dialogues can be seen as his creation of a new genre. Plato borrows from, as well as rejects, earlier and contemporary authors, and he is constantly in conversation with …