A three-time National Book Award for Fiction winner, Saul Bellow (1915-2005) is one of the most highly regarded American authors to emerge since World War II. His 60-year career produced 14 novels and novellas, two volumes of nonfiction, short story collections, plays and a book of collected letters. His 1953 breakthrough novel The Adventures of Augie March was followed by Seize the Day (1956), Herzog (1964) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). His Humboldt's Gift won a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 and contributed to his receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature that year. This literary...

Surveying the life, work and accolades of Irish playwright Brian Friel, this literary companion investigates his personal and professional relationships and his literary topics and themes, such as belonging, violence, patriarchy and hypocrisy. Character summaries describe his most significant figures, particularly St. Columba, the victims of Derry's Bloody Sunday, and Hugh O'Neill, the Lord of Tyrone. Entries analyze Friel's style in detail, from his column in the Irish Times and his short fiction in the New Yorker to his most recent plays, Philadelphia, Here I Come ,...

James Lee Burke is best known for crime novels in which protagonists battle low-life thugs who commit violent crimes and corporate executives who exploit the powerless. He is best known for his Dave Robicheaux series, set in New Orleans and the surrounding bayou country. With characters inspired by his own family, Burke uses the mystery genre to explore the nature of evil and an individual's responsibility to friends, family and society at large. This companion to his works provides a commentary on all of the characters, settings, events and themes in his novels and short stories, along with...

James Joyce, one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, continues to fascinate readers all over the world. His works illuminate the human condition in a way that many readers find life changing. But he also challenges the reader with a variety of experimental techniques befitting one of the most important artists in the twentieth century movement known as "modernism." James Joyce Literary Companion] provides historical and biographical background, plot summaries of the novels and stories, and critical insight helpful for any reader of Joyce's works. Featuring a...

Provides an extensive chronology and 175 entries about both George Orwell's literary works and personal life. Also included are discussion questions and research topics, notable quotations by Orwell and an extensive bibliography of related sources.