• A green field with a hedge in the left background. The field is covered with thin, eerie mist.

Normal People and the strangeness of other people

Towards the end of Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel Normal People, the two main characters, Connell and Marianne, talk sleepily one morning about whether it’s possible ever really to know another person. ‘I guess everyone is a mystery in a way’,…

canada-landscape-cityscape

Canadian Modernism at the Present Time

Here, Brian Trehearne expands on his inspirations, and the wider context behind his article in Modernist Cultures (November 2018). My article in Modernist Cultures volume 13.4, ‘Canadian Modernism at the Present Time’, had a number of prompts, only one of which…

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CounterText Special Issue: Afterward/Afterword

CounterText guest editor Norbert Bugeja shares some interesting thoughts about the special issue, Afterward/Afterword, and the important, complex questions it approaches. It is mid-May, a sunny afternoon in Bethlehem. I have arrived here from Ramallah, driving in the midday heat…

Children’s Gothic Fiction – Top 10 Must Reads

By Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley While researching my forthcoming book, Twenty-First-Century Children’s Gothic, I have read a lot of scary stories written for children and young adults. Although the Gothic has always been part of children’s literature, it has exploded in…

Photograph of Jean-Luc Nancy

OLR 40th Anniversary – Jean-Luc Nancy

In 1963, Jean-Luc Nancy tackled the subject of generational silence in his article ‘A Certain Silence’ (republished in OLR in 2005). Nancy, a well-known French philosophy and writer, wrote ‘A Certain Silence’ only a year after he graduated in Philosophy…

OLR 40th Anniversary – Maurice Blanchot

Marcel Proust once said, “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Friendship, and the role it plays in life, is an interesting and varied topic explored…

OLR 40th Anniversary – Ann Smock

Welcome to the not-so-sunny days of August where, in the perpetual spirit of celebrating OLR’s 40th anniversary, we are sharing the work of Ann Smock, currently Professor Emerita of French at the University of California. Perhaps best known for her…