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Articles on Literature

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In this 1999 photo, author Michael Ondaatje poses at Coach House Press in Toronto. In addition to receiving a coveted spot on the 2018 Man Booker longlist for ‘Warlight,’ Michael Ondaatje recently won the Golden Man Booker prize for his critically acclaimed novel ‘The English Patient.’ (CP PHOTO/Kevin Frayer)

Ondaatje’s win of the Golden Man Booker Prize is complicated

The meanings of Ondaatje’s Golden Man Booker win is complicated and demonstrates the contradictions of literary value. Literary prizes permit us to imagine that literature is more than a commodity.
William Faulkner’s novel depicts a poor rural family from Mississippi struggling to find their place in the modernising society of the 1930s. US Library of Congress

William Faulkner diagnosed modern ills in As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner began writing As I Lay Dying the day after the 1929 Wall Street crash. It documents, through the voices of 15 characters, the emergence of a poor white family into the modern world.
The “Don Quixote” windmills in Consuegra, Spain. They were made famous by the novel in the 16th century. Wikimedia Commons

Guide to the classics: Don Quixote, the world’s first modern novel – and one of the best

Completed by Cervantes when he was in prison, Don Quixote is the tale of a man so passionate about reading he leaves home to live the life of his fictional heroes.
Australia’s romantic attitude to farming has done untold damage to the land. Shutterstock.com

Friday essay: Dark Emu and the blindness of Australian agriculture

The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.
Margaret MacLean visited and wrote about the Royal Ontario museum’s collections as well as visiting Egypt for Saturday Night magazine. (Database of Canadian Women Writers)

Playing detective with Canada’s female literary past

Did you know Lucy Maud Montgomery also published under the name Belinda Bluegrass? A new database of early Canadian women writers reveals thousands of stories about women’s lives in Canada.
A stick insect in Borneo: variation and natural selection has resulted in insects with the astonishing ability to mimic features in their natural environment. Shutterstock

Guide to the classics: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

In this age of the pseudo-factual, its more important than ever to acquaint ourselves with the foundations of the scientific tradition, such as Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Many authors born in Latin America have produced some of their finest work while living in the United States. Alvy Libros/flickr

5 Latino authors you should be reading now

Spanish-speaking writers have made exceptional contributions to American literature. Here are the best Latin American and Latino authors you probably haven’t heard of.
Australian pulp fiction: these works can be read as a symptom, laying bare the unspoken fears, desires, dreams and nightmares of the time. Author provided

Friday essay: the complex, contradictory pleasures of pulp fiction

Mid-20th century pulp fiction was trashy, tasteless, exploitative and lurid. There’s a lot there to love. You might read pulp as a cultural Freudian slip, loony bulletins from the collective Id.

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