‘Ex-Wife’ originally outsold ‘The Great Gatsby,’ but critics sniffed at the novel, deeming it a melodramatic period piece − even though it tackled timeless issues like gender, money and power.
Margeurite Duras’s fictionalised account of a teenage affair with a much older Chinese man has been criticised as a kind of retro-Orientalist Lolita. But that does her iconic novel an injustice.
A century ago, the end of the 1918 flu pandemic was followed by a period of prosperity, cultural flourishing and social change known as the Roaring ‘20s. Will the end of COVID-19 launch a similar era?