Neue Englischsprachige Literaturen und Kulturen
The NELK website has been completely reworked to provide a more up-to-date web presence and more user-friendly navigation. All important content from the old site has been transferred, and more content will begin appearing over the next few weeks.
Enjoy!
- The NELK Webmaster
Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black: And Other Stories by Nadine Gordimer
Review by Jan Wilm
There are a few books on my shelf so heavily underlined and so thoroughly magic-marked, a friend of mine once quipped it would be easier to just underline every sentence beforehand and read the book in full once I’m done. Nadine Gordimer‘s latest story collection is one of those books. (read more)
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
Review by Jörg-Dieter Riemenschneider
Kan ma kan fi qadim azzaman: it was so and it was not, in a time long forgot: Gibreel Farishta’s comment in The Satanic Verses also holds true for the events in Rushdie’s novel released earlier this year. (read more)
Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows by Alastair Pennycook
Review by Nadia Butt
This remarkable book explores the transnational spread of hip-hop to bring out the connections between global Englishes and transcultural flows and their implications for applied linguistic research. The term ‘flows’ in the title of the book, in fact, alludes to global phenomena of mass movement and migration in our increasingly transcultural age. (read more)
Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think by John L. Esposito & Dalia Mogahed
Review by Claudia Perner
Between 2001 and 2007, tens of thousands of Muslims worldwide were interviewed in the “Gallup Poll of the Muslim World”. Now John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed’s book summarizes the poll’s results and tells us “what Islam really thinks” – or does it? (read more)
Measuring Time by Helon Habila
Review by Karsten Levihn
A child soldier and a historian, one an impulsive adventurer, one a hesitant intellectual – the twins Mamo and LaMamo at the centre of Helon Habila’s second novel could not be more different. The parallels and differences of his characters are Habila’s brush strokes in an ambitious portrait of post-independence Africa. (read more)
Diary of a Bad Year by J.M Coetzee
Review by Jan Wilm
Señor C, an ageing South African novelist living in exile in Australia, has forsaken the art of fiction to contribute to a collection of essays entitled Strong Opinions. Because of his age and a case of cramped hands, he hires a young girl as his typist only to fall in love with her. (read more)
The Night Wanderer: a Native Gothic Novel by Drew Hayden Taylor
Review by Ivaylo Shmilev
Tiffany is a 16-year-old Native coping with the seemingly ordinary difficulties of her life in Otter Lake. Unexpectedly, her father decides to host a strange lodger. What will she learn from her encounter with the mysterious, sinister traveller? (read more)