Here we are again with another roundup of (just a fraction!) of some of the new titles that have made their way into the EFL this July. As ever, you can view the full list of our latest books at https://www.librarything.com/catalog/EFLOxford.
Bennett examines six contemporary novels in response to the common perception that, in this digital age of technology and social media and their continual distractions, we are experiencing a crisis of reading. Bennett flags up the ‘perpetual death notices for the novel that have haunted the form since its inception’ (p.11) as indicative that the novel is not going anywhere anytime soon. The six case studies are used as examples of a broader trend in today’s novels to become more interested in the notion of attention.
Kayo Chingonyi. 2021. A Blood Condition.
A Blood Condition is Chingonyi’s second poetry collection, addressing the history of colonialism, the spread of HIV and the death of Chingonyi’s parents. The first part of the collection, ‘Origin Myth’, comprises a sequence of interlinked sonnets around the HIV epidemic in Zambia, with the last line of each sonnet becoming the opening line for the next. A second sequence of short poems, ‘Genealogy’, is located towards the end of the collection, each poem a tightly focused snapshot exploring grief and loss. Water and rivers are another recurring theme in A Blood Condition; the collection opens and closes with poems about the Zambezi River god, Nyaminyami.
Hadas Elber-Aviram. 2021. Fairy Tales of London: British Urban Fantasy, 1840 to the Present.
In this monograph, Elber-Aviram posits why London – today no longer one of the biggest or most well-populated city hubs – nevertheless remains a cultural lodestone for urban fantasy novels. Elber-Aviram examines the influential factors behind this, including how London’s jumbled mix of architecture lends itself to a sense of a city set in multiple alternate realities, and how the myths and legends around London, as well as more recent urban fantasy writings, feed into an increasingly self-referential literary genre. This book charts the rise of British urban fantasy from Charles Dickens through to contemporary fantasy novelists such as Neil Gaiman and China Miéville.
Susheila Nasta & Rukhsana Yasmin (eds.). 2019. Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now.
In these specially commissioned essays, fifteen writers examine the value of literature and critical thinking in modern times. Olumide Popoola’s essay, All the Feels: vulnerability as political vision, proposes ‘a different way of engaging with politics’ (p.193), acknowledging the importance of anger in fighting back against oppression while also advocating the power of vulnerability as a means of bringing about political change. In What a Time to be a (Black) (British) (Womxn) Writer, Bernadine Evaristo explores the connection between the internet, social media and activism today in relation to her own experience creating a platform as a young writer. Other contributors include Shivanee Ramlochan, Mukoma Wa Ngugi and James Kelman. The anthology was published to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the international writing magazine Wasafiri.
Aditya Nigam. 2020. Decolonizing Theory: Thinking Across Traditions.
In this work, Nigam highlights the necessity of unravelling theory from its Western origins and of creating a space beyond Western modernity and capitalism. Nigam argues that it is essential to draw on understanding and ideas from other thought traditions to reconstruct social and political theory and to create an ‘outside’ to escape the totality of Eurocentric theory.
Sarah Ogilvie (ed). 2020. The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries.
This wide-ranging book outlines the important issues surrounding the concept of the dictionary genre as an authoritative text, and gives a new perspective into the progression of English dictionaries over the course of time. The work is divided into three overarching sections – Part I: Issues in English Lexicography; Part II: English Dictionaries Throughout the Centuries; and Part III: Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties. The contributors pose questions regarding the dictionary text as an instrument through which to educate, to standardise and to display prestige and power, and analyse the relationship between dictionaries and national identity.