We live in a world with a long history of atrocity — from the colonization of the Americas to the Japanese massacre at Nanking. Our guest Bruce Robbins is curious about how these past atrocities show up in novels. In our conversation today, he focuses on how the novel plays with time. By paying attention to these shifting timelines, Bruce suggests that readers can begin to imagine a more just future.
Works mentioned
– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
– Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Further reading
Kwame Anthony Appiah talk on Al Jazeera – On Cosmopolitanism
Bruce Robbins in n+1 – The Logic of the Beneficiary
Bruce Robbins talk at the University of Pittsburgh – The Representation of Atrocity