A critique of the Chilean novelist's A House in the country, studying particularly its representation of the many-faceted concept of `authority'. Casa de campo combines the techniques of traditional novels with the 20th-century intermingling of reality and fiction. The novel's central theme of authority as figured in the discourse, its play between reality and illusion, and its dialogue with literature and society as a whole form the subject of this study. Murphy explores the illusory authority of the narrator in controlling characters' voices, and establishes a parallel with the characters'contradictory power over each other; the ploys of the narrator recall and parody the authoritarian regime which is reflected in the novel. The narrator's authority is further defined in a reading of the novel in which author, narrator, reader and character become linguistic constructs in a textual play, and meanings emerge at variance with the authorized commentary. MARIE MURPHY is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at Loyola College in Maryland.

Fictional novelists and other author characters have been a staple of novels and stories from the early nineteenth century onwards. What is it that attracts authors to representing their own kind in fiction? Author Fictions addresses this question from a theoretical and historical perspective. Narrative representations of literary authorship not only reflect the aesthetic convictions and social conditions of their actual authors or their time; they also take an active part in negotiating and shaping these conditions. The book unfolds the history of such ‘author fictions’ in European and North American texts since the early nineteenth century as a literary history of literary authorship, ranging from the Victorian bildungsroman to contemporary autofiction. It combines rhetorical and sociological approaches to answer the question how literature makes authors. Identifying ‘author fictions’ as narratives that address the fragile material conditions of literary creation in the actual and symbolic economies of production, Ingo Berensmeyer explores how these texts elaborate and manipulate concepts and models of authorship. This book will be relevant to English, American and comparative literary studies and to anyone interested in the topic of literary authorship.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam, and his girlfriend follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met. Alexis and Austin don’t have a typical “meet cute”—their first encounter involves Alexis, an emergency room doctor, suturing a bullet wound in Austin’s arm. Six months later, they’re on a romantic getaway in Vietnam: a bike tour on which Austin can show Alexis his passion for cycling, and can pay his respects to the place where his father and uncle fought in the war. But then Austin fails to return from a solo ride. Alexis’s boyfriend has vanished, the only clue left behind a bright yellow energy gel dropped on the road. As Alexis grapples with this bewildering loss, she starts to uncover a series of strange lies that force her to wonder: Where did Austin go? Why did he really bring her to Vietnam? And how much danger has he left her in? Set amidst the adrenaline-fueled world of the emergency room, The Red Lotus is a global thriller about those who dedicate their lives to saving people—and those who peddle death to the highest bidder. Look for Chris Bohjalian's new novel, The Lioness!

Annotation Writing from positions of cultural exclusion, women have faced constraints not only upon the "content" of fiction but upon the act of narration itself. Narrative voice thus becomes a matter not simply of technique but of social authority: how to speak publicly, to whom, and in whose name. Susan Sniader Lanser here explores patterns of narration in a wide range of novels by women of England, France, and the United States from the 1740s to the present. Drawing upon narratological and feminist theory, Lanser sheds new light on the history of "voice" as a narrative strategy and as a means of attaining social power.