Best of
American-Novels
2010
Bloomsday: The Bostoniad
David B. Lentz - 2010
This new "Bostoniad" portrays the American immigrant descendants of Leopold and Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus of Dublin. After Tim Finnegan's Irish wake Rudy and Penelope Bloom of Beacon Hill meet Harvard Professor, Dr. Thomas Dedalus. "Bloomsday" narrates in a pixilist style a chorus of New England voices blending to render new verses of the greatest epic of antiquity and the 20th century's most celebrated literary novel on the legendary wandering home of Odysseus after the fall of Troy.
The Damnation of Theron Ware
William Godwin - 2010
He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and one of the first modern proponents of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published within the space of a year: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, an attack on political institutions, and Things as They Are or The Adventures of Caleb Williams, which attacks aristocratic privilege, but also is virtually the first mystery novel. Based on the success of both, Godwin featured prominently in the radical circles of London in the 1790s. In the ensuing conservative reaction to British radicalism, Godwin was attacked, in part because of his marriage to the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft in 1797 and his candid biography of her after her death; their child, Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) would go on to author Frankenstein and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Godwin wrote prolifically in the genres of novels, history and demography throughout his lifetime."