History and Race in Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood (Studies in English Literatures)
Brand: ibidem Press
Categories: Books, Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism



Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.5 x 8.1 inches
ISBN-13: 978-3838214337
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3838214331
Publisher: ibidem Press
Print length: 230 pages
Publication date: October 20, 2020
subtitle: Paperback – October 20, 2020
author: Maria Festa
review: Editorial Reviews Review In her reading of Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood , Maria Festa studies the unique ways in which the narrative of racism, Nazi camps, traumatic memory, and black consciousness meet the issues of historical imagination. Literature and traumatic fiction are here once again the source of a tenacious counter-memory. -- Roberto Beneduce, Professor of Medical and Psychological Anthropology, University of Turin, and co-author of Frantz Fanon: Psychiatry and Politics In her compelling and articulate work, Maria Festa achieved a lucid view of the entanglement between the Black and the Jewish question across European history and in the literary masterpiece of Caryl Phillips, one of the outstanding novel writers in English of our times. -- Carmen Concilio, Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature, University of Turin Maria Festa’s insightful textual analysis of The Nature of Blood succeeds in broadening the reader's experience of this rich and complex novel. She sheds light on recurring historical patterns of oppression and characters’ psychological responses to that oppression in the narrative to underscore a deeply embedded culture of dehumanization and marginalization of “foreigners” evident throughout European history. The particular attention given in this study to the role of the omniscient narrator’s voice in bridging gaps in the narrative along with Maria Festa’s research on the background of the historical events depicted help to render the genius of The Nature of Blood all the more apparent to new and returning readers of the novel. -- Pietro Deandrea, Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature, University of Turin About the Author Maria Festa has an MA in Anglophone Postcolonial Literature from the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures, University of Turin, Italy. She is contributor to and co-editor with Carmen Concilio of Word and Image in Literature and the Visual Arts (Mimesis International 2016). She has published articles on Anglophone cultures and literatures for the journals RiCognizioni, From the European South, Lectures du monde anglophone, CoSMo .