Though Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat” is only 4743 words long (about 15 pages), the scope of the work reaches farther than most novels. Within this small space, Hurston addresses a number of themes, such as the trials of femininity, which she explores with compelling and efficient symbolism. This is woven together with an ecocritical/ecofeminist […]

Donald Goines lacked the education and literary pedigree to write as eloquently as the likes of Cormac McCarthy or Toni Morrison, and while other American writers of his generation were brought up on Steinbeck and Faulkner, Goines was brought up on Iceberg Slim. Drawing on his own experience, though, Goines was able to write as van Gogh painted, […]

In his eulogy for Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre said that The Fall was likely Camus’s “finest and least understood” book. Given that Sartre’s most famous work, Huis Clos (or No Exit), bemoans that “hell is other people”, and that the protagonist of The Fall, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, spends his life tormented by the thought of […]

Michael Brett’s Slit My Throat Gently will never be remembered as a masterpiece of detective fiction, and in fact may never even be in publication again, but the work remains a joy to read as Brett manages to do what the finest detective novelists often accomplish by creating an entertaining narrative that uncovers an […]