Jeanette M. L. den Toonder

Bettina van Hoven

A variety of productions and representations of Canadian identities are the central theme that runs through this book. The different contributions explore imagined spaces by considering Canadian music, poetry and novels; they engage with political space by addressing various ways in which the people of Canada have made claims to different regions in the distant and recent past; and they address lived spaces, and their actual and symbolic meanings. It is an unusual book as it encompasses the writings by those studying the arts and literature as well as writings by social scientists, and it includes both English and French-speaking scholars. The richness that can be found in this multitude of perspectives and approaches to exploring Canadian space is characteristic of the way in which Canadian Studies is practiced nowadays. It is therefore an appropriate volume to celebrate 20 years of Canadian Studies in the Netherlands.

Re-Exploring Canadian Space. Redecouvrir L Espace Canadien

Susan Bainbrigge

Since the publication of her first novel in 1992, Amélie Nothomb continues to engage and to provoke her readers through her exploration of the fluid boundaries between beauty and monstrosity, good and evil, fable and reality, as well as by her fascinating presentation of childhood, anorexia, and the abject. In Amélie Nothomb: Authorship, Identity and Narrative Practice, the first full-length study in English of Nothomb's work, these elements are presented and interpreted from a variety of perspectives, with the contributors focusing on a single novel or comparing different texts. Comprised of a collection of essays on her autobiographical and fictional works, with contributions from her anglophone translators, it also includes an interview with the author, a preface by the eminent writer and critic, Jacques de Decker and a bibliography of secondary works. Nothomb's works and the critical responses to them are contextualized in a general introduction and organized under the following key themes: autobiography and gender identity, representations of the body, and narrative practice. This collection is an essential resource for students and scholars of twentieth-century contemporary literature and gender studies.

Jeanette M. L. den Toonder

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