The Literary Cold War, 1945-Vietnam: Sacrificial Logic and Paranoid Plotlines

The Literary Cold War concentrates on authors who straddle the line between aesthetic project and political allegory, paying particular attention to the work of Vladimir Nabokov and Graham Greene. A paranoid plotline informs these and other Anglo-American texts, from Storm Jameson and John Dos Passos to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and they commonly trade in the figure of the non-aligned neutral observer who finds himself caught up in sacrificial triangles. Following the lead of prominent historians of the period, this volume gives shape to a new field in literary studies&mdashthe literary Cold War. (2/1/2010)