Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend confronts a history beyond the ken of storytelling
- Written by Julian Murphet, Jury Professor of English and Language and Literature, University of Adelaide
Dante's Inferno – Joseph Anton Koch, detail from Cassa Massimo fresco (c.1825).Sailko, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SAIt is worth asking whether there are topics beyond the capacity of the novel. Are there subjects so immense in historical scope and in depths of human suffering that a form engineered to tackle but a bare handful of lives in...
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