Realism and the Impossible Nation

After thinking about literary realism from the very particular angle of national identity, we will read four big novels - two by the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago (Blindness, and Seeing), Namwali Serpell's brilliant novel of Zambia, The Old Drift, and Gao Xinjian's dazzling and disturbing Soul Mountain. Each of these novels, in very different ways, tackles issues of gender, state politics, and environmentalism, and the idea of human perception and sociality.