Selected Essays on Canadian, Australian and New Zealand Literatures

"This intriguing book of essays introduces readers to a number of well- and little-known literary authors and texts written in English. The various chapters deal with a variety of interesting subjects, ranging from surveys of Canadian diasporic literature in the context of postcolonial and transcultural studies to an introduction to authors of Slovenian descent and their often neglected contribution to the literatures of Canada and Australia. The author includes lucid and sensitive analyses of individual literary works, such as C. K. Stead’s New Zealand novel Talking About O’Dwyer (2003), a complex narrative mixing of realistic and metafictional elements on several narrative levels, or the novel Open City (2011) by Nigerian-American author Teju Cole, which reads almost like a musical score and moves between continents and time perspectives. Professor Maver also points out the parallels between Byron’s poetry and that of the Australian author A. D. Hope, both spiritual exiles from their homelands, reads Ouyang Yu’s Knightsbury Tales in the context of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and engages with the notions of debt, sin and a balance of scales in Atwood’s non-fiction work Payback. The study is evidence of the author’s remarkable breadth of interests and opens new vistas for readers into a wide range of texts from all over the Anglophone world."