Course : Fiction and Power in World Literature

**For a detailed module outline, please see the SYLLABUS in the Documents section**

Weeks 1-2: Introduction: Can fiction change the world? 

Introduction to the module

Michael Hanne, “Narrative and Power” in The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change (1994)

Weeks 3-4: Ideology, or the quest for identity: Zionism before Israel

Linda Grant, When I Lived in Modern Times (2000)

Weeks 5-6: Nazism and the "death" of humanity

Leni Riefenstahl (dir.), Triumph of the Will (1935) (film)

Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (1947)

Week 7: The "death" of an ideology: Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall

Wolfgang Becker (dir.), Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) (film)

Weeks 8-9: What goes wrong with revolutions? Iran between royalty and theocracy

George Orwell, Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945)

Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs (1985)

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (2000) EXTRACTS

Weeks 10-11: Totalitarianism and Resistance: The Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico

Roberto Bolano, Amulet (1999)

Weeks 12-13: Fiction and Power: China and the cultural revolution

Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2000)