bexapril1's review
5.0
Note: I received a free ARC of this book through NetGalley
The Last Samurai Reread is Lee Konstantinou's entry into Columbia University Press' Rereadings series where authors and academics revisit post-1970 novels and write about them through a present day lens. I originally chose to read The Last Samurai Reread because I remember reading Helen DeWitt's landmark novel and enjoying it while also knowing that I wasn't fully understanding it. Knowing Lee Konstantinou's work as an academic focused on postmodern literature, I felt that he would be an excellent teacher to lead me back to DeWitt.
The Last Samurai Reread does exactly what you would want it to do. After reading it I want nothing more than to find my old copy of The Last Samurai and devour it. Particularly enjoyable are Konstantinou's investigations into DeWitt's struggles writing and publishing her novel and how that impacts the novel itself as well as where DeWitt's lived experiences diverge from Sibylla's and Ludo's in the novel. Konstantinou is able to write about some difficult and often heady concepts -- postmodernism is not often an easy period in literature to grasp -- in a readable way. Since graduating from college I have often missed deeper, academic discussions of literature and The Last Samurai Reread scratched that itch for me. It also encouraged me to seek out other titles from this series to hopefully discover (or rediscover) more great literature.
The Last Samurai Reread is Lee Konstantinou's entry into Columbia University Press' Rereadings series where authors and academics revisit post-1970 novels and write about them through a present day lens. I originally chose to read The Last Samurai Reread because I remember reading Helen DeWitt's landmark novel and enjoying it while also knowing that I wasn't fully understanding it. Knowing Lee Konstantinou's work as an academic focused on postmodern literature, I felt that he would be an excellent teacher to lead me back to DeWitt.
The Last Samurai Reread does exactly what you would want it to do. After reading it I want nothing more than to find my old copy of The Last Samurai and devour it. Particularly enjoyable are Konstantinou's investigations into DeWitt's struggles writing and publishing her novel and how that impacts the novel itself as well as where DeWitt's lived experiences diverge from Sibylla's and Ludo's in the novel. Konstantinou is able to write about some difficult and often heady concepts -- postmodernism is not often an easy period in literature to grasp -- in a readable way. Since graduating from college I have often missed deeper, academic discussions of literature and The Last Samurai Reread scratched that itch for me. It also encouraged me to seek out other titles from this series to hopefully discover (or rediscover) more great literature.
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