English confessional and philosophical novel (an extract)

In 2011, Russian academic Olga Jumailo, who is well-known to many Anglicists for her essays in the Russian quarterly Вопросы литературы, and who is a member of our Seminar, published a monograph which, we hope, will be interesting for the readers of Footpath. Besides a deep poetic analysis of novels by John Fowles, Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, Graham Swift and Jonathan Coe, the monograph refers to many other contemporary British writers and their works. Personally I doubt that all novels taken by the author for her analysis belong to the philosophical genre as she suggests. What is obvious is that Olga Jumailo's research brings to the readers some urgent and much debated issues of contemporary British fiction's dynamics, and among them the complex co-existence of realistic and postmodernist trends in English Literature of the last thirty years. She argues that at the turn of the 21s t century the novels to which she attributes confessional and philosophical characteristics express the difficult process of selfidentification through life-experience in the context of swift changes in society in Britain and in the world as a whole. Anyway, we may say that this comprehensive study of a British literary phenomenon makes a significant contribution to Russian Anglistics studies, and that its significance goes beyond a single national culture. Above all - and this is very important - the book makes its readers think and analyze. We publish an extract from the 61 'Introduction' of Olga Jumailo's book with the hope that our readers will get interested in her approach and will read the book to develop their own view on the issues raised by her. The author has given us her permission to publish the extract. Boris Proskurnin This is an important book by a Russian academic on contemporary English fiction. However, in one respect this extract does not conform with our policy as editors. We strongly believe that all quotations from English literature should be given in the original as well as in a Russian translation. Our readers read English and many of them are engaged in teaching translation. Giving them the opportunity to compare the original and the translation will encourage them to make those literary and critical judgements that are essential to the spirit of our project. The editors regret that the original words in English do not appear in this extract, but cannot alter the text of the published Russian book where they do not occur. Karen Hewitt