For all his breadth, however, Mahfouz’s best-loved books are straightforward realist literature, featuring simple, clear language and literal descriptions of recognizable characters and environments.

We’ve waited seven years for Zadie Smith’s NW, the same number of years it took Joseph O’Neill to write Netherland and for Tom McCarthy to place Remainder with a mainstream publisher. It’s been four ...

The connotations of the word “realism” in French literature are so varied that the magnitude of the subject is even greater than appears at first sight. In its later developments realistic literature ...

Olga Tokarczuk’s new rules for realism. In The Empusium, the Polish novelist’s first novel since her Nobel, she pays homage to Thomas Mann in order to redraw the boundaries of the realist novel. In ...

Although it has a hoary past, going back to Machiavelli and Hobbes, in its most recent incarnation, “realism” was devised as an explanatory tool primarily by American scholars of international ...

Rose Michael does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...