Reviews

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"Erudite and unpretentious, intelligent as well as intelligible, it presents a multitude of perpsectives on the portraits of three twentieth-century Eurpean cities, each of which 'was to undergo the greatest crisis of identity in its history.'"
--James Joyce Literary Supplement

"not the least interest of Barta's book is that, as a Slavicist, he is able to draw attention both to the primacy of Bely's Petersburg in the twentieth-century urban novel and to Bely's debt to a nineteenth-century tradition, that of "Petersburg writing" in Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoievsky. . . . what survives is a sense of insoluble tensions, of "mobility, colors, and constructive and destructive technology," and of an existence pursued without real hope of significant achievement in a "maze of signs" that constitutes urban experience."
--Modern Fiction Studies

"Peter Barta's book is a welcome addition to the individual study of the three novels themselves, as well as to that of the city novel and the modernist novel."
--International Review of Modernism

"Barta's study has opened a promising face on a rich seam." -- Neil Cornwell, James Joyce Quarterly
--James Joyce Quarterly

"An accessible and enlightening, if somewhat limited, introduction to the modern novel of the city -- in particular, to the device of the peripatetic, or 'wandering hero' as a window on the heart of the city. . . . [A] model of intellectual dexterity. . . highly recommended for all levels of Joyce scholarship and. . . especially helpful for Finnegans Wake." -- News Stead: A Journal of History and Literature
--News Stead: A Journal of History and Literature

"Barta's nuanced, well-researched arguments certainly enrich our understanding and appreciation of these three most prominent modernist city novels in European literature." -- Slavonic Review
--Slavonic Review

"Barta's study is a good introduction to these three very important novels."-- Journal of the James Joyce Society
--Journal of the James Joyce Society

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