# Atrocity: A Literary History - Hardcover

by **Bruce Robbins** (Author)

**Exploring literary representations of mass violence, Bruce Robbins traces the emergence of a cosmopolitan recognition of atrocity.**

Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, what we think of now as atrocities have not always invited indignation or been seen to violate moral norms. Venturing from the Bible to Zadie Smith, Robbins explores the literature of suffering, to show how, over time, abhorrence of mass violence takes shape. With it comes the emergence of a necessary element of cosmopolitanism: the ability to look at one's own nation with the critical eyes of a stranger.

Drawing on a vast written archive and with penetrating insight, Robbins takes up such literary representations of violence as Bartolom? de las Casas's account of his fellow Spaniards' atrocities, Kurt Vonnegut's _Slaughterhouse-Five_, Grimmelshausen's 1668 novel _Simplicissimus_, David Mitchell's _Cloud Atlas_, Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez's _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, Homero Aridjis's short novel _Smyrna in Flames_, and Tolstoy's _Hadji Murat_. These essential texts do more than simply testify to atrocious acts. In their literariness, they take the risk of contextualizing and relativizing, thereby extending beyond the legal paradigm of accusation. They recognize atrocity as a moral scandal about which something should be done and can be done, while they also place that scandal within a larger and more uncertain history.

### Author Biography

**Bruce Robbins** is Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He has authored several books, among them _Criticism and Politics: A Polemical Introduction_ (Stanford, 2022).

**Number of Pages:** 294

**Dimensions:** 1 x 9.1 x 6.1 IN

**Publication Date:** February 04, 2025

## Details

- **Price:** 32.0 USD
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- **Type:** Books
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## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
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- Atrocity: A Literary History - Hardcover

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