Atrocity A Literary History

" Exploring literary representations of mass violence, Robbins traces the emergence of a cosmopolitan recognition of atrocity. Mass violence did not always have a name. Like conquest, atrocity was not always seen as violating a moral norm or inviting indignation. Could the concept of atrocity even exist before people could accuse their own country of mass violence committed against the inhabitants of another country? Drawing on a vast archive, Bruce Robbins seeks to give atrocity a literary history. With penetrating insight, Robbins takes up such literary representations of atrocity as Bartolomâe 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 Garcâia Mâarquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Homero Aridjis's short novel Smyrna in Flames, and Tolstoy's Hadji Murat .