Download or read book Loving Against the Odds written by Elizabeth Russell and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2006 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in this volume include a selection of those presented at a conference in the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, in 2002. They highlight the existence of a European network of women's writing which became a valuable source of consciousness-raising, not only for European women writers, but also for their readers. The main theme running through the essays is love: women loving against the odds and transcending all kinds of obstacles. Does love speak a common language or is it inevitably linked to social mores and individual experience? Does desire work in the same way? Do love and desire have the power to subvert dichotomous thinking and motivate real change? The texts studied in this volume are both fictional and factual, from plays and novels to diaries, letters and drama performances. The countries the essays travel through, and the languages they encounter, all contribute to forming a magic web of connections, solidarities and ideas that truly cross boundaries.