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Blanche H. Gelfant's book Cross-Cultural Reckonings both demonstrates and questions the applicability of postmodern cultural and literary theories to realistic texts - to fiction and autobiographies valued for their truth. Drawing together an unusual combination of Russian, American and Canadian writers, the various essays of this book provide original perspectives upon the puzzling issues of national identity, of historical change and continuity, of gender and the integrity of literary genres, the boundaries between text and context and the underlying if overlooked conflicts between the post-modern critic's scepticism and a writer's belief in the transcendence of art and truth. These writers are discussed singly and in comparative essays, each of which is discrete and self-contained, while all interconnect and reflect upon each other as exemplary demonstrations of cross-cultural literary criticism and the deferred final judgement that results from a weighing and reweighing of books.