"Adulterous Nations is a significant accomplishment with special resonance in comparative literature and Slavic literature. It offers a creative and imaginative reworking of a set of novels vis-à-vis European space and geopolitics. Well written, carefully and logically structured, and thoroughly researched, this book demonstrates the author’s considerable linguistic and cultural expertise across several national literatures." —Jessie Labov, author of Transatlantic Central Europe: Contesting Geography and Redefining Culture beyond the Nation
"Adulterous Nations brings together two “hot” topics in literary criticism—sex and geopolitics—and argues for their interconnectedness in the nineteenth-century novel. Drawing on Kuzmic’s enviable linguistic capabilities and a wealth of historical research, the book explores this theme in five novels: three novels of empire (English, German, and Russian) and two from stateless “colonized” nations (Poland and Croatia). Although the stated topic is adultery, ultimately the book engages more profoundly with questions of belonging and outsiderhood and the complex, shifting perception of Slavic nations by their neighbors throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. The book is at its best in its detailed historical research and intriguing insights into the way geopolitics infuses the amorous themes. It is a model of historically grounded comparative study: it traces a theme across multiple national traditions, making a place for often overlooked minorities and reinstating them in the broader European tradition." —Comparative Literature
"Specialists in comparative literature or in any of the five national literatures treated—British, German, Russian, Croatian or Polish—will find the book valuable, and any curious lover of literature will be broadened and enlightened by reading Tatiana Kuzmic’s Adulterous Nations." —Slavic Review
"This stimulating cross-cultural study of how narratives of marital discord converge with issues of nation and empire in European "realism" between 1870 and 1900 straddles a divide in literary studies... The author is to be praised for bringing works from the so-called "minor" literatures of Croatia and Poland into a complex, historically meaningful relationship with Fontane’s, and especially Eliot’s and Tolstoy’s well-known novels." —Russian Review
