The irresistible rise of Harry Potter
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The irresistible rise of Harry Potter
Verso, 2002
Available at 12 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
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  Tokyo
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  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
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  Gifu
  Shizuoka
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  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
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  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
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  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [115]-[116]) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
As the British state begins to unravel, and as journalists compete to pronounce on the death of Britain, a schoolboy from suburban Surrey who lives for most of the year in a semi-parallel universe becomes the most popular figure in contemporary world literature. Now read on - everyone else does...
Harry Potter is English, a home-counties suburban child. An orphan, oppressed and abused by the adults around him, he retreats into a fantasy world where his problems are more elemental; everyday rituals, magic spells and supercharged broomsticks with only the occasional homicidal wizard to worry about. Ironically, as Andrew Blake makes clear, J. K. Rowling rescues her character through the reinvention of that apex of class privilege, the English public school, a literary conceit that problematises Harry Potter's status as a role model and raises important social questions about the state of education in Tony Blair's Britain.
Andrew Blake's examination of the Harry Potter phenomenon also raises serious questions about the condition of the publishing industry, the state of bookselling and filmmaking, and the ways in which the Potter consumer campaign has changed our ideas about literature and reading. Blake reflects on how these connections, while drawn up in Britain, act as a template for Harry Potter's international success.
by "Nielsen BookData"