Set in the immigrant community of Winnipeg’s North End, Under the Ribs of Death follows the progress of young Sandor Hunyadi as he struggles to cast off his Hungarian background and become a “real Canadian.” Embittered by poverty and social humiliation, Sandor rejects his father’s impractical idealism and devotes himself single-mindedly to becoming a successful businessman. Equipped with a new name and a hardened heart, he is close to realizing his ambition when fortune’s wheel takes an unexpected – and possibly redemptive – turn. Combining social realism and moral parable, Under the Ribs of Death is John Marlyn’s ironic portrayal of the immigrant experience in the years leading up to the Great Depression. As a commentary on the problems of cultural assimilation, this novel is as relevant today as it was when first published in 1957.

Examines stereotypes in Canadian literature reflecting both the racist view that Jews and other aliens could never become good "white" Canadians because of their inherent defects, and the belief that with time they could assimilate. Discusses the origins of ethnic tension in Canada. Up to 1939, English Canadian literature expressed the demand for British Protestant political and cultural dominance. The popular novelist Charles Gordon, a Presbyterian minister, viewed the British (especially the Scots) as the chosen race, and even when trying to present Jews sympathetically he treated them as stereotypes. John Murray Gibbon was violently antisemitic. F.P Grove saw the Jews as urban businessmen exploiting the peasant immigrants. After 1945 antisemitism became unfashionable. Works by Jews such as Mordecai Richler exposed anti-Jewish discrimination, and English Canadians produced works attacking antisemitism and racism.

Eugene O'Neill - Clifford Odets - Left-wing theatre - Black drama - Thornton Wilder - Lillian Hellman - Luigi Pirandello - Arthur Miller.

A haunting, provocative novel, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a fictional autobiography in an alternate twentieth century that chronicles one woman’s unusual life, including the price she pays to survive and the cost her choices hold for the society she is trying to save. Born at the end of the old world, Miriam grows up during The Great Reckoning, a sprawling, decades-long war that nearly decimates humanity and strips her of friends and family. Devastated by grief and loneliness, she emotionally exiles herself, avoiding relationships or allegiances, and throws herself into her work—disengagement that serves her when the war finally ends, and The New Society arises. To ensure a lasting peace, The New Society forbids anything that may cause tribal loyalties, including traditional families. Suddenly, everyone must live as Miriam has chosen to—disconnected and unattached. A researcher at heart, Miriam becomes involved in implementing this detachment process. She does not know it is the beginning of a darkly sinister program that will transform this new world and the lives of everyone in it. Eventually, the harmful effects of her research become too much for Miriam, and she devises a secret plan to destroy the system from within, endangering her own life. But is her “confession” honest—or is it a fabrication riddled with lies meant to conceal the truth? A jarring and uncanny tale of loss, trauma, and the power of human connection and deception, You Feel It Just Below the Ribs is a portrait of a disturbing alternate world eerily within reach, and an examination of the difficult choices we must make to survive in it.