And when we leap to Africa and an aura of stark, estranging violence, it feels like going from Ishiguro to J. M. Coetzee's "Life and Times of Michael K".
His arrest is a stark reminder that violence is an everyday fact of life in South Africa, where fear of armed robberies and carjackings prompt the wealthy to take refuge in heavily guarded gated compounds and arm themselves with handguns.
Recently, on a train in Portland, Oregon, a man's anti-Muslim tirade against two teen-age girls ended when he stabbed three men, killing two, who tried to defend them — a stark instance of violence directly following hateful words.
Two equally stark studies in violence and alienation — "Benny's Video" and "71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance" — followed "The Seventh Continent," and the three films together, which have since come to be known as "The Glaciation Trilogy," earned him a measure of admiration outside the German-speaking world.
Jennifer Lawrence is no stranger to physicality -- the 20-year old Kentucky native grew up wrangling wild horses on her family's farm, and used that Appalachian toughness to work her way through both the stark poverty and violence of "Winter's Bone" and the mutant action of "X-Men: First Class".
Amid stark polarisation and increasing violence, the army-dominated government has made it clear that its intent is simply to erase the Islamist side of the triangle.
It is not so much a fusion of styles as a series of stark oppositions: serenity v violence, classical v digital.
The smooth transition after so close a race, in stark contrast to the violence and acrimony last year that disfigured elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe, boosted Ghana's reputation as one of Africa's more successful countries.
More than an hour in duration, it covers a vast range of emotion, from stark tragedy and aural violence to moments of grotesque humour, while achieving some sort of provisional resolution.
The latest attack in Idlib, which took place while students were leaving four schools adjacent to each other, was a stark reminder of the violence gripping much of the rest of the country.
