To truly understand this novel, we need to analyze its extratextual context, such as the author's political environment at the time.

extratextual 是由前缀 extra-（表示"超出、在...之外"）和形容词 textual（文本的）组成的复合词。textual 来自名词 text（文本）加上形容词后缀 -ual。 extratextual 字面意思是"超出文本之外的"，指与文本内容相关但不在文本直接表述范围内的背景因素。