Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The 'first man' is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers is made bearable by his love for his silent and illiterate mother, and by the teacher who transforms his view of the world. The most autobiographical of Camus's novels, it gives profound insights into his life, and the powerful themes underlying his work.

    Through translations by two major contemporary poets and a scholar intimate with the Ponge canon, this volume offers selections of mostly earlier poetry —Le parti pris des choses, Pièces, Proêmes, and Nouveau nouveau recueil—as representative of the strongest work of this modern French master.

    This is the largest, most diverse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings--the Cajun French and its English translation--along with insightful commentaries.This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana through the years has remained vigorous and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of their best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales--all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best.Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It is even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.

    Written in French in the late 1800s and translated by Karim Hamdy and Laura Rice, her characters live, love, work, and die with passions as fierce and brutal as the midday sun, reflections as gentle as the evening breeze, and happiness as beautiful and fleeting as the spring desert in bloom. As in 'The Oblivion Seekers,' Eberhardt's descriptions and voices are as lyrical, harsh, and ultimately captivating as the North African land and people she knew."This selection of short stories, reportage, and travel journals, which glow with sensuous detail, superbly evokes the life of the desert towns and nomadic peoples of the Saharan region of Morocco and Algeria. As a radical individualist, Eberhardt identified with and defended the oppressed; yet she was a romantic as well, and ambiguous about the 'civilizing' role of France. Today she has become an iconic figure at the center of discussions about gender, race, colonialism, representation, and writing."—Bridge Over Traveled WaterIsabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was an explorer who lived and traveled extensively throughout North Africa. She wrote of her travels in numerous books and French newspapers, including Nouvelles Algeriennes [Algerian News] (1905), Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam [In the Hot Shade of Islam] (1906), and Les journaliers [The Day Laborers] (1922).