Based on Dovlatov's experiences as a journalist in the Soviet Republic of Estonia, this is an acidly comic picture of ludicrous bureaucratic ineptitude, which obviously still continues.

    Inspired by a real episode in Brazilian history, Mario Vargas Llosa tells the unforgettable story of an apocalyptic movement, led by a mysterious prophet, in which prostitutes, beggars and bandits establish Canudos, a new republic, a libertarian paradise.~publisher's web site

    -- and embellishes it with his own ironic humor, brilliant insights, and piercing observations. We meet a vast array of historical figures in a staggering novel of love, war, philosophy, and adventure . . . "There isn't a page of CREATION that doesn't inform and very few pages that do not delight."-- John Leonard, The New York Times

    Here are urban upheavals reimagined as frontier myth; travelogues through countries that might have been created by Kafka; cryptic dialogues that bore down to the bedrock of our longings, dreams, and angsts. Like all of Donald's work, the sixty stories collected in this volume are triumphs of language and perception, at once unsettling and irresistible.

    Boyle's riotous first novel, now in a new edition for its 25th anniversary Twenty five years ago, T.C. Boyle published his first novel, Water Music, a funny, bawdy, extremely entertaining novel of imaginative and stylistic fancy that announced to the world Boyle's tremendous gifts as a storyteller. Set in the late eighteenth century, Water Music follows the wild adventures of Ned Rise, thief and whoremaster, and Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, through London's seamy gutters and Scotland's scenic highlands to their grand meeting in the heart of darkest Africa. There they join forces and wend their hilarious way to the source of the Niger.

    “This volume... never once fails to instruct and stimulate. This is a great Russian talking of great Russians” (Anthony Burgess). Edited and with an Introduction by Fredson Bowers; illustrations.

    Alternate-cover edition can be found here In his second collection, Carver establishes his reputation as one of the most celebrated and beloved short-story writers in American literature—a haunting meditation on love, loss, and companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark.

    . . But I think it is sometimes done—or very, very nearly done—in stories.”C.S. Lewis is widely known for his fiction, especially his stories of science fiction and fantasy, for which he was a pioneering author in an age of realistic fiction. In On Stories, he lays out his theories and philosophy on fiction over the course of nine essays, including “On Stories,” “The Death of Words,” and “On Three Ways of Writing for Children.” In addition to these essays, On Stories collects eleven pieces of Lewis’s writing that were unpublished during his lifetime. Along with discussing his own fiction, Lewis reviewed and critiqued works by many of his famous peers, including George Orwell, Charles Williams, Rider Haggard, and his good friend J.R.R. Tolkien, providing a wide-ranging look at what fiction means and how to craft it from one of the masters of his day.

    Peopled largely with young southern females who chafe against the restrictions of their upper-class lives, these stories convey the humor and tragedy to be found wherever retreat into imagination is preferred over reality. Introduced here are Nora Jane Whittington, Rhoda Manning, and other recurring Gilchrist characters beloved for their failures, tenacity, and all-too-human hope in the face of frustrated love.

    Among the characters you'll find in this collection of twelve stories by Tobias Wolff, are a teenage boy who tells morbid lies about his home life, a timid professor who, in the first genuine outburst of her life, pours out her opinions in spite of a protesting audience, a prudish loner who gives an obnoxious hitchhiker a ride, and an elderly couple on a golden anniversary cruise who endure the offensive conviviality of the ship's social director.Fondly yet sharply drawn, Wolff's characters stumble over each other in their baffled yet resolute search for the "right path."

    Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

    When he arrives, he finds her shaken but surviving; it is his father, left alone, who is unable to cope, who begins to fail, to slip away from life. Joined by his nineteen-year-old son, John suddenly becomes enmeshed in the frightening, consuming, endless minutiae of caring for a beloved, dying parent. He also finds himself inescapably confronting his own middle age, jammed between his son's feckless impatience to get on with his life and his father's heartbreaking willingness to let go. A story of the love that binds generations, Dad celebrates the universe of possibilities within every individual life.

    As Malcolm Cowley says in his introduction, the first edition of Leaves of Grass 'might be called the buried masterpiece of American writing', for it exhibits 'Whitman at his best, Whitman at his freshest in vision and boldest in language, Whitman transformed by a new experience.' Mr Cowley has taken the first edition from its narrow circulation among scholars, faithfully edited it, added his own introduction and Whitman's original introduction (which never appeared in any other edition during Whitman's life), and returned it to the common readership to whom the great poet really speaks.

    Levi was a master storyteller but he did not write fairytales. These stories are an elegy to the human figures who stood out against the tragic background of Auschwitz, 'the ones in whom I had recognized the will and capacity to react, and hence a rudiment of virtue'. Each centres on an individual who - whether it be through a juggling trick, a slice of apple or a letter - discovers one of the 'bizarre, marginal moments of reprieve'.The English edition includes just one section of the three originally published in Italian under the title 'Lilít', tales from the other two sections have been published in 'A Tranquil Star'.

    Presents thirteen short stories peopled by such characters as Rhoda, a precocious nine-year-old; Nora Jane, an expectant mother of twins; and Crystal, an outrageous Southern belle.

    In the 40 essays that constitute this collection, Guy Davenport, one of America's major literary critics, elucidates a range of literary history, encompassing literature, art, philosophy and music, from the ancients to the grand old men of modernism.

    This anthology covers all of the major topics that fall within this subject and includes essays and excerpts from fifty authors, including C.S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Sayers, and Frederick Buechner.

    Only Mr. Davies, author of Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, could have woven together their destinies with such wit, humour-and wisdom.

    From “Guests of the Nation” to “The Mad Lomasneys” to “First Confession” to “My Oedipus Complex,” these tales of Ireland have touched generations of readers the world over and placed O'Connor alongside W. B. Yeats and James Joyce as the greatest of Irish authors.Analyzing a Robert Browning poem, O'Connor once wrote: “Since a whole lifetime must be crowded into a few minutes, those minutes must be carefully chosen indeed and lit by an unearthly glow.” Each of the sixty-seven stories gathered here achieves the same incredible feat of the imagination, laying bare entire lives and histories within the space of a few pages. Dublin schoolteacher Ned Keating waves good-bye to a charming girl and to any thoughts of returning to his village home in the lyrical and melancholy “Uprooted.” A boy on an important mission is waylaid by a green-eyed temptress and seeks forgiveness in his mother’s loving arms in “The Man of the House,” a tale that draws on O'Connor’s own difficult childhood. A series of awkward encounters and humorous misunderstandings perfectly encapsulates the complicated legacy of Irish immigration in “Ghosts,” the bittersweet account of an American family’s pilgrimage to the land of their forefathers.As a writer, critic, and teacher, O'Connor elevated the short story to astonishing new heights. This career-spanning anthology, epic in scope yet brimming with the small moments and intimate details that earned him a reputation as Ireland’s Chekhov, is a testament to Frank O’Connor's magnificent storytelling and a true pleasure to read from first page to last.

    The satire is broad, and uses southern culture cliches but is often very funny. Some of the names of the girls at the school, for example, are Mimsy Borogoves, Barbara Celarent, and Pengwynn Custiss.The story is said to be based on Theroux's years of teaching at Longwood University, and places described in the book are easily recognized buildings on the campus.[citation needed]

    Whether it be in the depiction of the complications of divorced families, grown-up daughters, estranged sisters, office friendships or fleeting love affairs, the pieces in this collection showcase Richard Yates's extraordinary gift for observation and his understanding of human frailty.

    Andre Gregory is an intense, highly experimental theater director and playwright in search of life's meanings and spiritual revelations. His friend, Wally Shawn, is an actor and playwright living in New York who is more preoccupied with the search for his next meal. As Andre recounts his global journeys involving esoteric theatrical experiments and mystical adventures, Wally listens with more than skepticism, as his attitudes shift among wonder, puzzlement, admiration, and anger. What finally emerges is a sensitive portrait of a friendship that survives and transcends contransting assumptions about love, death, art, and man's continuing quest for self-fulfillment.

    Far from wealthy they are still reasonably content with their life until one night when their teenage daughter helps a wealthy and lonely Wall Street lawyer. Out of gratitude the lawyer showers the family with gifts and money. The Strands find their lives altered and not necessarily for the best.

    Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India’s 1,000 other “midnight’s children,” all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people–a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight’ s Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.

    Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister.Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to try and stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society--not just a pair of murderers—is put on trial.

    Included here, in addition to his classic novels and short story collections, is a group of "uncollected" short stories, some of which have never appeared in book form. We have sought, wherever possible, to use only first editions of London's work - the only way, we feel, to convey the truly original spirit of London's boundless imagination, his insight into humankind's passion for adventure, and his gripping life view.Three novels...and 54 short stories, some of them never available in book form, that exemplify two sides of Jack London (1876-1916): the quiet, contemplative writer of San Francisco and the bruising, lusty adventurer of the Yukon and the Pacific. - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWCover Illustration: Gill Cohen

    Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.

    A sinister totalitarian ministry called the Palace of Dreams recruits Mark-Alem to sort, classify, and interpret the dreams of the people in the empire, seeking the master-dreams that give clues to the empire's destiny.

    It won the School Library Journal Best Book Award. Another exploration of the very real and painful world of the learning-disabled child.

    His works have been translated into every major language, and the Nobel Prize awarded to him in 1954 recognized his impact on contemporary writing. While many people are familiar with the public image of Hemingway and the legendary accounts of his life, few knew him as an intimate. With this collection of letters, presented for the first time as a Scribner Classic, a new Hemingway emerges. Ranging from 1917 to 1961, this generous selection of nearly six hundred letters is, in effect, both a self-portrait and an autobiography. In his own words, Hemingway candidly reveals himself to a wide variety of people: family, friends, enemies, editors, translators, and almost all the prominent writers of his day. In so doing he proves to be one of the most entertaining letter writers of all time. Carlos Baker has chosen letters that not only represent major turning points in Hemingway's career but also exhibit character, wit, and the writer's typical enthusiasm for hunting, fishing, drinking, and eating. A few are ingratiating, some downright truculent. Others present his views on writing and reading, criticize books by friend or foe, and discuss women, soldiers, politicians, and prizefighters. Perhaps more than anything, these letters show Hemingway's irrepressible humor, given far freer rein in his correspondence than in his books. An informal biography in letters, the product of forty-five years' living and writing, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters leaves an indelible impression of an extraordinary man. Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899. At seventeen he left home to join the Kansas City Star as a reporter, then volunteered to serve in the Red Cross during the First World War. He was severely wounded at the Italian front and was awarded the Croce di Guerra. He moved to Paris in 1921, where he devoted himself to writing fiction, and where he fell in with the expatriate circle that included Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ford Madox Ford. His novels include The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. He died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961.

    Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament - the sordid truth that he alone possessed. Fascinated but horrified, they learn of a dazzling array of characters caught up in a scandal and political corruption.Famous Last Words is part-thriller, part-horror story; it is also a meditation on history and the human soul and it is Findley's fine achievement that he has combined these elements into a web that constantly surprises and astounds the reader.

    Frye persuasively presents the Bible as a unique text distinct from all other epics and sacred writings. “No one has set forth so clearly, so subtly, or with such cogent energy as Frye the literary aspect of our biblical heritage” (New York Times Book Review). Indices.

    Stephen Greenblatt examines the structure of selfhood as evidenced in major literary figures of the English Renaissance—More, Tyndale, Wyatt, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare—and finds that in the early modern period new questions surrounding the nature of identity heavily influenced the literature of the era. Now a classic text in literary studies, Renaissance Self-Fashioning continues to be of interest to students of the Renaissance, English literature, and the new historicist tradition, and this new edition includes a preface by the author on the book's creation and influence. "No one who has read [Greenblatt's] accounts of More, Tyndale, Wyatt, and others can fail to be moved, as well as enlightened, by an interpretive mode which is as humane and sympathetic as it is analytical. These portraits are poignantly, subtly, and minutely rendered in a beautifully lucid prose alive in every sentence to the ambivalences and complexities of its subjects."—Harry Berger Jr., University of California, Santa Cruz

    His poetry, whether dealing with art, war, memories of childhood, or the loneliness of everyday life, is powerful and moving. A poet of colloquial language, ample generosity, and intimacy, Jarrell wrote beautifully "of the American landscape," as James Atlas noted in American Poetry Review, "[with] a broad humanism that enabled him to give voice to those had been given none of their own."The Complete Poems is the definitive volume of Randall Jarrell's verse, including Selected Poems (1955), with notes by the author; The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960), which won the National Book Award for Poetry; and The Lost World (1965), "his last and best book," according to Robert Lowell. This volume also brings together several of Jarrell's uncollected or posthumously published poems as well as his Rilke translations.

    . . By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright prose, [Updike] makes Rabbit's sorrow his and out own.The Washington Post"Precise, graceful, stunning, he is an athlete of words and images. He is also an impeccable observer of thoughts and feelings."The Village VoiceRABBIT REDUX"Great in love, in art, boldness, freedom, wisdom, kindness, exceedingly rich in intelligence, wit, imagination, and feeling -- a great and beautiful thing . . . these hyperboles (quoted from a letter written long ago by Thomas Mann) come to mind after reading John Updike's Rabbit Redux.The New York Times Book Review "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. . . . A masterpiece.Time

    This is the story of John's relationship with his family, the town, and the woman he loves; and also between the past and the present, between oppression and guilt, hate and violence, love and acceptance.

    Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they “dream on” in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.

    Philosophers such as Emerson and the other New England Transcendentalists were deeply affected by its insights, a dozen or more scholars, including Annie Besant and Mahatma Gandhi, have attempted its translation, and thousands of individuals struggling with the problems divided loyalties have found comfort and wisdom in its pages.The Bhagavadgita ("Song of the Lord") tells of the young and virtuous Prince Arjuna who is driven to lead his forces into battle against an opposing army composed of close relatives and others whom he loves. The Lord Krsna, appearing in the poem as Arjuna's friend and charioteer, persuades him that he must do battle, and we see Arjuna changing from revulsion at the thought of killing members of his family to resignation and awareness of duty, to manly acceptance of his role as warrior and defender of his kingdom.The Bhagavadgita is a self-contained episode in the Mahabharata, a vast collection of epics, legends, romances, theology, and metaphysical doctrine that reflects the history and culture of the whole of Hindu civilization. The present edition forms a part of J. A. B. van Buitenen's widely acclaimed translation of this great work. Here English and Sanskrit are printed on facing pages, enabling those with some knowledge of Sanskrit to appreciate van Buitenen's accurate rendering of the intimate, familial tone and directness of the original poem.

    These eleven essays, selected by the author from five previous collections.

    Full description

    Ideal for contemporary literature studies. Each book contains the following: text with notes that enhance comprehension, a basic outline of society and culture, a literary analysis of the work by prominent scholars and a chronological chart.

    In turn, Ahasverus was cursed to roam the earth until the Second Coming. Stefan Heym's novel re-creates and expands this myth to propose that the right synthesis of love and rebellion can bring humankind to the Kingdom of Heaven.Heym introduces both Ahasverus and Lucifer as angels cast out of heaven for their opinions on God's order. Their respective oppositions continue throughout the rest of time: Ahasverus remains defiant through protest rooted in love and a faith in progress, while Lucifer is rebellious by means of his old, familiar methods. In a funny eternity of run-ins, debates, and meddling with characters such as Christ, a disciple of Luther, and a Marxist professor in East Germany, Ahasverus and Lucifer struggle on, awaiting the Second Coming.

    So, with great resourcefulness, she advertised for a companion and eventually staked out a corner of her own—one with a view. Mildred Walker's skill as a storyteller never falters in this portrayal of an elderly woman who won't give up.

    Rui S., a political historian, is unable to accept the circumstances of his life: his mother's death from cancer, his estrangement from his family, his rejection by his first wife and children, his political vacillations and his ambigious feelings for his second wife.

    In her seminal study, first published in 1981, Marjorie Perloff argues that the map of Modernist poetry needs to be redrawn to include a central tradition which cannot properly be situated within the Romantic-Symbolist tradition dominating the early twentieth century.

    Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0706415523This edition first published in the United States of America in 1984 by Octopus Books LImited.This edition reprinted 1985.Copyright (c) 1981 Introduction, arrangement and illustrations Octopus Books Limited.

    Here are enchanting tales about queens and kings and princesses in magical, timeless lands; marvelously warm and funny stories that move, amuse, and enlighten us as they probe the mysterious and profound relation between art and life." This is a hardcover edition of The Art of Living and Other Stories, written by John Gardner and published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1981. It is a self-stated First Printing, with stunning woodcuts by Mary Azarian.

    Anyone who admires The Big Sleep, My Lovely, or The Long Goodbye should rush to buy this volume.

    Revolving around the everyday experiences of a group of men and women whose lives reflect the human costs of maintaining a racially divided society, in a series of vivid and compelling episodes, Alan Paton examines what happens between people when such political events overtake their lives.

    The sign of the four --The adventure of the blue carbuncle --The adventure of the speckled band.

    In Company a solitary hearer lying in blackness calls up images from the far-off past. Ill Seen Ill Said meditates upon an old woman living out her last days alone in an isolated snow-bound cottage, watched over by twelve mysterious sentinels. In Worstward Ho, a breathless speaker unravels the sense of things, acting out the unending injunction to ‘Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ And Stirrings Still, published in the Guardian a few months before Beckett’s death in 1989, is the last prose work and testament of ‘this great soothsayer of the age, and of the aged’ (Christopher Ricks).The present edition includes several short prose texts (Heard in the Dark I & II, One Evening, The Way, Ceiling) which represent work in progress or works ancillary to the composition of these late masterpieces.Edited by Dirk Van Hulle.

    (1886-1961) is what can best be described as a 'find', a posthumous treasure. In writing this book, H.D. returned to a year in her life that was 'peculiarly blighted.' She was in her early twenties--'a disappointment to her father, an odd duckling to her mother, an importunate, overgrown, unincarnated entity that had no place... Waves to fight against, to fight against alone... 'I am Hermione Gart, a failure'--she cried in her dementia, 'I am Her, Her, Her.' She had failed at Bryn Mawr, she felt hemmed in by her family, she did not yet know what she was going to do with her life.

    

    Eclogues is a delight, and Guy Davenport proves a companionable and witty guide.

    Primo Levi emerged not only as one of the most profound and haunting commentators on the Holocaust but also as a great writer on many twentieth-century themes. Here is an anthology of writings that he considered to be essential reading. As Peter Forbes says in his Introduction, In the context of the twenty-first century, all of Levi's choices are striking; they exhibit a kind of chastened curiosity rare in our time, and an undiminished sense of wonder and horror at a universe that has such things in it. Most of the pieces, as Levi comments, reflect the fundamental dichotomies that face us all. Many have their roots in Levi's experience of Auschwitz, and in their startling juxtaposition they give the impression of a world turned upside down. One of the most important Italian writers. --Umberto Eco

    Wyatt had himself survived two imprisonments in the Tower as well as a love affair with Anne Boleyn, and his poetry - that of an extraordinarily sophisticated, passionate and vulnerable man - reflects these experiences, making disguised reference to current political events. Above all, though, Wyatt is known for his love poetry, which often dramatizes incidents and remembered conversations with his beloved, with an ear acutely sensitive to patterns of rhythm and colloquial speech. Conveying the actuality of betrayal or absence, and the intense pressure of his longing for a love that could be trusted, these are some of the most haunting poems in the English language.

    He has taken part in all the significant developments and knows most of the important writers personally. His familiarity with the history of sf is unsurpassed, including UTOPIA, FRANKENSTEIN, the stories of Jules Verne and the concerns of today's writers.ASIMOV ON SCIENCE FICTION is just that: the Grand Master's views on his subject. There is no other book like it.

    This collection includes the Tibetan myth of creation; some of the famous Jataka tales, or stories of former lives of the Buddha; and the most popular of all the time-honored legends of Tibet, the great epic of King Gesar of Ling, the warrior who became a national hero.

    Together, they embark on a journey to the dark, smoky blues clubs of the midwest, encountering Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Boy Williamson, Tampa Red, Kokomo Arnold and other blues musicians along the way.

    This complete history tells the truth about many of those who have attempted to climb to the roof of the world.

    20 Russian writers are represented in this collection, beginning with Pushkin, the founder of modern Russian literature, and concluding with contributions from such modern writers as Vladimir Nabokov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

    It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions.... And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." --Times Literary Supplement"The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." --Slavic Review"Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." --American Historical ReviewA dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

    As he travels, his adventures mirror an inner search along the hidden pathways of the mind and heart.Estchimah is a female shaman. Her path to self-discovery leads through dazzling worlds of natural beauty, dream landscapes, and the borderlands where these spheres overlap.SONG OF HEYOEKHAH is a Vision Quest, a search for meaning, harmony, and balance that returns the reader to "the time of the Medicine Ways," "the place of imagination," and the very heart of human nature, in a compelling, unforgettable, and magical reading experience.

    He sees hope in the study of Kabbalah, the Jewish bok of mysticism and visions, truth and light. But to Gershon's friend, Arthur, light means something else, the Atom bomb, his father helped create. Both men seek different a refuge in a foreign place, hoping for the same thing....

    But when she went to England to claim her legacy, her dream turned into a nightmare of temptation and seduction.Three strong-minded women in a stirring epic saga that sweeps from Pennsylvania to Kansas to England -- and lights up three tempestuous generations of American life.

    Tommy didn't kill him, but the police will shoot first and ask questions later. Mother Bess is kin, but she is a crazy, mean old lady hiding out high about the Homewood streets--streets that have taken away everything she ever loved. Together, Tommy and Mother Bess are hiding, in anger and fear. Will they find the courage to come out of hiding?

    "Aké: The Years of Childhood" gives us the story of Soyinka's boyhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Aké. A relentlessly curious child who loved books and getting into trouble, Soyinka grew up on a parsonage compound, raised by Christian parents and by a grandfather who introduced him to Yoruba spiritual traditions. His vivid evocation of the colorful sights, sounds, and aromas of the world that shaped him is both lyrically beautiful and laced with humor and the sheer delight of a child's-eye view.A classic of African autobiography, "Aké" is also a transcendantly timeless portrait of the mysteries of childhood.

    Butler relates the French and American Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the expansion of agriculture, trade, and industry, and growing economic and social pressures to the cultural forces which shaped their work. She reveals the common factors which engaged the separate efforts of so many individual creative minds, and the fierce personal and artistic politics of an age in the midst of profound change. Demonstrating that the literature produced during this dynamic, restless time is not as homogenous as is generally assumed, Butler illuminates the ways in which these various experimental works reflected radically new sensibilities and aspirations.

    

    

    

    Conductor and writer Robert Craft was his closest colleague and friend. Together they published five acclaimed collections known as the "Conversations "series, which sprung from informal talks between the two men. In this newly edited and re-structured one-volume version, Craft brings Stravinsky's reflections on his childhood, his family life, professional associates, and personal relationships into sharper focus and places the major compositions in their cultural milieux.

    

    Consistent recognition of these hidden significances in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man would require an encyclopedic knowledge of life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Dublin such as few readers possess. Now this substantially revised and expanded edition of Don Gifford's Notes to Joyce: "Dubliners" and "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" puts the requisite knowledge at the disposal of scholars, students, and general readers. An ample introductory essay supplies the historical, biographical, and geographical background for Dubliners and Portrait. The annotations that follow gloss place names, define slang terms, recount relevant gossip, give capsule histories of institutions and political and cultural movements and figures, supply bits of local and Irish legend and lore, explain religious nomenclature and practices, and illuminate cryptic allusions to literature, theology, philosophy, science and the arts. Professor Gifford's labors in gathering these data into a single volume have resulted in an invaluable source-book for all students of Joyce's art.

    The final section of the book includes the long poem 'Endless Life'.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    Victor Terras’s companion work provides readers with a richer understanding of the Dostoevsky novel as the expression of a philosophy and a work of art.     In his introduction, Terras outlines the genesis, main ideas, and structural peculiarities of the novel as well as Dostoevsky’s political, philosophical, and aesthetic stance. The detailed commentary takes the reader through the novel, clarifying aspects of Russian life, the novel’s sociopolitical background, and a number of polemic issues. Terras identifies and explains hundreds of literary and biblical quotations and allusions. He discusses symbols, recurrent images, and structural stylistic patterns, including those lost in English translation.

    Amid the flight and reenslavement of its inhabitants emerges the love story of Anninho and Almeyda, former African slaves. Song for Anninho offers readers some of Gayl Jones's very best verse.

    Part of the The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written Collection of Easton Press.

    

    Rossetti, Whistler, Lewis Carroll... these and other characters come vividly to life in this extraordinary novel. Set within a few square blocks along the Thames, in Chelsea, Neighboring Lives is a glorious re-creation, based on historical fact, of the private and working lives of many of the nineteenth century's greatest writers and artists.

    . . a dual self-portrait . . . by two gifted, courageous people whose story adds a heroic chapter to the tragic annals of our century."--The New York Times Book Review

    a major study of the poetry." --Sandra M. Gilbert, New York Times Book Review..". the first book-length study to approach H.D. from a feminist perspective.... Psyche Reborn is a valuable book not only for H.D. specialists but also for those interested in twentieth-century intellectual history." --Cheryl Walker, Signs..". lucid, deeply informed assessment... " --Joanne Felt Diehl, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature"Indiana University Press should be heartily commended for promoting Psyche Reborn in paperback, hence making this vital critical work more widely available." --Lesbian and Gay Studies Newsletter..". a richly documented, polemical, and intelligent study... Friedman's is a splendid and rewarding achievement." --The Year's Work in English Studies

    Includes an introduction, two complete commedia scenarios, and a glossary of commedia characters.

    Literary essays

    

    Gathers English translations of eight plays by the Norwegian dramatist.

    

    Its purpose is to enable students to read poems with understanding and pleasure and to provide them with a basic vocabulary for analysing and talking about poems.

    Two brothers, Justin and Douglas Bledsoe, have been blown to bits. They died "in the same division, on the same day," and their "grim unmended bathrobes" are sent home in a crate to the small Midwestern town where they were born. "There was nothing to bury but maybe a dog tag and some scraps of clothes."The story is deceptively simple. It's a kind of battlefield where the living play dead, and the dead begin to warp those "mourners below." Most of the novel exists in that lost hour "between very late and very early." This has always been the strength of Mr. Purdy's writing. He cuts below the skin and doesn't become involved with the sociology of any particular time or place. He uses locale to isolate hysteria and deal with that terrible anger of being unloved. The rhythms of his prose have nothing to do with mimicry, or the rendering of American speech. He has never sought to be a caricaturist, to parody the best or the worst of our lives. That slight awkwardness of Mr. Purdy's corrosive style, the deadpan electricity his characters speak with is the crazy jumping sound of the heart's own music. James Purdy is one of the very best writers we have. He exists in some strange limbo between adoration and neglect. His books are "noticed," but they are rarely celebrated the way they should be. Perhaps this is because Mr. Purdy doesn't play the peacock in his books or strut around with his talents. You have to peek under the feathers to catch the wildness of his prose. [From the NYT book review, July 26, 1981.]

    Throughout his evolution, Johnny seeks emancipation from a multitude of emotional, political, and religious prisons, not realizing that with each successive grasp at freedom, he escapes one form of captivity only to be confined by another. When Cromwell, the leader Johnny has supported so staunchly, limits the freedoms for which Johnny has taken up arms, he bravely questions the commander. Shortly thereafter he finds himself held in a prison of stone and mortar where, as an example to other soldiers tempted to champion their rights, he is executed. Based on a true incident of the English Civil War, Prisons captures the promise and tragedy of the conflict that led to one of the first substantial migrations to North America and lays the foundation for the next chapter in Settle's riveting saga - O Beulah Land.