The four strangers whose lives havebecome inextricably linked find themselves crossing divides of caste,class and religion to form the most unexpected of friendships.Produced by Tamasha - creator of the groundbreaking East is East and the award-winning musical Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral - A Fine Balance was first seen at Hampstead Theatre in 2006, where it enjoyed a sell-out run.'it tells a grim tale with wit, warmth and a keen eye for the join between public policies and private lives' The Times****'nothing short of a miracle' Sunday Telegraph'a moving but unsentimental homage to endurance, asking for no pity, only understanding' Sunday Times

    This volume features a wide selection of Wilde’s literary output, including the comic masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest, an immensely popular play filled with satiric epigrams that mercilessly expose Victorian hypocrisy; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., a story proposing that Shakespeare’s sonnets were inspired by the poet’s love for a young man; The House of Pomegranates, the author’s collection of fairy tales; lectures Wilde delivered, first in the United States, where he exhorted his audiences to love beauty and art, and then in England, where he presented his impressions of America; his two major literary-theoretical works, “The Decay of Lying” and “The Critic as Artist”; and a selection of verse, including his great poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in which Wilde famously declared that “each man kills the thing he loves.” A testament to Wilde’s incredible versatility, this collection displays his legendary wit, brilliant use of language, and penetrating insight into the human condition.

    Ricardo Reis says: "Alberto Caeiro da Silva was born in Lisbon on April 16, 1889, and died of tuberculosis in the same city on (. . .), 1915. He spent nearly all his life in a village in Ribatejo, and only returned to the city of his birth in his final months. In Ribatejo he wrote nearly all his poems . . ." Fernando Pessoa was educated in English in Durban, as the stepson of a Portuguese diplomat, and was completely bilingual. During his lifetime he was to publish only one collection of his poems in Portuguese, although many appeared in literary journals, under a number of alter egos, or heteronyms, chief amongst them Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis. At his death in 1935, Pessoa left more than 20,000 manuscripts - poetry and prose - in a large trunk, the contents of which are still being transcribed and deciphered to this day. He is the greatest modern poet in the Portuguese language, but always considered himself a poet in the English tradition."

    Andersen's most beloved tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Little Mermaid" are now joined by "The Shadow" and "Story of a Mother," mature stories that reveal his literary range and depth. Tatar captures the tales' unrivaled dramatic and visual power, showing exactly how Andersen became one of the world's ten most translated authors, along with Shakespeare, Dickens, and Marx. Lushly illustrated with more than one hundred fifty rare images, many in full color, by artists such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen will captivate readers with annotations that explore the rich social and cultural dimensions of the nineteenth century and construct a compelling portrait of a writer whose stories still fascinate us today.

    Dick is now seen as a uniquely visionary figure, a writer who, in editor Jonathan Lethem’s words, “wielded a sardonic yet heartbroken acuity about the plight of being alive in the twentieth century, one that makes him a lonely hero to the readers who cherish him.”This Library of America volume brings together four of Dick’s most original novels. The Man in the High Castle (1962), which won the Hugo Award, describes an alternate world in which Japan and Germany have won World War II and America is divided into separate occupation zones. The dizzying The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965) posits a future in which competing hallucinogens proffer different brands of virtual reality, and an interplanetary drug tycoon can transform himself into a godlike figure transcending even physical death.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), about a bounty hunter in search of escaped androids in a postapocalyptic society where status is measured by the possession of live animals and religious life is focused on a television personality, was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Ubik (1969), with its future world of psychic espionage agents and cryonically frozen patients inhabiting an illusory “half-life,” pursues Dick’s theme of simulated realities and false perceptions to ever more disturbing conclusions, as time collapses on itself and characters stranded in past eras search desperately for the elusive, constantly shape-shifting panacea Ubik. As with most of Dick’s novels, no plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing and constantly surprising texture of these astonishing books.Posing the questions “What is human?” and “What is real?” in a multitude of fascinating ways, Dick produced works—fantastic and weird, yet developed with precise logic, marked by wild humor and soaring flights of religious speculation—that are startlingly prescient imaginative anticipations of 21st-century quandaries.

    In this brilliant translation by Matvei Yankelevich, English-language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms s literary reputation a reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it.A master of formally inventive poetry and what today would be called micro-fiction, Kharms built off the legacy of Russian Futurist writers to create a uniquely deadpan style written out of and in spite of the absurdities of life in Stalinist Russia. Featuring the acclaimed novella The Old Woman and darkly humorous short prose sequence Events (Sluchai), Today I Wrote Nothing also includes dozens of short prose pieces, plays, and poems long admired in Russia, but never before available in English. A major contribution for American readers and students of Russian literature and an exciting discovery for fans of contemporary writers as eclectic as George Saunders, John Ashbery, and Martin McDonagh, Today I Wrote Nothing is an invaluable collection for readers of innovative writing everywhere.About the EditorMATVEI YANKELEVICH is also a co-translator of Oberiu: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism (2006). His translation of the Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "Cloud in Pants" appears in Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky. He is the author of a long poem, The Present Work, and his writing has appeared in Fence, Open City, and many other literary journals. He teaches Russian Literature at Hunter College in New York City and edits the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Press in Brooklyn.

    In these four stories, Stefan Zweig shows his gift for the acute analysis of emotional dilemmas. His four tragic and moving cameos of the human condition are played out against cosmopolitan and colonial backgrounds in the first half of the twentieth century.

    An old king seeks to set aside his crown and divide his realm among his three daughters. But treachery and madness lie ahead for King Lear

    Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck.Forced into a brutal concentration camp during a great war, Brodeck returns to his village at the war’s end and takes up his old job of writing reports for a governmental bureau. One day a stranger comes to live in the village. His odd manner and habits arouse suspicions: His speech is formal, he takes long, solitary walks, and although he is unfailingly friendly and polite, he reveals nothing about himself. When the stranger produces drawings of the village and its inhabitants that are both unflattering and insightful, the villagers murder him. The authorities who witnessed the killing tell Brodeck to write a report that is essentially a whitewash of the incident. As Brodeck writes the official account, he sets down his version of the truth in a separate, parallel narrative. In measured, evocative prose, he weaves into the story of the stranger his own painful history and the dark secrets the villagers have fiercely kept hidden.

    The compelling new saga set in turn-of-the-century London by the author of Mermaids Singing, about a young girl gifted with a beautiful soprano voice who is forced to work as a pickpocket in order to support her crippled brother.

    With the wisdom of a literary archaeologist-astronomer-anthropologist-zookeeper, he leads us through histories, fables, and meditations about the ten thousand things in the universe: the wind and the rhinoceros, Catholic saints and people named Chang, the Mandaeans on the Iran-Iraq border and the Kaluli in the mountains of New Guinea. Among the thirty-five essays included are a poetic biography of the prophet Muhammad, which was praised by the London Times for its "great beauty and grace," and "The Stars," a reverie on what's up there that has already been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and Maori.

    It was built on the twentieth-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950's, the magic seemed to be working.Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan, and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, it give the tyranny its happy ending. It's history, it's fiction. It's a comedy of ideas, and a novel about the cost of ideas.By award-winning (and famously unpredictable) author of The Child That Books Built and Backroom Boys, Red Plenty is as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant - and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

    

    Vikar Jerome steps into the vortex of a cultural transformation: rock ’n’ roll, sex, drugs, and — far more important to him — the decline of the movie studios and the rise of the independent director. Jerome will become a film editor of astonishing vision. Then through encounters with former starlets, burglars, political guerillas, punk musicians, and veteran filmmakers, he discovers the astonishing secret that lies in every movie ever made.

    Verne's classic story bubbles with excitement, suspense, and colorful locations. Illustrations.

    His five novels–collected here in one volume–are a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius. O’Brien’s masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds, is an exuberant literary send-up and one of the funniest novels of the twentieth century. The novel’s narrator is writing a novel about another man writing a novel, in a Celtic knot of interlocking stories. The riotous cast of characters includes figures “stolen” from Gaelic legends, along with assorted students, fairies, ordinary Dubliners, and cowboys, some of whom try to break free of their author’s control and destroy him. The narrator of The Third Policeman, who has forgotten his name, is a student of philosophy who has committed murder and wanders into a surreal hell where he encounters such oddities as the ghost of his victim, three policeman who experiment with space and time, and his own soul (who is named “Joe”). The Poor Mouth, a bleakly hilarious portrait of peasants in a village dominated by pigs, potatoes, and endless rain, is a giddy parody aimed at those who would romanticize Gaelic culture. A naïve young orphan narrates the deadpan farce The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive is an outrageous satiric fantasy featuring a mad scientist who uses relativity to age his whiskey, a policeman who believes men can turn into bicycles, and an elderly, bar-tending James Joyce. With a new Introduction by Keith Donohue

    The garden burns with sunlight; the macaws laugh sweetly. Otilia, Ismail's wife, is ashamed of his peeping and suggests that he pay a visit to Father Albornoz. Instead, Ismail wanders the town visiting old friends, plagued by a tangle of secret memories. "Where have I existed these years? I answer myself; up on the wall, peering over." When the armies slowly arrive, the profesor's reveries are gradually taken over by a living hell. His wife disappears and he must find her. We learn that not only gentle, grassy hillsides surround San Joseacute; but landmines and coca fields. The reader is soon engulfed by the violence of Rosero's narrative that is touched not only with a deep sadness, but an extraordinary tenderness.

    This emotional speech which sincerely conveys the spirit of Pamuk’s thirty two years of writing effort, had a deep, worldwide impact. This book combines “My Father’s Suitcase” which is a basic text about writing and living with Pamuk’s two other speeches in which the same subjects and problems are discussed from other perspectives. “The Implied Author”, the speech that Pamuk gave when he received the Puterbaugh Prize given by World Literature magazine, in April 2006 is about the psychology of writing and the urge and adventure of being a writer. Pamuk’s other speech, “In Kars and in Frankfurt” that was given when he received the Peace Prize given by the German Publishers Associations in October 2005 is investigating the power of the writer to put himself in another’s place and the political consequences of this very natural human talent. My Father’s Suitcase consists of three speeches that are seen as a whole by their writer.It’s a unique, personal book on what writing is, how to become a writer, life and writing, the writer’s patience and the secrets of the art of novel (from the author's website)

    In this new work, The Last Novel, an elderly author (referred to only as "Novelist") announces that since this will be his final effort, he has "carte blanche to do anything he damned well pleases."Pressed by solitude and age, Novelist's preoccupations inevitably turn to the stories of other artists — their genius, their lack of recognition, and their deaths. Keeping his personal history out of the story as much as possible, Novelist creates an incantatory stream of fascinating triumphs and failures from the lives of famous and not-so-famous painters, writers, musicians, sports figures, and scientists.As Novelist moves through his last years, a minimalist self-portrait emerges, becoming an intricate masterpiece from David Markson's astonishing imagination. Through these startling, sometimes comic, but often tragic anecdotes we unexpectedly discern the entire shape of a man's life.

    Reflective and often humorous, these tales reveal an enormous amount about Japanese culture, while the inner struggles of the characters always strike the universal.

    Miller's graceful, unpretentious reflections will touch religious readers who are still searchers: "In the winter, it was easier for me to believe in God and I suppose that it had to do with the new weather, with the color of leaves clinging to trees, with the smoke in the fireplaces of the opulent houses where I would ride my bike. I half believed that God lived in one of those neighborhoods."

    His collections are among the most admired, influential, and exciting of the last half century. The Collected Stories brings them back into print, from the astonishing debut Going Places (1969) to the uncollected last stories, unavailable since they appeared in The New Yorker, Threepenny Review, and Partisan Review.At every stage in his career, Michaels produced taut, spare tales of sex, love, and other adult intimacies: gossip, argument, friendship, guilt, rage. A fearless writer—"destructive, joyful, brilliant, purely creative," in the words of John Hawkes—Michaels probed his characters' motivations with brutal humor and startling frankness; his ear for the vernacular puts him in the company of Philip Roth, Grace Paley, and Bernard Malamud. Remarkable for its compression and cadences, his prose is nothing short of addictive.The Collected Stories is a landmark."Leonard Michaels's stories stand alongside those of his best Jewish contemporaries -- Grace Paley and Philip Roth." -- Mona Simpson, The New York Times Book Review

    His subsequent work—five novels, another story collection, and two books of nonfiction—continued to bring extraordinary praise and national attention to the writer New York Newsday called a "master." In November 2004, Brown sent the nearly completed manuscript of his sixth novel to his literary agent. A week later, he died of a massive heart attack. He was fifty-three years old.A Miracle of Catfish is that novel. Brown's trademarks—his raw detail, pared-down prose, and characters under siege—are all here. This beautiful, heartbreaking anthem to the writer's own North Mississippi land and the hard-working, hard-loving, hard-losing men it spawns is the story of one year in the lives of five characters—an old farmer with a new pond he wants stocked with baby catfish; a bankrupt fish pond stocker who secretly releases his forty-pound brood catfish into the farmer's pond; a little boy from the trailer home across the road who inadvertently hooks the behemoth catfish; the boy's inept father; and a former convict down the road who kills a second time to save his daughter. That Larry Brown died so young, and before he could see A Miracle of Catfish published, is a tragedy. That he had time to enrich the legacy of his work with this remarkable book is a blessing.

    Now an old woman, she waits to be reunited after sixty-two years with her son, fathered by an S.S. officer and stolen from her by the German authorities during the War as part of Himmler's clandestine 'Lebensborn' project, which strove for a 'racially pure' Germany. Haya's reflection on her Catholicized Jewish family's experiences deals unsparingly with the massacre of Italian Jews in the concentration camps of Trieste. Her obsessive search for her son leads her to photographs, maps and fragments of verse, to testimonies from the Nuremberg trials and interviews with second-generation Jews, as well as witness accounts of atrocities that took place on her doorstep. A broad collage of material is assembled, and the lesser-known horror of Nazi occupation in northern Italy is gradually unveiled. Written in immensely powerful language, and employing a range of astonishing conceptual devices, Trieste is a novel like no other. Dasa Drndic has produced a shattering contribution to the literature of our twentieth-century history.

    Sixty miles away, Cory, a city kid on a fishing trip, survives a boating accident that takes his father’s life. Now two boys the same age have lost their fathers­ on the same day.The story bends and twists through eight years, revealing the true impact of this tragic coincidence. For the hard-luck young priest who brings the boys together, it takes beating alcoholism and re-examining his calling to discover true love and grace. For the reclusive widow trapped between emptiness and forbidden love, grace proves to be elusive. And for the boys who grow to become best friends and star teammates in college, the very existence of grace is something they couldn’t have disagreed on more.Fall to Grace is picturesque, spiritual, and reflective—while never forgetting its first obligation: to be a flat-out page-turner. The story takes you to the far edges of loss where love can do surprising things for those willing to reach again. And it reminds us, none too gently, that only angels fall from grace. The rest of us fall toward it.

    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

    Manguso’s Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape is a series of crystalline recollections of her childhood misadventures; Eggers’ How the Water Feels to the Fishes brings a deadpan absurdism to the intimacy and vision of his earlier work; and Unferth’s rollicking Minor Robberies unleashes a horde of off-kilter characters and their indelible misadventures. Each author’s work comes in its own hardcover, foil-stamped volume, and the three volumes are housed in an elegant slipcase.

    This volume collects four novels that exhibit the full range of his gift, along with a travel book that has become one of his most enduringly popular works.In The Wayward Bus (1947), Steinbeck leads a group of ill-matched passengers representing a spectrum of social types and classes, stranded by a washed-out bridge, on a circuitous journey that exposes cruelties, self-deceptions, and unsuspected moral strengths. The tone ranges from boisterous comedy to trenchant satirical observation of postwar America. Burning Bright (1950), an allegory set against shifting backgrounds (circus, sea, farm) and revolving around the fear of sterility and the desire for self-perpetuation, marks Steinbeck’s involvement with the drama in its fusion of the forms of novel and play.Sweet Thursday (1954) marks Steinbeck’s return, in a mood of sometimes frothy comedy, to the characters and milieu of his earlier Cannery Row. A love story set against the background of the local brothel, the Bear Flag, Sweet Thursday is for all its intimations of melancholy one of the most lighthearted of Steinbeck’s books. It was subsequently adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into their musical Pipe Dream. Steinbeck’s final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) is set in an old Long Island whaling town modeled on Sag Harbor, where he had been spending time since 1953. The book breaks new ground in its depiction of the crass commercialism of contemporary America, and its impact on a protagonist with traditionalist values who is appalled but finally tempted by the encroaching sleaziness.Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962) was Steinbeck’s last published book. A record of his experiences and observations as he drove around America in a pickup truck, accompanied by his standard poodle Charley, it is filled with engaging, often humorous description and comes to a powerful climax in an encounter with racist demonstrators in New Orleans.

    G. Sebald died in a car accident at the age of fifty-seven, the literary world mourned the loss of a writer whose oeuvre it was just beginning to appreciate. Through published interviews with and essays on Sebald, award-winning translator and author Lynne Sharon Schwartz offers a profound portrait of the writer, who has been praised posthumously for his unflinching explorations of historical cruelty, memory, and dislocation. With contributions from poet, essayist, and translator Charles Simic, New Republic editor Ruth Franklin, Bookworm radio host Michael Silverblatt, and more, The Emergence of Memory offers Sebald’s own voice in interviews between 1997 up to a month before his death in 2001. Also included are cogent accounts of almost all of Sebald’s books, thematically linked to events in the contributors’ own lives.Contributors include Carole Angier, Joseph Cuomo, Ruth Franklin, Michael Hofmann, Arthur Lubow, Tim Parks, Michael Silverblatt, Charles Simic, and Eleanor Wachtel.

    The Curtain is a seven-part essay by Milan Kundera, along with The Art of the Novel and Testaments Betrayed composing a type of trilogy of book-length essays on the European novel.

    Now, The Library of America collects On the Road together with four other autobiographical “road books” published during a remarkable four-year period.The Dharma Bums (1958), at once an exploration of Buddhist spirituality and an account of the Bay Area poetry scene, is notable for its thinly veiled portraits of Kerouac’s acquaintances, including Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Kenneth Rexroth. The Subterraneans (1958) recounts a love affair set amid the bars and bohemian haunts of San Francisco. Tristessa (1960) is a melancholy novella describing a relationship with a prostitute in Mexico City. Lonesome Traveler (1960) collects travel essays that evoke journeys in Mexico and Europe, and concludes with an elegiac lament for the lost world of the American hobo. Also included in Road Novels are selections from Kerouac’s journal, which provide a fascinating perspective on his early impressions of material eventually incorporated into On the Road.

    This selection of letters begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children); a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial.

    This special edition of the Life in the Spirit Study Bible was first called the Fire Bible by believers in mainland China after they received Bibles in their own languages because of its Pentecostal message. Now obtainable in 26 languages, the Bible that has fueled the flames of global revival is available to you. Created by Life Publishers International.

    K. Rowling about a teenage boy named Harry Potter. Since the release of her first novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 1997, the books have gained enormous popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide, spawning films, video games and assorted merchandise. The Unofficial Harry Potter Encyclopedia: Harry Potter A - Z studies each character in Harry's World from his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger to Lord Voldemort to Professor Dumbledore. No Wizard, Witch or Muggle is to be missed in this encyclopedia of characters. Note: This book is an independent and unauthorized publication. It is not endorsed by J.K Rowling, her publishers, copyright or trademark holders.

    M. Coetzee In addition to being one of the most acclaimed and accomplished fiction writers in the world, J. M. Coetzee is also a literary critic of the highest caliber. As Derek Attridge observes in his illuminating introduction, reading Coetzees nonfiction offers one the opportunity to see how an author at the forefront of his profession engages with his peers, not as a critic from the outside, but as one who works with the same raw materials. In this collection of twenty recent pieces, Coetzee examines the work of some of the twentieth centurys greatest writersfrom Samuel Beckett and Gnter Grass to Gabriel Garca Mrquez and Philip Roth. Brilliantly insightful, challenging, yet accessible, these essays demonstrate Coetzees sharp eye and unwavering critical acumen and will be of interest to his many fans as well as to all readers of international literature.

    An older tradition—the Great Tradition—of education in the West is waiting to be heard. Since antiquity, the Great Tradition has defined education first and foremost as the hard work of rightly ordering the human soul, helping it to love what it ought to love, and helping it to know itself and its maker. In the classical and Christian tradition, the formation of the soul in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence took precedence over all else, including instrumental training aimed at the inculcation of “useful” knowledge.  Edited by historian Richard Gamble, this anthology reconstructs a centuries-long conversation about the goals, conditions, and ultimate value of true education. Spanning more than two millennia, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary writers, it includes substantial excerpts from more than sixty seminal writings on education. Represented here are the wisdom and insight of such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Basil, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, Thomas Arnold, Albert Jay Nock, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Eric Voegelin. In an unbroken chain of giving and receiving, the Great Tradition embraced the accumulated wisdom of the past and understood education as the initiation of students into a body of truth. This unique collection is designed to help parents, students, and teachers reconnect with this noble legacy, to articulate a coherent defense of the liberal arts tradition, and to do battle with the modern utilitarians and vocationalists who dominate educational theory and practice.

    Navigate easily to any novel from Table of Contents or search for the words or phrases. Author's biography and stories in the trial version. Features Navigate from Table of Contents or search for words or phrases Make bookmarks, notes, highlights Searchable and interlinked. Access the e-book anytime, anywhere - at home, on the train, in the subway. Automatic synchronization between the handheld and the desktop PC. You could read half of the book on the handheld, then finish reading on the desktop. Table of Contents List of Works by Genre and TitleList of Works in Alphabetical Order Joseph Conrad Biography NovelsAlmayer's FollyThe Arrow of Gold ChanceEnd of the TetherGaspar RuizHeart of Darkness The InheritorsLord Jim The Nigger Of The "Narcissus"NostromoAn Outcast of the IslandsThe Point Of HonorThe RescueRomanceThe Secret AgentA Set of SixThe Shadow LineSome ReminiscencesTales Of HearsayTales of Unrest 'Twixt Land & SeaTyphoon Under Western EyesVictoryWithin the Tides PlaysOne Day More Short StoriesAmy FosterFalk The LagoonThe Secret Sharer To-morrowYouth Non-fictionNotes on Life and LettersNotes on My BooksA Personal RecordThe Mirror of the Sea

    With warmth and wisdom, Herring offers a path to discovering "deep writing"—prose that is unique, expressive, and profoundly authentic. Lessons and imaginative exercises show you how to: stay with your writing when your mind or body starts to pull you away; explore the five senses in your writing; and approach your writing without judgment. Writing Begins with the Breath will open up a whole world of creativity for people who may not have considered themselves writers before, while also providing keen insights into the craft for seasoned writers.

    

    Drout embarked on a thought-provoking investigation into the role of rhetoric in our world. Now, in A Way with Words II: Approaches to Literature, the renowned literary scholar leads a series of lectures that focus on the big questions of literature. Is literature a kind of lie? Can fiction ever be "realistic"? Why do we read? What should we read? Professor Drout provides insight into these and other provocative questions, including those related to the role of the text, author, and audience in the reading process. Throughout, Professor Drout introduces the major schools of literary and critical thought and employs illuminating examples from the world's most important literary works. Literature contributes to our understanding of what it means to be human in a myriad of complex ways, and for all those who appreciate the role of literature in our lives, this course proves a wonderful exploration of one of humankind's most cherished pursuits.

    Ellison went on to earn many other honors, including two presidential medals and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Now, as the first scholar given complete access to Ellison's papers, Arnold Rampersad has written not only a reliable account of the main events of Ellison's life but also a complex, authoritative portrait of an unusual artist and human being. Born poor and soon fatherless in 1913, Ralph struggled both to belong to and to escape from the world of his childhood. We learn here about his sometimes happy, sometimes harrowing years growing up in Oklahoma City and attending Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Arriving in New York in 1936, he became a political radical before finally embracing the cosmopolitan intellectualism that would characterize his dazzling cultural essays, his eloquent interviews, and his historic novel. The second half of his long life brought both widespread critical acclaim and bitter disputes with many opponents, including black cultural nationalists outraged by what they saw as his elitism and misguided pride in his American citizenship. This biography describes a man of magnetic personality who counted Saul Bellow, Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, Richard Wilbur, Albert Murray, and John Cheever among his closest friends; a man both admired and reviled, whose life and art were shaped mainly by his unyielding desire to produce magnificent art and by his resilient faith in the moral and cultural strength of America. A magisterial biography of Ralph Waldo Ellison--a revelation of the man, the writer, and his times.

    Al Burian weaves an excellent fictional but real account of twenty / thirty something life in the modern USA. Here is an Excerpt: "We see humans engage in similar behavior, although admittedly less in the context of procreation and Darwinistic survival and more in the are of pay-per-view cable entertainment options, in the form of the "Ultimate Fighting Championship" program, an international sporting event in which there seem to be no rules except those generally governing global human rights abuses and war crimes. Martial arts masters from the Far East go up against guys from Newark whose idea of fighting expertise is drinking from a bottle of gin and starting a bar fight. The results are often surprising. The constant is the insane violence, the disturbing spectacle of seeing people pounding on each other like animals. "Ultimate Fighting Championship" viewing never fails to deliver a queasy, unsanitary sensation, the bottom-feeding feeling of watching the very lowest common denominator in what can still be identified as "entertainment" - one step up, maybe, from watching videos of police car wreck footage. Although, I must concede: if, as in ape culture, the prize for being the winner of "Ultimate Fighting Championship" was the exclusive right to mate with the women of earth, it would probably make the program more compelling viewing. In any case, I am not sure where I stand in regards to this whole mating-for-life-issue. Humans, Judith points out, are the only creatures that mate for entertainment. That whole aspect complicates everything greatly, we both agree. The great apes have a good thing going for their needs, in that they have an effective, albeit socio-mechanically primitive, form of assuring that the greatest of the ape qualities are passed on, and since these great qualities consist of exactly two, ass-kicking and chest-pounding, the selection process is reasonably simple. If humans subscribed to a winner-takes-all pecking order of the type the great apes favor, the only person currently allowed to initiate sexual intercourse would be someone like Bill Gates, a man of great power and influence but also a man whose dancing was characterized by Newsweek magazine as looking like "a twelve year old kicking around a squirrel."

    There is no other guide like this; a user-friendly and enticing entry into the marvelously enjoyable world of Proust.At seven volumes, three thousand pages, and more than four hundred characters, as well as a towering reputation as a literary classic, Proust's novel can seem daunting. But though begun a century ago, in 1909, it is in fact as engaging and relevant to our times as ever. Patrick Alexander is passionate about Proust's genius and appeal--he calls the work "outrageously bawdy and extremely funny"--and in his guide he makes it more accessible to the general reader through detailed plot summaries, historical and cultural background, a guide to the fifty most important characters, maps, family trees, illustrations, and a brief biography of Proust. Essential for readers and book groups currently reading Proust and who want help keeping track of the huge cast and intricate plot, this Reader's Guide is also a wonderful introduction for students and new readers and a memory-refresher for long-time fans.

    Drawing on a lifetime’s study of this prodigiously brilliant figure, Michael Slater explores the personal and emotional life, the high-profile public activities, the relentless travel, the charitable works, the amateur theatricals and the astonishing productivity. But the core focus is Dickens’ career as a writer and professional author, covering not only his big novels but also his phenomenal output of other writing--letters, journalism, shorter fiction, plays, verses, essays, writings for children, travel books, speeches, and scripts for his public readings, and the relationships among them.Slater’s account, rooted in deep research but written with affection, clarity, and economy, illuminates the context of each of the great novels while locating the life of the author within the imagination that created them. It highlights Dickens’ boundless energy, his passion for order and fascination with disorder, his organizational genius, his deep concern for the poor and outrage at indifference towards them, his susceptibility towards young women, his love of Christmas and fairy tales, and his hatred of tyranny.Richly and precisely illustrated with many rare images, this masterly work on the complete Dickens, man and writer, becomes the indispensable guide and companion to one of the greatest novelists in the language.

    With brilliant prose, terrific imagination, and dazzling literary skill, Mason creates alternative episodes, fragments, and revisions of Homer’s original that taken together open up this classic Greek myth to endless reverberating interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is punctuated with great wit, beauty, and playfulness; it is a daring literary page-turner that marks the emergence of an extraordinary new talent.

    It showcases the works that made him one of the most beloved and significant writers of the past century while inviting a new recognition of his enduring commitments, fluency, and power.

    The title character of THE REVISIONIST conducts covert surveillance on a city whose inhabitants are subject to uncanny transformations as a result of catastrophic weather, political corruption, invasive technologies and environmental degradation. Hired to spin, or "revise," the facts, the revisionist's perceptions in turn become detached and distorted--inevitably unreliable yet all the same, revealing. This civil scientist of a narrator sardonically observes a distressed landscape inhabited by mutant children, a seeing-eye dog, a centenarian with iguanas and constellations beneath her dress, brooding frigate birds, insurance love clones, a terrorist curator, a private investigator, and a little girl who's discovered the world's largest conch. "THE REVISIONIST is at once a beautifully simple fable and a wonderfully lyrical apocalyptic tale"--Brian Evenson.

    Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer's responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and addresses written in the last years of Sontag's life, when her work was being honored on the international stage, that reflect on the personally liberating nature of literature, her deepest commitment, and on political activism and resistance to injustice as an ethical duty. She considers the works of writers from the little-known Soviet novelist Leonid Tsypkin, who struggled and eventually succeeded in publishing his only book days before his death; to the greats, such as Nadine Gordimer, who enlarge our capacity for moral judgment. Sontag also fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.At the Same Time, which includes a foreword by her son, David Rieff, is a passionate, compelling work from an American writer at the height of her powers, who always saw literature "as a passport to enter a larger life, the zone of freedom."

     This was the beginning of two years of persecution, punishment and imprisonment for Tchernavin and his family. Although a penniless scientist who was aiding the U.S.S.R. with research in fishing he was persecuted by the state because his family were Russian nobility, which to the Soviet Government meant that he was a class enemy. Tchernavin’s fascinating story takes the reader into the heart of the Soviet Union of the 1930s as it was desperately trying to industrialise, no matter what the cost was in human lives. Accused of counter-revolutionary activities and not assisting in the industrial drive that Stalin had implemented he was imprisoned in 1931 and sentenced to five years in the Gulags. Tchernavin’s account vividly depicts the persecution that he and his fellow prisoners suffered at the hands of the U.S.S.R., how many buckled under the torturous conditions, confessing to crimes they had never committed and even indicting others in the process. Along with his wife and son Tchernavin was one of the lucky ones who was able to escape across the border to Finland and later live in England. “Professor Tchernavin has an important story to tell and tells it well and convincingly.” William Henry Chamberlain, Pacific Affairs “The story reveals the life and organization of the prisons, the treatment meted out to those dealing with the Communists.” Kirkus Reviews Vladimir Tchernavin was a Russian scientist, who specialized in studying fish. He was one of the first and very few prisoners of the Gulag system to escape. His work I Speak for the Silent Prisoners of the Soviets was first published in 1934 and he died in 1949. This work was translated by Nicholas Oushakoff who had left the U.S.S.R. in the 1920s to settle in Massachusetts. He died in 1973.

    Morson argues that Tolstoy’s ideas are far more radical than has been thought: his masterpiece challenges deeply held conceptions of romantic love, the process of social reform, modernization, and the nature of good and evil. By investigating the ethical, philosophical, and social issues with which Tolstoy grappled, Morson finds in Anna Karenina powerful connections with the concerns of today. He proposes that Tolstoy’s effort to see the world more wisely can deeply inform our own search for wisdom in the present day. The book offers brilliant analyses of Anna, Karenin, Dolly, Levin, and other characters, with a particularly subtle portrait of Anna’s extremism and self-deception. Morson probes Tolstoy’s important insights (evil is often the result of negligence; goodness derives from small, everyday deeds) and completes the volume with an irresistible, original list of One Hundred and Sixty-Three Tolstoyan Conclusions.

    Miyazawa Kenji: Selections collects a wide range of his poetry and provides an excellent introduction to his life and work. Miyazawa was a teacher of agriculture by profession and largely unknown as a poet until after his death. Since then his work has increasingly attracted a devoted following, especially among ecologists, Buddhists, and the literary avant-garde. This volume includes poems translated by Gary Snyder, who was the first to translate a substantial body of Miyazawa’s work into English. Hiroaki Sato’s own superb translations, many never before published, demonstrate his deep familiarity with Miyazawa’s poetry. His remarkable introduction considers the poet’s significance and suggests ways for contemporary readers to approach his work. It further places developments in Japanese poetry into a global context during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition the book features a Foreword by the poet Geoffrey O’Brien and essays by Tanikawa Shuntaro, Yoshimasu Gozo, and Michael O’Brien.

    What – me, in a big white dress? In a veil? The closest I ever got to the fantasy was back in the eighties, when I used to admire the white gypsophila crowns that Susan Renouf wore to parties: I drew a curious satisfaction from their ethereal, circular, brow-pressing beauty. Twenty years later all that's left is the frisson I get from the coronet shape that salad leaves briefly take when I tip them out of the whizzer on to a tea towel."Cities, friends, lost loves, Antarctica, the joy of being a grandmother, weddings, fencing... Such is the array of subjects in Helen Garner's second non-fiction collection. Some pieces were published in The Age, some are previously unpublished, but woven together they present as an evocative memoir, and offer a wonderfully personal portrait of an always unconventional talent.In word-perfect and often hilarious prose, Helen Garner reminds us of the human condition, in all its various guises.

    Here, he tells his own story, from his upbringing in Central America and his experience as a working-class immigrant in the United States, to his service in Iraq and as a prisoner guard.

    Unlike Kerouac's novel, however, this book was literally written on the road in Gudding's own car, on pad and paper while driving. Rhode Island Notebook is the handwritten account of one driver's journey to happiness in the face of grief. This book-length poem chronicles the break-up of a family and the separation of a father and daughter, while at the same time recording the rise of jingoism in the United States in the moments before and during the invasion of Iraq.

    Now, the much-anticipated Third Edition responds to the wealth of writing by women across the globe with the inclusion of 61 new authors (219 in all) whose diverse works span six centuries. A more flexible two-volume format and a versatile new companion reader make the Third Edition an even better teaching tool."As diversity itself has shaped the evolution of feminist criticism, from its early preoccupation with women's shared experiences to its more recent absorption in the complex issues and assumptions informing English-language texts by women writers of diverse geographical, cultural, racial, sexual, religious, and class origins and influences, so diversity has shaped the revisions of this anthology."

    Marked by a keen political consciousness, an imagination as wicked as it is generous, and an erotic, physical sense of language both remembered and forgotten, these poems are at once social critique and personal intimation, worth revisiting again and again.”—Jane Jeong TrenkaAs Sun Yung Shin spins new myths from Catholic and Buddhist traditions and bestows new connotations upon the characters of the Korean alphabet, she gives voice to the spiritual and cultural hunger of transnational adoptees, crafting a nuanced, unique language for navigating the politics of gender, ethnicity, and identity. Visit her website at www.sunyungshin.com.

    Based on the true story of the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, the novel follows the lives of Paul and Roy Deacon, teenagers and childhood friends of Michael Donald, as they cope with the aftermath of his hanging. It is Paul Deacon who discovers the body, and the experience leaves him forever changed. The Deacons have operated a funeral home in the city for over 100 years. When the family is asked to conduct the services for Michael, Roy Deacon must examine whether a life in the family tradition is where he belongs.The story explores the vivid history and landscape of the Gulf Coast community and takes readers down the wooden–bricked streets of turn of the century Mobile with its Spanish architecture and its tree–lined avenues that host the annual Mardi Gras parades.Readers experience the complexities of the American South–the beauty of the landscape mixed with the ugliness of its racial history–as the characters cope with a tragic chapter in the unfolding story of the New South.

    

    Jekyll and Mr. HydeTreasure Island

    The Library of America volume Novels 1956–1964 opens with Seize the Day, a tightly wrought novella that, unfolding over the course of a single devastating day, explores the desperate predicament of the failed actor and salesman Tommy Wilhelm. The austere psychological portraiture of Seize the Day is followed by an altogether different book, Henderson the Rain King, the ebullient tale of the irresistible eccentric Eugene Henderson, best characterized by his primal mantra “I want! I want!” Beneath the novel’s comic surface lies an affecting parable of one man’s quest to know himself and come to terms with morality; like Don Quixote, Henderson is, as Bellow later described him, “an absurd seeker of high qualities.”Henderson’s irrepressible vitality is matched by that of Moses Herzog, the eponymous hero of Bellow’s best-selling 1964 novel. His wife having abandoned him for his best friend, Herzog is on the verge of mental collapse and has embarked on a furious letter-writing campaign as an outlet for his all-consuming rage. Bellow’s bravura performance in Herzog launched a new phase of his career, as literary acclaim was now joined by a receptive mass audience in America.

    It it impossible is to resist quoting passages from this novel, given the author’s brilliant insights into character, wonderful literary flourishes and stunning demonstration of what is meant by inspired writing." - Humber School for Writers. A savage, brilliant, hilarious attack on modern hypocrisy, "The God of Atheists" follows the downfall of three men who wake up one morning and decide to take what they have not earned. Al, a down-and-out music producer, bullies his handsome son into forming a boy-band. Alder, an obscure academic, steals a brilliant idea from a grad student. As they exploit the talents of the naïve youths around them, their fame and wealth increase – but they become more and more terrified of exposure and destruction...

    That's a really nice book of how Abou-Sayid Tried to reach the God....He was a famous one in his age and did many surprizing things...Mohammad-ebne-Monavvar is one of his grans grand sons, and as he really liked his grand grand dad and heard many things of him, decided to write this about....It's really a fantastic book, written in an easy way comparing to other ancient Farsi books...so it's no hard to read about...I really suggest it!

    

    Under Nina Baym's direction, the editors have considered afresh each selection and all the apparatus to make the anthology an even better teaching tool.

    Together, they are the Rainbow Fairies! They keep Fairyland dazzling and bright. But when evil Jack Frost sends them far away, the sisters are in big trouble. If they don't return soon, Fairyland is doomed to gray forever!

    --C. S. Lewis In From Achilles to Christ, Louis Markos introduces readers to the great narratives of classical mythology from a Christian perspective. From the battles of Achilles and the adventures of Odysseus to the feats of Hercules and the trials of Aeneas, Markos shows how the characters, themes and symbols within these myths both foreshadow and find their fulfillment in the story of Jesus Christ--the myth made fact. Along the way, he dispels misplaced fears about the dangers of reading classical literature, and offers a Christian approach to the interpretation and appropriation of these great literary works. This engaging and eminently readable book is an excellent resource for Christian students, teachers and readers of classical literature.

    A distinctive new voice, from a distinctive new press.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh GirlIncludes “Wait,” a Best American Short Stories 2007 inclusion.

    Sure, sure, it's chock full of great stories by the best short fiction writer of his generation, modern classics like The Ugly Chickens and Flying Saucer Rock n Roll and Heart of Whitenesse and many more... but there are two or three times as many terrific Waldrop stories, equally good and sometimes even better, that have been left out for want of space. There's only one solution. Read this book... and then go out and track down all of Waldrop's other collections and read them too.

    It is a dark world, shot through with flashes of joy and lunacy."I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet, just like a human being..." Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, his back twisted beyond repair by the catastrophic events of "that night" when a burning fog of poison smoke from the local factory blazed out over the town of Khaufpur, and the Apocalypse visited his slums. Now just turned seventeen and well schooled in street work, he lives by his wits, spending his days jamisponding (spying) on town officials and looking after the elderly nun who raised him, Ma Franci. His nights are spent fantasizing about Nisha, the girlfriend of the local resistance leader, and wondering what it must be like to get laid. When Elli Barber, a young American doctor, arrives in Khaufpur to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolk -- only to find herself struggling to convince them that she isn't there to do the dirty work of the Kampani -- Animal gets caught up in a web of intrigues, scams, and plots with the unabashed aim of turning events to his own advantage. Profane, piercingly honest, and scathingly funny, Animal's People illuminates a dark world shot through with flashes of joy and lunacy. A stunning tale of an unforgettable character, it is an unflinching look at what it means to be human: the wounds that never heal and a spirit that will not be quenched.

    Represented in this text are poems dashed off in the full awfulness of the battlefield, as well as those honed with the terrible benefit of hindsight.

    The definition and example usages accompany each word's comic. Practice vocabulary quizzes are provided every ten words with answers in the back of the book.

    The colt was beautifully formed with strong, straight legs and a pretty head. But due to his small size, it was unlikely he would be more than a nice child’s riding pony. By the following spring, the yearling was separated from his mother and turned out to pasture with the other weanlings. Little Squire wasn’t happy to be away from his dam so he charged the high stone wall and cleared it easily. Little Squire had just shown an astonishing side of himself that would eventually bring him greatness. Over time, the young horse traded hands, crossed an ocean, and ended up on the American show-jumping circuit. That was when he met another diminutive Irish immigrant, Mickey Walsh. The two were inseparable until, at Mickey’s request, Little Squire was retired at the top of his game, and while he was still sound. He went out in a blaze of glory, though, ending his last performance with Mickey by jumping a six-foot-two fence — rider-less — in front of a packed arena. During the war-torn 30s, Little Squire had given people something to cheer about.

    With this volume and a companion volume devoted to the 30s and 40s--the first two entries in what will be a series devoted to Wilson's work--The Library of America pays tribute to the writer who first conceived the idea of a publishing series dedicated to "bringing out in a complete and compact form the principal American classics." "Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s and 30s" presents Wilson in the extraordinary first phase of his career, participating in a cultural renaissance and grappling with the crucial issues of his era. The Shores of Light (1952) is Wilson's magisterial assemblage of early reviews, sketches, stories, memoirs, and other writings into a teeming panorama of America's literary life in a period of exuberant expansion and in the years of political and economic strife that followed. Wilson traces the emergence of a new American writing as he reviews the work of Hemingway, Stevens, Cummings, Dos Passos, Wilder, and many others, including his close friends F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Little escapes his notice: burlesque shows and Henry James, Soviet theater and the magic of Harry Houdini, the first novels of Malraux and the rediscovery of Edgar Allan Poe. "Axel's Castle" (1931), his pioneering overview of literary modernism, includes penetrating studies of Yeats, Eliot, Proust, Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and others. For several generations this book has stood as an indispensable companion to some of the crucial turning points in modern literature. Both these classic works display abundantly Wilson's extraordinary erudition and unquenchable curiosity, his visionary grasp of larger historical meanings, his gift for acute psychological portraiture, and the matchless suppleness and lucidity of his prose. For Wilson, there are no minor subjects; every literary occasion sparks writing that is witty, energetic, and alive to the undercurrents of his time. In addition this volume includes a number of uncollected reviews from the same period, including discussions of H. L. Mencken, Edith Wharton, and Bernard Shaw

    Navigate easily to any novel from Table of Contents or search for the words or phrases. Author's biography and free stories in the trial version. Features Navigate from Table of Contents or search for words or phrases Make bookmarks, notes, highlights Searchable and interlinked. Access the e-book anytime, anywhere - at home, on the train, in the subway. Automatic synchronization between the handheld and the desktop PC. You could read half of the book on the handheld, then finish reading on the desktop. Table of Contents Novels: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Ulysses (1922) Play:Exiles (1915) Poetry: Chamber Music (1907)Pomes Penyeach (1904-1924) Short story collection: Dubliners (1914) Short stories:After the Race Araby The Boarding House Clay Counterparts The Dead An Encounter Eveline Grace Ivy Day in the Committee Room A Little Cloud A Mother A Painful Case The Sisters Two Gallants

    This beautiful, haunting text describes Maribel Dixon’s crossing over to the Ghost-World and Edward’s attempts to reach her there, to bring her back or go himself—via found documents, interviews, prose fragments, and reassembled poems.Paperback, saddle-stapled.

    Table of Contents Lewis Carroll Biography Bibliography Prose:Alice's Adventures in WonderlandThrough the Looking-GlassSylvie and Bruno Poems:Atlanta in Camden-Town Echoes Fame's Penny-Trumpet Four Riddles A Game of Fives Hiawatha's Photography The Hunting of The Snark, an Agony in Eight Fits Jabberwocky The Lang Coortin' Melancholetta Phantasmagoria Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur A Sea Dirge Size and Tears Tema con Variazioni The Three Voices A Valentine The Walrus and the Carpenter Ye Carpette Knyghte You Are Old, Father William Other:The Alphabet CipherThe Game of Logic What the Tortoise Said to Achilles

    PART OF THE WORLD is a fugue in both a musical and psychological sense. It is a canonical juggernaut of lyrical language--ever dissolving, devolving, shifting, then reconstituting itself into a new knowledge of reality. This language comes straight from a compulsive mind in a Quixotic state--ceaselessly harping on the everyday perturbations and peculiarities of our humdrum lives--our cars, apartments, health, finances. But if you relax your focus as if staring at some sort of holographic fractal, with each part containing the whole, the superficial meaning is purged, layer by layer, peeling back and revealing the subtext of what the mind is capable of under the burden of trauma and accountability. Robert Lopez has written a darkly hilarious exploration of the trickery of memory, the unreliability of personal history, and the strangeness, even uncanniness, of our daily transactions--Dawn Raffel. Literary pleasures like this are all too uncommon--Laird Hunt

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ—the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim. Diaz immerses us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humor, and insight the Dominican-American experience, and, ultimately, the endless human capacity to persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. A true literary triumph, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao confirms Junot Diaz as one of the best and most exciting voices of our time.

    This title includes the essays that include an endnote, telling the behind-the-scenes story about the article. One critic has written:- This collection of articles from Basbane's columns in BIBLIO and FINE BOOKS & COLLECTIBLES and other sources is an okay read, but not as in depth or detailed as his previous 4 books. A good read for bibliophiles, but its constant referencing back to A GENTLE MADNESS (his 1st and best book) is slighly irritating after a while, as this book becomes more of a sales pitch for those who missed that book 15 years ago.

    He adored his wife and didn't like anyone else around to claim her attention. Their sons saw him as a monster of egocentricity, a tyrant, a blustering bully; to her he was a sensitive, shy, helpless man with a mission. She believed in him from the moment they met, and under the wings of her faith in him as a philosopher, he became one.During their thirty years of marriage this woman's only concern was to enable her husband to hearken to "the voice of God."After his death she discovered somewhere deep inside a core of drop-forged steel. She rose to the challenge of widowhood and, continuing his work, took his place in the world. The full splendor of this tiny, frail woman's character, intelligence, and courage became evident during her World War II internment in a Japanese camp in the Dutch East Indies, when she managed to arrange a cease-fire between the Dutch Army and Indonesian guerillas.After her release from prison camp, she returned to Amsterdam, and resumed her simple life, offering spiritual advice to those seeking solace. Finally, she was faced with the ultimate test of her spirit: a diagnosis of a cancer too far advanced for treatment.De Hartog tells us how his mother's blazing courage through it all inspired his own spiritual awakening as he found, in her final months, the strength, the power, and the acceptance to see her through to the end.

    This collection, the first ever anthology on maternal theory, introduces readers to this rich and diverse tradition of maternal theory. Composed of 50 chapters and covering more than three decades of scholarship, Maternal Theory includes all the “must read” theorists on motherhood. Writers include: Adrienne Rich, Nancy Chodorow, Sara Ruddick, Alice Walker, Barbara Katz Rothman, bell hooks, Sharon Hays, Patricia Hill-Collins, Julia Kristeva, Kim Anderson, Audre Lorde, Ellen Lewin, Daphne de Marneffe, Ariel Gore, Ann Crittenden, Judith Warner and many more. Maternal Theory is essential reading for anyone interested in motherhood as experience, ideology, and identity.

    Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides chapter-by-chapter analysis; explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols; and a review quiz and essay topics. Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers.

    Beginning with an extended analysis of irony as an essentially dramatic device, Esolen explores those manifestations of irony that appear prominently in Christian thinking and art: ironies of time (for Christians believe in divine Providence, but live in a world whose moments pass away); ironies of power (for Christians believe in an almighty God who took on human flesh, and whose “weakness” is stronger than our greatest enemy, death); ironies of love (for man seldom knows whom to love, or how, or even whom it is that in the depths of his heart he loves best); and the figure of the Child (for Christians ever hear the warning voice of their Savior, who says that unless we become like unto one of these little ones, we shall not enter the Kingdom of God).  Esolen’s finely wrought study draws from Augustine (Confessions), Dante (The Divine Comedy), Shakespeare (The Tempest), and Tolkien (“Leaf, By Niggle”); Francois Mauriac (A Kiss for the Leper), Milton (Paradise Lost), and Alessandro Manzoni (The Betrothed); the poems of George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Edmund Spenser (Amoretti); Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol), Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), and the anonymous author of the medieval poem Pearl, among other works. Readers who treasure the Christian literary tradition should not miss this illuminating book.

    Mention politics, philosophy, law, medicine, history, even the visual arts, and we barely scratch the surface of what we owe this extraordinary culture.Course Lecture Titles:1. Definitions, Boundaries, and Goals2. Homer I—Introduction to Epic and Iliad3. Homer II—Iliad, The Wrath of Achilles4. Homer III—Iliad, The Return of Achilles5. Homer IV—Odyssey, Introduction and Prelude6. Homer V—Odyssey, The Adventures7. Homer VI—Odyssey, Reintegration8. Hesiod—Theogony and Works and Days9. Homeric Hymns10. Lyric Poetry I—Archilochus and Solon11. Lyric Poetry II—Sappho and Alcaeus12. Tragedy—Contexts and Conventions13. Aeschylus I—Persians14. Aeschylus II—Agamemnon15. Aeschylus III—Libation Bearers and Eumenides 16. Sophocles I—Ajax and Philoctetes 17. Sophocles II—Oedipus the King 18. Sophocles III—Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone19. Euripides I—Electra, Orestes, Trojan Women 20. Euripides II—Medea and Hippolytus21. Euripides III—The Bacchae22. Aristophanes I—Introduction to Old Comedy23. Aristophanes II—Acharnians and Lysistrata24. Aristophanes III—The Frogs and The Clouds25. Herodotus I—Introduction to History26. Herodotus II—The Persian Wars27. Thucydides I—The Peloponnesian War28. Thucydides II—Books 1-529. Thucydides III—Books 6-730. Plato I—The Philosopher as Literary Author31. Plato II—Symposium32. Plato III—Phaedrus33. Rhetoric and Oratory34. Hellenistic Poetry I—Callimachus and Theocritus35. Hellenistic Poetry II—Apollonius36. Looking Back and Looking Forward

    Described by André Breton as among the ten books he would most like to take to a desert island, Haunted House combines the oblique, dreamlike world of Reverdy's poetry with a more ironic, whimsical tone of mock grandeur. John Ashbery's translations, published here for the first time in the UK, extends his life-long engagement with French literature, one that has vitally informed his own work in poetry, literature, and the arts.

    Asian American Studies. Translated from the Korean by Ji yoon Lee, Don Mee Choi and Johannes Goransson. "Kim Yi-Deum's poetry is the landscape of confession. The confession flows inside the landscape and the landscape soars inside the confession. These two elements of her poetry are interconnected in the way eros gets pulled up to the divine place. Her poetry appears as poetry, it also appears as prose. As poetry, it's polyphonic, and as prose, it's defiant. Her poetry is the theater of multiple personality. You hear the voices of hundreds of people, hundreds of things. These naked living things become her poetic subjects. In each poem, the different sensations of each body are invented. She punishes herself and accepts her own unsightly, gutless face. Her poetry is engaged in the difficult process of discovering the other inside her. Her rhythm, which emerges from the fishnet of interconnections, bites power and sets her free." Kim Hyesoon"

    Born in 1893 and dead by his own hand in 1930, Mayakovsky packed his thirty-six years with drama, politics, passion, and—most important—poetry. An enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution and the emerging Soviet State, Mayakovsky was championed by Stalin after his death and enshrined as a quasi-official Soviet poet, a position that led to undeserved neglect among Western literary scholars even as his influence on other poets has remained powerful.   With Mayakovsky, Bengt Jangfeldt offers the first comprehensive biography of Mayakovsky, revealing a troubled man who was more dreamer than revolutionary, more political romantic than hardened Communist. Jangfeldt sets Mayakovsky’s life and works against the dramatic turbulence of his times, from the aesthetic innovations of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde to the rigidity of Socialist Realism and the destruction of World War I to the violence—and hope—of the Russian Revolution, through the tightening grip of Stalinist terror and the growing disillusion with Russian communism that eventually led the poet to take his life.   Through it all is threaded Mayakovsky’s celebrated love affair with Lili Brik and the moving relationship with Lili’s husband, Osip, along with a brilliant depiction of the larger circle of writers and artists around Mayakovsky, including Maxim Gorky, Viktor Shklovsky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Roman Jakobson. The result is a literary life viewed in the round, enabling us to understand the personal and historical furies that drove Mayakovsky and generated his still-startling poetry.   Illustrated throughout with rare images of key characters and locations, Mayakovsky is a major step in the revitalization of a crucial figure of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

    Aimed at children aged four and over, each title in this series is a classic story or fable, retold with simple text to delight and inspire any child who is just beginning to read.

    He is soon told that a guy with AS could not possibly succeed as a detective. Undeterred, Trueman uses his exceptional mathematical skills to invent a crime-fighting equation, and with the help of his new friends and some amazing inventions, sets out to test his skills against the criminal world of New York. He is determined to show the police, his friends, and himself, that a guy with AS can become as good a detective as anyone else, maybe, even, one of the best.Trueman Bradley - Aspie Detective is a fantasy adventure that will capture the imagination of anyone interested in Asperger's Syndrome.

    He loved machines and technology, and the markets that create and distribute them. He loved the car and its transforming effect on society. And he lived through it all and knows what he is talking about.Here he sees Henry Ford for the genius that he was, as an entrepreneur who saw the possibilities and seized on them. He tells of how Ford faced and overcame incredible obstacles on his way to becoming one of the great capitalists of all time.Garrett doesn't stop there. He chronicles Ford's battles with the government and, in particular, the unions that ended up robbing the company and turning it to their own selfish ends. This was in the 1950s when he was writing, but he could see the future of one long slow decline. And how right he was!This isn't just a great business history for the regular person, one that provides a window into the making of a great company. Garrett has written a book that will interest people of all ages. It is a wonderful read for the young person who cares about cars. It shows that they are not somehow built into the fabric of society but rather came from the productive system of capitalism, a result of marvelous human ingenuity working within an atmosphere of freedom.Garet Garrett was a talented writer, researcher, and story teller who knew how markets work. This is a book for all times - a capitalist classic.

    But the true origins of one of the most powerful pop-cultural influences in the world are in the spontaneous, progressive musical culture that grew out of tough Bronx neighborhoods of the 1970s and led to a renaissance of poetry, music, and fashion.Through years of research, writer and curator Johan Kugelberg has pulled together the scattered remains of a movement that never had its eye on posterity. The book includes the improvisational artwork of previously unpublished street flyers of the era, Polaroids buried for decades in basements across the Bronx, and testimonials from influential figures such as Tony Tone, LA Sunshine, and Charlie Chase. Through the work of pioneering hip-hop photographer Jow Conzo–the man The New York Times calls “the chronicler who took hip hop’s baby pictures”–Born in the Bronx presents a unique introduction to an explosive and experimental period in music history.

    He sent his journals, a novel-in-progess, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe keeping, fully expecting to write little, if anything, ever again.? It was a relatively short-lived resolution, for Merton almost immediately found himself being assigned writing tasks by his Abbot?one of which was the autobiographical essay that blossomed into his international best-seller The Seven Storey Mountain. That book made him famous overnight, and for a time he struggled with the notion that the vocation of the monk and the vocation of the writer were incompatible. Monasticism called for complete surrender to the absolute, whereas writing demanded a tactical withdrawal from experience in order to record it.? He eventually came to accept his dual vocation as two sides of the same spiritual coin and used it as a source of creative tension the rest of his life.? Merton's thoughts on writing have never been compiled into a single volume until now. Robert Inchausti has mined the vast Merton literature to discover what he had to say on a whole spectrum of literary topics, including writing as a spiritual calling, the role of the Christian writer in a secular society, the joys and mysteries of poetry, and evaluations of his own literary work. Also included are fascinating glimpses of his take on a range of other writers, including Henry David Thoreau, Flannery O'Connor, Dylan Thomas, Albert Camus, James Joyce, and even Henry Miller, along with many others.

    Tragic, lyrical, hilarious, and politically controversial, they exist in a world where fact is as strange as fiction, and fiction is often disguised as fact.The Jiri Chronicles & Other Fictions is divided into three sections, each a unique literary experiment. In Snapshots: A Genealogy in Flight, Debra Di Blasi draws inspiration from real family photographs to creat a haunting portrait of successive generations of a fictionalized Midwest family. "Hyperfictions" features writing that is interactive and nonlinear, dissolving borders between poetry and prose, visual art and music.At the work's comic center is an invention that transgresses the boundaries of fiction and fraud. Just who is Jiri Cech? A businessman, vampire, and artist from Czechoslovakia? A website? A hoax? An American con artist whose racism and sexism, although loathsome, only heighten his allure? Or something greater or smaller than the sum of these parts?This astonishing collection challenges the stylistic and thematic boundaries of traditional literature, questioning what it means to be human—and awake—in the post-millenium.

    The author first writes a piece for the artist Sophie Calle to live out: a young, aspiring, French artist travels to Lisbon and the Azores in pursuit of an older artist whose work she’s in love with. The second part of the story tells what happens between the author and Calle. She eludes, him; he becomes blocked, and suffers physical collapse.“Something strange happened along the way,” Vila-Matas wrote. “Normally, writers try to pass a work of fiction off as being real. But in Because She Never Asked, the opposite occurred: in order to give meaning to the story of my life, I found that I needed to present it as fiction.”

    Now, the story continues… Thomas Travis had always thought the toughest streets in the ghettos of Atlanta were next door to hell. But he didn’t know just how close they were until the threat of racial violence sent him fleeing down the stairs of an abandoned building…only to fall headlong into a tortured realm of fire and ice, the place of the damned. The only chance of escape was to trust the strange elderly woman who met him there and insisted on being his guide. She claimed to know the way out, but it would lead through all the terrifying circles of divine judgment, each one deeper and more tormenting than the last. In the lowest pit, the Lord of Darkness himself lay in wait. Thomas had lived a godless life, and now there was hell to pay. If his soul could be purged on the journey, he just might make it. But the odds were against him. In hell, the only guarantee is justice…and the only way out is down. About the AuthorPAUL THIGPEN, PhD, is an award-winning journalist and the best-selling author of more than twenty-five books, including A Dictionary of Quotes from the Saints, Blood of the Martyrs, and Seed of the Church. He is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale University and also holds a doctorate in historical theology from Emory University.

    Its key mission is to help students understand the link between the historical context in which the literature developed, how this has influenced the literature of the period and how subsequent periods in literature have been influenced by those that precede them. The book is carefully structured for undergraduate use, with a rich range of illustrations and textboxes that enhance and summarise vital background material. The seven chronological chapters are written by a team of expert contributors who are also highly experienced teachers with a clear sense of the requirements of the undergraduate English curriculum. Each analyses a major historical period, surveying and documenting the cultural contexts that have shaped English literature, and focusing on key texts. In addition to the narrative survey, each chapter includes a detailed chronology, providing a quick-reference guide to the period; contextual readings of select literary texts; and annotated suggestions for further reading.

    From this deep reservoir of writing--as well as from previously published work by writers including Joy Harjo, Denise Chávez, Diane Ackerman, Naomi Shihab Nye, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Anzaldúa, Terry Tempest Williams, and Barbara Kingsolver--the editors of this book have drawn nearly a hundred pieces that witness both to the ever-changing, ever-mysterious life of the natural world and to the vivid, creative, evolving lives of women interacting with it. Through prose, poetry, creative nonfiction, and memoir, the women in this anthology explore both the outer landscape of the Southwest and their own inner landscapes as women living on the land--the congruence of where they are and who they are. The editors have grouped the writings around eight evocative themes: * The way we live on the land * Our journeys through the land * Nature in cities * Nature at risk * Nature that sustains us * Our memories of the land * Our kinship with the animal world * What we leave on the land when we are gone From the Gulf Coast of Texas to the Pacific Coast of California, and from the southern borderlands to the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, these intimate portraits of women's lives on the land powerfully demonstrate that nature writing is no longer the exclusive domain of men, that women bring unique and transformative perspectives to this genre.

    This beautifully illustrated field guide features over 400 species either common or particularly notable in the Lone Star state. Descriptions of each bird, as well as the illustrations and range maps, help you identify birds and understand their habits. A checklist helps you keep a list of your birding accomplishments.

    Eddie dies. But Mai falls into the world of her great-grandmother on the island of Hamahiga somewhere between heaven and earth. Odori is a novel that navigates through the glorious Ryukyuan Kingdom and the Golden Era of the Sho Dynasty, through bloody World War II Okinawa, and over parched prairies of Southern Alberta