This picture-perfect existence is shattered when Marie is assaulted by her new boss. Deeply shaken by the attack, she discovers she is pregnant, and is convinced her rapist is the father. Marie closes herself off in a destructive silence, ultimately leading her to commit an irreparable act.

    The eight stories in this collection, his first to be published in English, represent some of his best writing and most imaginative storylines: from the love story between Balthazar, wealthy and successful author, and Odette, cashier at a supermarket, to the tale of a barefooted princess; from the moving story of a group of female prisoners in a Soviet gulag to the entertaining portrait of a perennially disgruntled perfectionist. Here are eight contemporary fables, populated by a cast of extravagant and affecting characters, about people in search of happiness. Behind each story lies a simple, if elusive, truth: happiness is often right in front of our eyes, though we may frequently be blind to it.

    Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas are back to amuse you with how they find they are modifying their favorite bad-girl behavior as they address beauty, love, seduction as well as lifestyle, family, work, and living alone.They are still bohemian iconoclasts saying what you don't expect to hear. They will tell you things aren't what they used to be--when a thirty-year-old guy arrives at a party and does not even glance at you; when you wake up feeling great and everyone tells you how tired you look; you know you're an adult when you're excited just to go home.Neuroses vs. confidence, resistance vs. acceptance, passion vs. serenity, de Maigret and Mas through spirited short stories capture the different stages of ageing--as nostalgic but modern Parisian women. From the privately absurd to the strangely universal, this book captures moments of everyday life that will make the reader nod, cringe, and laugh out loud.

    The bad news is that these turn out to be the very things most discouraged by contemporary culture. This knotty dilemma is the subject of The Age of Absurdity - a wry and accessible investigation into how the desirable states of wellbeing and satisfaction are constantly undermined by modern life. Michael Foley examines the elusive condition of happiness common to philosophy, spiritual teachings and contemporary psychology, then shows how these are becoming increasingly difficult to apply in a world of high expectations. The common challenges of earning a living, maintaining a relationship and ageing are becoming battlegrounds of existential angst and self-loathing in a culture that demands conspicuous consumption, high-octane partnerships and perpetual youth. In conclusion, rather than denouncing and rejecting the age, Foley presents an entertaining strategy of not just accepting but embracing today's world - finding happiness in its absurdity.

    And this is precisely what Bruce Fink does in this ambitious book, a fine analysis of Lacan's work on language and psychoanalytic treatment conducted on the basis of a very close reading of texts in his Icrits: A Selection.As a translator and renowned proponent of Lacan's works, Fink is an especially adept and congenial guide through the complexities of Lacanian literature and concepts. He devotes considerable space to notions that have been particularly prone to misunderstanding, notions such as "the sliding of the signified under the signifier,"or that have gone seemingly unnoticed, such as "the ego is the metonymy of desire." Fink also pays special attention to psychoanalytic concepts, like affect, that Lacan is sometimes thought to neglect, and to controversial concepts, like the phallus.From a parsing of Lacan's claim that "commenting on a text is like doing an analysis," to sustained readings of "The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious," "The Direction of the Treatment," and "Subversion of the Subject" (with particular attention given to the workings of the Graph of Desire), Fink's book is a work of unmatched subtlety, depth, and detail, providing a valuable new perspective on one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers.Bruce Fink is a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst, analytic supervisor, and professor of psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is the author of A Clinical Introduction to LacanianPsychoanalysis (1997) and The Lacanian Subject (1995). He has coedited three volumes on Lacan's seminars and is the translator of Lacan's Seminar XX, On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge (1998), Icrits: A Selection (2002), and Icrits: The Complete Text (forthcoming).

    It comes from the Latin radix, radicis, meaning radish, a root vegetable.”—BK LorenWinner of the Colorado Book Award, these meditative essays range in subjects from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes ironically juxtaposed with her neighbor’s claim that nature “has gone out of vogue,” to Loren’s mother’s slow yet all-encompassing deterioration from Parkinson’s, and the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded her depression by offering the author a sense of her small place in a wild and worthwhile world.Loren has an empathetic and gentle approach to the world. In detailing the intricacies of human relationships and consciousness—fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, tradition’s beauty even when destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast-paced materialistic world—she peels back the film of popular thinking in order to expose herself to the secrets so few of us ever see.

    It is difficult to think about law, politics, religion, public policy, intimate relationships, morality—as well as feelings of remorse or personal achievement—without first imagining that every person is the true source of his or her thoughts and actions. And yet the facts tell us that free will is an illusion.In this enlightening book, Sam Harris argues that this truth about the human mind does not undermine morality or diminish the importance of social and political freedom, but it can and should change the way we think about some of the most important questions in life.

    . . Today I’m really gonna be a tough guy.” Growing up in a poor village in northern France, all Eddy Bellegueule wanted was to be a man in the eyes of his family and neighbors. But from childhood, he was different—“girlish,” intellectually precocious, and attracted to other men.Already translated into twenty languages, The End of Eddy captures the violence and desperation of life in a French factory town. It is also a sensitive, universal portrait of boyhood and sexual awakening. Like Karl Ove Knausgaard or Edmund White, Édouard Louis writes from his own undisguised experience, but he writes with an openness and a compassionate intelligence that are all his own. The result—a critical and popular triumph—has made him the most celebrated French writer of his generation.

    In Russia works such as his A Hunter’s Notes and Fathers and Sons, were pivotal in transforming the Russian social landscape.No less sensational than his novels was his personal life. For forty years, until the day he died, he was passionately devoted to the diva Pauline Viardot, following her and her husband around Europe and even living with them amicably at times as part of their household. What, then, did Turgenev mean by "love," the word at the core of his life and work?Robert Dessaix has had his own forty-year relationship with Turgenev, first as a student of Russian in both Australia and Russia, then as a teacher, and now as what he calls a close friend. In Twilight of Love, Dessaix has come to see Turgenev’s life and work as an expression of a turning point in the history of love —the moment the Romantic became rational, love unraveled into sentiment and erotic feelings, and eros became a mere commodity.

    While Jeremy can’t remember the previous year, he savors the miracle of waking up alongside the woman he loves.The next time he wakes, another year has passed and he finds himself a spectator of his own life. Victoria now carries his child, but the man alongside her is a disturbingly different person—a cruel, egotistical, seemingly unknowable Jeremy. Is it amnesia? Insanity? Or has the God Jeremy defied with his selfish act now cursed him?This strange and beautiful novel tells the tale of a man lost between life and death, but connected by the love—as friend, lover, son, and father—given and taken over the course of a lifetime, a love that simply won’t let go.

    Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early thirties, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier—a surprising turn of events for someone who didn’t have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn’t understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue? Does “I love you” even mean the same thing as “Je t’aime”? When the couple, newly married, relocates to Francophone Geneva, Collins—fearful of one day becoming "a Borat of a mother" who doesn’t understand her own kids—decides to answer her questions for herself by learning French. When in French is a laugh-out-loud funny and surprising memoir about the lengths we go to for love, as well as an exploration across culture and history into how we learn languages—and what they say about who we are. Collins grapples with the complexities of the French language, enduring excruciating role-playing games with her classmates at a Swiss language school and accidentally telling her mother-in-law that she’s given birth to a coffee machine. In learning French, Collins must wrestle with the very nature of French identity and society—which, it turns out, is a far cry from life back home in North Carolina. Plumbing the mysterious depths of humanity’s many forms of language, Collins describes with great style and wicked humor the frustrations, embarrassments, surprises, and, finally, joys of learning—and living in—French.

    From the classic sixteenth-century love sonnets of Louise Labé and Maurice Sceve to the piercing lyricism of the Romantics and the dreamlike compositions of the Surrealists, French Love Poems is the perfect, seductive gift for anyone who makes your heart flutter.This collection includes poems by Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Claude Cahun, René Char, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, Paul Éluard, Louise Labé, Stéphane Mallarmé, Anna de Noailles, Joyce Mansour, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, and many others; as well as translations by Mary Ann Caws, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Denise Levertov, Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, Frederick Seidel, Richard Sieburth, and William Carlos Williams.

    Now, the prize-winning author of I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere returns with a novel of an abandoned wife, and the profound relationship that unfolds between her and her father-in-law.

    In 1942 they made it onto the last boat to escape France before the Germans sealed its harbors. Then, barred from entering the United States, they lived in Cuba for almost two years before emigrating to New York. This sweeping account of one family’s escape from the turmoil of war-torn Europe hangs upon the intimate and deeply personal story of Maitland’s mother’s passionate romance with a Catholic Frenchman. Separated by war and her family’s disapproval, the young lovers—Janine and Roland—lose each other for fifty years. It is a testimony to both Maitland’s investigative skills and her devotion to her mother that she successfully traced the lost Roland and was able to reunite him with Janine. Unlike so many stories of love during wartime, theirs has a happy ending.

    They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official, and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them 'essays', meaning 'attempts' or 'tries'. Into them he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and more than four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment--and in search of themselves. This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing (made to speak only Latin), youthful career and sexual adventures, travels, and friendships with the scholar and poet Etienne de La Boétie and with his adopted 'daughter', Marie de Gournay. And as we read, we also meet his readers--who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, 'how to live?'