For The Good Of The Cause


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1964
    Solzhenitsyn presents the conflicts between right and wrong, between the freedom of the individual and the harshness of the system with absolute sincerity and conviction.

The Last Chapter


Knut Hamsun - 1923
    Among the characters is "The Suicide", who entered the sanatorium following the discovery of his wife’s infidelity and threatens constantly to take his own life. Another guest is the lovely Julie d'Espard. She enters into a relationship with the bogus Count Flemming and gets pregnant. When Flemming disappears one day she turns to Daniel Utby, who runs a small farm near Torahus and who represents the novel’s ideological norm.The Last Chapter is one of Hamsun’s darkest novels. It was written at a time when he was much preoccupied by death. The novel is often compared with Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which was published the year after.

Istočni diwan


Dževad Karahasan - 1989
    AD), in the Iraq cities of Basra and Baghdad and in Persia. In the framework of Islamic culture, the novel explores the relation between orthodox faith and mysticism, between the Arabic and Persian worlds, between male and female emotivity and experience of the world. The Arabic-Persian writer al-Muqaffa, the poet, mystic, and Sufi master al-Hallaj, and the philosopher and writer al-Tauhidi, all portrayed in confrontations with their persecutors – policemen and spies, profess esoteric teachings, and all esoteric religious and spiritual orientations are, as Dževad Karahasan says in his essay "Through Secret Gardens" from "Book of Gardens" (Knjiga vrtova, 2002), characterised by a belief that the world is divided into an outer and an inner sphere, of which the inner is the more valuable and the more real. This esoteric orientation leads the novel's protagonists into a conflict with the world: according to Dževad Karahasan, the rifts breeding hatred, excommunication, crime and war are engendered within the cultures and civilisations themselves rather than on their margins or borders. Each society has its 'different ones', the outcast, the persecuted, and the violence projected by us into the Other is actually present within the society itself. The other theme of Eastern Divan is the dialogue between male and female perceptions of the world, a dialogue established through the correspondence between al-Muqaffa, a Persian convert to Islam, and his wife. Their love letters crystallise two cultures, two views of the world, two ways of thinking and feeling.Uspješno transponujući borhesovske lavirinte i ogledala u duhovni ambijent Orijenta, Dževad Karahasan je uspio ostvariti "Istočni diwan" kao roman koji se 'čita u dahu', koji 'uvlači' u čitanje svojom uzbudljivošću, napetošću i mudrošću. I utoliko ovo djelo predstavlja jednu novu, svježu i vrijednu liniju savremenom romanu. "Istočni diwan" je djelo o sufijskom mučeniku i svecu Al-Halladžu, kompleksna studija u kojoj se preklapaju vjerno rekonstruirani ambijent Bagdada u 8. vijeku, refleksivni pasaži i egzistencijalno-spiritualna drama legendarnog martira, pjesnika i aforističkog mislioca. Za razliku od Selimovića u romanu "Derviš i smrt", Karahasan dobro poznaje problematiku sufijskog misticizma.

Ivo Andric: Bridge Between East and West


Celia Hawkesworth - 1985
    The book covers the full range of his work, including verse, essays and reflective prose as well as fiction. Celia Hawkesworth also provides an account of Andric's life, and the cultural history of his native Bosnia.>The story of the vizier's elephant --The bridge on the Žepa --In the guest-house --Death in Sinan's tekke --The climbers --A letter from 1920 --The house on its own : introduction --Alipasha --A story --The damned yard

An Imaginative Woman and Other Stories


Thomas Hardy - 1893
    

The Taste of a Man


Slavenka Drakulić - 1995
    He is a Brazilian anthropologist, in the city on a three-month research grant. They meet by chance in the New York Public Library, fall in love, and move into a tiny apartment together. Tereza has a lover waiting for her in Poland, Jose a wife and child in Sao Paulo. It would seem this could only be the most temporary of affairs. Yet, as Tereza recounts the extraordinary texture of their lives together, a portrait emerges of a relationship conducted at the extreme edge of sensuality - a relationship defying all conventional definitions. Jose and Tereza have no common language, they are exiled from their cultures, and for each of them the body of the other becomes everything: spirituality, sustenance, almost unbearable pleasure. In the tradition of Fatal Attraction, Slavenka Drakulic has written a breathtakingly erotic, profoundly intelligent tale of love based on pure appetite that will thrill readers with its unflinching candor, even as it shocks them with its horrifying conclusion.

Wide Sargasso Sea: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism


Carl Plasa - 2002
    The opening chapter outlines initial reactions to the novel from English and Caribbean critics, charting the differences between them. Chapter Two explores Wide Sargasso Sea 's dialogue with Jane Eyre and the theoretical questions it has raised. Succeeding chapters examine how critics have assessed the racial politics of Rhys's text, discuss the novel's African Caribbean cultural legacy, and explore how critics read the work both in terms of its moment of production and the early Victorian period in which it is set.

Atlas descrito por el cielo


Goran Petrović - 1993
    It is a magic tale based on an insignificant event: the painting of a roof of a bluesky color by removing it from its place. Petrovic has written a great universal story along the lines of magical realism, that reminds of some of the best books of Gabriel García Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes.

Classic American Literature: Works of Jack London, 43 books in a single file with active table of contents, improved 2/4/2011


Jack London - 1980
    According to Wikipedia: "Jack London (12 January, 1876 – 22 November, 1916) was an American author who wrote The Call of the Wild and other books. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing."

My Family's Role in the World Revolution: and Other Prose


Bora Ćosić - 1969
    My Family's Role in the World Revolution was originally published in Yugoslavia in 1969; it enjoyed a successful run as a play, but the firm version was closed immediately and ultimately caused Cosic's publications to be banned in that country for over four years. My Family's Role in the World Revolution takes place in Yugoslavia during and after World War II. During the German occupation of Belgrade, family members - an alarmist mother whose off-the-wall comments are always right on target, an eternally inebriated father, two young aunts who swoon over American movie stars, and a playboy uncle - keep attempting to find any kind of work they can do at home. Then, as the postwar Socialist society is being ushered into this Belgrade kitchen, the narrator, a naively wise schoolboy, becomes the slogan-spouting ideological leader of the household, while the remaining members try - and often fail miserably - to take part in the "great change." With humor reminiscent of Bohumil Hrabal and experimentation reminiscent of James Joyce, Cosic exposes the underside of the Communist revolution, revealing its destructive effects: chaos, bewilderment, and fear. This volume also includes several of Cosic's short stories, as well as recent essays in which he denounces the most recent war that has left him without a homeland.

Fording the Stream of Consciousness


Dubravka Ugrešić - 1988
    It begins with the death of an anti-Franco poet who slips into the pool of the intercontinental Hotel and continues with a rapid and entertaining chain of events involving espionage, sexual intrigue, murder, and a good deal of one-upmanship among the assembled academics. In the style of David Lodge, the novel is filled with colorful characters and hilarious scenes; but amid the lighthearted action Ugresic provides a serious and doubly outsidered perspective on the differences between the worlds of Eastern Europe and the West. Through the eyes of her Yugoslav and Russian characters Ugresic expresses the incredulity that many in Eastern Europe felt at the Western tendency to romanticize the "communist" world; simultaneously, through her American character, she explodes many of the myths of the West in the minds of Eastern Europe. In addressing issues of mutual cultural misunderstanding without attempting to impose artificial solutions to the problems, Ugresic has produced a truly successful multicultural novel.

Knjiga o Uni


Faruk Šehić - 2011
    The book covers three time periods, taking in the hero’s childhood before the war, the battle lines during the war, and his attempt to continue with normal life in a post-conflict society. Through his meditative prose, Šehić attempts to reconstruct the life of a man who is bipolar in nature; being both a veteran and a poet. At times, he manages to pick up the pieces of his life, but at other times it escapes him. His memories of the recent war and the killings are "dirty and disgusting", while he views his present as humdrum and his identity feels incomplete. With the help of his memories, he uses his mind and strength to look for a way out of the maze in which he is confined, acting as both archivist and chronicler of the past - roles that allow him the opportunity to rebuild everything again. In parallel to this story, the book’s passages on the town next to the river Una take on mythical and dreamlike dimensions. Here, the novel expands into a poetic description of nature, seasons, flora and fauna, as well as childhood memories not yet tainted by all that will happen after 1992.The book is dedicated to people who believe in the power and beauty of life in the face of death and mass destruction.

Shakespeare


Mark Van Doren - 1939
    Writing with an incomparable knowledge of his subject but without a hint of pedantry, Van Doren elucidates both the astonishing boldness and myriad subtleties of Shakespeare's protean art. His Shakespeare is a book to be treasured by both new and longtime students of the Bard.

Fabulous Small Jews


Joseph Epstein - 2003
    They are populated by lawyers, professors, scrap-iron dealers, dry cleaners, all men of a certain age who feel themselves adrift in the radically changed values of the day. Epstein's richly drawn characters are at various crossroads and turning points in their lives: bitter Seymour Hefferman, who anonymously sends scathing postcards to writers until he gets caught; Moe Bernstein, who, inspired by his grandson, decides to attend to his own health after long delay; divorcé Artie Glick, who wants to marry his pregnant girlfriend. Fabulous Small Jews is a marvelous collection from a master of the short form.

Catcher in the Rye: New Essays


J.P. Steed - 2002
    D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye celebrated its fiftieth anniversary of publication in 2001. The Catcher in the Rye: New Essays presents a variety of new approaches to this extremely popular and intensely influential novel, ranging from the examination of the intertextual relationship between The Catcher in the Rye and Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, to the evaluation of Salinger's mythic place in American film and popular culture, to the interrogation of what it means for a reader to claim that a novel such as The Catcher in the Rye has changed his or her life. These essays provide new commentary and new insights, and demonstrate the continuing relevance of Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, and Holden Caulfield to American culture and literature and, in turn, to American cultural and literary studies.