A Free Life
Ha Jin - 2007
We follow the Wu family--father Nan, mother Pingping, and son Taotao--as they fully sever their ties with China in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and begin a new, free life in the United States.At first, their future seems well-assured--Nan’s graduate work in political science at Brandeis University would guarantee him a teaching position in China--but after the fallout from Tiananmen, Nan’s disillusionment turns him towards his first love, poetry. Leaving his studies, he takes on a variety of menial jobs while Pingping works for a wealthy widow as a cook and housekeeper. As Nan struggles to adapt to a new language and culture, his love of poetry and literature sustains him through difficult, lean years. Ha Jin creates a moving, realistic, but always hopeful narrative as Nan moves from Boston to New York to Atlanta, ever in search of financial stability and success, even in a culture that sometimes feels oppressive and hostile. As Pingping and Taotao slowly adjust to American life, Nan still feels a strange, paradoxical attachment to his homeland, though he violently disagrees with Communist policy. And severing all ties--including his love for a woman who rejected him in his youth--proves to be more difficult than he could have ever imagined.Ha Jin’s prodigious talents are evident in this powerful new book, which brilliantly brings to life the struggles and successes that characterize the contemporary immigrant experience. With its lyrical prose and confident grace, A Free Life is a luminous addition to the works of one of the preeminent writers in America today.
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
In the Eye of the Sun
Ahdaf Soueif - 1993
Here, a woman who grows up among the Egyptian elite, marries a Westernized husband, and, while pursuing graduate study, becomes embroiled in a love affair with an uncouth Englishman.
Wild Freedom: Two Classic Westerns
Max Brand - 1922
The Long, Long Trail (1922)Jess is a gunslinger, an outlaw on the run trying to elude the sheriff. When a woman enters his life, he reconsiders his future.About The AuthorSeattle-born Frederick Schiller Faust (1892 –1944) was a western author who wrote under pen names including Max Brand. He grew up working on a ranch in California's San Joaquin Valley. His books inspired Hollywood films and he created popular characters including Dr. Kildare.
Exterminator!
William S. Burroughs - 1973
A perfect servant suddenly reveals himself to be the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Science-fantasy wars, racism, corporate capitalism, drug addiction, and various medical and psychiatric horrors all play their parts in this mosaiclike, experimental novel. Here is William S. Burroughs at his coruscating and hilarious best.
Camp Concentration
Thomas M. Disch - 1967
Sacchetti and the other inmates are used in perverse scientific experiments, and Sacchetti is infected with a germ that raises intelligence to incredible heights while causing decay and death.
The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes
Stephen Marlowe - 1991
Marlowe gives it to us. The backdrop is Renaissance Europe, a world alive with creative ferment, triple-crossing intrigue, and the passionate quest for novelty. Lofty tragedy and lyric poetry still reign as queens of the literary arts, but young writers heady with ambition seek live action to give substance to their teeming imaginations. It is scoundrel time, and the novel is in gestation. To enter Cervantes's world we cross a threshold that is Shakespearean and quixotic into a metaphysical wonderland where time expands to become space and vast vaulted distances bend back on themselves, where the threads of fiction and the strands of history shuttle back and forth in the great loom of the artist's imagination. Marlowe's Cervantes is a towering creation: flesh and blood and living legend, actor in and creator of the events in his own fantastical life story. He not only survives war, prison, torture, and poverty, he survives death itself, growing inexorably toward the writing of Don Quixote, which would bring both him and his character immortal fame.
Poems that will Save Your Life: Inspirational verse by the world's greatest writers to motivate, strengthen and bring comfort in difficult times
John Boyes - 2010
In this superb anthology can be found the best of the English-speaking world’s inspirational and reassuring verse, including such classics as Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ and W.H. Davies’ ‘Leisure’. This beautifully illustrated collection of over 120 poems is sure to offer solace, hearten the soul and motivate the human spirit.
On Being Blue
William H. Gass - 1975
In a philosophical approach to color, William Gass explores man's perception of the color blue as well as its common erotic, symbolic, and emotional associations.
Space Between Us
Zoya Pirzad - 1997
Although Edmond is Armenian and Tahereh is the Muslim daughter of the school’s janitor, they remain blissfully unaware of the disquiet that ripples the surface calm of their close-knit community. Yet years later, when Edmond’s daughter chooses a Muslim to marry, tensions inevitably build. Unable to keep sidestepping the prejudices around him, Edmond is finally forced to make a choice, and one that will haunt him for years to come.From the critically acclaimed author of Things We Left Unsaid, 'The Space Between Us' is a poignant, wistful story about belonging and otherness, pride and prejudice, and the pressures and family expectations that inform our decisions. Brilliantly painting the landscape of intricate social conventions and private emotional conflict, Pirzad has produced an intimate portrait of ordinary Iranians living everyday lives.
Mad Love
André Breton - 1937
Its adulation of love as both mystery and revelation places it in the most abiding of literary traditions, but its stormy history and technical difficulty have prevented it from being translated into English until now. "There has never been any forbidden fruit. Only temptation is divine," writes André Breton, leader of the surrealists in Paris in the 1920s and '30s. Mad Love is dedicated to defying "the widespread opinion that love wears out, like the diamond, in its own dust." Celebrating breton's own love and lover, the book unveils the marvelous in everyday encounters and the hidden depths of ordinary things.
Some Luck
Jane Smiley - 2014
Moving from post-World War I America through the early 1950s, Some Luck gives us an intimate look at this family's triumphs and tragedies, zooming in on the realities of farm life, while casting-as the children grow up and scatter to New York, California, and everywhere in between-a panoramic eye on the monumental changes that marked the first half of the twentieth century. Rich with humor and wisdom, twists and surprises, Some Luck takes us through deeply emotional cycles of births and deaths, passions, and betrayals, displaying Smiley's dazzling virtuosity, compassion, and understanding of human nature and the nature of history, never discounting the role of fate and chance. This potent conjuring of many lives across generations is a stunning tour de force.
The Waste Land
T.S. Eliot - 1922
"Contexts" provides readers with invaluable materials on The Waste Land's sources, composition, and publication history. "Criticism" traces the poem's reception with twenty-five reviews and essays, from first reactions through the end of the twentieth century. Included are reviews published in the Times Literary Supplement, along with selections by Virginia Woolf, Gilbert Seldes, Edmund Wilson, Elinor Wylie, Conrad Aiken, Charles Powell, Gorham Munson, Malcolm Cowley, Ralph Ellison, John Crowe Ransom, I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis, Cleanth Brooks, Delmore Schwartz, Denis Donoghue, Robert Langbaum, Marianne Thormählen, A. D. Moody, Ronald Bush, Maud Ellman, and Tim Armstrong. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are included.
The Doll: The Lost Short Stories
Daphne du Maurier - 2011
Originally published in periodicals during the early 1930s, many of these stories never found their way into print again . . . until now.Tales of human frailty and obsession, and of romance gone tragically awry, the thirteen stories in The Doll showcase an exciting budding talent before she went on to write one of the most beloved novels of all time. In these pages, a waterlogged notebook washes ashore revealing a dark story of jealousy and obsession, a vicar coaches a young couple divided by class issues, and an older man falls perilously in love with a much younger woman—with each tale demonstrating du Maurier’s extraordinary storytelling gifts and her deep understanding of human nature.
Stories for Children
Leo Tolstoy - 1987
This volume includes several of Tolstoy's stories for children.