It is out of this background that the great critic Theodor Adorno emerged. His finest essays are collected here, offering the reader unparalleled insights into Adorno's thoughts on culture. He argued that the culture industry commodified and standardized all art. In turn this suffocated individuality and destroyed critical thinking. At the time, Adorno was accused of everything from overreaction to deranged hysteria by his many detractors. In today's world, where even the least cynical of consumers is aware of the influence of the media, Adorno's work takes on a more immediate significance. The Culture Industry is an unrivalled indictment of the banality of mass culture.

    An exploration of the ideas, groupings and the social tensions that shaped the transformation of life caused by the changes of modernity in art, science, politics and philosophy

    The author provides a succinct but lucid outline of the ways in which language has been defined, described, and explored, and guides readers towards further exploration of their own.

    An entire community was destroyed. For many people affected by this tragedy, the psychological scars may never heal.Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a condition that affects many people who have endured traumatic events, leaving them unable to move on from life-changing tragedies. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the focus was rightly placed on providing food, shelter and health care for those left homeless – but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the psychological impact this fire will have had on its survivors.24 Stories is an anthology of short stories, written on themes of community and hope, by a mix of the UK’s best established writers and previously unpublished authors, whose pieces were chosen by Kathy Burke from over 250 entries.Contributors include: Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy, Meera Syal, John Niven, Pauline Melville, Daisy Buchanan, Christopher Brookmyre, Zoe Venditozzi, Nina Stibbe, Mike Gayle, Murray Lachlan Young, Barney Farmer.

    Or is it? He's not sure, he doesn't really care. It might be his last day or the beginning of a new chapter in his life. He must find the key to his old room. He knows the truth about his past lies there and somehow he must get in and confront it.Over a million Rose Tremain books sold‘A writer of exceptional talent ... Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion’ Independent I‘There are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain’ Irish Times‘Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect’ The Times'Rose Tremain is one of the very finest British novelists' Salman Rushdie‘Tremain is a writer of exemplary vision and particularity. The fictional world is rendered with extraordinary vividness’ Marcel Theroux, Guardian

    First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil’s whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II—calling it “her method of facing the war”—and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff’s account of the Iliad brings out Homer’s novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters’ choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey’s scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.

    This celebrated account of the decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris was written by his close collaborator in the momentuous discovery. In revealing the secrets of Linear B it offers a valuable survey of late pre-Hellenic archaeology, uncovering fascinating details of the religious and economic history of an ancient civilization.

    . . . Derrida's central contention is that language is haunted by dispersal, absence, loss, the risk of unmeaning, a risk which is starkly embodied in all writing. The distinction between philosophy and literature therefore becomes of secondary importance. Philosophy vainly attempts to control the irrecoverable dissemination of its own meaning, it strives—against the grain of language—to offer a sober revelation of truth. Literature—on the other hand—flaunts its own meretriciousness, abandons itself to the Dionysiac play of language. In Dissemination—more than any previous work—Derrida joins in the revelry, weaving a complex pattern of puns, verbal echoes and allusions, intended to 'deconstruct' both the pretension of criticism to tell the truth about literature, and the pretension of philosophy to the literature of truth."—Peter Dews, New Statesman

    When a mercurial Moscow blonde and a visiting British businessman conduct an affair through their Russian interpreter it reveals all the deceptions of love and East-West relations.

    Umberto Eco focuses here on what he once called "the cancer of uncontrolled interpretation"--that is, the belief that many interpreters have gone too far in their domination of texts, thereby destroying meaning and the basis for communication.

    The appearance of difficulty is part of Joyce's big joke; the profundities are always expressed in good round Dublin terms; Joyce's heroes are humble men."--From the Foreword by Anthony Burgess.

    The conventions of the Egyptian upper-middle class are laid bare in this dazzling novel, which exposes startling sexual hypocrisies and portrays a now vanished polyglot world of horse-racing, seaside promenades, and elegant night clubs. Hamdi-Ali senior is an old-time patriarch with more than a dash of strong Turkish blood. His handsome elder son, a promising horse jockey, can't afford sexual frustration, as it leads him to overeat and imperil his career, but the woman he lusts after won't let him get beyond undoing a few buttons. Victor, the younger son, takes his pleasure with other boys. But the true heroine of the story—richly evoked in a pungent upstairs/downstairs mix—is the raucous, seductive city of Alexandria itself. Published in Hebrew in 1978, Alexandrian Summer appears now in translation for the first time.Yitzhak Gormezano Goren was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1941 and immigrated to Israel as a child. A playwright and novelist, Goren studied English and French literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. In 1982, he cofounded the Bimat Kedem Theater.“Helps show why postwar Alexandria inspires nostalgia and avidity in seemingly everyone who knew it … The result is what summer reading should be: fast, carefree, visceral, and incipiently lubricious.”— The New Yorker“Luminous … One of the great triumphs of Alexandrian Summer is the richness of the evocation of this city and the multiple cultures pressed within it … A sultry eroticism pervades.”— The Forward"Alexandria, a lush paradise by the sea, comes to antic, full-bodied life ... Gormezano Goren’s characters are vividly depicted as they grow up or grow older in a city of conflicting loyalties, riven by resentment, ready to revolt. Readers will be transported."—Publishers Weekly"This novel recalls one gloriously golden summer in a cosmopolitan city on the verge of upheaval ... Fluidly written and soberly enticing."—Library Journal"A gifted writer ... Gormezano Goren defines the city and its ambiance in lush, sensuous terms ... He also describes so well the Diaspora Jew’s knack for downplaying the danger of gathering storms of hatred, a tendency not limited to Alexandria or to any particular era of exile."—The Jerusalem Post"A powerful novel of tensions–sexual, familial, religious, and political–and an affecting but unsparing portrait of the petit bourgeois world of Egyptian Jews standing obliviously on the edge of a precipice. Alexandria-–sensual and enchanting-–shimmers in these pages." —Dalia Sofer, author of The Septembers of Shiraz"A fine work of art . . . riveting from the first page to the last."—Zo Haderekh"A reason to rejoice. . . . You can't help but keep on smiling with great pleasure."—Maariv"A profound literary experience."—Ahshav

    In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.

    Hebdige [...] is concerned with the UK's postwar, music-centred, white working-class subcultures, from teddy boys to mods and rockers to skinheads and punks.' - Rolling StoneWith enviable precision and wit Hebdige has addressed himself to a complex topic - the meanings behind the fashionable exteriors of working-class youth subcultures - approaching them with a sophisticated theoretical apparatus that combines semiotics, the sociology of devience and Marxism and come up with a very stimulating short book - Time OutThis book is an attempt to subject the various youth-protest movements of Britain in the last 15 years to the sort of Marxist, structuralist, semiotic analytical techniques propagated by, above all, Roland Barthes. The book is recommended whole-heartedly to anyone who would like fresh ideas about some of the most stimulating music of the rock era - The New York Times

    At seven levels, from Starter to Advanced, this impressive selection of carefully graded readers offers exciting reading for every student's capabilities. It's Christmas in New York and Private Investigator Nathan Marley is hired by a rich attractive woman to reclaim a briefcase of jewellery from a locker at Grand Central station. Marley is right not to trust the woman and soon finds himself involved in a case of criminal activity involving fraud, computer hacking and kidnap. Paperback-only version. Also available with Audio CDs including complete text recordings from the book.