These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism -- years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. Their painful, unsettling eloquence testify to the humane and the comic in this absurdist writer's work. The translator Neil Cornwall gives a biographical introduction to his subject, enlarged upon by the poet Hugh Maxton in a contextual assessment of the writing of Flann O'Brien, Le Fanu and Doyle, and of their shared concerns with detective fiction, terror and death. Daniil Kharms 91905-42) died under Stalin. Along with fellow poets and prose-writers of the era -- Khlebnikov, Biely, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky and Pasternak -- he is one of the emerging experimentalists of Russian modernism.

    61 pages of summaries and analysis on Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.This study guide includes the following sections: Plot Summary, Chapter Summaries & Analysis, Characters, Objects/Places, Themes, Style, Quotes, and Topics for Discussion.

    Among the Hidden 2. Among the Impostors 3. Among the Betrayed 4. Among the Barrons 5. Among the Brave

    

    Tiny, warm-hearted, totally devoted to her charming rogue of a husband, Lizzie mothers her brood of nephews and nieces through the perils of the war-torn capital, makes a home for them in the bomb shelters of underground London, launches them on the roller-coaster of life and stands by with help and encouragement.For Lizzie is a survivor, an irresistible heroine with the unquenchable optimism, the great heart, the indomitable courage that sum up the spirit of the East End.

    In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes. Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature.

    When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia.Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe.Richly imagined, weaving anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk's novel is an epic of a small place. Since its publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.

    The inspiration to write a work of art arises from the unconscious, full of ideas that the very author may have been unaware of. “The Little Prince for Grown-ups” gets to the roots of some of Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince, using mythology and Jungian psychology concepts to expose some of its buried treasures. As in the book of Saint-Exupéry, the crash that leads the pilot to land in the Sahara desert becomes the beginning of a self-knowledge journey. Exupéry himself, or rather, Antoine, is the protagonist of this journey, and his companions are the blonde boy with the scarf around his neck and the Wise Old Man. In addition, there are many stories from the Bible as well as Gnostic texts, and Greek mythology.. Despite being based on Jungian ideas, no psychology knowledge is required to the read the book.

    Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You is a many-layered novel about family, race, secrets and love. When Marilyn Walker and James Lee meet at college in the late 1950's, a mixed-race relationship is something unusual and socially questionable. The story begins in the mid-seventies, a time of political and social upheaval, when many parts of life formerly taken for granted are uncertain and subject to change. This is the milieu in which Lydia Lee vanishes one night. The reader knows from the first line that Lydia is dead; what happened to her is not the mystery. The mystery is how it happened. Was it a suicide? Accident? Did someone kill her? If so, who? And why? This companion to Everything I Never Told You also includes the following: • Book Review • Story Setting Analysis • Story elements you may have missed as we decipher the novel • Details of Characters & Key Character Analysis • Summary of the text, with some analytical comments interspersed • Discussion & Analysis of Themes, Symbols… • And Much More! This Analysis of Everything I Never Told You fills the gap, making you understand more while enhancing your reading experience.

    After his doting aunt asks him to perform a small chore, he decides to kill her for no good reason other than, perhaps, boredom. Killing Auntie follows Jurek as he seeks to dispose of the corpse—a task more difficult than one might imagine—and then falls in love with a girl he meets on a train. Can he tell her what he's done? Will that ruin everything?"I'm convinced—simply—that we are all guilty," says Jurek, and his adventures with nosy neighbors, false-toothed grandmothers, and love-making lynxes shed light on how an entire society becomes involved in the murder and disposal of dear old Auntie. This is a short comedic masterpiece combining elements of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, and Joseph Heller, coming together in the end to produce an unforgettable tale of murder and—just maybe—redemption.Andrzej Bursa was born in 1934 in Krakow, Poland, and died twenty-five years later. In his brief lifetime he composed some of the most original Polish writing of the twentieth century. Killing Auntie is his only novel. His brilliant career and tragic early death established him as a cult figure among restless and disenchanted youth.

     - Why it is easy to be happy, and how you can miss happiness even if it stands before you. - How a bird can fill you with joy and how a stranger's smile can soothe you. - Why happiness may not even be the word for what we really need.India's beloved sage and writer brings together his own pithy observations and those by artists and thinkers he admires in this beautiful little anthology. A Little Book of Happiness is a miscellany for all seasons, one to cherish and to share.

    

    These stories are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the bizarre chills the spine, and few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy. The Dark Domain will introduce to English readers one of Europe's most important authors of literary fantasy.

    Returning to the Paris hotel where he spent his honeymoon six years earlier, he decides to take what seems like the only way out - suicide. But a chance encounter with a Russian in a similar predicament leaves Nick with an unlikely obligation to fulfil, one that will take him to Italy, and offer him a chance at something like redemption. www.kevinwignall.com

    Includes:Man from the South, Lamb to the Slaughter, The Landlady, The champion of the World, Galloping Foxley, Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat, The Ratcatcher and The Hitchhiker.