Literary companions, book reviews and guides Books

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Book SynopsisReading James Joyce is a ready-at-hand compendium and all-encompassing interpretive guide designed for teachers and students approaching Joyce's writings for the first time, guiding readers to better understand Joyce's works and the background from which they emerged. Meticulously organized, this text situates readers within the world of Joyce including biographical exploration, discussion of Joyce's innovations and prominent works such as Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, surveys of significant critical approaches to Joyce's writings, and examples of alternative readings and contemporary responses. Each chapter will provide interpretive approaches to contemporary literary theories and key issues, including end-of-chapter strategies and extended readings for further engagement. This book also includes shorter assessments of Joyce's lesser-known workscritical writings, drama, poetry, letters, epiphanies, and personal recollectionsto contextualizTable of ContentsIntroduction1 Biography2 Approaching Dubliners3 Approaching A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man4 Approaching Ulysses5 Approaching Finnegans Wake6 Approaching the Minor WorksAppendices—Debunking popular myths about Joyce’s writingsI. The Uncle Charles PrincipleII. The love life of Bloom and Molly III. The Dream of Finnegans WakeIV. Definitions of Modernism and PostmodernismV. Epiphanies, Epicleti, and EpicletsVI. Satiric and Serious Joyce: "The Holy Office," "Gas from a Burner," and "A Curious History"VII. Currency Terms with Selected Examples from Joyce’s Literary WorksChronologyBibliographyMiscellaneous: Joyce Foundations and Journals

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Book SynopsisThis book, first published in 1950, could best be described as a combination of literary, psychological and social criticism. Considerable space is allotted to the personal inner drama of Ibsen, which provides not only a clue to his art but shows how most of his themes inevitably grew out of the other. The author also explores some of those factors which make Ibsen of interest to the generation that were facing the social and spiritual havoc of the post-war period. This book will be of interest to students of literature and theatre. Table of Contents1. Introductory 2. Some Aspects of Ibsen’s Art 3. A Romantic Rebel 4. A Moral Superman 5. The ‘Gyntish Self’ 6. The Paradox of Will 7. Ibsen the Realist 8. ‘Mankind has Failed’ 9. The Turning-Point 10. The ‘Insecurity of Conscience’ 11. The Law of Adjustment 12. The Master-Builder’s Downfall 13. Empty Heights 14. The ‘Danse Macabre’; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index

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Book SynopsisEliot's Four Quartets is arguably the finest long poem in modern English literature. It is also one that presents considerable problems of interpretation. In Word Unheard, first published in 1969, Blamires aims to unravel some of these problems by guiding the reader line by line through the poem, blending paraphrase with commentary. Blamires pays particular attention to the philosophical and theological dimensions of the poem and to its multifarious personal, historical and literary allusions. This title will be of interests to students of literature. Table of ContentsIntroductory Note; Burnt Norton; East Coker; The Dry Salvages; Little Gidding; Appendix I; Appendix II; Appendix III; Index

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Book SynopsisPopular commercial fiction emerged in the nineteenth century, with serialised novels and sensational penny dreadfuls. Today it remains a multi-million dollar industry giving pleasure to many, but it is also a field of growing interest for scholars and students of literature. This Companion covers the major developments in the history of popular fiction, with specially commissioned chapters on pulp fiction, bestsellers, and comics and graphic narratives. The volume also examines the public and personal everyday contexts within which popular texts are read, highlighting the ways in which such narratives have circulated across a variety of constantly changing media, including theatre, television, cinema and new computer-based digital forms. Case studies from key genres - crime fiction, romance and Gothic horror - as well as a full chronology and guide to further reading make this collection indispensable to all those interested in this complex and vibrant cultural field.Trade Review'It is a subject which stretches back (and forward) in time, across cultures, media, readers or consumers and is constantly shifting, especially now in the light of rapidly developing technology. This is a thorough survey of the current state of academic study of this area … for academics and students it is an invaluable source and guide to a subject, or subjects, of wide social, cultural and academic application.' Stuart James, Reference ReviewsTable of ContentsIntroduction David Glover and Scott McCracken; 1. Publishing, history, genre David Glover; 2. Fiction, theatre, and early cinema Nicholas Daly; 3. Television and serial fictions John Caughie; 4. The public sphere, popular culture and the true meaning of the Zombie Apocalypse Roger Luckhurst; 5. The reader of popular fiction Nicola Humble; 6. Reading time: popular fiction and the everyday Scott McCracken; 7. Gender and sexuality in popular fiction Kaye Mitchell; 8. Pulp sensations Erin A. Smith; 9. Bestselling fiction: machinery, economy, excess Fred Botting; 10. Comic books and graphic novels Hilary Chute and Marianne Dekoven; 11. Popular fictions in the digital age Brenda Silver; Further reading; Index.

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Book SynopsisAn accessible, wide-ranging introduction to one of the most important aspects of Romantic cultural history, aimed at scholars and students alike. This is the only collection of its kind to focus exclusively on the Romantic sublime, its sources, and its afterlives, including state-of-the-art perspectives in digital and environmental humanities.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The romantic sublime, then and now Cian Duffy; Part I. The Sublime Before Romanticism: 1. The classical sublime Patrick Glauthier; 2. The natural sublime in the seventeenth century Dawn Hollis; 3. The sublime in eighteenth-century English, Irish and Scottish philosophy Cian Duffy; 4. The Nordic sublime Lis Møller; Part II. Romantic Sublimes: 5. German romanticism and the sublime Christoph Bode; 6. The romantic sublime and Kant's critical philosophy Timothy M. Costelloe; 7. Alpine sublimes Patrick Vincent; 8. Urban sublimes Matthew Sangster; 9. Highlands, lakes, wales Simon Bainbridge; 10. Science and the sublime Richard C. Sha; 11. Musical sublimes Miranda Stanyon; 12. The arctic sublime Robert W. Rix; 13. The body and the sublime Norbert Lennartz; 14. The sublime in romantic painting Nina Amstutz; 15. From the sublime to the ridiculous Andrew McInnes; 16. The sublime in American romanticism Cassandra Falke; Part III. Legacies: 17. The Victorian chthonic sublime Tatjana Jukić; 18. Mapping the nineteenth-century sublime Joanna E. Taylor, Christopher Donaldson and Ian N. Gregory; 19. The romantic sublime and environmental Crisis Tess Somervell.

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Book SynopsisDespite an unprecedented level of interest in the interaction between law and literature over the past two decades, readers have had no accessible introduction to this rich engagement in medieval and early Tudor England. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature addresses this need by combining an authoritative guide through the bewildering maze of medieval law with concise examples illustrating how the law infiltrated literary texts during this period. Foundational chapters written by leading specialists in legal history prepare readers to be guided by noted literary scholars through unexpected conversations with the law found in numerous medieval texts, including major works by Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and Malory. Part I contains detailed introductions to legal concepts, practices and institutions in medieval England, and Part II covers medieval texts and authors whose verse and prose can be understood as engaging with the law.Trade Review'The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature provides a useful introduction to the intersection of law and literature from the Middle Ages … this collection provides a rewarding read, and it will be of use to a broad array of literary scholars in later periods, as well as to those researching the origins of so many political and theological controversies in Anglo-American culture, many of which are shown to have their roots in medieval legal contexts.' Brian C. Lockey, Renaissance QuarterlyTable of ContentsPart I. Legal Contexts: 1. English law before the conquest Stefan Jurasinski; 2. Languages and law in late medieval England: English, French and Latin Gwilym Dodd; 3. Canon and civil law Peter D. Clarke; 4. Custom and common law Paul Raffield; 5. Magna Carta and statutory law Anthony Musson; 6. Treatises, tracts, and compilations Don C. Skemer; Part II. Literary Texts: 7. Treason Neil Cartlidge; 8. Complaint literature Wendy Scase; 9. Political literature and political law Andy Galloway; 10. William Langland Emily Steiner; 11. Geoffrey Chaucer Candace Barrington; 12. John Gower R. F. Yeager; 13. Lollards and religious writings Fiona Somerset; 14. Lancastrian literature Sebastian Sobecki; 15. Middle English romance and Malory's Le Morte Darthur Corinne Saunders; 16. Marriage and the legal culture of witnessing Emma Lipton.

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Book SynopsisThis newly commissioned volume presents a focused overview of Dante''s masterpiece, the Commedia, offering readers of today wide-ranging insights into the poem and its core features. Leading scholars discuss matters of structure, narrative, language and style, characterization, doctrine, and politics, in chapters that make their own contributions to Dante criticism by raising problems and questions that call for renewed attention, while investigating contextual concerns as well as the current state of criticism about the poem. The Commedia is also placed in a variety of cultural and historical contexts through accounts of the poem''s transmission and reception that explore both its contemporary influence and its continuing legacy today. With its accessible approach, its unstinting focus on the poem and its attention to matters that have not always received adequate critical assessment, this volume will be of value to all students and scholars of Dante''s great poem.Table of ContentsIntroduction Zygmunt G. Barański and Simon Gilson; 1. Narrative structure Lino Pertile; 2. Dante Alighieri, Dante-poet, Dante-character Giuseppe Ledda; 3. Characterization Laurence E. Hooper; 4. Moral structure George Corbett; 5. Title, genre, metaliterary aspects Theodore J. Cachey, Jr; 6. Language and style Mirko Tavoni; 7. Allegories of the corpus James C. Kriesel; 8. Classical culture Simone Marchesi; 9. Vernacular literature and culture Tristan Kay; 10. Religious culture Paola Nasti; 11. Doctrine Simon Gilson; 12. Politics Claire E. Honess; 13. Genesis, dating, and Dante's 'other works' Zygmunt G. Barański; 14. Transmission history Prue Shaw; 15. Early reception until 1481 Anna Pegoretti; 16. Later reception from 1481 to the present Fabio Camilletti.

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Book SynopsisOffering a comprehensive overview of Atwood's ever-changing work, this second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Margaret Atwood is designed for students, scholars and curious readers alike, placing emphasis on Atwood's recent dystopias including The Testaments, and the television adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale.Trade Review'Recommended.' T. Ware, Choice Connect'This book is a worthy addition to the series. Its focus on topics as diverse as Canadian identity, dystopias, power, poetry and poetics, environmentalism, humour, feminism, and digital technology ensure that there is something for all Atwood fans, and for Canadian scholars in general.' Jane Ekstam, British Journal of Canadian StudiesTable of ContentsIntroduction Coral Ann Howells; 1. Margaret Atwood in her Canadian context David Staines; 2. Margaret Atwood on questions of power Pilar Somacarrera; 3. Home and nation in Margaret Atwood's later fiction Eleonora Rao; 4. Margaret Atwood's female bodies Sarah A. Appleton; 5. Margaret Atwood and environmentalism J. Brooks Bouson; 6. Margaret Atwood and history Gina Wisker; 7. Margaret Atwood's revisions of classic texts Fiona Tolan; 8. Margaret Atwood's humor Marta Dvořák; 9. Margaret Atwood's poetry and poetics Branko Gorjup; 10. Margaret Atwood's later short fiction Reingard M. Nischik; 11. Margaret Atwood's recent dystopias Coral Ann Howells; 12. The Hulu and MGM television adaptations of The Handmaid's Tale Eva-Marie Kröller.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of thirty-five lively and accessible essays offers a comprehensive account of the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky (182181), set within social, political, cultural and literary contexts.Table of ContentsChronology; 1. Introduction: the many worlds of Dostoevsky Olga Maiorova and Deborah A. Martinsen; Part I. Social, Historical, and Cultural Contexts: Section 1. Changing Political, Economic, and Social Landscape: 2. The great reforms and the new courts Richard Wortman; 3. The abolition of serfdom Nathaniel Knight; 4. Punishment and crime Anna Schur; 5. Socialism, utopia, and myth James P. Scanlan; 6. Nihilism and terrorism Derek Offord; 7. The 'woman question', women's work, women's options Barbara Engel; 8. The economy and the print market Jonathan Paine; Section 2. Political, Social, and Cultural Institutions: 9. Russian monarchy and the people Richard Wortman; 10. Empire Olga Maiorova; 11. Service ranks Irina Reyfman; 12. Education Inessa Medzhibovskaya; 13. Science, technology, and medicine Michael D. Gordin; 14. Jews, race, and biology Harriet Murav; 15. Suicide Susan Morrissey; 16. Children Robin Feuer Miller; 17. Gambling Richard J. Rosenthal; Section 3. Space and Place: 18. Symbolic geography Anne Lounsbery; 19. St Petersburg Robert Belknap; 20. The Crystal Palace Sarah J. Young; Section 4. Religion and Modernity: 21. Orthodox spirituality Nel Grillaert; 22. Religious dissent Irina Paert; 23. Roman Catholicism Mikhail Dolbilov; 24. Islam Robert Geraci; Part II. Literature, Journalism, and Languages: 25. Modern print culture Konstantine Klioutchkine; 26. Realism Liza Knapp; 27. Dostoevsky: translator and translated Carol Apollonio; 28. Travel and travel writing Susan Layton; 29. Folklore Linda Ivanits; 30. Foreign languages Karin Beck; 31. Theater Maude Meisel; 32. Dostoevsky's journalism and fiction Ellen Chances; 33. Dostoevsky's journalism in the 1860s Sarah Hudspith; 34. Dostoevsky's journalism in the 1870s Kate Holland; 35. Censorship Irene Zohrab; Glossary; Further reading.

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George Orwell''s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) remains a book of the moment. This Companion builds on successive waves of generational inheritance and debate in the novel''s reception by asking new questions about how and why Nineteen Eighty-Four was written, what it means, and why it matters. Chapters on a selection of the novel''s interpretative contexts, the literary histories from which it is inseparable, the urgent questions it raises, and the impact it has had on other kinds of media, ranging from radio to video games, open up the conversation in an expansive way. Established concerns (e.g. Orwell''s attitude to the working class, his anxieties about the socio-political compartmentalization of the post-war world) are presented alongside newer ones (e.g. his views on evil, and the influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four on comics). Individual essays help us see in new ways how Orwell''s most famous work continues to be a novel for our times.

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Book SynopsisThe Victorian period has a strong tradition of poetry written by women. In this Companion, leading scholars deliver accessible and cutting-edge essays that situate Victorian women''s poetry in its relation to print culture, diverse identities, and aesthetic and cultural issues. The book is inclusive in method, demonstrating, for example, the benefits of both distant and close reading approaches, and featuring major figures like Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti and over one hundred poets altogether. Thematically arranged, the chapters deliver studies on a comprehensive array of subjects that address women''s poetry in its manifold forms and investigate its global context. Essays shed light on children''s poetry, domestic relations, sexualities, and stylistic artifice and conclude by looking at how women poets placed their published poems and how we can ''place'' Victorian women poets today.Trade Review'The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women's Poetry is an invigorating and accessible volume which is highly attuned to the pressures on the discipline in the wake of digitisation.' Jane Ford, Women's Writing'All of the chapters are deeply informed and scholarly, but also readable and accessible.' Martin Dubois, Tennyson Research BulletinTable of ContentsList of illustrations; Notes on contributors; Acknowledgments; Chronology of publications and events, compiled by Sofia Prado Huggins; 1. Introduction Linda K. Hughes; Part I. Form and the Senses: 2. Genres Monique R. Morgan; 3. Prosody Meredith Martin; 4. Haunted by voice Elizabeth Helsinger; 5. Floating worlds: wood engraving and women's poetry Lorraine Janzen Kooistra; 6. Embodiment and touch Jason R. Rudy; Part II. Women's Poetry in the World: 7. Publishing and reception Alexis Easley; 8. Transatlanticism, transnationality, and cosmopolitanism Alison Chapman; 9. Dialect, region, class, work Kirstie Blair; 10. Politics, protest, interventions: beyond a poetess tradition Marjorie Stone; 11. Religion and spirituality Charles Laporte; Part III. Nurturance and Contested Naturalness: 12. Children's poetry Laurie Langbauer and Beverly Taylor; 13. Marriage, motherhood, and domesticity Emily Harrington; 14. Sexuality Jill Ehnenn; 15. Poets of style: poetries of asceticism and excess Ana Parejo Vadillo; Part IV. Reading Victorian Women's Poetry: 16. Distant reading and Victorian women's poetry Natalie M. Houston; Afterword. Nineteenth-century women's poetry in the field of vision Isobel Armstrong; Further reading; Appendix. Poets' biographies.

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Book SynopsisThis second editionof The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot includes several new chapters, providing an essential introductionto all aspects of Eliot''slife and writing. Accessible essays by some of the most distinguished scholars of Victorian literature provide lucid and original insights into the work of one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century, author most famously of Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda. From an introduction that traces her originality as a realist novelist, the book moves on toextensive considerations of each of Eliot''s novels, her life and her publishing history. Chapters address the problems of money, philosophy, religion, politics, gender and science, as they are developedinher novels. With its supplementary materials, including a chronology and an extensive section of suggested readings, this Companion is an invaluable tool for scholars and students alike.Table of Contents1. Introduction – George Eliot and the art of realism Nancy Henry and George Levine; 2. A woman of many names Rosemarie Bodenheimer; 3. Marian Evans's journalism Fionnuala Dillane; 4. George Eliot and her publishers Donald Gray; 5. The early novels Josephine McDonagh; 6. The later novels Alexander Welsh; 7. George Eliot and money Dermot Coleman; 8. George Eliot and gender Kate Flint; 9. George Eliot and politics Nancy Henry; 10. George Eliot and science Amy M. King; 11. George Eliot and religion Barry V. Qualls; 12. George Eliot and philosophy Suzy Anger; 13. George Eliot's reputation Margaret Harris; Guide to further reading Allison Clymer.

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Book SynopsisTakes a new approach to the question of how female regionalist fictions represent the economic by situating them within traditions of classical political economic thought. The book's approach ultimately leads us to reconsider what we mean by the term economic.Trade ReviewKitchen Economics is a thoughtful, deeply contextualized, and persuasively detailed re-reading of late-nineteenth-century female regionalist writers from the perspective of their engagement with political economic theory. This book will be a valuable addition to a growing body of work on women writers and economic discourse." - Mary Templin, author of Panic Fiction: Women and Antebellum Economic Crisis

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Book SynopsisThe full story of the gifted but troubled R. A. K. Mason is told for the first time in this accessible biography. The puzzling reasons after his extraordinary beginning that Mason almost completely stopped writing poetry are investigated. The legendary story of how Mason dumped 200 copies of his first book, The Beggar, into Auckland harbor in disappointment, disgust, or despair because no one would buy it is explored as a symbol of a timeâthe 1920s and 1930sâwhen a true, vital, native literature struggled to be written or heard in a provincial and puritanical country. Also explored are how Masonâs political beliefs prompted him to turn his creative energies to left-wing theater movements in the 1930s, the impact that family pressures had on his life, and his late-in-life diagnosis with manic depression.

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Book SynopsisFeaturing the text of the original play "The Scarlet Letter", a list of characters with descriptions, and helpful commentary, this title is suitable for students or for those who wish to gain an understanding of the text.

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Book SynopsisThis collection features essays on Nova Scotia-born poet, playwright and literary critic George Elliott Clarke. Instrtumental in promoting the writing of writers of African descent, Clarke's work has won awards including the Governor General's Award for poetry. He is also the recipient of seven honorary doctorates.

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Book SynopsisThis book of essays examines the fictional work of Nino Ricci from a variety of critical perspectives. These perspectives include ideas about literature, culture, identity, politics, and society in terms of Canada and the modern world. Each contributor examines a specific novel or several novels, focusing on the prevailing themes and literary elements used by Nino Ricci to construct his work of fiction. This critical study allows the reader to enhance one's understanding of Nino Ricci's particular style and vision. It also provides an understanding of Nino Ricci's valuable contribution to contemporary Canadian fiction and world literature. The contributors in this book are: William Anselmi, Howard A. Doughty, Brian L. Flack, Lise Hogan, Marino Tuzi, and Jim Zucchero.

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Book SynopsisCapturing the 20th-century literary world, this collection of nonfiction work includes essays, reviews, and articles concerning the personalities and events between 1928 and 1990. Starting in the 1920s with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, the reflections move through the decades covering everything from war propaganda to the life of a writer.Trade ReviewOver sixty years of wonderfully explorative and insightfully written essays by the master of belles letters." —Michael Keefer, The Globe and Mail

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Book SynopsisCelebrating two decades in publication, this twentieth-anniversary edition of a timeless classic comprises forty stories and poems that feature Luke Warmwater, a Vietnam veteran who survived the war but has trouble surviving the peace.Trade Review"This 20th-anniversary edition includes the original 40 stories as well as new material: poems, a play and some of Northrup's newspaper work. The stories stand the test of time, as blackly humorous, plainspoken and earthy as they were in 1993. ... Northrup knows this life, this area, to the bone." —Star Tribune "As relevant as it was 20 years ago, this collection continues to provide an unromanticized, insider's view of a culture struggling to maintain, and even recover, its identity, heritage, and language in a rapidly changing and often openly hostile world." —Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisIn 1925 William Faulkner began his professional writing career in earnest while living in the French Quarter of New Orleans. He had published a volume of poetry (The Marble Faun), had written a few book reviews, and had contributed sketches to the University of Mississippi student newspaper. He had served a stint in the Royal Canadian Air Corps and while working in a New Haven bookstore had become acquainted with the wife of the writer Sherwood Anderson.In his first six months in New Orleans, where the Andersons were living, Faulkner made his initial foray into serious fiction writing. Here in one volume are the pieces he wrote while in the French Quarter. These were published locally in the Times-Picayune and in the Double Dealer.The pieces in New Orleans Sketches broadcast seeds that would take root in later works. In their themes and motifs these sketches and stories foreshadow the intense personal vision and style that would characterize Faulkner's mature fiction. As his sketches take on parallels with Christian liturgy and as they portray such characters as an idiot boy similar to Benjy Compson, they reveal evidence of his early literary sophistication.In praise of New Orleans Sketches, Alfred Kazin wrote in the New York Times Book Review that ""the interesting thing for us now, who can see in this book the outline of the writer Faulkner was to become, is that before he had published his first novel he had already determined certain main themes in his work.""In his trailblazing introduction, Carvel Collins often called ""Faulkner's best-informed critic,"" illuminates the period when the sketches were written as the time that Faulkner was making the transition from poet to novelist.""For the reader of Faulkner,"" Paul Engle wrote in the Chicago Tribune, ""the book is indispensable. Its brilliant introduction . . . is full both of helpful information . . . and of fine insights."" ""We gain something more than a glimpse of the mind of a young genius asserting his power against a partially indifferent environment,"" states the Book Exchange (London). ""The long introduction . . . must rank as a major literary contribution to our knowledge of an outstanding writer: perhaps the greatest of our times.""

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Book SynopsisChicago Writers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year (2017) Society of Midland Authors Literary Award in Biography (2017) A tireless champion of the downtrodden, Nelson Algren, one of the most celebrated writers of the 20th century, lived an outsider’s life himself. He spent a month in prison as a young man for the theft of a typewriter; his involvement in Marxist groups earned him a lengthy FBI dossier; and he spent much of his life palling around with the sorts of drug addicts, prostitutes, and poor laborers who inspired and populated his novels and short stories. Most today know Algren as the radical, womanizing writer of The Man with the Golden Arm, which won the first National Book Award, in 1950, but award-winning reporter Mary Wisniewski offers a deeper portrait. Starting with his childhood in the City of Big Shoulders, Algren sheds new light on the writer’s most momentous periods, from his on-again-off-again work for the WPA to his stint as an uninspired soldier in World War II to his long-distance affair with his most famous lover, Simone de Beauvoir, to the sense of community and acceptance Algren found in the artist colony of Sag Harbor before his death in 1981. Wisniewski interviewed dozens of Algren’s closest friends and inner circle, including photographer Art Shay and author and historian Studs Terkel, and tracked down much of his unpublished writing and correspondence. She unearths new details about the writer’s life, work, personality, and habits and reveals a funny, sensitive, and romantic but sometimes exasperating, insecure, and self-destructive artist. biography The first new biography of Algren in over 25 years, this fresh look at the man whose unique style and compassionate message enchanted readers and fellow writers and whose boyish charm seduced many women is indispensable to anyone interested in 20-century American literature and history.Trade Review"Mary Wisniewski has written a captivating biography of Nelson Algren, rife with the soul, passion, and grit that made Chicago a 'city on the make' and Algren its greatest poet. For those who have loved the town and the writer who made it his 'trade,' here, at last, is the book you've waited for." Warren Leming, cofounder, Nelson Algren Committee of Chicago"It's good to have the irascible, bohemian chronicler of the streets back via this top-notch biography." Kirkus Reviews"Mary Wisniewski's Algren: A Life is an immensely readable portrait of the great but problematic Chicago writer. Exquisitely reported, sympathetic but clear-eyed, it's about the most complete account of his life and work I've seen. Wisniewski has a great sense of detail, and a wonderfully candid voice." Achy Obejas, author of Days of Awe"Nelson Algren was surely one of the most important post-World War II novelists in America, and his life and work are even more relevant today than they were in the 1940s and '50s, when he was at the peak of his popularity. . . . This new biography goes a long way toward redeeming both his life and his art. His novels and stories should be required reading in every American college syllabus. This excellent biography tells us why." Russell Banks, author of Rule of the Bone and Cloudsplitter"We also learn how, as tough as he famously was, Algren was vulnerable to the same sensitivities and bouts of self-doubt that plague all writers. He was always one of us. Post-Wisniewski, he may be even more so." Chicago Tribune" Algren is a welcome addition to the literature on Nelson Algren's life and work. In fact the strength of Algren is the way that Wisniewski integrates Algren's working life with his personal life. This thankfully is not yet another biography of a writer that ignores the writing." Stuart Dybek, author of The Coast of Chicago"A powerful piece of biography." Houston Press"With this comprehensive biography, Wisniewski, award-winning journalist for the Chicago Tribune, has done sterling work toward restoring Nelson Algren to his position of prominence as a celebrated author." Publishers Weekly

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 SAMLA Studies Book Award — Edited Collection Cities both near and far communicate in a variety of ways. Travel between, through, and among urban centers initiates contact, and cities themselves are sites of ever-changing cultural and historical encounters. Predictable and surprising challenges and opportunities arise when city borders are crossed, voices meet, and artistic traditions find their counterparts. Using the Latin word for “translation,” translatio, or “to carry across,” as a point of departure, Avenues of Translation explores how translation perpetuates, diversifies, deepens, and expands the literary production of cities in their greater cultural context, and how translation shapes an understanding of and access to a city's past and present literary and cultural practices. Thinking about translation and the city is a way to tell the backstories of the cities, texts, and authors that are united by acts of translation. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.Table of Contents Prologue: The City and the Translator by Suzanne Jill Levine Introduction: Translation and the City by Regina Galasso and Evelyn Scaramella 1 Un Walker en Nuyol: Coming to Terms with a Babel of Words by Ilan Stavans 2 Translation as a Native Language: The Layered Languages of Tango by Alicia Borinsky 3 Lorca, From Country to City: Three Versions of Poet in New York by Christopher Maurer 4 “Here Is My Monument”: Translation, Urban Space, and Martín Luis Guzmán’s Memorias de Pancho Villa by Nicholas Cifuentes Goodbody 5 On Languages and Cities: Rethinking the Politics of Calvert Casey’s “El regreso” by Charles Hatfield 6 A Palimpsestuous Adaptation: Translating Barcelona in Benet i Jornet's La plaça del Diamant by Jennifer Duprey 7 Montreal's New Latinité: Spanish-French Connections in a Trilingual City by Hugh Hazelton 8 Translating the Local: New York’s Micro-Cosmopolitan Media, from José Martí to the Hyperlocal Hub by Esther Allen 9 “litORAL translation TRADUCCIÓN LIToral” by Urayoán Noel 10 Coda: The City of the Translator’s Mind by Peter Bush Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisDisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono engages actively with a diasporic world: Otiono is equally at home critiqueing petroculture in Nigeria and in Canada. His work straddles multiple poetic traditions and places African intellectual history at the forefront of an engagement with western poetics. The poems in this selection are drawn from Otiono's two pulished collections, Voices in the Rainbow, and Love in a Time of Nightmares, and includes previously unpublished new poems. Peter Midgley’s introduction contextualizes Otiono's work within the frame of diaspora and newer critical frames like Afropolitanism, attending to form as well as his political engagement. The volume concludes with an afterword written by the poet with Chris Dunton.Trade ReviewDisPlace is the contradictory being of Nduka Otiono: He’s “here” in Canada, but he’s also a dissident resident of Nigeria. He exists in the self-appointed Shangri-La that is the once-boastfully slaveholding Americas; but he insists on remaining the anointed exorcist of an Africa still decadent with bullets, with “militicians,” who play baboons rather than messiahs.—George Elliott Clarke, Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada, 2016-17 The most personal of Otiono’s poems are mostly elegiac, with death pawing at the door, and the language swaying with a new, lithe spring to it and the strength one associates with fine, high-tensile wire. The poet’s imagistic reflections on life are at once sonorous, contemplative, bold, and defiant." - Chris Dunton, Professor of Literature in English and former Dean of The Faculty of Humanities at The National University of Lesotho, Roma

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Book SynopsisThis is the third book in the critically acclaimed Two Guys series by Steve Chandler and Terrence Hill. This time the two guys take on their biggest challenge yet-Jane Austen. Follow their wild and often hilarious exchanges as they fly through Pride and Prejudice and the darker, more complex Mansfield Park. Often veering off into the worlds of music, sports, and history, both of these accomplished writers draw upon their lifelong friendships and shared childhood memories to give dimension to their deeply personal responses to Jane Austen's writing. These same zany digressions and non sequiturs were widely hailed in their first two books in this series, Two Guys Read Moby-Dick and Two Guys Read the Obituaries. Terrence Hill and Steve Chandler share their humorous and touching commentaries and debates with their readers in a way unlike any other, a testimony to their 53-year friendship.

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