Literary studies: fiction Books

Book SynopsisThis long awaited collection brings together in one volume the definitive essays on Anton Chekhov by renowned Chekhov scholar Robert Louis Jackson, including work that has never appeared in English as well as brand new essays published here for the first time. The volume offers a series of “slow” readings that yield insight after exquisite insight. They also model fruitful ways of discerning the rich complexity of Chekhov’s deceptively simple work. The volume’s introduction by Robin Feuer Miller captures beautifully what Jackson undertakes in his careful scrutiny of Chekhov’s text. The editor’s afterword by Cathy Popkin includes passages from the editorial correspondence in which Jackson reflects on his work and articulates his aspirations; the authorial voice thus resounds in the section Jackson expected to write himself. The editor also outlines the arguments and insights of Jackson’s remarkable unfinished essays. Finally, an appendix provides the full text of his virtually complete but still open-ended treatment of “On Official Business,” the story Jackson returned to repeatedly for decades, the previously unpublished culmination of his life’s work on Chekhov. Essays on Anton P. Chekhov: Close Readings is fully accessible to readers without knowledge of Russian while also providing complete documentation for scholars in the field.Trade Review“A virtuoso performance by the maestro of Russian literary criticism. This lovingly edited and produced volume, itself a conversation, tells the story of Professor Jackson’s lifelong engagement with the great short-story master. These close readings, many of which will be new even to scholars, focus in on the microscopic elements of a text—the sounds and roots of individual words—and lead from there along inexorable, but previously unnoticed paths to the big questions of justice and faith, good and evil, fate and conscience. Along the way, we realize that Chekhov, too, was in conversation with masters—with the Bible, with Dante, with writers of his time, most notably Dostoevsky, and with others who were to come after. These seemingly disparate essays themselves add up to a majestic, and yet uniquely accessible, body of work. Riches emerge when reader meets text, slows down, and gives it the attention it deserves. It turns out that to understand this, we needed a teacher.”— Carol Apollonio, Duke University“Over twenty years ago, Janet Malcolm assessed that Robert Louis Jackson's ‘writing and teaching on the religious subtext in Chekhov's stories have inspired a generation of younger critics.’ With this volume of exquisitely written, penetrating studies—many of which previously appeared in inaccessible venues or in languages other than English, and one that was not quite finished—Jackson's profound influence on the field will endure. In editing Jackson’s work and ushering it to publication, Cathy Popkin has repaid that younger generation's debt, to the benefit of us all.”— Michael Finke, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignTable of ContentsIntroduction Robin Feuer Miller Editor’s NoteCathy Popkin On Chekhov’s ArtChekhov’s Seagull: The Empty Well, the Dry Lake, and the Cold Cave“If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem”: An Essay on Chekhov’s “Rothschild’s Fiddle”Dostoevsky in Chekhov’s Garden of Eden: “Because of Little Apples”“The Betrothed”: Chekhov’s Last TestamentChekhov and Proust: A Posing of the Problem“The Steppe”: Space and the Journey. A Metaphor for All Times“The Enemies”: A Story at War with ItselfChekhov’s “The Student”The Ethics of Vision: The Punishment of the Tramp Prokhorov in The Island of SakhalinDantesque and Dostoevskian Elements in Chekhov’s “In Exile”Biblical and Literary Allusions in Chekhov’s “Gusev”Russian Man at the Rendezvous: The Narrator in Chekhov’s “A Little Joke”“Small Fry”: A Nice Little Easter StoryChekhov’s “Rothschild’s Fiddle”: “By the Waters of Babylon” in Eastern Orthodox LiturgyThree Deaths: A Boy, A Goose, and an InfantA Fragment from the Aggregate: Sinai and Sakhalin in Chekhov’s Letters to Suvorin“Grief”: Once Again about the Ending of the StoryDogs: Text and Subtext in “Lady with a Pet Dog”Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” and Gurov’s Oreanda Meditations in Chekhov’s “Lady with a Pet Dog” Afterword Cathy Popkin Appendix: Robert Louis Jackson on “Po delam sluzhby” [“On Official Business”]Index

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Book SynopsisA NETFLIX BOOK CLUB PICKThe powerful, thrilling, and tragic tale about the fluidity of racial identity that continues to resonate today, with an introduction by Emily Bernard. Now a major motion picture starring Tessa Thompson and Alexander SkarsgårdA Penguin Vitae EditionClare Kendry is living on the edge. Light-skinned, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a racist white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past after deciding to pass as a white woman. Clare''s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, and is simultaneously allured and repelled by Clare''s risky decision to engage in racial masquerade for personal and societal gain. After frequenting African American-centric gatherings together in Harlem, Clare''s interest in Irene turns into a homoerotic longing for Irene''s black identity that she abandoned and can never embrace again, and she is forced to grapple with her decision to pass for white in a way that is both tragic and telling.Penguin Classics launches a new hardcover series with five American classics that are relevant and timeless in their power, and part of a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from almost seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

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Book SynopsisGenevieve Lloyd illuminates and challenges some perplexing aspects of contemporary attitudes to wonder. She draws especially on Flaubert, who influenced the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre, Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida. She also reaches into contemporary debates on refugees, secularisation and climate change.

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Book SynopsisThis book develops a new theory of the novel for the twenty-first century. In the works of writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Rachel Cusk, James Kelman, W. G. Sebald, and Zadie Smith, Timothy Bewes identifies a mode of thought that he calls “free indirect,” in which the novel’s refusal of prevailing ideologies can be found.Trade ReviewThis unapologetically polemical book is disturbing in the very best of ways, including the radical ideological optimism of its claims for the novel’s anti-formalist fugitivity. Tracking a historical mutation in the nature of contemporary fiction with eye-opening consequences for literary theory and beyond, Bewes has once again written a brilliant and utterly unforgettable book. Free Indirect is one of the boldest works of criticism I’ve encountered in decades. The study of the novel cannot be the same after its intervention. -- Sianne Ngai, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English, University of ChicagoFree Indirect is the first work of literary theory to make sense of the contemporary novel and its maddening relationship to fiction. With patience and a great deal of wit, Bewes dispenses with the red herrings of novel theory—form, connection, subjectivity—to unveil how the novel thinks, and how its thinking hollows out the spurious distinction between fiction and nonfiction. This is a brilliant, brave, and exceptionally unsettling book for how it guides its readers to the outer limits of what criticism can say or do, and leaves them there, in the realm of pure thought. -- Merve Emre, University of Oxford and contributing writer at the New YorkerCan a single book tell us about the life of the novel after the death of the novel, after the end of theory, and after the eclipse of literary institutions? Yes. Bewes shrinks from nothing in reading contemporary fiction outside all traditional approaches. A true work of novel theory and a bracing challenge to literary-critical orthodoxy. -- Jed Esty, Vartan Gregorian Professor of English, University of PennsylvaniaSummoning the work of a range of contemporary authors, from W. G. Sebald to Zadie Smith, Rachel Cusk, and Jesse Ball, Free Indirect constructs a remarkable theory of the contemporary novel, arguing that it thinks differently from how it represents thinking and in so doing both enacts and articulates a novel way for thought to relate to the body, language, and the environment. In Bewes' powerful readings, the contemporary novel is interested less in the traditional categories of character, plot, or narrative, than in unbinding thought from them in order to release it into the unformed and the obscure; it thus transcends the realm of the aesthetic, and instructs us in new possibilities for thinking in the twenty-first century. No conversation about the contemporary novel will henceforth be possible without approaching Free Indirect. -- Branka Arsić, Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor, Columbia UniversityFree Indirect is a provocation in the best sense of that word. -- Jesse van Amelsvoort * The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms *A must-read critique of the connections between thought and form in contemporary fiction. -- Adam Dalva * The Millions *Bewes teaches us how to read novelistically, where the lines between insight and experiment are blurred. As Bewes shows, pushing these limits is what keeps thought alive, and perhaps, free. -- Athanassia Williamson * Critical Inquiry *Bewes has produced a work for the ages—an intervention in critical theory that will forever change the way we read fiction. -- Jennie Hann * National Book Critics Circle *For scholars working on the twenty-first century this is an invaluable text for its examinations of perspective, discourse, thought, and genre. . . As critics and readers continue to parse its relevancy amidst so many competing genres, Bewes’s work reminds us of the novel’s inherent ability to transform and provoke. -- Emily Hall * Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature *In tracing the autonomisation of thought from thinker, Bewes makes significant headway not only in conceptualising the contemporary novel, but also in identifying the theoretical problems that have made that task so difficult. -- Carson Welch * Radical Philosophy *[This] study seeks to overturn pretty much everything that has ever been thought and said about the novel. By its lights, a great deal of what counts as ordinary novel criticism, even very good criticism, looks unenlightened and, what’s worse, dreary. . . [Free Indirect]’s ambition is dazzling, as is its sentence-by-sentence intelligence. -- Bruce Robbins * American Literary History *Free Indirect upends modes of formal criticism and offers a bold view of contemporary literature and its study. This is a vital and important book for thinking about recent fiction, but also for reconsidering the practice of criticism in the present. -- Georgia Walton * Textual Practice *Remarkable and challenging. -- Michael Lucey * Genre *An illuminating work of novel theory that will stimulate and challenge the study of contemporary literature and of the novel alike. -- David Wylot * Modern Philology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction. Unthinking ConnectionsPart I. The Novel Form and Its Limits1. The Problem of Form2. Against Exemplarity: W. G. SebaldPart II. The Emergence of Postfictional Aesthetics3. The Instantiation Relation4. The Postfictional Hypothesis5. The Logic of Disconnection Interlude. Fictional Discourse as Event: On Jesse BallPart III. The Free Indirect6. How Does Immanence Show Itself?7. What Is a Sensorimotor Break? Deleuze on CinemaInterlude. Profiling8. Rancière: Toward Nonregime ThinkingConclusion. The Indeterminate Thought of the Free IndirectNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThe Op-Ed Novel follows a clutch of globally renowned Spanish novelists who swept into the political sphere via the pages of El País. Their literary sensibility transformed opinion journalism, and their weekly columns changed their novels, which became venues for speculative historical claims, partisan political projects, and intellectual argument.Trade ReviewThe Op-Ed Novel not only elegantly recounts a vital intellectual and cultural history of post-Franco Spain. Carefully exploring the careers of Spain’s most eminent writers, it demonstrates, too, the osmotic links between political journalism and literary fiction—salutary reading in the English-speaking countries, where politics and literature are still regarded as strangers to each other. -- Pankaj Mishra, author of Run and HideIn few places are novelists as powerful as in Spain, with the op-ed page serving as their pulpit and ring for political or cultural pugilism. In this hugely valuable study of the cross-fertilization between opinion writing and Spanish fiction, Seguín discovers a space where ideas are tested and novels are hatched. His book lets readers judge for themselves how much newspapers, novels, and public debate have been enriched as a result—and how much the opposite has happened. -- Giles Tremlett, author of España: A Brief History of SpainMost Anglophone literary critics have clicked on an op-ed whose byline they recognize from the cover of a favorite novel, but few have thought to examine, as Bécquer Seguín does in this bold study, cases where the writing of novels and op-eds overlap so much as to become a single enterprise. Tracing the growth of a culture in which novels mimic, grow out of, or usurp the functions of op-eds—and vice-versa—this book forces us to rethink our understanding of institutions and of genre, as well as received ideas about fictionality, the status of the intellectual, and the always slippery category of ‘nonfiction.’ -- Leah Price, author of What We Talk About When We Talk About BooksThere are two types of intellectuals: the brave and everyone else. Bécquer Seguín analyzes why after Franco’s death Spain encouraged the former. His case study should serve as a lesson to America’s public intellectuals, if there is still such a thing, the majority having become dispensable entertainers. -- Ilan Stavans, author of Quixote: The Novel and the World

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Book SynopsisExplores the moral and ethical dilemmas that characters face inside themselves and in their interactions with others in the works of these two famed authors. Karl Zender's characterological study offers insightful, critically rigorous analyses of the complicated figures who inhabit several major Shakespeare plays and Faulkner novels.

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Book SynopsisReveals the complex irony in France's last volume of short stories, Les sept femme de la Barbe-Bleue. Diane Wolfe Levy shows how France imbues his narration with paradoxical elements, contrasts full of irony, and complex oppositions. She also reveals the way irony is directed to both the narrator and the fictional characters.

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Book SynopsisHow the otherworldly worlds created by the author of the Southern Reach Trilogy speak to—and even affect—our own If ever a moment and a writer were made for each other, that time is now and Jeff VanderMeer is that writer. Reaching more and more readers as his fantastic fiction delves deeper and deeper into the true weirdness of our day, VanderMeer presents a unique opportunity to explore the cultural frictions and fault lines in today’s—and tomorrow’s— literary landscape. In the first book-length study of this provocative writer, Benjamin J. Robertson focuses on the three major series that have propelled VanderMeer to prominence (his Vennis fictions, Ambergris novels, and Southern Reach Trilogy) as well as his recent stand-alone novel Borne. Most salient for Robertson is how VanderMeer grapples with the transformation of human meaning and being in the contemporary moment. None of This Is Normal reveals how VanderMeer creates fictions that directly address our Anthropocene epoch, in which humanity must reckon with the unprecedented nature of its impact on the environment and with the consequent obsolescence of its methods of representing itself in this altered world. In Robertson’s reading it becomes startlingly clear that certain fiction, especially when willing to abandon humanist assumptions about history, has the power to not simply show us a world “out there” but to actively participate in that world. As realist fiction and even science fiction conventionally reduce the scale and complexity of the Anthropocene to human-sized dimensions, None of This Is Normal shows how VanderMeer’s work conjures what Robertson calls a “fantastic materiality”: a reality that stands apart from us as a model of thinking, irreducible to our own.Trade Review"None of This Is Normal is the first book-length study of the weird fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Benjamin J. Robertson not only highlights the beauty and power of VanderMeer's fiction, but also shows how this writing is central to any attempt to think through the plight of humanity in what has come to be called the Anthropocene."—Steven Shaviro, author of The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism"This spirited book disturbs the new normal of the Anthropocene by way of the ‘New Weird’ in Jeff VanderMeer's fiction. At once a meditation on fantastic materiality and a step toward life after aftermath, this first dedicated study of VanderMeer tells a new story about humans and nonhumans both."—Wai Chee Dimock, Yale University"None of This Is Normal offers readers a rich, extended conversation between VanderMeer and Robertson, pointing out how crucial literary texts are to theorizings of themselves." —American Literary HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: All of This Is Normal1. Ambergris Rules: Genre and Materiality in the Anthropocene2. Let Me Tell You about the City: The Veniss Milieu and the Problem of Setting3. No One Makes It Out, There May Be a Way: Ambergris as Words and World4. There Is Nothing but Border. There Is No Border.: Area X and the Weird PlanetConclusion: Life after AftermathAfterwordJeff VanderMeerNotes

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Book SynopsisA bold new consideration of climate change between narratives of the Earth’s layers and policy of the present Long seen as a realm of mystery and possibility, the subsurface beneath our feet has taken on all-too-real import in the era of climate change. Can reading narratives of the past that take imaginative leaps under the surface better attune us to our present knowledge of a warming planet?In Subsurface, Karen Pinkus looks below the surface of texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Sand, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Jules Verne to find the buried origins of capitalist fantasies in which humans take what they want from the earth. Putting such texts into conversation with narrative theory, critical theory, geology, and climate policy, she shows that the subsurface has been, in our past, a place of myth and stories of male voyages down to gain knowledge—but it is also now the realm of fossil fuels. How do these two modes intertwine?A highly original take on evocative terms such as extraction, burial, fossils, deep time, and speculative futurity, Subsurface questions the certainty of comfortable narrative arcs. It asks us to read literature with and against the figure of the geological column, with and against fossil fuels and the emissions warming our planet. As we see our former selves move into the distance, what new modes of imagination might we summon?Trade Review "Considering a renewal of life that would begin in the subsurface of the earth, Karen Pinkus deftly navigates between nineteenth-century literature and current issues in geology, critical theory, and philosophy. Digging into the past to imagine a sustainable future, written with spark and wit, Subsurface is a welcome contribution to the environmental humanities."—Verena Andermatt Conley, Harvard University "A truly geologic, stratigraphic criticism of and for the multiple layers and ages of climate change. Karen Pinkus’s work forms the critical bedrock of environmental and energy humanities. Here, she goes underground, surveying a classic range of subterranean narratives and their striated formations across time and space, fusing with other realms of knowledge that climate challenges literature to uncover. Pinkus's critical alchemy mines novel seams, peels back undiscovered layers of texts and meaning, and cracks open new possibilities for reading narrative within and against the challenges of climate's unfolding futures. Tunneling back and forth from the crucial century of Verne and the rise of geology to contemporary debates over geoengineering, carbon sequestration, and extractivism, she explores carbonizing economic theory and assesses the strange formations of climate finance en route. Subsurface reassesses the grounds of and for literature and literary criticism as resource and method to confront our age of earthbound and atmospheric crisis, mapping its unruly domains, its shifting terrain and hidden impacts. This is exactly the kind of nonconformist analysis we need to navigate climate's deep and complex resonances."—Graeme Macdonald, University of Warwick

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Book SynopsisA new edition of this extensive visual analysis of horror tropes and their architectural analogues Horror in Architecture presents an unflinching look at how horror genre tropes manifest in the built environment. Spanning the realms of art, design, literature, and film, this newly revised and expanded edition compiles examples from all areas of popular culture to form a visual anthology of the architectural uncanny. Rooted in the Romantic and Gothic treatment of horror as a serious aesthetic category, Horror in Architecture establishes incisive links between contemporary horror media and its parallel traits found in various architectural designs. Through chapters dedicated to distorted and monstrous buildings, abandoned spaces, extremes of scale, and other structural peculiarities, and featuring new essays on insurgent natures, blobs, and architectural puppets, this volume brings together diverse architectural anomalies and shows how their unsettling effects deepen our fascination with the unreal. Intended for both horror fans and students of visual culture, Horror in Architecture turns a unique lens on the relationship between the human body and the artificial landscapes it inhabits. Extensively illustrated with photographs, film stills, and diagrams, this book retrieves horror from the cultural fringes and demonstrates how its attributes permeate the modern condition and the material world. Trade Review "Deeply researched, packed with detail, and bold in scope and imagination, this intriguing book is ultimately about temporality and culture. It brings an impressive array of sources to bear on the future-present and the future-past as key categories of political and aesthetic critique."—Achille Mbembe, philosopher, author of On the Postcolony "This densely packed book busts the genre of horror wide open, substituting slow-building dread with breakneck mesmerism. Like Walter Benjamin’s magical, if precarious, balance of opposites, Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing lay bare horror’s grasp over almost all aspects of architectural production and representation while nevertheless leaving us with the glimmer of a possible way forward."—Sarah M. Whiting, Harvard Graduate School of Design "This book is wise, challenging, and wonderful in its shameless celebration of the sublime qualities of horror. To see this subject discussed in relation to architecture is truly a discovery."—Sjón, author of The Blue Fox

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays tracing seven decades of literary interaction between Hemingway and notable French authorsIn a 1946 Atlantic Monthly essay, Jean-Paul Sartre writes: "The greatest literary development in France between 1929 and 1939 was the discovery of Faulkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Caldwell, and Steinbeck."When Ernest Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1922, he was an unknown writer from America. The City of Light was where he learned his craft and gained legitimacy. Although much has been written about Hemingway's apprentice years in Paris, little has been published about his literary convergences with French writers. In Hemingway and French Writers, Ben Stoltzfus illuminates the connections between Hemingway and the most important French intellectuals, such as Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, André Gide, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Henry de Montherlant, André Malraux, and Albert Camus. A distinguished scholar of both French literature and Hemingway studies, Stoltzfus compares Hemingway's major works in chronological order, from The Sun Also Rises to The Old Man and the Sea, with novels by French writers.While it is widely known that France influenced Hemingway's writing, Hemingway also had an immense impact on French writers. Over the years, American and French novelists enriched each other's works with new styles and untried techniques. In this comparative analysis, Stoltzfus discusses the complexities of Hemingway's craft, the controlled skill, narrative economy, and stylistic clarity that the French, drawn to his emphasis on action, labeled "le style américain."

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Book SynopsisAn anthology of the best scholarship on the celebrated African American writer.A prolific nineteenth-century author, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to gain national recognition. Praised by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass, who called him “the most promising colored man in America,” Dunbar intrigued readers and literary critics with his depictions of African Americans' struggle to overcome a legacy of slavery and prejudice. His remarkably large body of work—he wrote eleven volumes of poetry, four short story collections, five novels, three librettos, and a play before his death at thirty-three—draws on the oral storytelling traditions of his ex-slave mother as well as his unconventional education at an all-white public school to explore the evolving identity of the black community and its place in post–Civil War America.Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on Dunbar's work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Employing an array of approaches to Dunbar's poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. They situate Dunbar's work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies.We Wear the Mask will appeal to scholars and students of African American literature and poetry, as well as those interested in one of the most celebrated and widely taught African American authors.

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Book SynopsisTolstoy’s epic novel is one of the most famous pieces of Russian literature and is on the short list of the most important works of literature in the world. This volume examines Tolstoy’s unique achievement through a number of thought-provoking essays, and the interplay of the many genres of the text, including historical fiction, war drama, romance and realism.

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Book SynopsisWhat is life? This was a question of particular concern for Mary Shelley and her contemporaries. But how did she, and her fellow Romantic writers, incorporate this debate into their work, and how much were they influenced by contemporary science, medicine and personal loss? This book is the first to compile the many attempts in science and medicine to account for life and death in Mary Shelley’s time. It considers what her contemporaries thought of air, blood, sunlight, electricity and other elements believed to be most essential for living. Mary Shelley’s (and her circle’s) knowledge of science and medicine is carefully examined, alongside the work of key scientific and medical thinkers, including John Abernethy, James Curry, Humphry Davy, John Hunter, William Lawrence and Joseph Priestley. Frankenstein demonstrates what Mary Shelley knew of the advice given by medical practitioners for the recovery of persons drowned, hanged or strangled and explores the contemporary scientific basis behind Victor Frankenstein’s idea that life and death were merely ‘ideal bounds’ he could transgress in the making of the Creature. Interweaving images of the manuscript, portraits, medical instruments and contemporary diagrams into her narrative, Sharon Ruston shows how this extraordinary tale is steeped in historical scientific and medical thought exploring the fascinating boundary between life and death.Table of ContentsContents Introduction 1 Life and Death in Romantic Literature 2 Vital Air 3 Electric Life 4 Vis Vitae (the Vital Principle) 5 Raising the Dead Afterword Notes Further Reading Picture Credits Index

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Book SynopsisExperiences of twentieth century history and major literary trends are reflected in the excellent but little-known writings of the Austrian-Czech physician and novelist Ernst Weiss (1882-1940). Weiss was born in Moravia and studied medicine, in Vienna and Prague. One of many of Jewish exile writers who fled the Nazi regime, Weiss committed suicide in Paris when German troops entered the city in the Summer of 1940. Weiss wrote one of the few novels about Adolf Hitler during the Fuehrer's life. This work, using an eye doctor as narrator, was an experimental tour de force. His next novel, the "Expressionist" masterpiece, Nahar, was about a female tiger who had once been human. His fiction merges influences of "Expressionism", his own medical background, literary interactions with his friends Joseph Roth, Joseph Brod and Franz Kafka, as well as a Freudian emphasis on human drives, obsessions and compulsions. This is the first comprehensive assessment in English of the life and legacy of an important, underrated voice from mid twentieth century Central Europe. Weiss had a wide body of friends and colleagues including Artur Schnitzler and Karl Kraus as well as Kafka, Brod and Roth. He was a pioneer in modern travel writing undertaken when he was a ship's doctor in the Pacific. His work is only now coming under serious reconsideration. This monograph includes a robust bibliography and index as well as samples of the author's oeuvre.

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Book SynopsisEvidence of Things Not Seen: Fantastical Blackness in Genre Fictions is an interdisciplinary study of blackness in genre literature of the Americas. The “fantastical” in fantastical blackness is conceived by an unrestrained imagination because it lives, despite every attempt at annihilation. This blackness amazes because it refuses the limits of anti-blackness. As put to work in this project, fantastical blackness is an ethical praxis that centers black self-knowledge as a point of departure rather than as a reaction to threatening or diminishing dominant narratives. Mystery, romance, fantasy, mixed-genre, and science fictions’ unrestrained imaginings profoundly communicate this quality of blackness, specifically here through the work of Barbara Neely, Colson Whitehead, Nalo Hopkinson, and Colin Channer. When black writers center this expressive quality, they make fantastical blackness available to a broad audience that then uses its imaginable vocabularies to reshape extra-literary realities. Ultimately, popular genres’ imaginable possibilities offer strategies through which the made up can be made real. Trade Review"Evidence of Things Not Seen is a thoughtful and welcome examination of contemporary Black fantastic literature that expands our understanding of the liberatory ways that Black authors creatively imagine and write against the ongoing perniciousness of global anti-blackness."— Michelle D. Commander, author of Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic "With the brilliance of James Baldwin's cultural criticism as a conceptual frame, Frederick's 'fantastical blackness' defies the limitations offered by colonial attempts at diminishing African subjectivities. Instead, Frederick shows us how Black writers of fantastical blackness explore the contours of African identities made possible without the dehumanization of the colonial project. This contribution to scholarship on Black speculative fiction is a tour de force, for sure."— Meredith Gadsby, author of Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, and SurvivalTable of ContentsPrologue Introduction 1 First—Mystery: Fantastically Black Blanche White: BarbaraNeely’s Blanche on the Lam 2 Second—Urban Romantica: Making Black and Jamaican Love: Colin Channer’s Waiting in Vain and Romance-ified Diaspora Identities 3 Third—Fantasy: Fantastic Possibilities: Theorizing National Belonging through Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring 4 Fourth—Multigenre: Seeing White: Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad 5 Fifth—Fantasy, Short Story: Fantastically Black Woman: Nalo Hopkinson’s “A Habit of Waste” Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume introduces an international readership to the role books have played in the lives and upbringing of young people in the Nordic countries from the 1750s until today. Charlotte Appel and Nina Christensen look beyond an overview of noteworthy texts and characters to address the region’s distinctive reading cultures and the interactions between literature and changing views of childhood, with a special focus on Denmark.The emergence of a dedicated market for children’s books in the Global North coincided with national school reforms, when Luther’s Small Catechism started to be supplemented—or replaced—by new books published for and about young readers, learners, and citizens. Children’s use of books and media is closely related to adults’ wishes to influence the present and future of a child through instruction, entertainment, or play. Chapters point to strong continuities as well as remarkable changes in the relationships between child readers and adult authors, artists, publishers, teachers, librarians, and parents through the centuries.Focusing on children as the central users and producers of texts, this interdisciplinary and transnational history shows how children’s exposure to and use of media impacted the Nordic welfare state, and vice versa. The ways adults facilitated—and in some cases prevented—access to picture books, schoolbooks, textbooks, comics, magazines, and other media to youth between infancy and adolescence reveals the complicated interplay between children’s internal wishes and grown-ups’ external expectations over time. As narratives for young audiences are continuously rewritten, republished, and adapted into new forms, this pithy synthesis brings forward new knowledge about the material and social history of books, literature, and childhood.

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Book SynopsisRooms of Their Own travels around the world, examining the unique spaces in which famous writers created their most notable work. Table of ContentsIntroduction Isabel Allende Maya Angelou Margaret Atwood W.H. Auden Jane Austen James Baldwin Honoré de Balzac Ray Bradbury The Brontës Anton Chekhov Agatha Christie Colette Roald Dahl Charles Dickens Emily Dickinson Arthur Conan Doyle Ian Fleming Thomas Hardy Ernest Hemingway Victor Hugo Samuel Johnson Judith Kerr Stephen King Rudyard Kipling D.H. Lawrence Astrid Lindgren Jack London Hilary Mantel Margaret Mitchell Michel de Montaigne Haruki Murakami George Orwell Sylvia Plath Beatrix Potter Marcel Proust J.K. Rowling Vita Sackville-West George Bernard Shaw Zadie Smith Danielle Steel Gertrude Stein John Steinbeck Dylan Thomas Mark Twain Kurt Vonnegut Edith Wharton E.B. White P.G. Wodehouse Virginia Woolf William Wordsworth Visitor Information Index Picture credits

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Book SynopsisWilkie Collins''s classic thriller took the world by storm on its first appearance in 1859, with everything from dances to perfumes to dresses named in honor of the woman in white.  The novel''s continuing fascination stems in part from a distinctive blend of melodrama, comedy, and realism; and in part from the power of its story.     The catalyst for the mystery is Walter Hartright''s encounter on a moonlit road with a mysterious woman dressed head to toe in white.  She is in a state of confusion and distress, and when Hartright helps her find her way back to London she warns him against an unnamed man of rank and title.  Hartright soon learns that she may have escaped from an asylum and finds to his amazement that her story may be connected to that of the woman he secretly loves.  Collins brilliantly uses the device of multiple narrators to weave a story in which no one can be trusted, and he also famously creates, in the figure

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Book Synopsis"I've struck it!" Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. "And I will give it away - to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography." This title tells his story.Trade Review"Sometimes the autobiography seems Twain's letter to posterity. At other times, reading it feels like eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with himself... This first installment of Twain's autobiography brings us closer to all of him than we have ever come before." New York Review Of Books "This is a book to treasure for all friends of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." Acadiana Lifestyle Magazine "Dip into the first enormous volume of Twain's autobiography that he had decreed should not appear until 100 years after his death. And Twain will begin to seem strange again, alluring and still astonishing, but less sure-footed, and at times both puzzled and puzzling in ways that still resonate with us, though not the ways we might expect." New York Times "This is a book for dipping, not plunging. Read, as Twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. It feels like a form of time travel." New York Times/The Opinion Pages "Twain generously provides the 21st century aficionado a marvelous read. His crystalline humor and expansive range are a continuous source of delight and awe... [He] has given us 'an astonishment' in his autobiography with his final, beautifully unorganized genius and intemperate thoughts. Pull up a chair and revel." Los Angeles Times Book Review "Mission accomplished, Mr. Clemens." -- Roger Boylan Boston Review "His "whole frank mind,' sharp and funny, is seared onto every page. A" Entertainment Weekly "Brimming with Twain's humor, ideas and opinions, this is a book for anyone interested in the writer's work and life." Curledup.com "Pure Twain at his typically discursive, rambling, and droll... The bard of Hannibal still has much to say." American Heritage "The bestseller chart is awash with memoirs -- but none offer the extreme reading of the Autobiography of Mark Twain." -- Debra Craine The Times "Twain's autobiography, finally available after a century, is a garrulous outpouring-and every word beguiles." Wall Street Journal "Promises a no-holds barred perspective on Twain's life, and will be rich with rambunctious, uncompromising opinions." Herald Scotland "Twain would approve!" Bookideas.com "Twain's writing here is electric, alternately moving and hilarious. He couldn't write a ho-hum sentence." Library Journal "A major achevement." Choice "Twian's 'Final Plan' has been released in a truly spectacular first volume of his posthumous 'Autobiography'." -- Vitali Vitaliev Engineering & Technology "With the uncensored Twain finally here, we're the furthest thing from indifferent." Time MagazineTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN An Early Attempt My Autobiography [Random Extracts from It] The Latest Attempt The Final (and Right) Plan Preface. As from the Grave The Florentine Dictations Autobiographical Dictations, January–March 1906 Appendix: Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations Samuel L. Clemens: A Brief Chronology Family Biographies References Excerpt from Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2

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Book SynopsisFeaturing a new introduction by Ken Liu, this revised edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s first full-length collection of essays covers her background as a writer and educator, on fantasy and science fiction, on writing, and on the future of literary science fiction.“We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.” —Ursula K. Le Guin Le Guin’s sharp and witty voice is on full display in this collection of twenty-four essays, revised by the author a decade after its initial publication in 1979. The collection covers a wide range of topics and Le Guin’s origins as a writer, her advocacy for science fiction and fantasy as mediums for true literary exploration, the writing of her own major works such as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, and her role as a public intellectual and educator. The book and each

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Book SynopsisIn 1981, the celebrated author and activist Nawal el Saadawi was imprisoned by the Sadat regime in her native Egypt, for ‘crimes against the state’. Through haunting and evocative prose, Saadawi here recounts how she and her fellow prisoners continued to resist even in captivity, and to form a community which transcended divisions between secular and religious activists. She reveals both the harrowing detail and the everyday mundanity of prison life, as well as the bravery and resolve of all women resisting oppression – and of political prisoners around the world. Memoirs from the Women’s Prison is an unforgettable, landmark work of prison writing that offers a rare insight into the indomitable, soaring literary mind of the Arab world’s leading feminist.Trade ReviewEven more relevant today, Memoirs from the Women’s Prison will make readers think more deeply about who is really being incarcerated today, and for what. * Bustle *Intensely powerful * Nation *A highly literary, Kafkaesque account … There is an honest, reflective quality to her writing, and her plight evokes outrage and sympathy. * Publishers’ Weekly *i>'Memoirs from the Women’s Prison is part of an extraordinary body of work from Egypt’s most prominent and longstanding dissident. * TLS *Table of Contents1. The Arrest 2. Prison 3. Piercing the Blockade 4. Out to the Investigation 5. The Death of Sadat 6. The Final Part Afterword

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Book SynopsisProvides a deeper understanding of the comforts of reading literatureTrade Review"In his remarkably informed and sensitive study, J rgen Pieters proposes an exceptional long-term perspective on the diverse uses of literature throughout centuries and this allows us to understand on a deeper level how and why contemporary literature can now claim what could be called a new consoling turn." -William Marx, Coll ge de France

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Book SynopsisProlific even by eighteenth-century standards, Eliza Haywood was the author of more than eighty titles, including short fiction, novels, periodicals, plays, poetry, and a political pamphlet for which she was briefly jailed. From her early successes (most notably Love in Excess) to later novels such as Betsy Thoughtless (her best known work) she remained widely read, yet sneered at as a 'stupid, infamous, scribbling woman' by the likes of Swift and Pope.Betsy Thoughtless is the story of the slow metamorphosis of the heroine from thoughtless coquette to thoughtful wife. Ironically, the most decisive moment in this development may be when Betsy decides to leave her emotionally abusive and financially punishing husband; it is only after experiencing independence that she returns to her marriage and to what becomes her husbands deathbed. Betsy Thoughtless may be the first real novel of female development in English. In this edition the text is accompanied by appendices, including writings from the period that shed light on Haywood's life and work, and on her relationship with contemporaries such as Henry Fielding.Trade ReviewBoth scholarly and readable, Christine Blouch's edition of Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless is a welcome addition to the expanding library of neglected and undervalued women novelists of the early eighteenth century that will contribute to the current re-assessment of Haywood's work." - John Richetti, University of Pennsylvania"Eliza Haywood transforms the familiar tale of the reformed coquette. A comic investigation of city morals and manners develops into a dark critique of women's vulnerability in bourgeois marriage. Christine Blouch's informative edition clarifies the contexts of Haywood's textual, political and personal relations." - Ros Ballaster, Mansfield College, Oxford University"Simply the best edition to date of Haywood's fiction. The text and apparatus are equally impressive." - Alexander Pettit, University of North TexasTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionA Note on the TextWorks of Eliza HaywoodThe History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless Appendix A: Haywood’s First BiographerAppendix B: Review of Betsy ThoughtlessMonthly Review (1751)Haywood’s response (from The History of Jenny and Jemmy Jessamy)Appendix C: Betsy Thoughtless on TrialProceedings at the Court of Censorial Enquiry, Etc. (1752)Appendix D: Reading Haywood in her own centuryClara Reeve, The Progress of Romance (1785)Appendix E: A Stage Adaptation of Betsy ThoughtlessRobert Hitchcock, The Coquette; or, The Mistakes of the Heart (1777) Select Bibliography

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Book SynopsisJohannes de Hauvilla’s satirical allegory Architrenius, completed in 1184, follows the quest for moral education of its eponymous protaganist, the “arch-weeper,” who confronts the vices of school, church, and court. This edition brings together the most authoritative Latin text with a new English translation of an important medieval poem.Trade ReviewIts stylistic ambitions, complex figurative language, and impressive knowledge of ancient literature and mythology made the Architrenius a classic in the Middle Ages and a canonical school text equal to the works of Bernardus Silvestris, Alan of Lille, and Walter of Châtillon. However, in a strange and, perhaps some would argue, justified, twist of fate (as did Petrarch, who disliked the poem intensely), scholarly interest in Johannes’s work has lagged far behind that afforded his more famous contemporaries…This elegant volume is clearly a labor of love: it provides students and scholars with an eminently useful translation of an often misunderstood and misjudged twelfth-century Latin epic…It is to be hoped that both edition and translation will change the fate of the Architrenius, bringing this distinctive, if unusual work to the attention of both Latin aficionados and the wider public. -- Greti Dinkova-Bruun * Speculum *

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Book SynopsisLish's latest work of exquisitely crafted fiction sees a narrator - variously Gordon, I, He - approaching the precipice of old age. White Plains is Lish at his sharpest, tackling his perennial subject - the memory of memory itself - with spellbinding mastery.Trade Review"These are stories for the neurotic state of our times, stories for insomnia, stories for those who wake in discontent. There will never be another like Gordon Lish." BERFROIS "Gordon Lish, famous for all the wrong reasons, has written some of the most important American fiction of the past ten or twelve years [...] hypnotic, ever circling, a desperate entity that belies the elegance of the prose that drives it." DON DELILLO "Lish is still our Joyce, our Beckett, our most true modernist. Buy! Read! Listen up!" KIRKUS REVIEWS "A writer of extraordinary vision, a tireless innovator." ELECTRIC LITERATURE "It's the voice, the force of the language that compels us to read Lish." BIBLIOKLEPT "The US's answer to Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard." THE GUARDIAN "His enormous importance, as an editor and teacher, to the story of twentieth-century American fiction is now, finally, not in dispute. But I guess some more people will have to die before there can be a full reckoning with the power of [his] pieces." SAM LIPSYTE

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This essay collection assesses the stakes and real-world relevance of Nabokov’s writing, from his lectures and short stories to his major novels. It’s a great read if you’re a Nabokov fan, or if you’ve ever wondered, ‘Why did this guy write Lolita?'" * Literary Hub *"These clear and dazzlingly erudite essays offer a superb introduction to the writer’s life and work."---David Herman, Jewish Chronicle"Robert Alter’s new book Nabokov and the Real World presents a fascinating study of the works of Vladimir Nabokov. . . . Alter’s Nabokov and the Real World provides an engaging analysis of Nabokov’s robust body of work and artfully articulates how he weaves a tapestry of linguistic tools, literary devices, nuanced visual descriptions, and empirical classifications to create beautifully crafted stories that help us better to understand the complex spectrum of human existence."---Leonara Cravotta, American Spectator"Alter is one of America’s most distinguished persons of letters. His primary task in Nabokov and the Real World is to dismantle the widely-echoed theory of critics who accuse Nabokov of playing an elaborate literary game—a set of stylistic maneuvers, mannered, overwrought and arch. Alter counters that Nabokov. . .used language to awaken readers to the dense, many-layered, multi-connected reality of which we are part."---David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express"Nabokov and the Real World is a wonderful contribution and . . . [a] beautiful collection."---Erik Eklund, Nabokov Online Journal

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales—related in language that is sharp, lively, and free of jargon—is delightful evidence that Grimm scholarship can give pleasure to the general reader.”—Janet Adam Smith, New York Review of Books“Tatar takes detours into literary history here and into comparative anthropology there. What results is at once intelligently eclectic and refreshingly commonsensical, a thoughtful ramble through the dark childhood woods that haunt our adult dreams.”—Carl Maves, San Francisco Chronicle“A clear, imaginative and fascinating illumination of the stories we thought we knew.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review“For scholars, students, and general readers, Tatar’s book is a balanced, sensitive, and informative guide to the content and context of Grimms’ fairy tales.”—Merle Rubin, Christian Science Monitor

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Book SynopsisSince the appearance of her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960—a book that undermined the nation’s ideal of innocent and pious Irish girlhood­—Edna O’Brien has provoked controversy in her native Ireland and abroad. Indeed, several of her early novels were condemned by church authorities and banned by the Irish government for their frank portrayals of sexual matters and the inner lives of women. Now an internationally acclaimed writer, O’Brien must be critically reassessed for a twenty-first century audience. Edna O’Brien and the Art of Fiction provides an urgent retrospective consideration of one of the English-speaking world’s best-selling and most prolific contemporary authors. Drawing on O’Brien’s fiction as well as archival material, and applying new theoretical approaches—including ecocritical and feminist new materialist readings—this study considers the pioneering and enduring ways O’Brien represents women’s experience, family relationships, the natural world, sex, creativity, and death, and her work’s long anticipation of contemporary movements such as #metoo.Trade Review"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *“O’Connor’s close readings, coupled with a deft use of theory, nimbly move between texts in O’Brien’s oeuvre, highlighting recurring images and preoccupations, resulting in a valuable critical account that firmly illustrates O’Brien’s mastery as a writer; and asserts her as a figure in Irish literary culture deserving of continued attention.” * Irish University Review *"This is a scholarly, sensitive, balanced exploration of the work of a great writer. It is beautifully written and very accessible. Maureen O’Connor has left no stone unturned in her painstaking research and the result is a wonderful book, indispensable for anyone with an interest in Edna O’Brien or contemporary Irish literature. Thank you, Maureen O’Connor!" -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * author of Little Red and Other Stories *"Readable yet theoretically sophisticated, this welcome new study offers an authoritative look at one of Ireland’s greatest—and historically most underappreciated—writers. O’Connor ranges comprehensively through O’Brien’s canon to trace her career-long feminist critique of Irish society's patriarchal mores. Both a history of O’Brien criticism and an examination of her work, O’Connor’s exciting study offers a forceful defense of O’Brien’s craft and an unapologetic critique of the social forces hampering the reception and interpretation of her canon. This study is destined to become required reading in O’Brien studies." -- Kathleen Costello-Sullivan * author of Trauma and Recovery in the Twenty-First-Century Irish Novel *“Maureen O’Connor nails once and (one hopes) for all the myth of Edna O’Brien as wailing Irish banshee. Instead O’Connor makes a scholarly and at the same time impassioned case for O’Brien as a serious, creative artist thoroughly cognizant of what she is about and decades ahead of her fellow Irish in her analysis of political, social, and environmental ills.” -- Heather Ingman * author of Irish Women's Fiction: From Edgeworth to Enright *"In this meticulous, forensic, and illuminating work of scholarship, Dr. O'Connor sets the benchmark for all future studies of one of Ireland's greatest writers. In what amounts to a powerful work of restorative justice, she establishes once and for all the high and deliberate guiding intelligence that animates O'Brien's work." -- Theo Dorgan * author of Orpheus *Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments Introduction: Edna O’Brien, Leader of the Banned 1 Anti-Oedipal Desires 2 The Liberating Sadomasochism of Things 3 The Ungrammatical Sublime 4 Otherworldly Possessions 5 Myth and Mutation 6 Disorder, Dirt, and Death Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisA son’s poignant letter to his father—from the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial, and one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. • “One of the great confessions of literature.” —The New York Times Book Review Franz Kafka wrote this letter to his father, Hermann Kafka, in November 1919. Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, relates that Kafka actually gave the letter to his mother to hand to his father, hoping it might renew a relationship that had lost itself in tension and frustration on both sides. But Kafka’s probing of the deep flaw in their relationship spared neither his father nor himself. He could not help seeing the failure of communication between father and son as another moment in the larger existential predicament depicted in so much of his work. Probably realizing the futility of her son’s gesture, Julie Kafka did not deliver the letter but instead returned it to its author.

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of black superheroes as a fascinating racial phenomenon and a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society.Trade ReviewThis well-conceptualized, well-written book is enriched by Nama's witty turns of expression, occasional corrections of earlier errors and omissions, and fascinating background material. * Choice *Throughout, Nama takes a refreshingly nuanced approach to his subject. Nama complicates the black superhero by also seeing the ways that they put issues of post-colonialism, race, poverty, and identity struggles front and center. * Rain Taxi *Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Color Them Black Chapter 2. Birth of the Cool Chapter 3. Friends and Lovers Chapter 4. Attack of the Clones Chapter 5. For Reel?: Black Superheroes Come to Life Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThe beloved Shannara series by New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks has been acclaimed as a towering achievement, an unquestioned masterpiece in fantasy literature. Now all the wonders of Shannara have been gathered into one indispensable volume in which Brooks shares candid views on his creation. This completely updated edition includes new entries on the High Druid of Shannara and Genesis of Shannara series, as well as the thrilling connection between Shannara and the Word and the Void trilogy. Illustrated throughout with full-color paintings and black-and-white drawings by award-winning artists David Cherry and Rob Alexander, this comprehensive guide ventures behind the scenes to explore the history, the people, the places, the major events, and, of course, the magic of one of the world’s greatest fantasy epics.What sets Terry Brooks apart? Is it a knack for creating unforgettable characters like Allanon the Druid, Shea Ohmsford, Tom Logan, and Angel P

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Book SynopsisDavid Galef provides a guide to writing flash fiction, from tips on technique to samples by canonical and contemporary authors to provocative prompts that inspire powerful stories in a little space. Brevity is an indispensable resource for anyone working in this increasingly popular form.Trade ReviewIf I had to choose just one book for my class in writing flash fiction, it would be this one. Practical, direct, wonderful examples, fun to read-if this book doesn't energize your writing, nothing will. -- Robert Shapard, coeditor of Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories Brevity represents a useful addition to the range of current creative writing texts, combining an anthology of flash fiction with an analysis of the subcategories within the form and writing exercises that will inspire students. Galef's witty, welcoming tone will appeal to beginning and intermediate writers. Often, I felt so inspired by the prompts that I wanted to sit down at my computer and try the exercises myself. -- Eileen Pollack, author of A Perfect Life: A Novel Brevity is a thorough introduction to the form, offering a variety of strategies for composition, as well as a wide-ranging, international anthology linked to each chapter's focus. A relentlessly generative, eclectic, instructive, entertaining, and motivational text. -- Michael Martone, author of The Flatness and Other Landscapes Galef is an excellent writer, and the book throughout is a delight-he makes the reader want to immediately start writing... He provides deft insights and suggestions on editing... and he suggests techniques that work well when applied to a small text. Best of all, each chapter provides examples of great flash fiction-from authors as different as Saki and Steve Martin-as well as ideas for readers to explore. Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments A Short Introduction Vignettes. Readings: Colette: "The Other Wife"; Isaac Babel: "An Incident on the Nevsky Prospekt" Character Sketches. Readings: L. E. Leone: "The Argument for a Shotgun"; Josefina Estrada: "The Extravagant Behavior of the Naked Woman" Letters. Readings: Yasunari Kawabata: "Canaries"; Phil Karasik: "Mickey the Dog Phones Home" Diary Entries. Readings: Will Stanton: "Barney"; Mark Budman: "The Diary of a Salaryman" Lists. Readings: Sei Shonagon: "Annoying Things"; Steve Martin: "Disgruntled Former Lexicographer" Fables. Readings: Anonymous: Untitled; Raphael Dagold: "The Two Rats and the BB Gun" Anecdotes. Reading: The peasant and the genie Prose Poems. Readings: Yusef Komunyakaa: "Nude Interrogation"; Len Kuntz: "Story Problems" Soliloquies, Rants, Riffs, and Themes. Readings: Christine Byl: "Hey, Jess McCafferty"; John Edgar Wideman: "Witness" Perfect Miniatures. Readings: John Collier: "The Chaser"; Jeffrey Whitmore: "Bedtime Story" Intermission: Cutting Down. Bruce Taylor: "Exercise" Surrealism. Readings: Richard Brautigan: "A Need for Gardens"; Donald Barthelme: "The Baby" What If? Readings: Wayland Hilton-Young: "The Choice"; Dicky Murphy: "The Magician's Umbrella" Genre. Readings: Roxane Gay: "The Mistress of Baby Breath"; Tara Orchard: "My Love" Setting. Readings: Bharati Mukherjee: "Courtly Vision"; Alice Walker: "The Flowers" Twists. Readings: Luisa Valenzuela: "Vision Out of the Corner of One Eye"; Saki: "The Open Window" Two Viewpoints. Readings: Robert Schipits: "Dialogue Between Two Teenagers, One Interested in Cars and One Not"; Ryan Ridge: "Shaky Hands & All" Mass Compression. Readings: Bruce Holland Rogers: "Dinosaur"; Susan O'Neill: "Memento Mori" Metafiction. Readings: Ptim Callan: "Story"; Jorge Luis Borges: "Borges and I" Vanishing Point. Readings: Merilee Faber: "We came around the corner"; Dean Clayton Edwards: "It was pretending"; Davian Aw: "She raised the glass"; Augusto Monterroso: "The Dinosaur" The Future Conclusion Bibliography Permissions Index

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Book SynopsisThis is the fifth volume to be published in the ongoing complete edition of Auden''s works, under the editorship of Edward Mendelson. It includes the essays, reviews, and other prose that Auden published or prepared for publication between 1949 -- when he wrote his first book of criticism, The Enchafèd Flood -- and December 1955, shortly before he was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford and began the series of lectures that he published, with much else, in The Dyer''s Hand.The texts throughout this edition are, wherever possible, newly edited from Auden''s manuscripts, and the notes report variant readings from all published versions.Trade Review"'The Complete Works, edited with elegant scruple by Edward Mendelson, is the only way to get at Auden as he happened, year by year, bit by bit, and not as he, or his later biographers, want us to think of him.' Boston Book Review"

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Book SynopsisA brilliant personal history from the award-winning author of ‘The Corrections’.Trade Review'His discreetly devastating comic timing derives from the tension between the optimism of his ambition and the reality of the attempts to deal with the experiences that have marked his career as one America's best novelist and essayist.' Times 'Franzen's memoir is cleverly written and often fun to read…He's funny and self deprecating…' Sunday Telegraph ‘Wonderful and supremely personal…' Time Magazine 'Reading such honest, awkward, tender pieces as these, the socially isolated individual may feel that little bit less lonely.' New Statesman. 'The close of this book is almost miraculous; we are reminded that Franzen, at his best, can write like a dream.' FT Magazine

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Book SynopsisThe 2004 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction returns with a collection of 14 short stories, rife with characters who will stay with you well beyond the last pageTrade ReviewReviews for ‘The Known World’: 'A very moving epic.' Andrea Levy, author of ‘Small Island’ 'Majestic…[its] cumulative effect devastates.' Daily Telegraph 'A moral epic, skilfully and sensitively constructed.' Sunday Times 'A powerful experience…rich in character and plot.' Guardian 'A masterpiece.' Time Magazine

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