Literature: history and criticism Books

Book SynopsisA stunning reproduction of the 1934 classic with never-before-seen images.

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Book SynopsisTinder matches go wrong all the time - but not like this.

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Book SynopsisA guide to the most illuminating literature of the modern world.Science fiction and fantasy comprise some of the great works of the human imagination—and some of the most abhorrent. This is your Politically Incorrect Guide® to a literary tradition that is a key to understanding the modern world.Before men knew how to write, they were telling each other stories of gods and monsters. But science fiction and fantasy are not escapist literatures and they never have been. Science fiction grapples with the great questions of technology and human society. Fantasy grapples with the great questions of the human spirit. A reader who can find his way to the enduring classics of these genres will be immeasurably enriched.In this book you’ll learn about futurists and dreamers such as Ray Bradbury and J. R. R. Tolkien, master storytellers such as Orson Scott Card and Isaac Asimov, troubled scribes such as J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin, and failed visionaries preaching a dysfunctional anti-human future such as Ursula LeGuin and her covens of woke disciples infesting the literature of the imagination.The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy is a gazetteer to futures filled with big dreams and innovation, imparting a healthy sense of wonder and mapping those dangerous regions filled with dragons waiting to consume with fire the careless, uninformed, and prideful.All is chaos, yet nothing is new. This is the perfect moment to give guidance to readers and to new practitioners alike.

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Book SynopsisWhat does contemporary China's diverse and exciting fiction tell us about its culture, and the relationship between art and politics? The Subplot takes us on a lively journey through a literary landscape like you’ve never seen before: a vast migrant-worker poetry movement, homoerotic romances by “rotten girls,” swaggering literary popstars, millionaire e-writers churning out the longest-ever novels, underground comics, the surreal works of Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, and Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and what is widely hailed as a golden age of Chinese science fiction. Chinese online fiction is now the largest publishing platform in the world. Fueled by her passionate engagement with Chinese literature and culture, Megan Walsh, a brilliant young critic, shows us why it’s important to finally pay attention to Chinese fiction—an exuberant drama that illustrates the complex relationship between art and politics, one that is increasingly shaping the West as well. Turns out, writers write neither what their government nor foreign readers want or expect, and they work on a different wavelength to keep alive ideas and events that are either overlooked or off limits. The Subplot vividly captures the ways in which literature offers an alternative—perhaps truer—understanding of the contradictions that make up China itself.Trade ReviewA New Yorker Best Book of 2022 An Economist Best Book of 2022 “Engaging, informative and — considering the ground it covers in 135 pages — astonishingly nuanced, The Subplot primes us to dig into her list of suggested further reading.” —The Wall Street Journal “A lively, lucid survey of contemporary Chinese fiction.... Walsh delivers a wry cornucopia, inviting for general readers who don’t know Mo Yan from Han Han.” —The New York Times “Illuminating...offers a superb introduction to Chinese publishing and the clever, subversive ways it’s thriving.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “A wonderful, pacy tour of contemporary Chinese literature.” —The Economist “A portal into people’s hearts and minds by exploring contemporary Chinese literature.” —GlobalAsia “Concise and fast-paced.... The Subplot will make you want to read more Chinese fiction.” —The New Statesman “An illuminating insight into the web fiction, sci-fi and subtle dissent read by one-fifth of humanity.” —Financial Times “A sharp, revealing portrait of contemporary China.... Elegantly written and fascinating.” —Adam Foulds, author of The Quickening Maze “An eye-opening glimpse into China’s ‘intentionally hazy’ authoritarian political climate of censorship and propaganda…. A succinct, fascinating overview of literary ambivalence in China.” —Kirkus Reviews “Drawing on a rich field of research, The Subplot not only crosses the language barrier, opening a window for the world to see contemporary Chinese literature, but it could also be an invaluable record for young Chinese people, both in China and overseas, to think about how society is affected by China's fast-pace of change.” —Xinran, author of The Good Women of China “In The Subplot, Megan Walsh showcases the diversity and vitality of contemporary Chinese literature. With economy and wit, she shows us why it’s so necessary to read literature to understand the story of China today.” —Angie Baecker, University of Hong Kong “A jaw-dropping look at what mainland Chinese are reading right now. Megan Walsh tells us why, in this time of China’s economic ascension, its literature is both liberating—and soul-crushing.” —Jan Wong, author of Red China Blues “We are what we read. As China is rising, people are naturally interested in what the Chinese are reading. This overview of the literature in China offers an interesting perspective of a country that is reshaping the world.” —Lijia Zhang, author of the novel Lotus and of Socialism Is Great!: A Worker’s Memoir of China

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines how the political period in Spain following Franco's death, known as the Transición, is being remembered by a group of writers, filmmakers and TV producers born in the sixties and early seventies. Reading against the dominant historical account that celebrates Spain’s successful democratisation, this study reveals how recent television, film and fiction recreate this past from a generational perspective, linking the experience of the Transición to the country’s present political and financial crises. Privileging above all an emotional connection, these artists use personal feelings about the past to analyse and revisit the history of their coming-of-age years. Lost in Transition considers the implications of adopting such a subjective positioning towards history that encourages an unending narrative, always in search of more meaningful and intimate connections with the past. Taking into account recent theoretical approaches to memory studies, this book proposes a new look at the production of memory in contemporary Spain and its close relationship to popular culture, shifting the focus from what is remembered to how the past is recalled affectively to be made part of an ongoing and enduring everyday experience.Trade Review‘Lost in Transition represents another valuable addition to the burgeoning area of studies on memory in contemporary Spain…The author shows awareness and understanding of the existing research on the topic and departs from the existing bibliography by trying new critical approaches and expanding the corpus of recent works, which represents an important contribution to the field.’José Colmeiro, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies Table of Contents[Acknowledgments] [List of Illustrations] 1. Introduction 2. Ordinary Memories: Feeling the Past 3. The Moment of Memory 4. Mediating Memory (or Telling How It Happened) 5. Transitional Stories 6. Conclusion Filmography Bibliography [Index]

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the rich seam in Finnegans Wake of references to Ulster, to its geography, myth and history: a subject which has received relatively little attention in Joyce studies. Joyce portrays Ulster as sharing a complex relationship with the rest of Ireland, one which combines difference with inclusion. He makes many references in the Wake to the historical factors, from the sixteenth-century plantations to the Anglo-Irish War, which contributed to the gradual estrangement of the province (at least its majority population) from the rest of Ireland. Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake between 1923 and 1939. He was, therefore, ideally placed to interrogate the trauma of partition and the growing pains of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. He sketches these historical moments and times satirically, and with disappointment and heartfelt regret. A century after partition, borders are again prominent physical and symbolic markers of difference, of exclusion of the outsider, not just in Ireland and Britain, but across the world. Joyce's satirical assault on intolerance, national and global, is as pertinent today as it was when he embarked on Finnegans Wake a century ago.

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Book SynopsisAmid the flames of the culture wars, politicians have taken up arms over controls on literary culture, spurred on in part by universities 'triggering' canonical texts. Jonathan Swift's 'Battle of the Books' has flared up again. But is 'triggering' utter wokery or responsible pedagogic practice? Through dozens of case studies of triggered works, from Romeo and Juliet to Gender Queer, John Sutherland explores the recent phenomenon of triggering and its consequences for university English departments and literature itself. He maintains that what is routinely overlooked in the heat of polemic is that triggering is categorically different from traditional institutional (religious, educational, dictatorial) controls on literature. Triggering is in essence an alert. Done responsibly it does not erase or meddle; it stimulates curiosity and thought. It honours the fact that great literature is great because it is, as Franz Kafka says, powerful. In this characteristically nuanced and calmly objective study, the witty literary critic guides us through the increasingly rocky terrain of triggering. His advice rings clear: literature matters, to us and what we make of our world, and it must be handled with critical care.

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Book SynopsisJohn Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art in Ways of Seeing; as a storyteller and political activist he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants and the oppressed around the world. In 1953 he wrote: "Far from dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics." He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January, 2017. In A Writer of Our Time, Joshua Sperling places Berger's life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond. The book also explores, through the work, the larger questions that vexed a generation: the purpose of art, the nature of creative freedom, the meaning of commitment. Drawing on extensive interviews, close readings and a wealth of archival sources only recently made available, the book brings the many different faces of John Berger together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, thinkers and storytellers of our time.Trade ReviewThe remarkable John Berger has gotten the thoughtful, sensitive study he deserves. Joshua Sperling is at ease in every aspect of this extraordinarily multifaceted writer's life: his art criticism, his fiction, his passionate political commitment, his immersion in the lives of Alpine villagers, and more. Lovers of Berger's work will find a rich array of background here, and those who don't yet know Berger will, I hope, be inspired to read him -- Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold’s GhostThe author of G., A Seventh Man and Ways of Seeing was of course a lifelong controversialist and revolutionary. But, ultimately, he was a man 'defined less by what he was against than by what he loved.' Occasionally critical, always passionate, Joshua Sperling's study of John Berger is as observant, rigorous, profound and as surprisingly entertaining as its subject. -- David Edgar, author of Written on the HeartAcross the 90 years of John Berger's life, he was by turns, and sometimes at the same time, an art critic and novelist, documentarian and screenwriter, farm laborer and historian, poet and polemicist...Does this mass of apparent contradictions add up to anything? The trick for any would-be biographer of John Berger is to find the unity in variety. Joshua Sperling is up to the task. -- Robert Minto * LARB *With sophistication and passion to match his subject, Sperling unfolds a chronological and thematic assessment of Berger...[A Writer of Our Time] is a lively and astute contribution to the writing on Berger, as well as to scholarship on the last 50 years of the cultural left in general. * Publishers Weekly *This engaging intellectual biography traces Berger's creative evolution, analyzes highlights from his vast output ... and situates them within his empathetic Marxism. * The New Yorker *A Writer of Our Time, switches expertly from the political to the personal and back, mapping the highs and lows of an eventful-and sometimes turbulent-life. * Sunday Guardian Live *Switches expertly from the political to the personal and back, mapping the highs and lows of an eventful-and sometimes turbulent-life. * Sunday Guardian *Excellent ... Sperling writes crisply as a Berger fan without hagiography. * Sydney Morning Herald *An excellent introduction not only to Berger but also to the aesthetic and political issues of his era. Sperling is a clear and elegant writer, and the book is very well researched. * Choice *A first-order intellectual biography of John Berger . . . Sperling explores the context of Berger's development with reference to the rapidly evolving social and political climate. * Choice, editor's picks *Sharp, moving, and immensely readable -- Bruce Robbins * The Nation *Sperling provides context for the art and political movements of Berger's years such that we now have a full context for the evolution of his ideas and style-and the remarkable variety of his sustained output. ... There is no question that Berger is one of the most influential arts and culture intellectuals of the past 50 years. -- Ron Slate * On the Seawall *An extraordinary and analytical biography of an extraordinary and influential life, A Writer of Our Time: The Life and Work of John Berger is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Biography collections in general, and John Berger supplemental studies reading lists in particular * Midwest Book Review *

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Book Synopsis“[It] will move you across the globe and back in time.” - Library Journal Europa Compass series – new format and covers For the readers of Mary Beard and Bethany Hughes (Re)discover the timeless beauty of ancient literature The classics “never exhaust what they have to say”. Informed by this belief, linguistic expert Piero Boitani invites the reader to explore the wisdom of the works of literature underpinning Western culture, and highlights their profound and sometimes surprising connection to the present. The themes explored in this book are as wide-ranging as they are enduringly relevant. They include the Iliad’s depiction of power and war, as well as its invocation of compassion as one of the necessary foundations of society; the Odyssey as the world’s first novel; Lucretius and the way he transformed Greek scientific thought into sublime poetry; Virgil’s celebration of the history of Rome, from small village to world capital, as well as Tacitus’ denunciation of the imperialistic nature of Roman power; and Ovid’s Metamorphoses—a poem about incessant change the first postmodern classic.Trade Review“A remarkable book. The stories collected by Boitani, written centuries ago, still speak to us.” -- Corrado Augias * La Repubblica *

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Book Synopsis'Mary Gaitskill is willing to think about the problematic with complexity and humanity, and without taking sides or engaging in all the fashionable moral hectoring that passes for serious thought these days.' Eimear McBride Nuanced, daring and tender, these essays from the celebrated author of This is Pleasure and Bad Behavior, consistently fascinate and provoke. Mary Gaitskill takes on a broad range of topics from Nabokov to horse-riding with her unique ability to tease out unexpected truths and cast aside received wisdom. Written with startling grace and linguistic flair, and delving into the complicated nature of love and the responsibility we owe to the people we encounter, the work collected here inspires the reader to think beyond their first responses to life and art. Spanning thirty years of Mary Gaitskill's writing, and covering subjects as diverse as Dancer in the Dark, the world of Charles Dickens and the Book of Revelation with her characteristic blend of sincerity and wit, Oppositions is never less than enthralling.Trade ReviewGloriously trenchant, but never gimmicky, in these unsparing essays... insightful and revealing * Guardian *Gaitskill has long been interested in the power play inherent in sexual relationships, so when it comes to probing the messy, murky topography of abuses of power and issues of consent, she's definitely the woman for the job -- Lucy Scholes * Daily Telegraph *Provocative and wry * Vogue *Gaitskill is enormously gifted * The New York Times Book Review *The range of Gaitskill's humanity is astonishing * LA Times *A writer of prodigious gifts * Guardian *Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail * The New York Times *Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it -- Alice MunroGaitskill is phenomenally gifted -- Sarah HallNever fails to surprise, provoke, or wander into the murky areas most writers try and avoid ... Oppositions is never less than fascinating -- Steven Long * The Crack *Gaitskill's personal essays are evergreen... her non-fiction succeeds in embracing complexity -- Mia Levitin * TLS *

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Book SynopsisThe relationship between women and houses has always been complex. Many influential writers have used the space of the house to portray women's conflicts with the society of their time. On the one hand, houses can represent a place of physical, psychological and moral restrictions, and on the other, they often serve as a metaphor for economic freedom and social acceptance. This usage is particularly pronounced in works written in the nineteenth and twentieth century, when restrictions on women's roles were changing: "anxieties about space sometimes seem to dominate the literature of both nineteenth-century women and their twentieth-century descendants." The Metaphor of the House in Feminist Literature uses a feminist literary criticism approach in order to examine the use of the house as metaphor in nineteenth and twentieth century literature. Trade ReviewA house, seldom a home for women —the more luxurious or impoverished, the more imprisoning, the more beautifully designed, the more objectifying, the more socially abiding, the more privately constraining— is the focus of this useful introduction to feminist and comparative studies covering a wide range of works by authors from an equally wide range of countries. -- Candelas Gala, Charles E. Taylor Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Emerita, Wake Forest UniversityDr. Davis uses a feminist literary criticism approach to examine the use of the house as metaphor during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She clearly analyses the dichotomy imbedded in this metaphor. She explains how houses can represent a place of physical, psychological, and moral restrictions for women on one hand, and a metaphor for economic freedom and social acceptance on the other hand. Dr. Davis has demonstrated how the study of the space of the house in feminist literature is crucial to fully understanding these literary works. This book is a superb contribution to feminist comparative literature. -- Jesus Pico Argel, Indiana University, KokomoMaría E. Davis has written a wonderful and interesting book about women in their houses. This is a very rich and important theme since throughout history and in all different cultures, one can see how women are the center of the house, but they also often feel trapped in their homes. When one thinks about this theme, one can find many great examples of literature written about women in the house. María E. Davis finds some very good, and important works from different cultures and genres to support her theme. I highly recommend her book. -- Sarah D'empaire-Wilbert, University of North Carolina, GreensboroTable of ContentsChapter 1: The House as a Symbol of Women's Economic Freedom: The House on Mango Street and A Room of One's OwnChapter 2: The House and Female Mental Entrapment: The Yellow Wallpaper and Wide Sargasso Sea Chapter 3: The House as a Metaphor for Social Performance: The House of Mirth and The AwakeningChapter 4: The House as a Symbol of Female Physical Entrapment: A Doll House and La casa de Bernarda AlbaChapter 5: The House as a Magical Space: The House of the Spirits and Like Water for ChocolateChapter 6: The House as a Metaphor of Social and Racial Integration: Brown Girl, Brownstones and A Raisin in the Sun

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive study of Wilfred Bion's autobiographical and literary writings: an in-depth analysis of how, throughout his life, Bion sought a narrative form for his traumatic experiences as a tank commander in the First World War, and how he developed a unique writing style aimed at generating insight and cognition.

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Book SynopsisIn late December 1817, when attempting to name “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature,” John Keats coined the term “negative capability,” which he glossed as “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats’s work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability’s relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the “poetical Character” Keats notes that “it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.” This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.Trade Review‘That this book ranges so richly, so variously, and so widely will be welcome to all readers, not least because it embodies the Shakespearean aspects of negative capability.’ Nicholas Roe, Wardlaw Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews‘Keats's Negative Capability will ... prompt [its readers] to think again and anew and unceasingly on what negative capability was, is, and can become.’ Jonathan Mulrooney, Associate Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross‘[A] wonderfully diverse collection that equally tells the story of Keats while profitably poking and probing the discursive, diffusive, and cultural powers of the term [negative capability]… in the spirit of an intelligently designed Keatsian smorgasbord, the collection has something for everyone.’ G. Kim Blank, The Wordsworth Circle'This book significantly and provocatively reconfigures our understanding of Keats's poetry and letters, his authorial intentions, his aesthetic philosophy, and his global legacy.'Rebecca Nesvet, Review 19'[A] thought-provoking collection of commentary and innovative thinking... The work here will not provide statements of ‘fact and reason’, but instead will stimulate future scholarship on Keats and Romantic legacy for many years to come.'Anna Mercer, The Hazlitt Review'[The essays'] disagreements about what negative capability can and can’t mean give the volume a conversational dynamism; even their anxiety resembles the urgency of a spirited argument between friends... As Jonathan Mulrooney’s afterward notes, the collection’s dissonance is “its most Keatsian” feature.'Brittany Pladek, European Romantic Review'The collection will be essential to students and scholars of Keats as Rejack's analysis of John Jeffrey's role in transcribing 'Negative Capability' refreshes our understating of the concept. Contributors to this collection have risen to Rejack's editorial challenge and, produced prominent and diverse readings, which extend in variety across a range of critical approaches, including feminism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. Keats's 'Negative Capability' remains a vital concept, which continues to provoke readers and writers alike to reflect on its myriad values and virtues in the present and will continue to do so in the future.'Amina Brik, The BARS ReviewTable of ContentsPreface - Nicholas RoeIntroduction. Disquisitions: Reading Negative Capability, 1817–2017 - Brian Rejack and Michael TheunePart I. ‘swelling into reality’: New Contexts for Negative Capability Keats’s Negative Capability: On Pantomime and ‘Irritable Reaching’ - Brian Bates John Keats’s Jeffrey’s ‘Negative Capability’; or, Accidentally Undermining Keats - Brian Rejack Keats’s ‘Negative Capability’ and Hazlitt’s ‘Natural Capacity’ - Michael Theune ‘that strong excepted soul’: Nineteenth-Century Women Read Keats - Carmen Faye MathesPart II. ‘examplified throughout’: Forms of Negatively Capable Reading’ Negatively Capable Reading - Cassandra Falke Knowledge’s ‘gordian shape’: Keats and the Disciplines - Kurtis Hessel ‘Irritable Reaching’ and the Conditions of Romantic Mediation - Jeanne Britton ‘uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts’: Pluralities and the Historical Present in Keats and Hazlitt - Emily RohrbachPart III. ‘pursued through Volumes’, Volume I: Negative Capability in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry Beyond the Great Divide: Negative Capability and Postwar American Poetics - Robert Archambeau Versions of Negative Capability in Modern American Poetry and Criticism - Eric Eisner ‘giddily off into the unknown’: Negative Capability and Naturalism in Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics - Arsevi Seyran ‘Darkling I listen’: Jorie Graham and Negative Capability - Thomas GardnerPart IV. ‘pursued through Volumes’, Volume II: Adaptations, Appropriations, Mutations Negative Capability in the Twenty-First Century and Romantic Self Annihilation in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials - Suzanne L. Barnett Negative Capability in Psychoanalysis: Keats and Retroactive Judgment in Bion, Freud, Lacan, and Milner - David Sigler Zen and the Art of Negative Capability - Anne C. McCarthy Negative Capability in Dialogic Context - Walter L. ReedAfterword: Reading Keats’s Negative Capability - Jonathan MulrooneyIndex

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Book SynopsisA genre-defying book from one of France’s most well-known philosopher-writers. In the Lower Saxony region of northwestern Germany sits the city of Osnabrück. This is where, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, bringing the Thirty Years’ War and one of the most calamitous periods of European history to an end. But the city was later to witness another calamity. Today, as one walks through Old Synagogue Street in a rich neighborhood of Osnabrück, one might miss noticing a pile of pale stones held together by chicken wire that sits between two fashionable homes. These are the well-kept ruins from behind which stares a gaping space—a place of memory and oblivion. Four polished plaques tell the tale of the horror-filled night of November 9, 1938—today known as Kristallnacht—when the synagogue that had stood on this spot was desecrated, looted, set on fire, and eventually demolished by Hitler’s forces. On the same day, ninety parishioners were imprisoned by the Gestapo and eventually sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Osnabrück was also home to Eve Klein, a member of the city’s early-twentieth-century Jewish community and the mother of author Hélène Cixous. In Well-Kept Ruins, Cixous returns to the historic city in 2019 and reflects on the remains of the synagogue that “express the life lost, the life kept.” Walking the streets of the city, plumbing the depths of the past along with her own family’s history, looking deep into the future, and punctuating her poetic prose with haunting photographs, Cixous explores the ruins at the heart of humanity. Part memoir, part philosophical meditation, Well-Kept Ruins is a genre-defying and timely reflection of the contemporary human condition. Trade Review"Well-Kept Ruins is shaped by a yearning to recover the irrecuperable. Cixous is compelled to revisit the fates of these castaways. She is a daughter who attempts to commemorate a midwife; a writer who finds herself through the bond of mother and child. . . . Cixous’s book is a genealogy of exile." * The Spectator *"This welcome translation gives us a Cixous still energetically writing the self, and other selves—this time with imperative retrospect." * 4columns *"To read Cixous here is to feel oneself pulled along, engulfed, really, amid a torrent of words, a cascade of sentences, as if one has drifted inside of a tumbling, beautiful, confusing, dream. A reader, too, must let go, must allow that we will not always know which of the book’s many voices are speaking, that we cannot always be sure where we are in time and space. The point was never to be so securely fastened, and anyway, such a condition is impossible, for Cixous at least." * Irish Times *"Well-Kept Ruins is at once a memoir, a history, and a work of philosophical theory — as [Cixous] seeks forms of writing to describe the embodied and inherited traumas of the 20th century." * On the Seawall *"One of Cixous’ imperatives is that writing should always act against finality, against death; now, with that most difficult and ungathered subject, she evokes that power." * Cleveland Review of Books *"Woven throughout is a meditation on the life of Cixous's mother and the ineffability of another's interior life and experience. . . Recommended." * Choice *"Well-Kept Ruins turns inward, toward the personal sense of a present wonderfully and terribly ruptured by the past." * The Nation *Table of Contents1.To the Centre of the Centre of the World 2.Reconstitutions3.Plötzlich—Suddenly a Photograph4.Well-Kept Tales—Prisons5.Salt in the Soup6.In the Suitcase

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Book SynopsisA richly illustrated analysis from one of Europe’s greatest living philosophers. In Pinocchio, Giorgio Agamben turns his keen philosopher’s eye to the famous nineteenth-century novel by Carlo Collodi. To Agamben, Pinocchio’s adventures are a kind of initiation into life itself. Like us, the mischievous puppet is caught between two worlds. He is faced with the alternatives of submitting to authority or of carrying on, stubbornly indulging his way of being. From Agamben’s virtuoso interpretation of this classic story, we learn that we can harbor the mystery of existence only if we are not aware of it, only if we manage to cohabit with an area of non-knowledge, immemorial and very near. Richly illustrated with images from three early editions of Collodi’s novel, this new volume will delight enthusiasts of both literature and philosophy. Table of Contents1.Prologue2.Adventure3.Epilogue4.Bibliography5.Note on Illustrations

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Book SynopsisA moving ode to the Mississippi delta inspired by magical realism and written in vibrant and poetic prose. Blues in the Blood is an ode to the spring of 1932 in the Mississippi delta, when stifling heat crushed the countryside and threatened the harvest, pervasive injustice ruled the day, and ghostly riders of the Ku Klux Klan spread terror. A panoramic historical and musical portrait, Blues in the Blood follows a poor young Black couple who believe their love for each other will save them from this devastation. Julien Delmaire introduces us to a gallery of figures: Blacks, Whites, Native Americans, mulattos, landowners, itinerant bluesmen, preachers, witches, corrupt politicians, prisoners, bootleggers, and Legba, the voodoo god, “master of crossroads,” who, like an otherworldly detective, watches over people’s destinies. As the story unfolds, a world is reborn: the delta, the birthplace of the blues, in which oppressed women and men rediscover the voices and rhythms of their humanity.

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Book SynopsisAn intensely personal and profoundly moving review of Bonnefoy’s childhood memories. In December 2015, six months before his death at the age of 93, Yves Bonnefoy concluded what was to be his last major text in prose, L’écharpe rouge, translated here as The Red Scarf. In this unique book, described by the poet as "an anamnesis"—a formal act of commemoration—Bonnefoy undertakes, at the end of his life, a profoundly moving exegesis of some fragments written in 1964. These fragments lead him back to an unspoken, lifelong anxiety: “My most troubling memory, when I was between ten and twelve years old, concerns my father, and my anxiety about his silence.” Bonnefoy offers an anatomy of his father’s silence, and of the melancholy that seemed to take hold some years into his marriage to the poet’s mother. At the heart of this book is the ballad of Elie and Hélène, the poet’s parents. It is the story of their lives together in the Auvergne, and later in Tours, seen through the eyes of their son—the solitary boy’s intense but inchoate experience, reviewed through memories of the now elderly man. What makes The Red Scarf indispensable is the intensely personal nature of the material, casting its slant light, a setting sun, on all that has gone before. Trade Review“With The Red Scarf, Bonnefoy makes a breach in the past. But there is nothing merely nostalgic in this magisterial autobiographical essay.” * Le Monde *Table of ContentsThe Red Scarf An ‘Idea for a Story’ Ambeyrac Viazac Toulouse A Spelling Book A Painting by Max Ernst The Silent Third Danaë, the Hyacinth Girl, Balin, the Mask From New Guinea Pierre Jean JouveTwo Stages and Additional Notes Two Stages First Additional Note: An Aid to Understanding Second Additional Note Translator’s Note

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Book SynopsisStories that entwine the mundane with the mystical, written by a cult favorite Slovakian writer. An unhappily married woman is impregnated by her elderly neighbor who lives in a building across the street and with whom she has never had any physical contact. Just as his attention creates life within her, his own life waxes and wanes with her gaze and attention. A man finds himself trapped in a pub on a sweltering afternoon after refusing to buy a beer with his cigarettes. Guarded by a vigilante bartender and his beer-obsessed patrons, his every attempt at escape is foiled until their life-giving elixir, the beer, runs out. This collection introduces English-language readers to the work of Du?an Mitana, a cult figure in contemporary Central European literature. In Mitana?s stories, appearing in English for the first time, the rational and the irrational are indistinguishable. His tales infect a banal, quotidian realism with mystical and supernatural distortions. Tinged with Hitchcockian paranoia and full of unexpected turns, the seventeen stories collected here offer a glimpse into Mitana?s trademark absurdist style.

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Book SynopsisIn 1935, when she was fourteen years old, Ilse Gross fled Germany. Alone. Seventeen years later, she published her audacious first novel Fire in the Sun. Her pen name: Kathrine Talbot. Her German Jewish identity she carefully concealed. Becoming Kathrine Talbot explores the life of a refugee who lost her parents and sister in the Holocaust and who resisted telling their stories until it was almost too late. Only at the end of her life did she turn her family? s fate into prose. Christoph Ribbat follows a nearly forgotten 20th century novelist from an Isle of Man internment camp to postwar Cornwall, New York, and California, and then to a green hill in Sussex. She marries English painter Kit Barker and clashes with macho bohemians. She rises to literary fame and comes back down to obscurity. As Ilse Barker, she shares a close friendship with American poet Elizabeth Bishop. In their extraordinary letters the two women cover everything: from the mundane to the traumatic.Becoming Kathrine Talbot fuses literary biography and concise accounts of the German Jewish refugee experience in Britain. To scholars in Jewish studies, modern fiction, and life writing, this book offers an original case study. To a general audience, it presents an engrossing tale of creativity, joy, and pain.

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Book SynopsisDescribed as the most widely read and influential serious writer of the twentieth century, George Orwell remains relevant in our own era of contested media. He continues to attract a large readership. This book is about Orwell’s post-war cultural moment c. 1948. Taking his Diaries of the time as inspiration, together with his famous final novel, 1984 (published 1949), and treating them as contiguous texts, Brian May considers the gaps, equivocations, and contradictions in Orwell's message and asks what Orwell would have written next. But 1948 is more than a work of literary criticism: rather, it balances critical discussion with creative intervention, being one-half literary-critical commentary, and one-half fictional departure – a novella titled “From the Archives of Oceania,” which quotes, parodies and pastiches Orwell's Diaries, offering a possible prequel. Together these elements offer a resource for the reader to interrogate anew such difficult issues as Orwell's sexism and anti-Semitism; to explore the tensions between various intertwining strands of thought that cast Orwell as both realist and idealist, Puritan and individualist; and to better understand Orwell's curious affection for the natural world. 1948 will appeal to all readers and critics of Orwell, but also to students of dystopian fiction, "revisionary" fiction and "reception study," which highlights the audience’s contribution to an artwork's meaning.Trade ReviewAt the centre of this dense, extraordinary book lies a powerful novella... As well as mashing together Orwell’s life and fiction, the novella elegantly draws in some distressing contemporary issues. Evocative images of othered people on boats in perilous conditions, and the chilling consequences of leaving antisemitism unchallenged, are haunting... It slowly builds to a believable yet horrifying conclusion which would stand up well in comparison to the iconic end of Nineteen Eighty-Four. -- Nicola Rossi, The Orwell SocietyTable of ContentsAcknowledgement I. Introduction II. Novella: “From the Archives of Oceania” III. Teaching Supplement IV. Critical Supplement: “Orwell Agonistes” Notes Index

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Book SynopsisDeveloped in collaboration with the Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, this book, by the esteemed Donald Smith invites you to discover the captivating tapestry of Edinburgh: Our Storied Town a spellbinding exploration of Edinburgh's history, intricately illustrated by Cath Outram. This commemorative edition, part of Edinburgh's 900th anniversary celebration unveils the city's storytelling evolution through the centuries, with each chapter delving into a different century. As Edinburgh gears up for its grand 900th anniversary festivities in August, immerse yourself in this literary gem that intertwines seamlessly with the celebrations. Join Donald Smith in honouring Edinburgh's legacy, and witness the city hosting a major international literary conference, cementing its status as a global literary beacon. Edinburgh: Our Storied Town is an enchanting journey through time, connecting you to the heart of this storied city.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisFrances Hodgson Burnett is remembered today as the author of the children’s classic The Secret Garden, but in her lifetime she had a long and successful career as a novelist, dramatist and writer of children’s stories. Of high literary quality, her novels covered a range of genres, including industrial novels, American-themed social novels, historical novels, transatlantic novels and post–World War I novels. The Novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett reads her novels in the context of the changing literary field in England and the United States in the years between the death of George Eliot in 1880 through to the Great War. Read as a body of literary fiction in relation to Elizabeth Gaskell, Henry James and T. S. Eliot among others, and read in the context of literary realism, historical fiction, the sensation novel and so on, Burnett’s novels constitute an important thread that chronicles the changing contexts and forms of English and American fiction from the end of the Victorian period to the Jazz Age of the 1920s.Trade Review“Recchio’s book on Frances Hodgson Burnett is an excellent example of a popular woman writer reclaimed in the twenty-first century for her generically varied, financially successful and still relevant fiction. This book is a must for anyone interested in women’s writing, Victorian to modernist literary developments and First World War writing.” —Janine Hatter, Programme Manager, PGTS, Doctoral College, University of Hull, UKWith this literary reclamation of Burnett's novels, Thomas Recchio has made a significant contribution to nineteenth- and twentieth-century studies, persuasively arguing for the recognition of Frances Hodgson Burnett as a serious writer. One way in which The Novels of Frances Hodgson Burnett develops its in-depth analysis is by exploring intersecting threads of Burnett's life and career, thereby offering rich contexts in which to highlight her craft. - Ruth Y. Jenkins, The Lion and the Unicorn, Johns Hopkins University Press, Volume 44, Number 2, April 2020, pp. 213-215.Recchio offers detailed readings of most of Burnett’s fourteen adult novels (by his count), which he organizes into five roughly chronological clusters grouped by genre and topic. […] This book amply documents Burnett’s prolific work as a novelist for adults, her engagements with and influence on literary traditions in two countries and two centuries, and the rewards of reading her fiction more widely and critically —Victorian StudiesTable of ContentsAcknowledgments; Introduction; Chapter One Learning from Elizabeth Gaskell; Chapter Two Writing as an American: The Portrait of a Washington Lady; Chapter Three Historical Dreamscapes and the Vicissitudes of Class: From A Lady of Quality to The Methods of Lady Walderhurst; Chapter Four Transatlantic Alliances in The Shuttle and T. Tembarom; Chapter Five After the Great War: Emerging from the Wasteland in The Head of the House of Coombe and Robin; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThis volume deals critically with the insertion of university life in contemporary United States of America. The time frame covers the 1980s and today. These are five critical conversations with noted scholars hailing from different origins, holding different trajectories, agendas and interests who have excelled in the humanities in addressing the (Latin) American Scene in the United States of America. The volume is pursuing the interrogation of the sign America in between the crucial Anglo/Latin divide. This five-part interrogation is done in ways that do not necessarily agree with conventional understandings of the big sign (America) in mainstream or hegemonic English-language senses of the sign as it travels internally in the United States and internationally up and down and across the Atlantic. Hence, the suggested parenthesis of Latin that is intended to disrupt the sign of America, which is not and cannot possibly be the United States of America. The volume title also plays with perfection as in the verbal sense of finished business plus the idea of excellence. These five critical conversations illustrate some of the challenges, problems, troubles, dilemmas, and so on. We are in the not yet finished quality and the self-awareness of the scholarship that is never perfect. Hence, we are perpetually in motion and perhaps moving towards progress. Bright and dark sides frame the immediate and more distant past, the pressing present and the immediate future. The here-and-now summons an interregnum in which readers can see some of the challenges informing the academic profession, university life, history, Latin America and the U.S. associations, avatars of the (foreign) humanities, Spanish in pressurized Anglo settings, and so on.The five interviewees (Walter D. Mignolo, John Beverley, Rolena Adorno, José Rabasa and Roberto González Echevarría) have all been affiliated with Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, also called Romance Studies, Hispanic Studies (and now, Iberian and Latin American Studies or vice versa, Latin American and Iberian Studies). The signs Latin and Hispanic surface significantly in fields of languages, literatures and cultures, but also history and a variety of studies (the humanities, historical, sociological, Latin American, post/de-colonial, cultural, subaltern, etc.). Hispanic is challenged, and it turns out to be a common misnomer within and sometimes against Anglo domains (i.e. the U.S. and the U.K. too). The category of West is debated in different ways. It is not necessarily assumed as an unquestionable summum bonum (conventionally, Latin America is not part of the West in conventional English-speaking domains and a rich tradition of criticism emerges in these conversations). Tensions within monolingual institutional settings in the United States are mentioned.These conversations open up the notion of history which will go in different directions. There are different genealogies and there is no resolution. Literature is vigorously defended at least by one or two of these participants, but this is not the case in others who open up to the mounting challenges of literacy and the virtues and limitations of the alphabetic letter in historical and contemporary settings in the Americas (Latin America and the United States). Inter- or trans-disciplinarity is defended by all and 1,001 references fly around these exchanges. There is humor too, sometimes coming from me and sometimes at the expense of the interviewer. Three conversations took place in Spanish (Mignolo, Rabasa, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria ) and two in English (Beverley, Adorno). The final work includes my translations into English. There are personal predilections and collective trajectories, changes and continuities, celebrations and desires, accusations and stubborn challenges. The historical present allows for the referencing of Early Modern / colonial dimensions among these five (Latin) American scholars, and this is significant vis-à-vis the hegemonic European horizon inside U.S. academia. But things are ineluctably changing.As with Hispanic cultures, speakers occupy both sides of virtually all binaries (majority and minority, white and non-white, off-white, brown, etc.), minority-academic culture and majority minority population, bilingual, English and Spanish, (Latin) American, American and European, humanities and social-science, a general struggle for a greater visibility in the universities in the Anglo Zone. Vast historical vistas are addressed starting with the modern in the Spanish-language tradition. There are additions of post/decolonial perspectives, continental philosophical traditions and criticism from the margins. These vistas are combined with their most pressing situations in the various academic environments. Tensions, challenges, xenophobia and even racism come up. The thrust of this work is to open up to something bigger and something different. Hispanic writ large inside the foreign humanities allows for numerous upsets of the conventional narratives.

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Book SynopsisArt honours the world, and criticism honours art, even – perhaps especially – when the critic sets out to destroy. The bad review is hardly ever written out of mere spite. In most cases, the motivation is disappointed idealism. Critics are people who love art and who hate to see it traduced. Hence the critic’s sempiternal cry: You’re doing it wrong. What the critic wants is for you to do it better. Since 2008, acclaimed novelist Kevin Power has reviewed almost three hundred and fifty books. Power declares, ‘Even now, cracking open a brand-new hardback with my pencil in my hand, I feel the same pleasure, and the same hope. That’s the great secret: every critic is an optimist at heart.’ Art that thinks and feels at the same time – ‘good art’ – requires explication. The writing of criticism in response to such art is an activity that has taken place since Aristotle first sat down to figure out what made tragedy work. It is in the pursuit of this question – what makes good art ‘good’ – that Kevin Power found his vocation. During a ten-year stint as a regular freelance reviewer for the Sunday Business Post, Power fell in love with the writing of criticism, and with the reading of it, too, particularly by talented novelists who review books on the side. His conclusion is that criticism is absolutely an art. But it is never more so than when practiced by an actual artist. These pieces, ranging from reviews of Susan Sontag to the meaning of Greta Thunberg, apocalyptic politics, and literary theory, represent a decade’s worth of thinking about books; a record of the author’s attempts to honour art, and through art, the world. In The Written World, Power explains how he became a critic and what he thinks criticism is. It begins and ends with a long personal essays, ‘The Lost Decade’, written especially for this collection, about his mental and writing block after publishing Bad Day in Blackrock and his decade-long journey to White City. The pieces gathered by Power are connected by a theme – this is a book about writing, seen from various positions, and about growth as an artist and a critic.Trade ReviewPower is a writer's writer, and this collection of essays and reviews captures his sharp wit and incisive, fair critical eye like no other Dubray Staff Choice (Luke – Dubray Grafton Street, Dublin)Hot Press Book of the Year a remarkably perceptive literary critic and essayist ... The Written World is a testament to Power’s well-deserved status as one of Ireland’s most reliably engaging writers. Oh, and did I mention he’s often hilarious, too? Luke Warde Totally DublinEvery essay here is a pleasure to read ... The light touch with which Power deploys his wide and deep reading is illustrated by his extensive quotation, from the Roman dramatist Terence to Hannibal Lecter. It is a masterclass in and of itself ... his book is metropolitan and cosmopolitan in word and spirit, enlightening and amusing, and across its pages art is happening too. Tom Hennigan, Dublin Review of BooksIn this smart and funny collection of essays and reviews, Kevin Power doles out praise but isn’t afraid to put the boot in ... It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read either of his novels to hear that Power the critic embodies all these qualities — intelligence, good taste, humour and common sense — and that The Written World is criticism worth reading, for enjoyment above any other consideration. Pat Carty, Irish Independent [The Written World] contain[s] essays on criticism itself, authors and their work, society and crises. All are delivered in beautifully wrought sentences, along with a healthy dose of Power's own personal thoughts and experiences ... a joy to read ... His warmth, humour, humanity and intellectual rigour should ensure that this collection finds its place not just on the dusty bookshelves of Trinity College's English Department – but also in the hands of ordinary readers on the 46A bus. Sunday Business PostPrefaced by an unsettlingly frank account of artistic and personal breakdown after the success of his first novel, this glorious collection follows the triumphant publication last year of his second. It marks Power as one of the best, a writer to depend upon. I will read every word he writes. Sunday IndependentHis book reviews are zingy and readable, with a knack for a killer opening ... tremendous fun. Irish Timessearingly honest ... the depth and breadth of Power's scholarship is immense, but it's the fluency and grace of his pen that keeps you reading, even when you disagree with him ... he is one of the country's brightest literary stars. Anne Cunnigham, Meath ChronicleIn prose that glistens with style and intelligence, Power draws on the breadth of his reading and elegantly marshals his arguments … At his best, he proves as adept and illuminating guide through the world of literary criticism. Brendan Daly, Irish ExaminerPower’s logic, his thought-processes, are in general as sumptuously balanced as his sentences, which manage to accommodate some unsettled and unsettling issues without knocking a single word out of place. His piece on Literary Theory (vs. Liberal Humanism) is a masterclass of intellectual poise … [He is] a critic of high integrity. Harry Cochrane, The London MagazineHe delivers punchy, witty and considered opinions on an array of subjects from Greta Thunberg to Norman Mailer. The opening essay on failure, a meditation (sharing personal experience) on how it is hardwired into a writer’s life, should be mandatory reading for anyone hoping to be published. Martina Devlin, Irish IndependentIrish Independent Best Book of 2022Reviewing books at the same time as [Kevin Power] is a very frustrating business because he’s so bloody good at it. Pat Carty, Hot Press

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Book SynopsisThough manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies. Though manifestations of play represent a burgeoning subject area in the study of post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, they have not always received the respect and attention they deserve. This volume seeks to correct those deficiencies via six essays that directly address how the Middle Ages have been put in play with regard to Alice Munro's 1977 short story "The Beggar Maid"; David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight; medievalist archaisms in Japanese video games; runic play in Norse-themed digital games; medievalist managerialism in the 2020 video game Crusader Kings III; and neomedieval architectural praxis in the 2014 video game Stronghold: Crusader II. The approaches and conclusions of those essays are then tested in the second section's six essays as they examine "muscular medievalism" in George R. R. Martin's 1996 novel A Game of Thrones; the queering of the Arthurian romance pattern in the 2018-20 television show She-Ra and the Princesses of Power; the interspecies embodiment of dis/ability in the 2010 film How to Train Your Dragon; late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century nationalism in Irish reimaginings of the Fenian Cycle; post-bellum medievalism in poetry of the Confederacy; and the medievalist presentation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2020-21 Covid inoculation.Table of ContentsPreface - Karl Fugelso I: Medievalism in Play Sexual Play and Medievalism: Alice Munro's "The Beggar Maid" - M. J. Toswell Spoiling the Sport, Upping the Ante, and Calling His Bluff: Why St. Winifred Appears in David Lowery's 2021 Film The Green Knight - Kevin J. Harty "My guise doth not incur thy trust": Translating English Medievalism and Archaism to and from Japanese in a Video Game Context - Jacob W. Runner "Boy, what do those runes say?": Runic Play in Norse-Themed Digital Games - Tom Birkett Middle (Ages) Managers: Crusader Kings III as Medievalist Managerialism - Andrew Baerg "Castles are like possessions: merely temporary!": Neomedieval Architectural Praxis in Stronghold: Crusader II - Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly II: Other Responses to Medievalism George R. R. Martin's "Muscular Medievalism" in A Game of Thrones: Masculinity, Violence, and Fantasy - Steven Bruso Big Sword-in-the-Stone Energy: Queering the Arthurian Romance Pattern in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - Jessica Stanley Interspecies Embodiment of Dis/Ability in How to Train Your Dragon - Leah Haught Fenian Medievalisms, from Imperialist to Insurrectionist: Reimagining the Fenian Cycle and the Future of Ireland, 1878-1916 - Vanessa K. Iacocca Medievalism and the Old South: Metaphors and References in the Works of Poets of the Confederacy - Michel Aaij From Holy Lance to Covid-19 Syringe: Benjamin Netanyahu as Curator and Saint - Galit Noga-Banai

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Book SynopsisMargaret Atwood's witty and informative book focuses on the imaginative mystique of the wilderness of the Canadian North. She discusses the 'Grey Owl Syndrome' of white writers going native; the folklore arising from the mysterious-- and disastrous -- Franklin expedition of the nineteenth century; the myth of the dreaded snow monster, the Wendigo; the relations between nature writing and new forms of Gothic; and how a fresh generation of women writers in Canada have adapted the imagery of the Canadian North for the exploration of contemporary themes of gender, the family and sexuality. Writers discussed include Robert Service, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, E.J. Pratt, Marian Engel, Margaret Laurence, and Gwendolyn MacEwan.This superbly written and compelling portrait of the mysterious North is at once a fascinating insight into the Canadian imagination, and an exciting new work from an outstanding literary presence.Trade Review[a] wittily patriotic collection of lectures * INDEPENDENT on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisThe first collection of influential anarchist Hippolyte Havel's works.

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Book SynopsisTo judge by the worldwide success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Poirot, it is not only the Anglo-Saxons who have an appetite for mystery and mayhem. Talking about the craft of detective writing and sharing her personal thoughts and observations on one of the most popular and enduring forms of literature, P.D. James examines the challenges, achievements and potential of a genre which has fascinated her for more than fifty years as a novelist. From the tenant of 221b Baker Street to the Village Priest from Cubhole in Essex, from the Golden Age of detective writing between the wars to the achievements of the present and a glimpse at the future, P.D. James explores the metamorphosis of a genre which has gripped and entertained the popular imagination like no other type of novel. Written by the author widely regarded as the queen of the detective novel, this book is sure to appeal to all aficionados of crime fiction.Trade ReviewElegant and thoughtful … It is PD James’s longevity, as well as her serene intelligence, that makes this book especially noteworthy and enjoyable … If you want to extend you own reading, discover new authors or clarify your thoughts, this is an excellent way to do so. -- Amanda Craig

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Book SynopsisAre the peripheries the new centre? How do the 'debatable lands' of Scandinavia and Scotland write their relations with their national centres, and with each other? Is the story of the margins just a figment of the metropole's imagination? How have postcolonialism and postnationalism made themselves felt in the literature of the cultural patchwork of Northern Europe? In these sixteen essays, Scandinavian and Scottish scholars trace ways to tell the stories of connections, boundaries and localities that might go undetected by historians and artists in the metropolitan centres. Centring on the Peripheries opens up unexpected perspectives on cultural roots and on the routes between cultures, demonstrating that relations between 'core' and 'periphery' are in constant flux. It will appeal to scholars of cultural identity, postcolonialism and European literature, and to readers who delight in exploring the borderlands of the literary canon.

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Book SynopsisIn three urgent pieces of non-fiction Anne Enright explores speech and silence in the lives of Irish women: the long silence surrounding the Mother and Baby home in Tuam which was broken by the voice of Catherine Corless, the silence of Irish literary critics in response to work by women, and the reclaimed voice of the Irish writer Maeve Brennan. The short story form is celebrated with two new pieces of writing, and a biographical piece looks at the role of Canadian fiction in her reading life.Table of ContentsIntroduction | No Authority Lecture 1 | Antigone in Galway Short Story | The Hotel Lecture 2 | Maeve Brennan: Going Mad in New York Short Story | Solstice Lecture 3 | Call yourself George: Gender Representation in the Irish Literary Landscape Oh Canada: Lecture delivered on the presentation of the UCD Ulysses Medal to Margaret Atwood Afterword | Ennis, Armagh, Howth and Ballymun: A Report from the Laureate 2015–18

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Book Synopsis'The Sick List operates on the far side of literature.' John Schad In this novel, an unnamed academic in an unnamed contemporary university, relates his obsession with his tutor, Gordon. He pores over the increasingly bizarre mis-readings in Gordon’s annotations in a strange selection of stolen library books. Is Gordon unraveling a mystery? Or is his own mind unraveling? Meanwhile, an epidemic of catatonia breaks out; academics are found slumped and unconscious at their desks. Is reading itself the cause of this sickness? Is the only escape to return to illiteracy?Witty, moving, and beautifully written, The Sick List plays with the dividing line between deploring and exemplifying what it most despises. Inspired by the work of the Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, it considers how the minds of educated people are moulded by both the breadth of literary culture and the narrowness of academic institutions. ‘The Sick List is about menace, about a menace (Gordon), and is written in the voice of a menace. It reads like one of the pen-portraits of surreal ultra-violence in Bernhard's Gargoyles, where education turns out to be the most deceitful panacea of all.' Katharine Craik

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Book SynopsisA beautiful celebratory tribute to the powers of one of our most undervalued skills — an ideal gift for the avid reader. ‘What you are doing right now is, cosmically speaking, against the odds.’ As young children, we are taught to read, but soon go on to forget just how miraculous a process it is, this turning of scratches and dots into understanding, unease and inspiration. Perhaps we need to stop and remember, stop and learn again how to read better. Damon Young shows us how to do exactly this, walking alongside some of the greatest readers who light a path for us — Borges, Plato, Woolf. Young reads passionately, selectively, surprisingly — from superhero noir to speculative realism, from Heidegger to Heinlein — and shows his reader how cultivating their inner critic can expand their own lives as well as the lives of those on the pages of the books they love.Trade Review'For Damon Young, writers are like secret agents gone rogue, grabbing us by the lapels and inviting us into a realm of delicious ambiguity. The Art of Reading is an intimately conspiratorial book — erudite, surprising, and persuasive.’ -- Henry Hitchings, author of Browse: the world in bookshops'Reading about reading feels like it should be confusing, but Damon Young makes it both intriguing and insightful.’ -- Dean Burnett, author of The Idiot Brain‘The Art of Reading is perhaps [Young’s] best yet. It’s difficult to write about an unseen phenomenon, and yet he does so engagingly, compulsively, from the first page.’ -- John Birmingham, author of Zero Day Code and The Golden Minute‘An erudite and engaging enquiry into the transformative power of reading.’ -- Melissa Harrison, author of Rain‘Damon Young’s The Art of Reading is a brilliant, wide-ranging exploration of the nature and value of reading, a serious philosopher’s serious game with literature. Witty and graceful it does what it sets out to do, to turn black text into an illuminated theatre of mind, heart and consciousness as it passes through the teasing virtues and vices of its main headings. By taking a few key texts and introducing them to each other Young expands into the vast universe of his and our remembered and potential reading.’ -- George Szirtes‘A compelling riff on the best kind of reading - with unfettered curiosity and courage.’ -- Hilary McPhee, author, editor and publisher‘[A]n ethics of attention towards the written word … [A]n eminently readable, rousing and hugely intelligent account.’ -- Geordie Williamson * The Australian *‘[A] philosopher of fierce intellect and erudition, but also playful and eclectic in his tastes.’ -- Jane Sullivan * The Sydney Morning Herald *‘The Art of Reading is not just another bibliomemoir; it is also a manifesto of sorts … [Young’s] ambitious goal is to re-enchant an activity which, “cosmically speaking”, is very much “against the odds”.’ * The Irish Times *‘Attempts something like an ethical guide to literary life.’ * TLS *‘[A]n excellent argument for why reading is desirable for its own sake.’ * Bookseller+Publisher *‘Damon Young has written a neat little book … One of the key aims of The Art of Reading is to sharpen our interest in reading, and to train us to read more intelligently.’ * The Mail on Sunday *‘Its short length belies a book heavy with insight, creativity, and wit. To Young’s credit, he treats all types of reading, from scholarly meditation to frivolous binge reading, with seriousness and respect … This literary study is serious but also witty and fun — a tough balance to strike, but Young nails it.’ STARRED REVIEW * Publishers Weekly *‘Young offers a useful, erudite, and often arresting survey of philosophical thought featuring both renowned figures in the discipline (Plato, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Schopenhauer) and those less well known, as well as penetrating takes on novelists Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges, Henry James, and others … While Young's latest may be the essence of bookish preoccupation, it is a worthy challenge to read bravely, to regard deeply, and to weigh ideas with discernment and generosity.’ * Kirkus Reviews *‘Bibliophiles will relish Damon Young’s The Art of Reading, a hypnotic, erudite and riveting analysis of why we lose and find ourselves in the pages of books … A rare joy, a company of pages to cherish for a long time.’ * Bookanista *‘[S]ometimes even I find myself in a bit of a slump and forget how wonderful it is that type on a page can conjure up vivid worlds. In The Art of Reading, Young shows us how to cultivate our inner critic and read better, while celebrating reading and readers.’ -- Sarah Shaffi * Stylist *‘Damon Young’s purpose in this elegant volume is to demonstrate just what an extraordinary thing it is to be a reader — and how much power we have to be even better at it … [his] approach is omnivorous and inspiring.’ -- Sarah Ditum * In the Moment *‘A beautifully written and thoughtfully constructed ode to the inner worlds opened up by the page, and the role of reading in the discovery and development of the self. The Art of Reading is just what I needed to remind me I am neither alone — nor irrational — in my bibliophilia.‘ -- Tara Moss‘Young extols the virtues gifted to us by a well-stocked bookcase.’ * Australian Women’s Weekly *‘[N]uanced, articulate … the book illuminates the many prejudices and habits that a reader can have — and how fluid they are.’ * The Big Issue *‘The erudite, sometimes playful Australian philosopher and columnist is the most avid of readers.’ * The Post and Courier *

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Book SynopsisFew works of scholarship have so comprehensively recast an existing debate as Chinua Achebe’s essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Achebe – a highly distinguished Nigerian novelist and university teacher – looked with fresh eyes at a novel that was set in Africa, but in which Africans appear only as onlookers or as indistinguishable "savages". Dismissing the prevailing portrayal of Joseph Conrad as a liberal hero whose anti-imperialist views insulated him from significant criticism, Achebe re-cast the Polish author as a "bloody racist" in an analysis so cogent it changed the way in which his discipline looked not only at Conrad, but also at all works with settings indicative of racial conflict. The creative contribution of Achebe’s essay lies in delving far beneath the surface of Conrad’s novel; he not only generated new and highly influential hypotheses about the author's modes of thought and motivations, but also redefined the entire debate over Heart of Darkness. Just because the novel had been accepted into the "canon", and now falls into the class of “permanent literature”, Achebe says, does not mean we should not question it closely – or criticize its author.Table of ContentsWays In to the Text Who was Chinua Achebe? What does An Image of Africa Say? Why does An Image of Africa Matter? Section 1: Influences Module 1: The Author and the Historical Context Module 2: Academic Context Module 3: The Problem Module 4: The Author's Contribution Section 2: Ideas Module 5: Main Ideas Module 6: Secondary Ideas Module 7: Achievement Module 8: Place in the Author's Work Section 3: Impact Module 9: The First Responses Module 10: The Evolving Debate Module 11: Impact and Influence Today Module 12: Where Next? Glossary of Terms People Mentioned in the Text Works Cited

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Book SynopsisWhy do people love ghost stories, even if they don’t believe (or say they don’t believe) in ghosts? Is it simply the adrenaline rush that comes from being mesmerized and terrified by a great storyteller, or do these tales yield deeper meanings—telling us things about our own inner shadows? Stephen Johnson brings together some of the most memorable encounters with ghosts in world literature, from Europe, Russia, the United States, and China. Recurring themes and imagery are noted, interpretations suggested—but only suggested, since ambiguity and resistance to rational interpretation are key elements in the best ghost stories. As the writer Robert Aickman observed, often the decisive moment comes when someone, somehow, makes a “wrong turning”—literally, perhaps, but at the same time psychologically, even morally—and some mysterious nemesis takes over. Old favorites by M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman are interlaced with extracts from longer works by Emily Brontë, Henry James, and Alexander Pushkin,, along with slightly left-field apparitions from Tove Jansson and Flann O’Brien. With such expert guides, who knows what we will be led to encounter in the haunted chambers of our minds?

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Book SynopsisAn examination of science fiction narratives and the light they shed on human life, the unknowable future, and the vagaries of unforeseeable change.With this book, Steven Shaviro offers a thought experiment. He discusses a number of science fiction narratives: three novels, one novella, three short stories, and one musical concept album. Shaviro not only analyzes these works in detail but also uses them to ask questions about human, and more generally, biological life: about its stubborn insistence and yet fragility; about the possibilities and perils of seeking to control it; about the aesthetic and social dimensions of human existence, in relation to the nonhuman; and about the ethical value of human life under conditions of extreme oppression and devastation. Shaviro pursues these questions through the medium of science fiction because this form of storytelling offers us a unique way of grappling with issues that deeply and unavoidably concern us but that are intractable to rational argumentation or to empirical verification. The future is unavoidably vague and multifarious; it stubbornly resists our efforts to know it in advance, let alone to guide it or circumscribe it. But science fiction takes up this very vagueness and indeterminacy and renders it into the form of a self-consciously fictional narrative. It gives us characters who experience, and respond to, the vagaries of unforeseeable change.

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Book SynopsisA fascinating and exhilarating look at the many ways we love, and are loved. Following on from his bestselling The History of Wales in Twelve Poems, M. Wynn Thomas turns his attention in A Map of Love to poems from Wales and reflects on what they have to say on the age-old subject of love in its many and varied forms. Featuring twelve pieces dating from the fourteenth century to the present, this absorbing collection deliberately veers far from clichéd verses with its poems of regret and of mourning; straight love and gay love; bawdy verses of passion and desire, and gentle meditations on motherhood and marriage. It features anonymous and lesser-known writers as well as household names such as Gillian Clarke and R. S. Thomas, and it includes a previously unpublished poem by Emyr Humphreys. With original illustrations by Ruth Jên Evans throughout, this short but powerful collection will appeal to anyone interested in people and their complex relationships.

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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