Search results for ""bel""

'His rise testifies to the decline of a whole society.' Jean-Paul Sartre Maupassant's second novel, Bel-Ami (1885) is the story of a ruthlessly ambitious young man (Georges Duroy, christened 'Bel-Ami' by his female admirers) making it to the top in fin-de-siècle Paris. It is a novel about money, sex, and power, set against the background of the politics of the French colonization of North Africa. It explores the dynamics of an urban society uncomfortably close to our own and is a devastating satire of the sleaziness of contemporary journalism. Bel-Ami enjoys the status of an authentic record of the apotheosis of bourgeois capitalism under the Third Republic. But the creative tension between its analysis of modern behaviour and its identifiably late nineteenth-century fabric is one of the reasons why Bel-Ami remains one of the finest French novels of its time, as well as being recognized as Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Guy de Maupassant's scandalous tale of an opportunistic young man corrupted by the allure of power, Bel-Ami is translated with an introduction by Douglas Parmée in Penguin Classics.Young, attractive and very ambitious, George Duroy, known to his admirers as Bel-Ami, is offered a job as a journalist on La Vie francaise and soon makes a great success of his new career. But he also comes face to face with the realities of the corrupt society in which he lives - the sleazy colleagues, the manipulative mistresses and wily financiers - and swiftly learns to become an arch-seducer, blackmailer and social climber in a world where love is only a means to an end. Written when Maupassant was at the height of his powers, Bel-Ami is a novel of great frankness and cynicism, but it is also infused with the sheer joy of life - depicting the scenes and characters of Paris in the belle epoque with wit, sensitivity and humanity.Douglas Parmée's translation captures all the vigour and vitality of Maupassant's novel. His introduction explores the similarities between Bel-Ami and Maupassant himself and demonstrates the skill with which the author depicts his large cast of characters and the French society of the Third Republic.Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was born in Normandy. By the late 1870s, the first signs of syphilis had appeared, and Maupassant had become Flaubert's pupil in the art of prose. He led a hectic social life, and in 1891, having tried to commit suicide, he was committed to an asylum in Paris, where he died two years later.If you enjoyed Bel-Ami, you might like William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, also available in Penguin Classics.

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Las relaciones con la prensa de Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) le sirvieron de experiencia para el argumento de " Bel Ami " , publicada en 1885 y provocadora de una intensa polémica pública. Aunque el relato se centre en la rápida ascensión social del periodista George Duroy, de origen humilde e instrucción mediocre, tras haber pasado unos años como suboficial en el norte de África, la novela no se limita, sin embargo, a historiar el triunfo de un antihéroe, intrigante y desaprensivo, que apoya sus ambiciones en sus dotes de seducción. La hipocresía y la corrupción durante la Tercera República, la política colonial francesa, la formación de una clase dominante basada en la especulación financiera y las turbias relaciones de la prensa con los grupos de presión son algunos de los hilos que entretejen la trama de la novela.

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Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The poignant – and at times very funny – novel from the author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth. Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

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Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The poignant – and at times very funny – novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth. Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

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Anna Maria Bel, una vida dedicada a la dansa descriu la carrera com a ballarina, docent i divulgadora d'Anna Maria Bel Curto (1938). Aquesta història neix a la capital ebrenca en el marc de la Guerra Civil, sota els bombardejos de l'aviació franquista; transcorre a Barcelona, on desenvolupa la seva carrera com a intèrpret al Gran Teatre del Liceu, i torna a Tortosa, com a professora i difusora de la dansa, que la considera una eina pedagògica i un valor cultural. L'obra traça la seva etapa de formació i creixement professional, en parallel al rol de la dona en el context de la dictadura franquista i en el procés de construcció de la nova societat democràtica.D'altra banda, el text descriu la seva metodologia de treball al Ballet Estudi Anna Maria Bel, centre d'aprenentatge referent a les Terres de l'Ebre, on collaboren pedagogs de renom de la dansa a Catalunya i es formen la majoria dels ballarins professionals del territori de les darreres dècades.

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The Franco-German armistice, signed in June 1940 following the German invasion of France, called on the Vichy government to surrender on demand all refugees considered enemies of the Third Reich. Suddenly, thousands of artists, scientists and other intellectuals feared for their lives. The Emergency Rescue Committee, based in New York, compiled a list of two hundred people it considered the most endangered, including artists and writers André Breton, Max Ernst and Benjamin Péret. The committee sent Varian Fry to set up its headquarters in Marseilles, with the aim of helping these artists to escape. A number of them were sheltered at the Villa Air-Bel. Amidst the chaos and terror of wartime France, the villa became an oasis of calm, and a centre of creativity. Rosemary Sullivan explores the diaries, memoirs and letters of the individuals involved as she uncovers their private worlds and the web of relationships they developed. Central to her task is to understand what it must feel like to move from freedom to occupation: to feel threatened, administered, restrained. Villa Air-Bel brilliantly dramatizes the slow, relentless process by which ordinary lives were turned into lives lived in terror. In the end every artist in the house, as well as two thousand others, found asylum outside of France through the courageous intervention of Fry and his committee.

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The book presents a comprehensive treatment of a family archive originating from Neo-Babylonian Sippar complete with editions and handcopies of the texts. Among the subjects treated in the commentary are the prebendary system of the Ebabbar temple, various dues and taxes, and agriculture. The archive is shown to exhibit strong traces of the activity of apprentice scribes; it can in fact be considered to be a 'school archive,' the setting of the 'school' being the archive owner's family. It is only part of a larger group, the other part of which is an archive of medical texts (also consisting mostly of school tablets) studied by Irving Finkel.

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After years in exile, Nyxnissa so Dasheem is back in action in service to the bel dames, a sisterhood of elite government assassins tasked with eliminating deserters and traitors. The end of a centuries-long holy war between her country, Nasheen, and neighboring Chenja has flooded the streets of Nasheen with unemployed - and unemployable - soldiers whose frustrations have brought the nation to the brink of civil war. Not everyone likes this tenuous and unpredictable "peace," however, and somebody has kidnapped a key politician whose death could trigger a bloody government takeover. With aliens in the sky and revolution on the ground, Nyx assembles a team of mad magicians, torturers,and mutant shape-shifters for an epic journey across a flesh-eating desert in search of a man she's not actually supposed to kill. Trouble is, killing is the only thing Nyx is good at. And she already left this man to die...

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Allan Appel has the rare ability to write comic novels about religion while being entirely respectful of people’s traditions and feelings. And now he’s written one about adolescence that is funny, poignant, and accessible, with characters readers will root for with glee. A kind of Romeo and Juliet tale (but with a whimsical rather than a tragic ending), all the hallmarks of a fast-paced, mainstream novel are here, yet Appel transcends the clichés with panache and has crafted a novel that just might take off like a roaring motorcycle.

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Nyx is a bodyguard in Mustallah, the capital city of Nasheen. The centuries-long holy war between Nasheen and Chenja is taking its toll, with shortages and rationing causing the Queen to lose power and popularity. While protecting the daughter of a Ras Tiegan Diplomat, Nyx is attacked by a group of assassins. Nyx survives, but begins to suffer from a strange, debilitating condition that nobody can identify. Caught up in a whirl-wind of intrigue involving Bel Dam Assassins plotting against the Queen, Nyx must learn who the rouge Bel Dam is, and find a cure for her illness, while avoiding the wrath of the queen she is trying to protect. The danger that swirls around her may have finally become too much, and Nyx's colleagues and friends began to die. Will Nyx be next?

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Norman Bel Geddes has long been considered the ‘founder’ of American industrial design. During his long career he worked on everything from theatre design, world fairs and cars to houses and product and packaging design. Nicolas P. Maffei’s magisterial biography draws on original material from the archive at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, and places Bel Geddes’ work within the fast-changing cultural and intellectual contexts of his time. Maffei shows how Bel Geddes’ futuristic but pragmatic style – his notion of ‘practical vision’ – was central to his work, and highly influential on the professional practice of American industrial design in general.

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Everyone is familiar with the words diva or prima donna, which have come to mean a (usually) outrageous operatic soprano, but there was a time when the star of the show was more often a contralto, or a soprano singing in today's mezzo-soprano range. This performer was referred to as an alto. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the male and female leading roles were likely to be sung by emasculated males, the alto castrati, although there were many great female altos during this period as well. The music for these fantastic artists, written by such composers as Porpora, Vinci, Hasse, and even Handel, has been largely forgotten. At the beginning of the 19th century, as the castrati died out, their roles were often assumed by female altos referred to as musici. New repertoire continued to be written for them by Rossini and others, but gradually, this musical tradition and technique was lost. Now, however, because of the talent and industry of such gifted artists as Marilyn Horne, Cecilia Bartoli, and Joyce DiDonato, and the sudden ease with which the performance of these forgotten works can be obtained, there is a resurgence of interest in the performance and preservation of this lost art. Alto: The Voice of Bel Canto examines the careers of nearly 320 great alto singers, including the great castrati, from the dawn of opera in 1597 to the present. The music of the composers who wrote for the alto voice is discussed along with musical examples and suggestions for listening. The exploration of the greatest altos’ careers and techniques offers inspiration for aspiring young singers as well as absorbing reading for the music lover who wants to know more about the fascinating world of opera.

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