Impossible to Swallow-Collection of Short Stories about the White Terror in Taiwan
Essays on Miyazawa Kenji and Endo Shusaku
This book discusses literary criticism, especially Japanese literature, from the perspective of the theme of "religious salvation." As such, my discussion focuses on two writers--Miyazawa Kenji, a Buddhist, and Endo Shusaku, a Christian. Their works appear to reflect their religious experiences strongly. I have endeavored to discuss this point in detail. The final appendix is an examination of the "simple religious belief of Japanese people" that these two writers have in common and flows as a deep undercurrent.
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated Into English Prose
The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated Into English Prose
By the Waters of Babylon
By the Waters of Babylon is a memoir and travelogue by Mori Arimasa, the influential Japanese philosopher and intellectual who interpreted European culture to postwar Japan. A professor of French philosophy, Mori visited Paris and came to the realization that to truly understand the significance of French and European civilization, he would have to live there and immerse himself in French culture. Abandoning his Tokyo professorship, Mori remained in France for over two decades, teaching, translating, and writing. Written in an intimate epistolary style, Mori's memoir chronicles his complex response as an outsider to a culture he so admired. His observations on European art, architecture, literature, and philosophy were highly influential to the first Japanese generation to come of age after World War II, who felt a need for Japan to rejoin the global community. By the Waters of Babylon is a compelling account of cross-cultural encounters and a meditation on living and loving a culture that is so different from one's own.
By the Waters of Babylon
By the Waters of Babylon is a memoir and travelogue by Mori Arimasa, the influential Japanese philosopher and intellectual who interpreted European culture to postwar Japan. A professor of French philosophy, Mori visited Paris and came to the realization that to truly understand the significance of French and European civilization, he would have to live there and immerse himself in French culture. Abandoning his Tokyo professorship, Mori remained in France for over two decades, teaching, translating, and writing. Written in an intimate epistolary style, Mori's memoir chronicles his complex response as an outsider to a culture he so admired. His observations on European art, architecture, literature, and philosophy were highly influential to the first Japanese generation to come of age after World War II, who felt a need for Japan to rejoin the global community. By the Waters of Babylon is a compelling account of cross-cultural encounters and a meditation on living and loving a culture that is so different from one's own.
The Cleaving
The first and only book to gather the voices and perspectives of Vietnamese diasporic authors from across the globe. Edited by Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Lan P. Duong, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Cleaving brings together Vietnamese artists and writers from around the world in conversation about their craft and how their work has been shaped and received by mainstream culture and their own communities. This collection highlights how Vietnamese diasporic writers speak about having been cleaved--a condition in which they have been separated from, yet still hew to, the country that they have left behind. Composed of eighteen dialogues among thirty-seven writers from France, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Canada, Australia, Israel, and the United States, the book expands on the many lives that Vietnamese writers inhabit. The dialogues touch on family history, legacies of colonialism and militarism, and the writers' own artistic and literary achievements. Taken together, these conversations insist on a deeper reckoning with the conditions of displacement. Featured writers: Hoai Huong Aubert-Nguyen, Amy Quan Barry, Doan Bui, Thi Bui, Lan Cao, Cathy Linh Che, Andr矇 Dao, Duy Đo?n, Lan P. Duong, Dương V璽n Mai Elliott, Le Ly Hayslip, Matt Huynh, Violet Kupersmith, Thanhh? Lại, Vincent Lam, T.K. L礙, Tracey Lien, Marcelino Trương Lực, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Anna M繹i, Beth (Bich) Minh Nguyen, Diana Khoi Nguyen, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Hoa Nguyen, Philip Nguyễn, Thảo Nguyễn, Vaan Nguyen, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Isabelle Thuy Pelaud, Andrew X. Pham, Aimee Phan, Abbigail Nguyen Rosewood, Bao Phi, Dao Strom, Kim Th繳y, Paul Tran, Monique Truong, Minh Huynh Vu, Ocean Vuong
Sumud
An anthology that celebrates the power of culture in Palestinian resistance, with selections of memoir, short stories, essays, book reviews, personal narrative, poetry, and art. Includes twenty-five black-and-white illustrations by Palestinian artists. The Arabic word sumūd is often loosely translated as "steadfastness" or "standing fast." It is, above all, a Palestinian cultural value of everyday perseverance in the face of Israeli occupation. Sumūd is both a personal and collective commitment; people determine their own lives, despite the environment of constant oppressions imposed upon them. This anthology spans the 20th and 21st centuries of Palestinian cultural history, and highlights writing from 2021-2024. The collection of writing and art features work from forty-six contributors including: Dispatches from Hossam Madhoun, co-founder of Gaza's Theatre for Everybody, as he survives the post-October 2023 war on Gaza;Novelist Ahmed Masoud with "Application 39," a sci-fi short story about a Dystopian bid for the Olympics;Sara Roy and Ivar Ekeland with "The New Politics of Exclusion: Gaza as Prologue," an analysis of Israel's divide and conquer policies of fragmentation;Historian Ilan Papp矇 with a review of Tahrir Hamdi's book, Imagining Palestine, in which he unpacks the relationship between culture and resistance;Essayist Lina Mounzer with "Palestine and the Unspeakable," an offering on the language used to dehumanize Palestinians;And poetry by the next generation of poets who have inherited the mantle of the late Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008).The essays, stories, poetry, art and personal narrative collected in Sumūd: A New Palestinian Reader is a rich riposte to those who would denigrate Palestinians' aspirations for a homeland. It also serves as a timely reminder of culture's power and importance during occupation and war.
New Stories Told While Trimming the Wick
The Hsu-Tang Library presents authoritative and eminently readable translations of classical Chinese literature, in bilingual editions, ranging across three millennia and the entire Sinitic world. New Tales Told While Trimming the Wick by the talented scholar and poet of the Ming dynasty, Qu You (1347-1433), was the first work of fiction officially banned in China, but also the first internationally acclaimed collection of Chinese short stories. These tales often seem quite modern in their character development and plot intricacies, with characters facing ethical and moral challenges that are just as difficult to navigate today as they were over six hundred years ago. This collection is a crucial and delightful bridge between the classical tales of the Tang dynasty and Pu Songling's famous Strange Tales from Liaozhai in the Qing. Despite being fiction filled with supernatural elements, New Tales offers fascinating insights into the life and society of China during the turbulent transition between the Yuan and Ming dynasties. Translated in full for the first time, with a contextual introduction to the stories and their author, historical and literary annotations to aid the reader, and bibliographical support, this volume introduces a collection of tales that have had a profound influence on literature across all of Asia.
Hiding in Caverns Formed from Old Roots
Yu Xuanji (c. 843-868) is one of the most interesting poets in premodern Chinese literature, and her approximately fifty extant poems include some of the most arresting writing from the Tang dynasty--a period known as the golden age of Chinese poetry. Born a commoner, by fifteen Yu had become the concubine of a man from an illustrious family, until he abandoned her and she became a Daoist priestess, where she took on an active role as a poet as well as a religious practitioner. She was only a priestess for two years before she was executed at the age of twenty-six on dubious accusations of murder. Yu's story is fascinating, but her poetry is even more so. Despite her relatively slim output and the patriarchal culture in which she lived, she became known for writing that combines late Tang lushness with a rare frankness about what it meant to be a woman in the ninth century. Yu was an incisive and expressive poet, and her work treats a wide range of topics, such as love, spirituality, abandonment, female friendship, sex, and sexuality. Preceded by a critical introduction explaining the possibility of a tradition of women's poetry in medieval China, as well as Yu's relationship with the dominant tradition of male poets, this collection of innovative translations combines scholarly accuracy with a poet's demand for creative solutions in handling the crossover between languages and literary styles.
If I Must Die
"If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale."This rich, elegiac compilation of work from the late Palestinian poet and professor, Refaat Alareer, brings together his marvelous poetry and deeply human writing about literature, teaching, politics, and family. The renowned poet and literature professor Refaat Alareer was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City alongside his brother, sister, and nephews in December 2023. He was just forty-four years old, but had already established a worldwide reputation that was further enhanced when, in the wake of his death, the poem that gives this book its title became a global sensation. "If I Must Die" is included here, alongside Refaat's other poetry.Refaat wrote extensively about a range of topics: teaching Shakespeare and the way Shylock could be appreciated by young Palestinian students; the horrors of living under repeated brutal assaults in Gaza, one of which, in 2014, killed another of his brothers; and the generosity of Palestinians to each other, fighting, in the face of it all, to be the one paying at the supermarket checkout.Such pieces, some never before published, have been curated here by one of Refaat's closest friends and collaborators. This collection forms a fitting testament to a remarkable writer, educator, and activist, one whose voice will not be silenced by death but will continue to assert the power of learning and humanism in the face of barbarity.
Granta 169
From Nobel Prize-winning writers to debut novelists, Britain's most prestigious literary magazine brings you the best in newwriting, photography and art from around the world. No nation boasts more manufacturing capacity than thePeople's Republic of China, yet few countries' literary products are less knownin the English-speaking world. Witnesses to the country's revolutionarymodernisation, China's writers have experienced historical whiplashes andsprints forward on an extreme scale. The zhiqing - theeducated youth whom Mao 'sent down' to the countryside and who experienced adecade of extreme austerity - are at a vast distance from the generations belowthem, who have lived through an epoch of self-assertion and creative dreaming.In China today, writers across generations look abroad, to new technologies, aswell as to rich veins in the Chinese literary past for new modes of expression. Granta's special issue on the writing of contemporary Chinacollects the mainland's most thrilling voices. Featuring memoir from Xiao Haion moving to Shenzhen at fifteen to work in its factories, reportage from HanZhang, who visits the working-class writers carving out a living in Picun, aswell as new fiction from Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Shuang Xuetao, ZhangYueran, Ban Yu, Wang Zhanhei, Zhou Jingzhi, and many more. Poetry by Huang Fan, Lan Lan, Hu Xudong andZheng Xiaoqiong. Photography by Feng Li, Haohui Liu, and Li Jie andZhang Jungang.
More Swindles from the Late Ming
A woman seduces her landlord to extort the family farm. Gamblers recruit a wily prostitute to get a rich young man back in the game. Silver counterfeiters wreak havoc for traveling merchants. A wealthy widow is drugged and robbed by a lodger posing as a well-to-do student. Vengeful judges and corrupt clerks pervert the course of justice. Cunning soothsayers spur on a plot to overthrow the emperor. Yet good sometimes triumphs, as when amateur sleuths track down a crew of homicidal boatmen or a cold-case murder is exposed by a frog. These are just a few of the tales of crime and depravity appearing in More Swindles from the Late Ming, a book that offers a panorama of vice--and words of warning--from one seventeenth-century writer. This companion volume to The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection presents sensational stories of scams that range from the ingenious to the absurd to the lurid, many featuring sorcery, sex, and extreme violence. Together, the two volumes represent the first complete translation into any language of a landmark Chinese anthology, making an essential contribution to the global literature of trickery and fraud. An introduction explores the geography of grift, the role of sex and family relations, and the portrayal of Buddhist clergy and others claiming supernatural powers. Opening a window onto the colorful world of crime and deception in late imperial China, this book testifies to the enduring popularity of stories about scoundrels and their schemes.
Whispers of the Rain
'In hot up-country towns in India, it is good to have the first monsoon showers arrive at night, while you are sleeping on the veranda. You wake up to the scent of wet earth and fallen neem leaves, and find that a hot and stuffy bungalow has been convened into a cool, damp place.' As heavy monsoon winds begin to blow at the end of every summer, an entire country waits with bated breath. Once rain hits the parched land, the arid landscape slowly turns green. Humans, whistling thrushes, frogs, beetles and geckos-all rejoice. Whispers of the Rain is a collection of short stories that celebrates the 'true spring' of India-monsoon. Ruskin Bond's descriptive, lucid and sensitive prose takes us through the dusty whirlwinds of the Gangetic plains, the whispering mists of Mussoorie and the thunderous Landour storms. This book welcomes you to embrace the fresh breeze of adventurous and rainy tales as seen through the master storyteller's eyes.
