The World of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen's artistic career is unique. Most poets and novelists do not become rock stars. No other rock star's career peaked in their eighth decade as Leonard Cohen's did. Cohen's popularity is still growing following his death. In The World of Leonard Cohen, a team of international scholars and writers explore the various dimensions of the artist's life, work, persona, and legacy to offer an authoritative and accessible summation of Cohen's extraordinary career. His relation to key themes and topics - Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Zen and the East, the Folk tradition, Rock & Roll, Canadian and world literature, film - are all addressed. The World of Leonard Cohen offers a comprehensive, uniquely informed and wholly fresh account of this iconic songwriter and artist, whose singular voice has permanently altered our cultural landscape.
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear
For the 100th anniversary of the publication of "Winnie-the-Pooh," Gyles Brandreth chronicles the writing of this beloved classic and the life of its creator, A. A. Milne. Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear tells the remarkable story of A A Milne, a playwright, a bestselling crime writer, poet, polemicist, humorist, and the man who created Winnie-the-Pooh. Gyles Brandreth explores "Winnie-the-Pooh," a bear beloved by millions: his genesis, his life across a hundred years, his special philosophy, and the reasons for his worldwide popularity. Brandreth's book is also the intimate biography of three generations of the fascinating and troubled Milne family, which knew fame and fortune, despising both for a time, but a family that ultimately found a profound reason to be grateful for the riches Pooh brought them. With an extraordinary cast list that includes Elizabeth II and Walt Disney, Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear moves from idyllic childhood games in the English countryside to New York in the 1930s and the love affairs, litigation, and heartrending family rifts that touched the life of one of Britain's most brilliant writers and his most famous creation.
Strange World of H. P. Lovecraft
Ideal for horror fans, this stunning, fully illustrated guide unlocks the eerie worlds and enduring legacy of H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic mythos and monsters. In this fascinating reference guide, you will discover the secrets and mysteries of H. P. Lovecraft's iconic worlds. From the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos to the shifting places of the Dreamlands, the settings of Lovecraft's stories are replete with terrifying monsters, bizarre creations and cosmic mysteries. Fully illustrated with full-color images and maps, the world of Cthulhu is brought to life as never before in this volume and you will soon become an expert in the characters and locations of Lovecraft's tales. As well as descriptions and explanations of the key people, events and places, this book includes an exploration of Lovecraft's legacy and examines how his writing has continued to enthrall and influence people for nearly a century.
How to Disappear and Why
From acclaimed fiction writer Kyle Minor emerges a collection of essays all about disappearing. Considering a wide scope of cultural, historical, spiritual, and philosophical figures and ideas, Minor assembles a collection of essays centered on the concept of disappearance. Considering subjects like ghosts (think Shakespeare and The Sixth Sense), lost temples, professional erasure and strategic exile, these essays dig deep into the cultural and historical archives of our civilization. Minor's keen wit and perception ensure one thing: readers will never forget this book.
Avoided No More
14 Writers - 14 Stories - 14 TruthsThe stories contained within this anthology were almost never written. Each contributing author dug deep to discover the one thing they'd avoided writing about and made the brave decision to speak their truth. But they didn't stop there. Every essay in this collection also includes a companion piece, a "behind-the-scenes" look at what it took to move through the struggle, shame, self-doubt, fear, and more to put these words to the page.Avoided No More reminds us that we all have stories buried within us, that there's power in sharing our truth, and, perhaps most importantly, that none of us are truly alone on this journey.--Published by Plymouth James Press, an imprint of The Open Book Company
Arms and the Self
War, armed conflict in general, and military service have likely inspired more textual testimonies than any other human event. Wars shatter every boundary imaginable--from national boundaries to bodily ones--confusing distinctions between social castes as well as between friends and foes, men and women, humans and animals, humans and machines, and even the living and the dead, making it difficult to classify what texts actually fall into the category "military autobiography."With its wide range of primary texts to demonstrate the many conflicts, author-participants, and interpretive perspectives, Arms and the Self provides an eclectic, suggestive perspective on this complex and varied field. With contributing authors such as Lynn Z. Bloom, Margaretta Jolly, Robert Lawson-Peebles, and Robert Shenk, the critical essays extend from Xenophon's memoir of his two years marching with the mercenaries of the Persian Prince Cyrus, through Canadian accounts of the Boer War and American civilian women's narratives of confinement in WWII Japanese internment camps, to Vietnam veterans' online testimonials and post-Persian Gulf War memoirs written as management primers.This thought-provoking collection adds significantly to the critical canon of military autobiography. With a helpful introduction and an extensive bibliography, Arms and the Self is an excellent tool for those interested in the literature of war and autobiographical writing.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
This revised edition of Ambrose Bierce's 1892 collection of "Soldiers" and "Civilians" tales fills a void in American literature. A veteran of the Civil War and a journalist known for his integrity and biting satire, Ambrose Bierce was also a lively short-story writer of considerable depth and power. As San Francisco's most famous journalist during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Bierce was hired by William Randolph Hearst to write a column for San Francisco Examiner, where his "Soldiers" and "Civilians" tales first appeared during the late 1880s. By the standards of his day and ours, Bierce's journalism was often brilliantly insightful, viciously libelous, petty, and grand, frequently in the space of a single paragraph. This edition reveals the often compelling artistry of Bierce's original versions of the tales and the intentionally intricate design and scope of the original collection.
Rhetorical Drag
An innovative discussion of this unique genre of American literature In this fresh examination of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century American captivity narratives, author Lorrayne Carroll argues that male editors and composers impersonated the women presumed to be authors of these documents. This "gender impersonation" significantly shaped the authorial voice and complicated the use of these texts as examples of historical writing and as women's literature. Carroll contends that gender impersonation was pervasive and that not enough critical attention has been paid to male intervention in female accounts. Rhetorical Drag examines the familiar territory of captivity narratives, including versions of Hannah Duston's captivity, and widens it by analyzing numerous examples, placing each in a deeply historicized context. For example, Mary Rowlandson's The Soveraignty and Goodness of God is viewed as a template against which later authors might differentiate their works rather than as a model. In this vein, Carroll looks at how Cotton Mather shaped the narrative of Hannah Swarton in light of Rowlandson's text (itself thought to have been edited by his father) and according to the ideals of female behavior outlined in his conduct book for women, Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion. A chapter on Quaker captivities illuminates the practices of censorship among Friends. Furthermore, Carroll does original archival work on the provenance of Susannah Johnson's narrative and makes some interesting discoveries about the practices of gender impersonation and collaborative composition that produced Johnson's text. Using this narrative, which appeared in the late eighteenth century, Carroll discusses the shift and evolution of gender norms in the representation of women's voices and embodied experience. Those interested in early American literary studies and historiography as well as women's and gender studies will find Rhetorical Drag a fascinating and important addition to the literature.
The Seven Deadly Sins in the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers
Janice Brown examines Sayer's major works, beginning with her early poetry and moving through her works of fiction to the dramas, essays, and lectures written in the last years of her life. She illustrates how Sayers used popular genres to teach about sin and redemption, how she redefined the Seven Deadly Sins for the twentieth century, why she stopped writing mysteries, and her application of the concepts of sin and redemption to society as a whole. She also considers the relationship between Sayers's spiritual life and her work and traces Lord Peter Wimsey's change from worldliness to something approaching Christianity.
Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context
Ambrose Bierce's In the Midst of Life, the second volume of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, is hailed by critics and scholars alike as his most important literary work. In Ambrose Bierce's Civilians and Soldiers in Context: A Critical Study, Donald T. Blume refutes this and instead identifies Bierce's original 1892 collection as his most definitive and authoritative work. The two subsequent collections, appearing in 1898 and 1909, although containing subtle clues pointing back to the importance of the 1892 collection, are in their primary effect literary red herrings. This new study reveals that the nineteen stories that comprised the original Tales of Soldiers and Civilians consist of carefully developed and interrelated meanings and themes that can only be fully understood by examining the complex circumstances of their original productions. By considering each of the nineteen tales in the order in which they were first published and by drawing heavily on contemporary related materials, Blume re-creates much of the original milieu into which Bierce carefully placed his short stories. Blume systematically examines many of Bierce's editing flaws, exposing that Bierce's decisions often weakened the original literary merits of his stories. Ultimately this story reveals, tale by tale and layer by layer, that the nineteen stories included in Bierce's 1892 collection were masterpieces of fiction, destined to become classics. Historians and Civil War enthusiasts, as well as literary scholars, will welcome this new study.
Evolution and "The Sex Problem"
A noteworthy investigation of the Darwinian element in American fiction from the realist through the Freudian eras In Evolution and "the Sex Problem" author Bert Bender argues that Darwin's theories of sexual selection and of the emotions are essential elements in American fiction from the late 1800s through the 1950s, particularly during the Freudian era and the years surrounding the Scopes trial. Bender contends that novelists with different social points of view explored "the sex problem," and what resulted was a great diversity of American narratives aligned with either Darwinian or a number of anti-Darwinian theories of evolution. Included are intriguing discussions of works by Frank Norris, Jack London, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, five writers of the Harlem Renaissance, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway. Among the ideas explored are Darwin's theory of common descent; the question of man's place in nature; the possibility of evolutionary progress; the issues of heredity and eugenics; the Darwinian basis of Freud's theory of sexual repression; the quandary of male violence and the role of female choice in sexual selection; the power of and the problems of racial and sexual difference; and the ecological problems that arose directly from Darwin's theory of evolution. This volume provides a valuable treatment of an underappreciated aspect of America's major narratives of human life and love and will be appreciated by literary scholars and readers interested in Darwinism and culture.
The Tower and the Ruin
No writer has surpassed the epic achievement of J.R.R. Tolkien, who spent decades refining his Middle-earth--a world that has felt so real to so many readers that it is almost impossible to imagine that any single person could have simply created it, seemingly out of thin air. In The Tower and the Ruin, Michael D. C. Drout takes us deep into Tolkien's genius, allowing us to glimpse the making of not only The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion but also lesser-known books such as The Fall of Gondolin as well as Tolkien's poetry and innovative scholarship.Drout, who has spent decades reading, studying, and teaching Tolkien, allows us to understand the author's methods and to embrace his works as never before. With great erudition and sparkling prose, Drout shows us how Tolkien invented myths, legends, cultures, languages, histories, and an intricate, multivocal narrative. We come to understand how Tolkien drew upon and modified material he found in Beowulf, the Kalevala, and other medieval literature from northern Europe, using the subtle qualities of those famous works as inspiration for his own. We also see the process by which he created the complex form of sorrow that is the primary emotional effect of his mature works, a sadness "blessed without bitterness," carefully woven through a tapestry of themes that has resonated with generations of readers.Sweeping and hugely perceptive--and enhanced throughout by Drout's personal reflections on how Tolkien has shaped his own life and relationships--The Tower and the Ruin illuminates Tolkien anew and will come to be seen as an essential work for anyone who has journeyed to Middle-earth.
Love Letters of Kings and Queens
Tender, moving, heartfelt and warm (and sporadically scandalous and outrageous too), these are the private messages between people in love. Yet, they are also correspondence between the rulers of nations. From Henry VIII's lovelorn notes to Anne Boleyn and George IV's impassioned notes to his secret wife, to Queen Victoria's tender letters to Prince Albert and Edward VIII's extraordinary correspondence with Wallis Simpson - these letters depict romantic love from its budding passion to the comfort and understanding of a long union (and occasionally beyond to resentment and recrimination), all set against the background of great affairs of state, wars and the strictures of royal duty. Here is a chance to glimpse behind the pomp and ceremony, the carefully curated images of royal splendour and decorum, to see the passions, hopes, jealousies and loneliness of kings and queens throughout history. By turns tender, moving, heartfelt and warm (and sporadically scandalous and outrageous too), these are the private messages between people in love. Yet they are also correspondence between the rulers of nations, whose actions (and passions) changed the course of history, for good and bad. This morning I received your dear, dear letter of the 21st. How happy do you make me with your love! Oh! my Angel Albert, I am quite enchanted with it! I do not deserve such love! Never, never did I think I could be loved so much. Queen Victoria to Prince Albert (28 November 1839)
Letters for the Ages the Great Musicians
A collection of letters written through the ages from musicians of all genres, from Mozart to Elton John. For tens of thousands of years, across various civilisations, our species has been creating music. But what is behind the human fascination with music? This new volume in the Letters for the Ages series explores that question through the personal correspondence of history's most brilliant musical talent, ranging from Hildegaard of Bingen to Amy Winehouse. Spanning from the 12th to the 21st centuries, the letters assembled in this collection combine to delve into musicians' personal relationship with music and the creative process behind their greatest works of art. Witness your musical idols, warm-hearted and compassionate, arrogant and angry, insecure and egocentric, defeated and morose. The letters give a rare insight into the innermost thoughts of these great musicians who have created some of the most recognisable and beautiful music ever heard. But despite the mass of talent within these pages, these letters also provide the realisation that even the most extraordinary music has been created by normal people with everyday worries and preoccupations.
The Book Club Journal
Embrace a new, more community-centered era of book clubs and make reading a shared experience! Book clubs aren't doing stale crackers, cramped living rooms, and stuffy chats anymore. We're getting out of the house and connecting with friends over good food and unforgettable stories. That's why this journal goes where you go--to the coffee shop, the brewery, the bookstore, or the park. It's ready to collect your favorite takes and moments from the meetup. Alternating spreads hold space for your personal thoughts (to share . . . or not) and your questions for the group. From your first impressions to your last, what you're loving to what you're not, and what you've learned to what you're eating while talking about it, this journal has room for it all. Plus, handy trackers let you log your TBR list and see at a glance what you've read, how you felt about it, and how close you are to your goal. Reading should feel like an experience, not homework. By the last page, this journal will be a memento of your adventures. And with room for 100 books, it'll be a page-turner!
All the Violet Tiaras
Ancient Greece was rich with stories of queer love and genderfluid identity--but what can these ancient stories tell us about our contemporary world?Tales as old as antiquity--whether the love affair of Achilles and Patroclus, the genderfluid Tiresias, or the infamous Heracles--are still capturing our imaginations thousands of years later. But was antiquity's relationship with queer folk more complicated than we now imagine? Historian Jean Menzies dives into the world of queer readings and retellings of Greek mythology, inviting readers to discover the power to be found in remaking these narratives, time and again.From explorations of gender and identity across millennia, to celebrating queer love in its many forms, All the Violet Tiaras carves a space for queer stories to be told with all the complexity and tenderness they deserve--and a goddess or two thrown in for good measure.
The Slicks
A keen, ardent celebration of unbridled female ambition in the work of Taylor Swift and Sylvia Plath In The Slicks, Maggie Nelson positions culture-dominating pop superstar Taylor Swift and feminist cult icon Sylvia Plath as twin hosts of the female urge toward wanting hard, working hard, and pouring forth--and as twinned targets of patriarchy's ancient urge to disparage, trivialize, and discipline creative work by women rooted in autobiography and abundance. A buoyant melding of popular culture and literary criticism, The Slicks is a captivating and unexpected assessment of two iconic female artists by one of the most revered and influential critics of her generation.
Selling Out Santa
Christmas is not just a day or a frame of mind as Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) imparts in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); Christmas is also a vehicle for national mythmaking as an idealising mirror for American cultural and political attitudes of a given moment. Via a case study on Hollywood Christmas films released between 1946 and 1961, Selling Out Santa offers an examination of political pressures on Hollywood in the post-war period and the cultural ramifications of federal involvement in the motion picture industry. As the House Committee on Un-American Activities opened hearings in 1947 and the FBI gathered reports on potential communist subversion in Frank Capra's Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Hollywood executives began to bend to the socially conservative pressures of this post-war moment. Using Christmas films as the core of this investigation to identify and analyse changes within the genre as they relate to and reflect changes in the wider cultural and political moment exposes for film scholars, students, and non-specialists how these federal and external pressures on Hollywood moulded these holiday favourites throughout the 1950s and set the social standard for decades of Christmas releases.
Alt 36: Queer Theory in Film & Fiction
ALT 36 turns a "queer eye" on Africa, offering provocative (re-)readings of texts to position formerly erased sexualities and contemporary sexual expression among Africans on the continent, and abroad. Debates on the future of the African continent and the role of gender identities in these visions are increasingly present in literary criticism forums as African writers become bolder in exploring the challenges they face and celebrating gender diversity in the writing of short stories, novels, poetry, plays and films. Controversies over the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) communities in Africa, as elsewhere, continue inthe context of criminalization and/or intimidation of these groups. Residual colonial moralizing and contemporary western identity norms and politics vie with longstanding polyvalent indigenous sexual expression. In addition to traditional media, the new social media have gained importance, both as sources of information exchange and as sites of virtual construction of gender identities. As with many such contentious issues, the variety of responses to the"state of the question" is strikingly visible across the continent. In this issue of ALT, guest editor John Hawley has sampled the ongoing conversations, in both African writing and in the analysis of contemporary African cinema, to show how queer studies can break with old concepts and theories and point the way to new gender perspectives on literary and cinematic output. This volume also includes a non-themed section of Featured Articles anda Literary Supplement. Guest Editor: John C. Hawley is Professor in the Department of English, Santa Clara University Series Editor: Ernest N. Emenyonu is Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA. Reviews Editor: Obi Nwakanma
Racial Fictions
A powerful critique of the racial myths that shape our world Drawing on a rich tapestry of historical analysis, literary criticism, and cultural theory, Hazel V. Carby interrogates our racial fictions, which have been constructed, maintained, and weaponized across centuries to justify systems of domination and exploitation. Traversing temporalities and global boundaries, Racial Fictions reveals the inter-connectedness of America's domestic racial struggles and international colonial ambitions. Carby challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths about the persistence of white supremacy, the violence embedded in historical memory, and the silencing of marginalized voices. The result is a profound exploration of the intricate and enduring legacies of race, imperialism, and violence in the formation of modern identities and nation-states.
The E.J. Pratt Lectures, 1968-2025
Compiling more than fifty years of the best poetic insights from the renowned series, a selection of the E.J. Pratt Lectures are collected together for the first time in this commemorative edition. For more than fifty years, Memorial University's E. J. Pratt Lecture Series has invited eminent critics and artists to St. John's, Newfoundland, to speak on the topics that lie at the heart of their work. This special edition, published to coincide with Memorial's 100th anniversary, gathers a selection of the Lectures, beginning with the one that inaugurated the series in 1968, Northrop Frye's "Silence in the Sea." George Elliott Clarke, Stan Dragland, Seamus Heaney, and Ursula K. Le Guin are among the E. J. Pratt Laureates represented in the volume, which culminates with Madeleine Thien's 2025 Lecture. An album reflecting a changing discipline, the volume is filled with a half-century of luminous writing and trenchant insights into poetry and poetics.
37 More Voices
Beyond the everyday, what hidden wisdom awaits in the tapestry of our lives? Picking up where Volume 1, 28 Voices, left off, this captivating second collection of essays invites you on a profound exploration of discovery and reflection.Through a diverse array of personal narratives, these pages delve into the myriad ways we learn and grow. From the quiet revelations of self-awareness to the complex dynamics of family and friendship, discover the profound impact of connection. Uncover unexpected insights from the loyalty of pets, the discipline of hobbies, and the expansive perspectives gained from travel and exploration. Ultimately, these essays illuminate how every experience-large or small-contributes to the ever-evolving landscapes of our personal philosophies and worldviews.Join us for a journey of introspection that celebrates the richness of life's lessons, beautifully told.
The Titanic Conspiracy
The sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912 is one of the most documented disasters in maritime history, yet the questions it raised have never fully gone away. The Titanic Conspiracy examines the theories, inconsistencies, and unresolved questions surrounding the ship's fate, from allegations of an insurance fraud scheme to claims about the identity of the ship itself. It is an engaging exploration of one of the twentieth century's most enduring historical mysteries.The book surveys the major conspiracy theories in turn, presenting the evidence for and against each with a clear and even-handed approach. It covers the circumstances of the voyage, the actions of the owners and crew, the controversial survivor accounts, and the questions raised by subsequent investigations and wreck discoveries. Whether or not readers come away convinced by any particular theory, they will gain a much richer understanding of the Titanic's story beyond the standard historical account.Contents: Reader review: "Gripping from start to finish. I have read a lot about the Titanic but this book introduced me to angles I had never considered. Well researched and genuinely thought-provoking." -- Caroline M.This title is well placed in history, maritime, and true mystery sections. It appeals to readers interested in the Titanic as well as those drawn to broader questions of historical conspiracy and cover-up. A strong choice for general bookshops and public libraries.Order now.
GrantBook - From Dream to Grant
This book introduces Sardor Tukhtaev, a dedicated student of international law passionate about human rights. With extensive academic achievements, international experience, and leadership roles, he exemplifies commitment to social justice and global human rights issues. The narrative highlights his active participation in international forums, competitions, and youth councils, reflecting his desire to promote human dignity. His pursuit of an LLM in Human Rights at the University of Birmingham stems from a deep commitment to advancing legal frameworks that protect individual rights, especially in Central Asia. Sardor's journey of academic excellence, leadership, and international engagement demonstrates his potential to contribute significantly to the global human rights movement. His aspiration to work within international law reinforces the importance of well-educated advocates dedicated to shaping laws that uphold human dignity and justice worldwide. This inspiring account underscores the role of persistent effort, leadership, and international outlook in fostering positive societal change.
Forced by Circumstance
A landmark collection of the work of pioneering Chicana scholar, Norma Alarc籀oacute;n. Forced by Circumstance gathers in one volume foundational essays by, and interviews with one of the most highly esteemed intellectuals in Chicana/o, Latina/o, and Feminist Studies. Reading Alarc籀n's essays-from her early work on Mexican feminist writer Rosario Castellanos to her recent reflections on the carceral state and the political debacle that our contemporary situation presents--not only offers readers a sense of the intellectual trajectory of one of our most important Chicana feminist thinkers but also brings to a new generation of scholars and readers classic essays in Chicana/o Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, and Literary Studies.
The American Sentence
A compelling quest to locate a history and poetics of the American sentence, this book applies four stages of communication to the story of American writing - the sermon, the telegraph, the newspaper and the screen - to ask what is an American sentence and how has it changed? While sentences have become the subject of their own form, literary histories, cultural narratives, and personal writings have not centred on the sentence as a singular object. There is no history of the sentence. This book addresses that absence, reviewing American style through American literary history for evolutionary moments in the development of the American sentence from the Puritans to the present day. Reading sentences from writers as diverse as Benjamin Franklin, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Lydia Davis, Cormac McCarthy and Colson Whitehead, we find ourselves asking if a poetics of the American sentence actually exists, whether good sentences are the reason we read, and what the future of the American sentence might be.
Portrait of an Island on Fire
A deeply moving and revelatory reading experience, the essays collected in Portrait of an Island on Fire form a searing account of Mauritius at a crucial moment in its history. Unceasing in its critiques of racist, patriarchal abuses of power, in its unpicking of the ills at the core of contemporary Mauritian society and their roots, the collection is a milestone in thinking about the lasting social and political effects of colonialism and how they play out at the level of government policy, the handling of environmental issues, in schools, in hospitals, in families, in language. For all its well-placed anger, Ariel Saramandi's sparklingly intelligent and intimate debut is full of love and momentum - a push for a better future for Mauritius and, by extension, for the world.
Stranger Than Fiction
One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024 "Ambitious, intelligent, and happily unpretentious." --Louis Menand, The New Yorker "Convincing, idiosyncratic and often felicitous." --Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times Book ReviewA legendary editor's reckoning with the twentieth-century novel and the urgent messages it sends. "How can we live differently?" a young woman urgently demands in Virginia Woolf's novel The Years. It is the 1930s, war and death are in the air, but her question was asked again and again in the course of a century where things changed fast and changed all the time. The century brought world wars, revolutions, automobiles, movies, and the internet, votes for women, death camps. The century brought questions. Novelists in the twentieth century had a question of their own: how can we write a novel as startling and unforeseen as the world we live in? Again and again they did, transforming the novel as the century remade the world. Imagine the history of the twentieth-century novel recounted with the urgency and intimacy of a novel. That's what Edwin Frank, the legendary editor who has run the New York Review Books publishing imprint since its inception, does in Stranger Than Fiction. With penetrating insight and originality, Frank introduces us to books, some famous, some little-known, from the whole course of the century and from around the world. Starting with Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground of 1864, Frank shows how its twitchy, self-undermining, and never-satisfied narrator established a voice that would echo through the coming century. He illuminates the political vision of H. G. Wells's science fiction, Colette and Andre Gide's subversions of traditional gender roles, and Gertrude Stein's untethering of the American sentence. He describes the monumental ambition of books such as Mrs. Dalloway, The Magic Mountain, and The Man Without Qualities to rebuild a world of human possibility upon the ruins of World War I and explores how Japan's Natsume Sōseki and Nigeria's Chinua Achebe broke open European models to reflect their own, distinct histories and experience. Here too are Vasily Grossman, Anna Banti, and Elsa Morante reckoning in specific ways with the traumas of World War II, while later chapters range from Marguerite Yourcenar and V. S. Naipaul to Gabriel Garc穩a M獺rquez and W. G. Sebald. The story as a whole is one of fearless, often reckless exploration, as well as unfathomable desolation. Throughout, we discover the power of the novel to reinvent itself, to find a way for itself, to live differently. Stranger Than Fiction offers a new vision of the history and art of the novel and of a dark and dazzling time in whose light and shadow we still stand.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Southeast Asian Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and much more!Journey through sun-drenched temples, jungle-clad mountains, and moonlit islands with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Southeast Asian Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a realm where forest spirits whisper through bamboo groves, serpent kings guard rivers of fire, and ghostly maidens wander between devotion and vengeance. From the sacred plains of Cambodia to the volcano-shrouded shores of Indonesia, each page breathes with the pulse of ancient belief - a world where ancestors, demons, and gods share the same breath as the living.Discover Legendary Spirits and Divine Beasts: Meet Banaspati, the fiery guardian of the forest; Rangda, Bali's terrifying queen of witches; and Phi Am, the shadow that suffocates sleepers in the night. Encounter the seductive Pontianak, who drifts beneath moonlight seeking retribution, and the noble Phaya Naga, serpent lord of the Mekong who commands the river's tides. Wander through Thailand's haunted villages, Malaysia's misted jungles, and the Philippines' enchanted coasts, where Aswang, Bakunawa, and Tikbalang still stir the imaginations of storytellers. Rooted in the animist traditions of the region and shaped by Buddhist, Hindu, and indigenous beliefs, these tales illuminate humanity's oldest bond with nature - reverence, fear, and wonder entwined.Breathtaking Art for Every Spirit, Demon, and Guardian: Each creature is reborn through luminous illustrations - capturing the glow of temple lanterns, the shimmer of tropical rain, and the eerie calm of jungles at dusk. From the serpent coils of Ngư Tinh to the golden eyes of ?ng Ba Mươi, every portrait radiates color, movement, and emotion. The art celebrates the living mythology of Southeast Asia - where every breeze carries prayer, and every shadow may conceal a soul.Inside this book, you'll find: In-depth profiles of mythical beings such as Rangda, Banaspati, Phi Am, Pontianak, Phaya Naga, Bakunawa, Aswang, and Tikbalang - among dozens more.Cultural insights into how Southeast Asian mythology shaped temples, festivals, rites, and moral traditions across the region.Exquisite artwork that brings to life the creatures, spirits, and elemental forces that still haunt Southeast Asia's imagination.A perfect reference for artists, historians, worldbuilders, and lovers of mythology from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Yokai & Japanese Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Japan!Step into the lantern-lit realms of misty mountains, moonlit rivers, and haunted temples with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Yokai & Japanese Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a world where spirits dwell in every shadow, foxes dance between illusion and truth, and ancient gods whisper through thunder, flame, and rain. From the snow-capped peaks of Hokkaido to the sacred forests of Kyoto, each page reveals the pulse of a land where beauty and terror walk hand in hand, and where the unseen governs the seen.Discover Legendary Beings and Timeless Spirits: Meet the nine-tailed Kitsune who bends hearts and destiny, the mischievous Kappa who lurks beneath still waters, and the fearsome Oni who tests human courage. Cross paths with the mournful Yuki-onna, the seductive Jorōgumo, and the prophetic Amabie who rises from the sea to warn of plague. Wander mountain passes where the Tengu guard hidden shrines, and misted cemeteries where the Shinigami collect wandering souls. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature, Buddhist visions of karma, and the storytelling spirit of Edo folklore, these tales illuminate Japan's eternal dialogue between purity and corruption, devotion and desire, life and the lingering afterlife.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Southeast Asian Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Thailand, Bali, Vietnam and much more!Journey through sun-drenched temples, jungle-clad mountains, and moonlit islands with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Southeast Asian Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a realm where forest spirits whisper through bamboo groves, serpent kings guard rivers of fire, and ghostly maidens wander between devotion and vengeance. From the sacred plains of Cambodia to the volcano-shrouded shores of Indonesia, each page breathes with the pulse of ancient belief - a world where ancestors, demons, and gods share the same breath as the living.Discover Legendary Spirits and Divine Beasts: Meet Banaspati, the fiery guardian of the forest; Rangda, Bali's terrifying queen of witches; and Phi Am, the shadow that suffocates sleepers in the night. Encounter the seductive Pontianak, who drifts beneath moonlight seeking retribution, and the noble Phaya Naga, serpent lord of the Mekong who commands the river's tides. Wander through Thailand's haunted villages, Malaysia's misted jungles, and the Philippines' enchanted coasts, where Aswang, Bakunawa, and Tikbalang still stir the imaginations of storytellers. Rooted in the animist traditions of the region and shaped by Buddhist, Hindu, and indigenous beliefs, these tales illuminate humanity's oldest bond with nature - reverence, fear, and wonder entwined.Breathtaking Art for Every Spirit, Demon, and Guardian: Each creature is reborn through luminous illustrations - capturing the glow of temple lanterns, the shimmer of tropical rain, and the eerie calm of jungles at dusk. From the serpent coils of Ngư Tinh to the golden eyes of ?ng Ba Mươi, every portrait radiates color, movement, and emotion. The art celebrates the living mythology of Southeast Asia - where every breeze carries prayer, and every shadow may conceal a soul.Inside this book, you'll find: In-depth profiles of mythical beings such as Rangda, Banaspati, Phi Am, Pontianak, Phaya Naga, Bakunawa, Aswang, and Tikbalang - among dozens more.Cultural insights into how Southeast Asian mythology shaped temples, festivals, rites, and moral traditions across the region.Exquisite artwork that brings to life the creatures, spirits, and elemental forces that still haunt Southeast Asia's imagination.A perfect reference for artists, historians, worldbuilders, and lovers of mythology from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures - Yokai & Japanese Mythology
Unveil the Mythology of Japan!Step into the lantern-lit realms of misty mountains, moonlit rivers, and haunted temples with the Encyclopedia of Mythical Creatures: Yokai & Japanese Mythology Volume. This beautifully illustrated bestiary unveils a world where spirits dwell in every shadow, foxes dance between illusion and truth, and ancient gods whisper through thunder, flame, and rain. From the snow-capped peaks of Hokkaido to the sacred forests of Kyoto, each page reveals the pulse of a land where beauty and terror walk hand in hand, and where the unseen governs the seen.Discover Legendary Beings and Timeless Spirits: Meet the nine-tailed Kitsune who bends hearts and destiny, the mischievous Kappa who lurks beneath still waters, and the fearsome Oni who tests human courage. Cross paths with the mournful Yuki-onna, the seductive Jorōgumo, and the prophetic Amabie who rises from the sea to warn of plague. Wander mountain passes where the Tengu guard hidden shrines, and misted cemeteries where the Shinigami collect wandering souls. Rooted in Shinto reverence for nature, Buddhist visions of karma, and the storytelling spirit of Edo folklore, these tales illuminate Japan's eternal dialogue between purity and corruption, devotion and desire, life and the lingering afterlife.
South Carolina Review:
Since 1968, The South Carolina Review (SCR) has published fiction, poetry, interviews, unpublished letters and manuscripts, essays, and reviews from literary giants such as Joyce Carol Oates and Kurt Vonnegut as well as eminent critics such as Cleanth Brooks and Marjorie Perloff. SCR celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2018. This special themed issue focuses on the Spectral South.
South Carolina Review:
Volume 46, no. 2 of South Carolina Review is a themed issue entitled Locating African American Literature.
Fascist Directive
Fascist Directive reveals changes in Ezra Pound's prose writing resulting from his excitement over Mussolini's use of Italian cultural heritage to build the modern Fascist state. Drawing on archival material and periodical contributions, Catherine E. Paul delves into the work of the most notorious American in Italy in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Dust of a Contact That Is Everywhere
the dust of a contact that is everywhere moves between theoretical reflection and aesthetic practice through essays, fragments, daybook entries, and lyrical experiments. It explores attention, the temporality of lyric lines, and the ethical implications of how we read, write, and live beside others. Collage and drift function as both method and ethic; friendship becomes a form of nonhierarchical inquiry. Drawing on artists and thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, and Toru Takemitsu, the book is a capacious and intimate work of reading understood as a form of radical attentiveness.
Zen in the Art of Writing
Discover the inimitable genius of Ray Bradbury as he explores the art of writing, the power of creativity, and the timeless appeal of storytelling in this collection of essays that are part masterclass, part memoir, featuring a new introduction by Dan Chaon. In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury's love for his craft shines. With signature wisdom, wit, and verve, Bradbury delves into his prolific writing career, exploring the creation of countless stories, novels, plays, movies, and more that have stood the test of time. Written over a thirty-year period, these inspirational essays insist that there is a "deep well of explosive self-revelation" in all of us waiting to be released through the process of writing. Bradbury's essays illuminate the passion and intellect of one of the most inventive and prolific artists of the 20th century. He reveals how writers can find their own unique path to developing their voice and style. Zen celebrates the art of writing that will delight, impassion, and inspire, but most of all, it celebrates life.
Rubble Masonry
Rubble Masonry is a collection of lyric essays that takes its title from the practice of stone masons who, rather than using materials cut to ideal measurements, work with found rocks' natural shapes. It combines the rich images and musical language of poetry with prose's capacity to share personal narratives and information from wide-ranging sources. Diverse content and innovative form distinguish a book that explores the places in which its author, Rose McLarney, finds herself as a woman from the mountain South--in history, national dialogues, public spaces, the natural world, and lineages that extend beyond an individual's life on earth.
Karen Blixen's Search for Self
In Karen Blixen's Search for Self, Patti M. Marxsen presents a twenty-first-century reconsideration of Blixen's iconic memoir Out of Africa, originally published in 1937 and now regarded as a classic of twentieth-century literature. The methodology of this "book about a book" draws on seasoned historical perspectives of European colonial activities in early twentieth-century Africa as it engages Blixen's letters, tales, speeches, interviews, the photographic record of her various personas, memoir literature of others who knew her, and three generations of scholarship, including pointed postcolonial critiques. Mixing scholarly research with personal reflection, Marxsen recounts an inspiring tale of a writer's evolution, along with thoughtful analysis of the art and craft of memoir. As a modern woman both trapped and liberated by privilege, Karen Christentze Dinesen Blixen experienced considerable personal and financial challenges during her years living in colonial Kenya (1914-1931), a period that Marxsen approaches as a belated coming-of-age journey rather than a romantic tale. Blixen returned to Denmark at age forty-six, bankrupt and in a state of physical and mental fragility with no idea about what she would do or how she would live in a bourgeois society that she viewed as "incarceration." Only when Blixen set out to reinvent herself with the "liberating mask" of the pseudonym Isak Dinesen did she begin to realize her potential as a storyteller and find the strength to develop her uniquely poetic narrative voice by writing about her African years. Blixen's process of loss and recovery through writing constitutes the frame of Marxsen's book, just as it constitutes the frame of Out of Africa. Marxsen traces Blixen's inner life through letters and writings to probe the origins of her imaginative power, her instinctive multiculturalism (considered "eccentric" in colonial Kenya), and the feminism of a creative woman in a new century. Marxsen continues the story through the contested legacies of the book, including its serving as the basis for the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning film released in 1985. This new study of Blixen's widely read memoir, which has remained consistently in print for almost ninety years, broadens understandings of the author's complex self-realization, the skill of her literary art, and the book's evolving afterlife.
Black Beans and Diamonds
Since its publication in Portuguese in 2015, Regina Przybycien's Black Beans and Diamonds has become a foundational study of the critical and highly productive years from 1951 to 1974 during which the American poet Elizabeth Bishop lived and worked in Brazil. Now available in English for the first time, the book provides Bishop scholars and her steadily growing audience of general readers a uniquely informed Brazilian perspective on the writer. Przybyzien discusses Bishop's many important poems set in Brazil and her translations of Brazilian poetry and prose, as well as her thoughts on the country, including her conflicted and complex relationship with its local culture, the Portuguese language, the rigidly observed social strata, its geography and cities (as explored during her wide travels throughout Brazil), its charged politics, and its architecture. Bishop's most important personal relationship, with the formidable, multitalented architect Lota de Macedo Soares, is addressed at length, along with her translations into English of major Brazilian poets such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Jo瓊o Cabral de Melo Neto. Elegantly translated into English by Neil K. Besner--and featuring a foreword by biographer Thomas Travisano, founding president of the Elizabeth Bishop Society--Black Beans and Diamonds presents the most substantial Brazilian treatment yet written of the extent to which Bishop's sojourn in Brazil profoundly shaped her life and work.
Speculative Insight
This book collects all of the essays published by Speculative Insight across 2024, including the two bonus essays by Lisa L Hannett and Bogi Takacs. Topics include Terry Pratchett's male characters, Murderbot's love of soap opera, what makes something a cosy fantasy, and much more.Authors include Cheryl Morgan, Joanne Anderton, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Amy Sjoquist, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Octavia Cade, Liz Barr, Joyce Chng, Celia Lake, Andrew Dana Hudson, Nina Niskanen, Lisa L Hannett, Signe Maene, Phoebe Wagner, Lee Murray, Rjurik Davidson, Amy Salley, Paula Aamli, Mary Fan, Christine Yunn-Yu Sun, Dove Cooper, and Bogi Takacs.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays in Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnote from July-December 2024, plus a bonus essay by Bogi Takacs. The essays explore aspects of science fiction and fantasy such as time travel as a way to deal with trauma, Terry Pratchett's male characters, and what makes something a cosy fantasy. Authors include Tansy Rayner Roberts, Signe Maene, Phoebe Wagner, Lee Murray, Rjurik Davidson, Amy Salley, Paula Aamli, Mary Fan, Christine Yunn-Yu Sun, Dove Cooper, and Bogi Takacs.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays in Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnote from January and June 2025, as well as a bonus essay by Lee Murray ONZM. Topics include an exploration of "quiet fiction", Terry Pratchett's male characters, the predominance of ethnically Chinese writers in South East Asian speculative fiction, national myth-making in The Lord of the Rings, and more. Authors include Nina Niskanen, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Ng Yi-Sheng, E.D.E bell, V.J Knipe, Abby Roberts, Emilie Morscheck, Kyle Tam, Val Nolan, Nick Hubble, and Lee Murray.
Speculative Insight
Collecting the essays from the first six months of the journal Speculative Insight: A Journal of Space, Magic and Footnotes. Essays range across a wide variety of topics, including Star Trek fandom and what counts as historical fiction, why readers love Murderbot and Joan of Arc as a lady knight. The book also includes a bonus essay by Lisa L Hannett about new motherhood and the lack of mothers in space. Authors include Cheryl Morgan, Joanne Anderton, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, Amy Sjoquist, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Octavia Cade, Liz Barr, Joyce Chng, Celia Lake, Andrew Dana Hudson, Nina Niskanen, and Lisa L Hannett.
Memory
A poet's spacious exploration of time, memory, and art, in homage to Bernadette Mayer. A spiritual homage to Bernadette Mayer's monumental artwork of the same title, Dorothea Lasky's Memory is a cycle of "poet's essays" stirred by two profound questions. What constitutes personhood and consciousness? What memories get lost, and why? Expansive in her quest for answers, Lasky launches an inspired investigation of the forces that form our lives and deepest senses of ourselves. She identifies three dimensions of memory--ancestral, personal, and poetic--and in her singularly clear voice, undertakes to enter into their mysteries. From those recesses, she returns with a wide-ranging collection of essays that like lyric poems find the universal inside the particular. Memory reflects on the banal; private emotions and historical trauma; dear departed poets (Diane di Prima, Lucie Brock-Broido); her father's battle with Alzheimer's; and cultural events that have become charged sites of collective reminiscence (the moon landing, the music of Neutral Milk Hotel). Other pieces face the flip side of memory, asking what's left where memory is absent, and what's "real" beyond the horizon of death. The book closes with "Time, the Rose, and the Moon," an ars poetica published here in English for the first time, which offers the ancient symbol of the Ouroboros as a figure for the nonlinear processes of time, memory, and art. Like Mayer before her, Lasky reveals memory to be huge and haunting, as she accumulates impressions that challenge the very possibility of fixed meaning. "Every rose has the scent of death," she writes. "And poetry is a perfume. That will stay on your body forever.... Whatever happens this time around, remember that."
What in Me Is Dark
"Enlightening and enthusiastic." --Ed Simon, The New York Times Book Review Now in paperback, a highly original hybrid of literary criticism and political history, telling of the enduring, surprising and ever-evolving relevance of Milton's epic poem through the scandalous life of its creator and the revolutionary lives that were influenced by it. What in Me Is Dark tells the unlikely story of how Milton's epic poem came to haunt political struggles over the past four centuries, including the many different, unexpected, often contradictory ways in which it has been read, interpreted, and appropriated through time and across the world, and to revolutionary ends. The book focuses on twelve readers--including Malcolm X, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Hannah Arendt, and C.L.R James--whose lives demonstrate extraordinary and disturbing influence on the modern age. Drawing from his own experiences teaching Paradise Lost in New Jersey prisons, English scholar Orlando Reade deftly investigates how the poem was read by people embedded in struggles against tyranny, slavery, colonialism, gender inequality, and capitalist exploitation. It is experimental nonfiction at its finest; rich literary analysis and social, cultural and political history are woven together to make a clarifying case for the undeniable impact of the poem.
