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books tagged “20th century”
books tagged “20th century”
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1934by Alberto MoraviaISBN 0374222541 (0-374-22254-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: '1934'Book summary:Moravia is not simply painting the portrait of an age but also coming to grips through his art with the great questions of all ages - the erotic, love, death, and the purposes of life. 1934 recapitulates the major themes of his art and at the same time takes us beyond them.[via]More editions of 1934:
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Annie on My Mindby Nancy GardenISBN 0374303665 (0-374-30366-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Annie on My Mind'Book summary:Liza puts aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at school, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of people. [via]
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The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraqby George PackerISBN 0374299633 (0-374-29963-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq'Book summary:As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.
How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin [via]
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Chester Cricket's New Homeby George Selden, Garth WilliamsISBN 0374312400 (0-374-31240-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chester Cricket's New Home'Book summary:"Readers of this favorite series will delight in the chance to share another experience with Chester and the inhabitants of the Old Meadow." --Booklist[via]
"Selden's new story, graced again by Williams's lovely pictures, won't sit on any shelves long." --Publishers WeeklyMore editions of Chester Cricket's New Home:
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Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939by Christopher IsherwoodISBN 0374312567 (0-374-31256-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939'Book summary:Christopher and His Kind is an intriguing slice of autobiography. It covers ten years in the writer's life-from 1929, when Isherwood left England to sp a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely, to the beginning of 1939, when he arrived in New York to start a life in the States.[via]
The book revealingly contrasts fact with fiction-the real people Isherwood met in Germany with the portraits of them in his two Berlin novels, who then appeared again, fictionalized to an even greater degree, in I Am a Camera and Cabaret.But one does not need to be familiar with his body of work to appreciate the powerful and compelling story he tells here. Isherwood left Berlin in 1933, after Hitler came to power. For the next four years, he wandered around Europe-through Greece, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France-with a German boy named Heinz.
The characters in the book include W.H. Auden, Stephen Sper, and E.M. Forster as well as the literary circles of Somerset Maugham and Virginia Woolf. Chronicling German refugees and the British colony in Portugal, the Group Theatre company (which performed the three Auden-Isherwood plays) and the film studio where he worked and which he used as the setting for Prater Violet, Christopher and His Kind is an engrossing and powerfully rered portrait of a decade in the life of a major writer.More editions of Christopher and His Kind, 1929-1939:
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The Cricket in Times Squareby George Selden, Garth WilliamsISBN 0374316503 (0-374-31650-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cricket in Times Square'Book summary:One night, the sounds of New York City--the rumbling of subway trains, thrumming of automobile tires, hooting of horns, howling of brakes, and the babbling of voices--is interrupted by a sound that even Tucker Mouse, a jaded inhabitant of Times Square, has never heard before. Mario, the son of Mama and Papa Bellini, proprietors of the subway-station newsstand, had only heard the sound once. What was this new, strangely musical chirping? None other than the mellifluous leg-rubbing of the somewhat disoriented Chester Cricket from Connecticut. Attracted by the irresistible smell of liverwurst, Chester had foolishly jumped into the picnic basket of some unsuspecting New Yorkers on a junket to the country. Despite the insect's wurst intentions, he ends up in a pile of dirt in Times Square.
Mario is elated to find Chester. He begs his parents to let him keep the shiny insect in the newsstand, assuring his bug-fearing mother that crickets are harmless, maybe even good luck. What ensues is an altogether captivating spin on the city mouse/country mouse story, as Chester adjusts to the bustle of the big city. Despite the cricket's comfortable matchbox bed (with Kleenex sheets); the fancy, seven-tiered pagoda cricket cage from Sai Fong's novelty shop; tasty mulberry leaves; the jolly company of Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat; and even his new-found fame as "the most famous musician in New York City," Chester begins to miss his peaceful life in the Connecticut countryside. The Cricket in Times Square--a Newbery Award runner-up in 1961--is charmingly illustrated by the well-loved Garth Williams, and the tiniest details of this elegantly spun, vividly told, surprisingly suspenseful tale will stick with children for years and years. Make sure this classic sits on the shelf of your favorite child, right next to The Wind in the Willows. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]
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The Discomfort Zone: A Personal Historyby Jonathan FranzenISBN 0374299196 (0-374-29919-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Doctor De Sotoby William SteigISBN 0374318034 (0-374-31803-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Dragons in the Watersby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374318689 (0-374-31868-9)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dragons in the Waters'Book summary:A thirteen-year-old boy's trip to Venezuela with his cousin culminates in murder and the discovery of an unexpected bond with an Indian tribe, dating from the days of Simâon Bolâivar. [via]
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Fire Down Belowby William GoldingISBN 0374253811 (0-374-25381-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Genesisby Jim CraceISBN 0374227306 (0-374-22730-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Genesis'Book summary:A major new novel about sex and the citizen by the award-winning author of Being Dead[via]
The timid life of actor Felix Dern is uncorrupted by Hollywood, where his success has not yet been shackled with any intrusive fame. But in the theaters and the restaurants of his own city, "Lix" is celebrated and admired for his looks, for his voice, and for his unblemished private life. He has succeeded in courting popularity everywhere, this handsome hero of the left, this charming darling of the right, this ever-twisting weather vane.
A perfect life? No, he is blighted. He has been blighted since his teens, for every woman he sleeps with bears his child. So now it is Mouetta's turn. Their baby's due in May. Lix wants to say he feels besieged. Another child? To be so fertile is a curse...
In Genesis, Jim Crace, winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award and the Whitbread Novel of the Year, charts the sexual history of a loving, baffled man, the sexual emancipation of a city, and the sexual ambiguities of humankind.More editions of Genesis:
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The Great Escape from City Zooby Tohby RiddleISBN 0374327769 (0-374-32776-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Escape from City Zoo'Book summary:Many years ago, in a daring escape still talked of in zoos worldwide, an elephant, an anteater, a turtle, and a flamingo went "over the wall" at the city zoo. This is their story, spun tersely but dramatically in simple language, accompanied by strangely compelling monochromatic illustrations that reference pop culture icons from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks to King Kong. Young children might not be ready for the obvious parallels drawn between prisons and zoos, but the gentle humor and marvelous pictures will draw them into the story. Each of the animals, except the flamingo, is eventually recaptured--the anteater when he faints in front of a taxidermist's, the turtle when he falls on his back in a truck stop and is unable to get up--but their experience as fugitives makes for fun children's reading. No one knows what happened to the flamingo (unconfirmed sightings include a grainy illustration that resembles the loch ness monster) but in the annals of zoo history, he lives on as a symbol of freedom and hope. It's easy to see why this book was short-listed for the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award. (Click to see a sample spread. Copyright 1997 by Tohby Riddle. With permission of the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.) (Ages 4 to 8) --Richard Farr [via]
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The Great Fireby Shirley HazzardISBN 0374278210 (0-374-27821-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Iron Lady: A Biography of Margaret Thatcherby Hugo YoungISBN 0374226512 (0-374-22651-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Meet the Austinsby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374349290 (0-374-34929-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Meet the Austins'Book summary:Reading award-winning author Madeleine L'Engle's Meet the Austins is like taking a vacation with the warm, compassionate Austins--an extraordinary family who takes a little girl named Maggy Hamilton under its wing when her father is killed in a plane accident. Adjusting to a new household member is not easy, as the 12-year-old narrator, Vicky, will testify. Maggy is spoiled, "ubiquitous," laughs in a "horrid, screechy way," and appears to be a child of an entirely different species from the thoughtful, intelligent, kind, yet not cloyingly so, Austin kids. Still, Vicky and her other siblings (Rob, Suzy, and John) grit their collective teeth and struggle to understand her, which becomes easier and easier as the loving family seems to rub off on the newly orphaned Maggy.
The Austins are beyond question a charming family, but their path is by no means rock-free: Vicky sneaks off to a friend's house and severely injures herself in a bike accident, they all get the measles, John is beat up after his guest sermon in church, and they almost lose little Rob. Despite ordinary family setbacks, there's no use pretending this is a run-of-the-mill family. When Vicky is sick, her older brother, John, comes into her room and soothes her with a discussion of the solar system, our atomic composition, and the relativity of size. Family dinner-table talk includes the ethics of meat eating, and a chat with Grandfather ends up with a discussion of whether Einstein believed in God. As in all of L'Engle's novels, she asks the big questions: What is the meaning of life, and how does death fit into that? Are there different kinds of intelligence? What happens when you remove a screw from a radiator? This strangely comforting novel, first published in 1960, is an ALA Notable Book, and was followed by four other books featuring the Austin Family: The Moon by Night, The Young Unicorns, A Ring of Endless Light (a Newbery Honor Book), and Troubling a Star. (Ages 9 to 12) --Karin Snelson [via]
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Memoirsby Pablo NerudaISBN 0374206724 (0-374-20672-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Otherby Walker PercyISBN 0374208565 (0-374-20856-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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A Minor Apocalypseby Tadeusz KonwickiISBN 0374209286 (0-374-20928-6)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus, Giroux
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More Stories from My Father's Courtby Isaac Bashevis Singer, Curt LeviantISBN 0374213437 (0-374-21343-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novelby Breyten BreytenbachISBN 0374213917 (0-374-21391-7)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mouroir: Mirrornotes of a Novel'Book summary:[via]Breytenbach composed this docu-dream during a period of incarceration. Mouroir (mourir: to die + miroir: mirror) is a ship of thought moving with its own hallucinatory logic through a sea of mythic images, protean characters and what the author describes as landscapes and spaces beyond death, spaces that have always existed and will always exist. An Orphic voyage into memory and mirage, through passages between death and life, darkness and light, oppression and flight, sense and the sensed. Mouroir.
An outspoken human rights activist, Breyten Breytenbach is a poet, novelist, memoirist, essayist, and visual artist. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited around the world. Born in South Africa, he immigrated to Paris in the late 60s and became deeply involved in the anti-Apartheid movement. Breytenbach is the author of All One Horse, A Season in Paradise, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist, Dog Heart, and The Memory of Birds in Times of Revolution, among many others. He received the Alan Paton Award for Return to Paradise in 1994 and the prestigious Hertzog Prize for Poetry for Papierblom in 1999 and for Die Windvanger (Windcatcher) in 2008.
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A Moving Targetby William GoldingISBN 0374215731 (0-374-21573-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Mr Golightly's Holidayby Salley VickersISBN 0374214891 (0-374-21489-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mr Golightly's Holiday'Book summary:1. holiday: a period in which a break is taken from work or studies for rest, travel, or recreation. [literally: holy day][via]
Many years ago, Mr. Golightly wrote a work of dramatic fiction that grew to be an astonishing international bestseller. But his reputation is on the decline and he finds himself badly out of touch with the modern world. He decides to take a holiday and comes to the historic village of Great Calne, hoping to use the opportunity to bring his great work up to date. But he soon finds that events take over his plans and that the themes he has written on are being strangely replicated in the lives of the villagers around him.
As he comes to know his neighbors better, Mr. Golightly begins to examine his attitude toward love and to ponder the terrible catastrophe of his only son's death. And we begin to learn the true, and extraordinary, identity of Mr. Golightly and the nature of the secret sorrow that haunts him and links him to his new friends.
Mysterious, light of touch, witty, and profound, Mr Golightly's Holiday confirms Salley Vickers's reputation as a writer of "fiction that entertains even as it considers serious questions of sin and redemption, love and loss" (Francine Prose, People).More editions of Mr Golightly's Holiday:
Myself with Others: Selected Essaysby Carlos FuentesISBN 0374217505 (0-374-21750-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The New Lifeby Guneli Gun, Orhan PamukISBN 0374221294 (0-374-22129-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Life'Book summary:In his native Turkey, author Orhan Pamuk's novel The New Life is a huge hit. Now English-language readers have an opportunity to sample this unusual book for themselves. The New Life begins with the sentence "I read a book one day and my whole life was changed." That book leads the narrator, a young man named Osman, on a wild journey in the company of Janan, a mysterious young woman in search of her lover, Mehmet. He had actually managed to enter--and escape--the world of the book. In the course of their travels, Osman and Janan are involved in a bloody bus wreck from which they emerge with new identities; they meet several "false" Mehmets; Janan mysteriously vanishes; and Osman eventually encounters a family friend who may or may not be the author of the life-changing book and possibly of The New Life itself.
In case you hadn't already guessed, The New Life is strictly postmodernist fare, where plot and character are minimal and time and space tend to bend and warp in unexpected ways. The author's vision is certainly original, his descriptions of violence and Turkish culture particularly strong. [via]
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Notebookby Robert LowellISBN 0374223254 (0-374-22325-4)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Now It's Time to Say Goodbyeby Dale PeckISBN 0374222711 (0-374-22271-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Old Gringo: A Novelby Carlos Fuentes, Margaret Sayers PedenISBN 0374225788 (0-374-22578-8)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Omerosby Derek WalcottISBN 0374225915 (0-374-22591-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Omeros'Book summary:Creating an epic poem based on Homer and Odysseus seems a risky proposition for a modern poet, but Derek Walcott accomplishes the feat with stunning results in Omeros. The title, which is Homer's name in Greek, nods to the wandering and exile of the great poet himself, who learned and suffered while traveling. From there, Walcott takes off to "see the cities of many men and to know their minds." After an exhilarating exploration of tremendous proportions, we learn of the past and the present and ride along the rhythm of the words of Walcott in this amazing text. [via]
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On Grief and Reason: Essaysby Joseph BrodskyISBN 0374234159 (0-374-23415-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996by Seamus HeaneyISBN 0374235171 (0-374-23517-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996'Book summary:For Seamus Heaney, "opened ground" is a necessity--a way of getting to the root of things. The book bearing that name spans three decades, beginning with "Digging," his exhilarating portrait of the artist as a young revolutionary. "Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun," Heaney boasts (although by the end of the poem, his weapon has metamorphosed into something closer to the spade his grandfather and father once relied upon). The last entry, the sonnet "Postscript," appears some 400 pages later, which makes Opened Ground a capacious selection of his work. But at this point Heaney requires the largest of hold-alls. There are beautiful, pastoral lyrics here, sequences such as "Glanmore Sonnets" and "Clearances," and a multitude of love poems, not solely to his wife but to his parents and children. And in Heaney's hands, small domestic moments and objects--a scrabble board, a swing, a kite, a bed sawn in half to get it downstairs--invariably become both reality and soaring myth.
At the same time, his Ireland is the site of "neighborly murders," and the past and larger world he confronts is one threatened by history and brutal sectarianism. Heaney has declared, "Fear is the emotion that the muse thrives on. That's always there"--and terror is pervasive in his "land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, / Of open minds as open as a trap." Many of his poems that explore the Troubles reflect his own considerable concern that he has long "confused evasion and artistic tact." Others might be termed self-reflexive, since Heaney uses them to unearth his own role. "Kinship" features a simple, brilliant (not to mention canine!) simile:
I step through origins
In a later poem, "From the Frontier of Writing," he compares the struggle for inspiration to being stopped at a roadblock: "And everything is pure interrogation / until a rifle motions you and you move / with guarded unconcerned acceleration." Heaney's gift is dazzling, and would be almost unbearable were it not matched by vigilance, self-doubt, and regret--and his longing for the day in which "justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme." --Kerry Fried [via]
like a dog turning
its memories of wilderness
on the kitchen mat.
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The Other Side of the Sunby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374228051 (0-374-22805-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Painted Wordby Tom WolfeISBN 0374228787 (0-374-22878-7)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Painted Word'Book summary:In 1975, after having put radical chic and '60s counterculture to the satirical torch, Tom Wolfe turned his attention to the contemporary art world. The patron saint (and resident imp) of New Journalism couldn't have asked for a better subject. Here was a hotbed of pretension, nitwit theorizing, social climbing, and money, money, money--all Wolfe had to do was sharpen his tools and get to work. He did! Much of The Painted Word is a superb burlesque on that modern mating ritual whereby artists get to despise their middle-class audience and accommodate it at the same time. The painter, Wolfe writes, "had to dedicate himself to the quirky god Avant-Garde. He had to keep one devout eye peeled for the new edge on the blade of the wedge of the head on the latest pick thrust of the newest exploratory probe of this fall's avant-garde Breakthrough of the Century.... At the same time he had to keep his other eye cocked to see if anyone in le monde was watching."
The other bone Wolfe has to pick is with the proliferation of art theory, particularly the sort purveyed by postwar colossi like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg. Decades after the heyday of abstract expressionism, these guys make pretty easy targets. What could be more absurd, after all, than endless Jesuitical disputes about the flatness of the picture plane? So most of them get a highly comical spanking from the author. It's worth pointing out, of course, that Wolfe paints with a broad (as it were) brush. If he's skewering the entire army of artistic pretenders in a single go, there's no room to admit that Jasper Johns or Willem DeKooning might actually have some talent. But as he would no doubt admit, The Painted Word isn't about the history of art. It's about the history of taste and middlebrow acquisition--and nobody has chronicled these two topics as hilariously or accurately as Tom Wolfe. --James Marcus [via]
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Paradisoby Jose Lezama LimaISBN 0374229848 (0-374-22984-8)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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The Penitentby Isaac Bashevis SingerISBN 0374230641 (0-374-23064-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Perpetual Orgyby Mario Vargas Llosa, Helen LaneISBN 0374230773 (0-374-23077-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Peyote Danceby Antonin ArtaudISBN 0374230900 (0-374-23090-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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A Philosophical Investigationby Philip KerrISBN 0374231761 (0-374-23176-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Philosophical Investigation'Book summary:A powerful, thought-provoking thriller set in London in 2013 with a difference that takes the reader on a terrifying journey into the head of a serial killer and to the heart of murder itself. Kerr has produced an unusual work of suspense which puts him at the front ranks in the genre. Movie rights optioned by Paramount Pictures. [via]
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Pictor's Metamorphoses, and Other Fantasiesby Hermann Hesse, Theodore ZiolkowskiISBN 0374232121 (0-374-23212-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Play It As It Laysby Joan DidionISBN 0374234442 (0-374-23444-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Play It As It Lays'Book summary:A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth's life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. Anaesthetized to pain and pleasure, she is seemingly unaffected by her fraught personal history. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, and somehow detached from her past and future, Wyeth epitomises a generation made ill by too much freedom. Set beyond good and evil -- literally in Los Angeles and the barren wastescapes of the Mojave desert, and figuratively in the landscapes of a broken spirit -- Play It As It Lays is an immaculately wrought vision of Californian culture on the cusp of the 1970s. Three decades after its original publication, the novel remains an intense dissection of a very particular time and place. [via]
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The Play of the Eyesby Elias CanettiISBN 0374234345 (0-374-23434-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Play of the Eyes'Book summary:The third volume of Canetti's autobiography is set in Vienna between 1931 and 1937: years when the European catastrophe, already clear to anyone with eyes to see, was approaching its horrifying climax. To this great intellectual and spiritual self-portrait Canetti adds wonderful portraits of his friends and rivals: Herman Broch, Robert Musil, Fritz Wortruba, Alban Berg and Alma Mahler. Canetti brings these legends to life for modern readers as never before. Central to the book is Canetti's account of his friendship with the mysterious Doctor Sonne, a mentor whose effect on his life and work was enormous. [via]
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The Poetical Works of Federico Garcia Lorcaby Federico Garcia Lorca, Christopher MaurerISBN 0374235392 (0-374-23539-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus Giroux
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Portraitsby Harold Rosenberg, Richard AvedonISBN 0374236380 (0-374-23638-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Psalm at Journey's Endby Joan Tate, Erik Fosnes HansenISBN 0374238685 (0-374-23868-5)
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The Pump House Gangby Tom WolfeISBN 0374238642 (0-374-23864-2)
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Pushkin Houseby Andrei Bitov, Susan BrownsbergerISBN 0374239347 (0-374-23934-7)
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Quarantine: A Novelby Jim CraceISBN 0374239622 (0-374-23962-2)
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The Quest for Christa T.by Christa WolfISBN 0374239886 (0-374-23988-6)
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The Questionnaire, Or, Prayer for a Town & a Friendby Jiri GrusaISBN 0374240108 (0-374-24010-8)
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A Reader's Guide to Samuel Beckettby Hugh KennerISBN 0374240957 (0-374-24095-7)
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Regarding the Pain of Othersby Susan SontagISBN 0374248583 (0-374-24858-3)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Regarding the Pain of Others'Book summary:A brilliant, clear-eyed new consideration of the visual representation of violence in our culture--its ubiquity, meanings, and effects[via]
Watching the evening news offers constant evidence of atrocity--a daily commonplace in our "society of spectacle." But are viewers inured -or incited--to violence by the daily depiction of cruelty and horror? Is the viewer's perception of reality eroded by the universal availability of imagery intended to shock?
In her first full-scale investigation of the role of imagery in our culture since her now-classic book On Photography defined the terms of the debate twenty-five years ago, Susan Sontag cuts through circular arguments about how pictures can inspire dissent or foster violence as she takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and Dachau and Auschwitz to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and New York City on September 11, 2001.
As John Berger wrote when On Photography was first published, "All future discussions or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies is now bound to begin with her book." Sontag's new book, a startling reappraisal of the intersection of "information", "news," "art," and politics in the contemporary depiction of war and disaster, will be equally essential. It will forever alter our thinking about the uses and meanings of images in our world.More editions of Regarding the Pain of Others:
Rembrandt's Hatby Bernard MalamudISBN 0374249091 (0-374-24909-1)
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Repetitionby Peter Handke, Ralph ManheimISBN 0374249342 (0-374-24934-2)
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Resuscitation of a Hanged Manby Denis JohnsonISBN 0374249490 (0-374-24949-0)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man'Book summary:Resuscitation of a Hanged Man is Denis Johnson's most fully realized novel to date, an enthralling and shattering reading experience, which probes the mysteries of faith, hope and love.[via]More editions of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man:
Reunionby Fred UhlmanISBN 0374249512 (0-374-24951-2)
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Running Wildby J. G. BallardISBN 0374252882 (0-374-25288-2)
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Sadnessby Donald BarthelmeISBN 0374253331 (0-374-25333-1)
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Satan in Gorayby Jacob Sloan, Isaac Bashevis SingerISBN 0374254044 (0-374-25404-4)
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Scar Tissueby Michael IgnatieffISBN 0374254281 (0-374-25428-1)
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Seeing Thingsby Seamus HeaneyISBN 0374257760 (0-374-25776-0)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seeing Things'Book summary:[via]Seeing Things (1991), as Edward Hirsch wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "is a book of thresholds and crossings, of losses balanced by marvels, of casting and gathering and the hushed, contrary air between water and sky, earth and heaven." Along with translations from the Aeneid and the Inferno, this book offers several poems about Heaney's late father.More editions of Seeing Things:
Selected Worksby Djuna BarnesISBN 0374259364 (0-374-25936-4)
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The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their Historyby Isaiah Berlin, Henry HardyISBN 0374260923 (0-374-26092-3)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sense of Reality: Studies in Ideas and Their History'Book summary:The publication of a new book by Sir Isaiah Berlin is always a welcome thing, and The Sense of Reality is no exception. In this volume the eminent scholar gathers nine long essays, eight previously unpublished, on the ideas that have governed European history for the last three centuries: nationalism, liberalism, and especially Marxism. Always seeking to draw moral lessons, Berlin wonders aloud why it is that humans admire men stirred by the lust for power or jealousy of others, or monomaniacal vanity--including notable figures of history like Peter the Great and Napoleon. He proposes a few answers in this study of ideas brought to power, and those answers are always illuminating. [via]
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A Severed Waspby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374261318 (0-374-26131-8)
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Shadow Without a Nameby Peter Bush, Anne McLean, Ignacio PadillaISBN 0374261903 (0-374-26190-3)
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Shadows on the Hudsonby Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph ShermanISBN 0374261865 (0-374-26186-5)
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Shakespeare's Languageby Frank KermodeISBN 0374226369 (0-374-22636-9)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare's Language'Book summary:Among our greatest contemporary critics, Sir Frank Kermode is the author of such classics as The Sense of an Ending, and his recent memoir, Not Entitled, vividly captured a life in letters. It's no surprise, then, that Shakespeare's Language is a deeply significant publication. Reflecting many decades of writing and thinking about the Bard, it meets and often exceeds the reader's expectations.
The author begins by lamenting the fact that general readers have not "been well served by modern critics, who on the whole seem to have little time for [Shakespeare's] language." However, rather than launching into a diatribe against current literary fashions, he proceeds to offer an elegant and detailed account of how his subject transformed him into "a different kind of poet." For Kermode, the rich complexities of Hamlet or "The Phoenix and the Turtle" (an allegorical poem in which Shakespeare juggles love and Thomistic jargon like rhetorical ninepins) mark a whole new level of accomplishment. How to define the change? Kermode notes "the pace of the speech, its sudden turns, its backtrackings, its metaphors flashing before us and disappearing before we can consider them. This is new: the representation of excited, anxious thought; the weighing of confused possibilities and dubious motives."
This before-and-after scenario breaks the book into two parts. In the first, Kermode deals with the plays up to 1600, controversially putting the kibosh on such warhorses as As You Like It. The second part offers 15 detailed chapters on the tragedies, problem plays, and romances. This is classic criticism, written in the mold of Johnson and Colderidge. And while Kermode never pays short shrift to the difficulties of Shakespeare's language, he's even more attuned to its prodigal, inexhaustible pleasures. --Jerry Brotton [via]
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Shoshaby Isaac Bashevis SingerISBN 0374263361 (0-374-26336-1)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shosha'Book summary:"Shosha is a hauntingly lyrical love story set in Jewish Warsaw on the eve of its annihilation. Aaron Greidinger, an aspiring Yiddish writer and the son of a distinguished Hasidic rabbi, struggles to be true to his art when faced with the chance at riches and a passport to America. But as he and the rest of the Writers' Club wait in horror for Nazi Germany to invade Poland, Aaron rediscovers Shosha, his childhood love-still living on Krochmalna Street, still mysteriously childlike herself-who has been waiting for him all these years." [via]
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Shrek!by William SteigISBN 0374368775 (0-374-36877-5)
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Slow Homecomingby Peter Handke, Ralph ManheimISBN 0374266352 (0-374-26635-2)
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A Small Placeby Jamaica KincaidISBN 0374266387 (0-374-26638-7)
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The Small Rain: A Novelby Madeleine L'EngleISBN 0374266379 (0-374-26637-9)
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The Sopranosby Alan WarnerISBN 0374266700 (0-374-26670-0)
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The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guideby Robert Pinsky, Robert PinksyISBN 0374266956 (0-374-26695-6)
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The Spellby Hermann BrochISBN 0374267618 (0-374-26761-8)
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The Stories of Bernard Malamudby Bernard MalamudISBN 0374270376 (0-374-27037-6)
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The Storyteller: A Novelby Mario Vargas Llosa, Helen LaneISBN 0374270856 (0-374-27085-6)
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The Strength of Poetry: Oxford Lecturesby James FentonISBN 0374228450 (0-374-22845-0)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strength of Poetry: Oxford Lectures'Book summary:Sharp-eyed critiques and appreciations of the essential poets of our time.
James Fenton is unique among contemporary writers in having achieved equal distinction as a poet and -- in his reportage and criticism -- as a master of trenchant prose. What is more, he has shown himself a devoted critic of both American and British modern poetry, an explainer of each tradition to the other and to itself. In these lectures, delivered at Oxford (where he succeeded Seamus Heaney as Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999), Fenton moves easily from Philip Larkin's laments for the British Empire, to Heaney's uneasy rebellion against it, to Robert Frost's celebrations of American conquest; from W. H. Auden on Shakespeare's homoeroticism to the vexed "feminism" of Elizabeth Bishop; from Wilfred Owen's juvenilia to Marianne Moore's youthful agitation for women's suffrage.
In these lectures -- many of which appeared in The New York Review of Books -- Fenton makes sense of the last century in poetry, and explores its antecedents and its legacies, with the lucidity, wit, and gusto that have made his criticism famous. [via]
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Tales from Ovidby Ted Hughes, OvidISBN 0374228418 (0-374-22841-8)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales from Ovid'Book summary:England's poet laureate Ted Hughes first turned his hand to Ovid's Metamorphoses when he--along with other prominent English-language poets such as Seamus Heaney, Amy Clampitt, and Charles Simic--contributed poems to the anthology After Ovid. In the three years following After Ovid's publication, Hughes continued working with the Metamorphoses, eventually completing the 24 translations collected here. Culling from 250 original tales, Hughes has chosen some of the most violent and disturbing narratives Ovid wrote, including the stories of Echo and Narcissus, Bacchus and Pentheus, and Semele's rape by Jove. Classical purists may be offended at the occasional liberties Hughes takes with Ovid's words, but no one will quarrel with the force and originality of Hughes's verse, or with its narrative skill. This translation is an unusual triumph--a work informed by the passion and wit of Ovid, yet suffused with Hughes's own distinctive poetic sensibility. [via]
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Tales of Protectionby Nadia Christensen, Erik Fosnes Hansen, Fosnes HansenISBN 0374272409 (0-374-27240-9)
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Tales of the Nightby Barbara Haveland, Peter HegISBN 0374272549 (0-374-27254-9)
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The Tenantsby Bernard MalamudISBN 0374272905 (0-374-27290-5)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tenants'Book summary:With a new introduction by Aleksandar Hemon[via]
In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel's attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.More editions of The Tenants:
Tender Shoot and Other Storiesby ColetteISBN 0374273103 (0-374-27310-3)
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That Mighty Sculptor, Timeby Marguerite Yourcenar, Walter KaiserISBN 0374273588 (0-374-27358-8)
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The Three Golden Keysby Peter SisISBN 0374375259 (0-374-37525-9)
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Time and Tideby Edna O'BrienISBN 0374277761 (0-374-27776-1)
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To the Finland Stationby Edmund WilsonISBN 0374278334 (0-374-27833-4)
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The Unburiedby Charles PalliserISBN 0374280355 (0-374-28035-5)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Unburied'Book summary:Though putatively a mystery set (mostly) in the Victorian age, Charles Palliser's The Unburied has more in common with Umberto Eco than Arthur Conan Doyle. Like The Name of the Rose, this novel is set in a scholarly community and features a lost manuscript as the McGuffin of choice. And here, too, the mystery is not really what the book is about at all. Palliser's tale centers on Edward Courtine, a Cambridge don with a bee in his bonnet about Alfred the Great. It doesn't take a great medievalist to figure out that Courtine has allowed emotion to cloud his reason concerning the Saxon monarch: his version of Alfred's life and character is so forgiving as to be downright suspicious.
When it is suggested that a source dear to his heart may in fact be fraudulent, he accuses his critics of cowardice. According to Courtine, those revisionist scoundrels doubt the veracity of his beloved source "because their own self-serving cynicism is reproached by the portrait of the king that Grimbald offers. You see, his account confirms how extraordinarily brave and resourceful and learned Alfred was, and what a generous and much-loved man." Now Courtine has come to the cathedral town of Thurcester because he believes Grimbald's original manuscript may be in the cathedral library--a manuscript that he hopes will validate his own version of the great king's reign.
Palliser takes his time setting up his story, seeding it with clues that more often than not lead to dead ends. We learn, for example, that Courtine was once married, that his wife ran off with another man, and that he blames his school pal Austin Fickling for the rupture in his marital bliss. Dark doings at the cathedral are also hinted at, with quite a lot of space devoted to a murder that occurred centuries earlier. Meanwhile, ecclesiastical renovations turn up some unpleasant surprises--and as yet another murder ensues, Courtine is swept up in less scholarly pursuits. As the hapless academic (a Watson without a Holmes) pursues one red herring after another, it becomes apparent that Courtine's psyche is the real mystery on hand. History, he discovers, can obscure as much as it elucidates. All these years, his obsession with an idealized past has provided an excellent refuge from the realities of his present. In the end, what he uncovers is the secret of himself--and the reader of The Unburied is treated to a fine ghost story, in which the ghosts are quite literally all in the mind. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Under the Sign of Saturnby Susan SontagISBN 0374280762 (0-374-28076-2)
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A Very Long Engagementby Sebastien Japrisot, Linda CoverdaleISBN 0374283354 (0-374-28335-4)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Very Long Engagement'Book summary:January 1917: five French soldiers are marched to their own front lines where they will be tossed out into no man's land with their hands tied behind their backs and left for the Germans to shoot. They were, in civilian life, variously a pimp, a mechanic, a farmer, a carpenter, and a fisherman; now they are condemned because each had sought to leave the war by shooting himself in the hand. Taken to a godforsaken trench nicknamed Bingo Crépuscule, the five are reluctantly sent out into the darkness; days later, five bodies are recovered and the families are notified, merely, that the men died in the line of duty.
August 1919: Mathilde Donnay receives a letter from a dying man. In it, the former soldier tells her that he met her beloved fiancé, the fisherman Manech, shortly before he died. Mathilde goes to meet Sergeant Daniel Esperanza at his hospital and there hears the story of the execution. She also receives a package with a photograph of the men and copies of their last letters. As Mathilde reads and rereads the letters and goes over Esperanza's tale, she begins to suspect that perhaps the story didn't end quite so neatly. And so begins her very long investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of five condemned prisoners--one of whom, at least, might not really be dead.
In Mathilde Donnay, Sebastien Japrisot has created one of the most compelling and delightful heroines in modern fiction. Though confined to a wheelchair since childhood, "Mathilde has other lives, varied and quite beautiful ones." She paints, cares for her pets, enjoys a rich fantasy life, and is relentless in her search for the truth about Manech's death. But she is by no means the only vibrant personality leaping off Japrisot's pages. This author has a remarkable ability to draw even minor characters in three dimensions with economy and wit. Take Mathilde's mother, for instance, caught in mid-card game: "At bridge, manille, bezique, Mama is a dirty rotten swine. Not only is she an ace with the pasteboards, but she throws her opponents off their mettle by insulting or making fun of them." And even the characters we meet only through other people's memories--the condemned men--are so fully realized that you find yourself torn over which one you hope may have survived. As Mathilde comes ever closer to solving the mystery of what happened at Bingo Crépuscule that January morning in 1917, Sebastien Japrisot proves himself a master storyteller and A Very Long Engagement a near perfect novel. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Vindicationby Frances SherwoodISBN 0374283907 (0-374-28390-7)
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The Vintner's Luckby Elizabeth KnoxISBN 0374283923 (0-374-28392-3)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vintner's Luck'Book summary:"A week after midsummer, when the festival fires were cold, and decent people were in bed an hour after sunset, not lying dry-mouthed in dark rooms at midday, a young man named Sobran Jodeau stole two of the freshly bottled wines to baptize the first real sorrow of his life."
The year is 1808, the place Burgundy, France. Among the lush vines of his family's vineyard, Jodeau, 18 years old and frustrated in love, is about to come face to face with a celestial being. But this is no sentimental "Touched by an Angel" seraph; as imagined by Elizabeth Knox in her wildly evocative and original novel, Xas is equipped with a glorious pair of wings ("pure sinew and bone under a cushion of feathers") and an appetite for earthly pleasures--wine, books, gardening, conversation, and, eventually, carnal love.
The fateful meeting between man and angel occurs on June 27. After an evening during which Sobran spills all his troubles and Xas gently advises him, the angel promises to return on the same night next year to toast Sobran's marriage. Thus begins a friendship that will last for 55 years, spanning marriages, wars, births, deaths, and even the vast distances between heaven, earth, and hell. In addition to the wonderfully flawed Sobran and his mysterious angel, Knox brilliantly limns secondary characters who are deeply sympathetic--from Sobran's unstable wife, Celeste, and his troubled brother, Leon, to his dear friend and confidante, the Baroness Aurora. Love, murder, madness, and a singular theology that would make a believer out of the most hardened atheist all add up, in The Vintner's Luck, to a novel that will break your heart yet leave you wishing for more. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Wandering; Notes and Sketchesby Hermann HesseISBN 0374286418 (0-374-28641-8)
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War Feverby J. G. BallardISBN 0374286450 (0-374-28645-0)
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The War of the End of the Worldby Mario Vargas Llosa, Helen LaneISBN 0374286515 (0-374-28651-5)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The War of the End of the World'Book summary:Set in nineteenth century Brazil, and based on a real episode in Brazilian history, this novel is the tory of an apocalyptic movement led by a mysterious prophet to establish another republic: Canudos, whose citizens are all the damned of the earth, the prostittues, bandits and beggars who flee to the Brazilian frontier. [via]
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwandaby Philip GourevitchISBN 0374286973 (0-374-28697-3)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda'Book summary:"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.
The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan [via]
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When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Storiesby Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elizabeth ShubISBN 0374383162 (0-374-38316-2)
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Where the Stress Falls: Essaysby Susan SontagISBN 0374289174 (0-374-28917-4)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Where the Stress Falls: Essays'Book summary:Susan Sontag has said that her earliest idea of what a writer should be was "someone who is interested in everything." Thirty-five years after her first collection of essays, the now classic Against Interpretation, our most important essayist has chosen more than forty longer and shorter pieces from the last two decades that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideas.[via]
"Reading" offers ardent, freewheeling considerations of talismanic writers from her own private canon, such as Marina Tsvetaeva, Randall Jarrell, Roland Barthes, Machado de Assis, W. G. Sebald, Borges, and Elizabeth Hardwick. "Seeing" is a series of luminous and incisive encounters with film, dance, photography, painting, opera, and theatre. And in the final section, "There and Here," Sontag explores some of her own commitments: to the work (and activism) of conscience, to the concreteness of historical understanding, and to the vocation of the writer.
Where the Stress Falls records a great American writer's urgent engagement with some of the most significant aesthetic and moral issues of the late twentieth century, and provides a brilliant and clear-eyed appraisal of what is at stake, in this new century, in the survival of that inheritance.More editions of Where the Stress Falls: Essays:
Who Killed Palomino Molero?by Mario Vargas Llosa, Alfred MacAdamISBN 0374289786 (0-374-28978-6)
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The Woman and the Apeby Peter Hoeg, Barbara HavelandISBN 0374292035 (0-374-29203-5)
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The Women at the Pumpby Knut Hamsun, Oliver Stallybrass, Gunnvor StallybrassISBN 0374292809 (0-374-29280-9)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Years With Laura Diazby Carlos Fuentes, Alfred MacAdamISBN 0374293414 (0-374-29341-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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