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books tagged “world literature”
books tagged “world literature”
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyerby Mark TwainISBN 0375756817 (0-375-75681-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'Book summary:Introduction by Frank Conroy Commentary by William Dean Howells, Athenaeum, The Illustrated London News, and Hartford Christian Secretary This irresistible tale of the adventures of two friends growing up in frontier America is one of Mark Twain's most popular novels. The farcical, colorful, and poignant escapades of Tom and his friend Huckleberry Finn brilliantly depict the humor and pathos of growing up on the geographic and cultural rim of nineteenth-century America. Originally intended for children, the book transcends genre in its magical depiction of innocence and possibility, and is now regarded as one of Twain's masterpieces. As Frank Conroy observes in his Introduction, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer "has become a sacred text within the body of American literature." This version, which reproduces the Mark Twain Project edition, is the approved text of the Center for Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association. Includes a Modern Library Reading Group Guide [via]
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After the Banquetby Yukio MishimaISBN 0375705155 (0-375-70515-5)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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All I Need Is Youby Johanna LindseyISBN 0380762609 (0-380-76260-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Anthills of the Savannahby Chinua AchebeISBN 0385260458 (0-385-26045-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anthills of the Savannah'Book summary:Achebe writes about the political and social problems facing newly independent African states.
Anthills of the Savannah transports the reader to the West African country of Kangan, a fictional Nigeria, in the wake of a revolutionary coup that overthrew a dictator. Achebe discusses the strict balance of power that must be maintained in order to sustain a democracy, and the fine the line that is tread between leader and dictator. [via]More editions of Anthills of the Savannah:
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The Art of Strategy: A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic, the Art of Warby R.L. Wing, Sun-TzuISBN 0385237847 (0-385-23784-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of Strategy: A New Translation of Sun Tzu's Classic, the Art of War'Book summary:More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu composed his masterpiece The Art of War which has been used by the world's greatest leaders including Napoleon. Here, Wing makes the influential philosophies of the Orient accessible to all seekers of professional achievement and personal excellence. 20 halftones, 35 illustrations. [via]
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The Art Of Warby Sun Tzu, James ClavellISBN 0385299850 (0-385-29985-0)
Softcover, Delta
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art Of War'Book summary:If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle....
These are the words of ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, whose now-classic treatise, The Art of War, was written more than 2,500 years ago. Originally a text for victory on the battlefield, the book has vastly transcended its original purpose.
Here is a seminal work on the philosophy of successful leadership that is as applicable to contemporary business as it is to war. Today many leading American business schools use the text as required reading for aspiring managers, and even Oliver Stone's award-winning film Wall Street cites The Art of War as a guide to those who strive for success.
Now acclaimed novelist James Clavell, for whom Sun Tzu's writing has been an inspiration, gives us a newly edited Art of War. Author of the best-selling Asian saga consisting of Shogun, Tai-Pan, Gai-jin, King Rat, Noble House, and Whirlwind, Clavell first heard about Sun Tzu in Hong Kong in 1977, and since then The Art Of War has been his constant companion--he refers to it frequently in Noble House. He has taken a 1910 translation of the book and clarified it for the contemporary reader. This new edition of The Art Of War is an extraordinary book made even more relevant by an extraordinary editor. [via]More editions of The Art Of War:
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The Art of War: The Essential Translation of the Classic Book of Lifeby James Clavell, Sun-TzuISBN 0385292163 (0-385-29216-3)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of War: The Essential Translation of the Classic Book of Life'Book summary:The Art of War is the Swiss army knife of military theory--pop out a different tool for any situation. Folded into this small package are compact views on resourcefulness, momentum, cunning, the profit motive, flexibility, integrity, secrecy, speed, positioning, surprise, deception, manipulation, responsibility, and practicality. Thomas Cleary's translation keeps the package tight, with crisp language and short sections. Commentaries from the Chinese tradition trail Sun-tzu's words, elaborating and picking up on puzzling lines. Take the solitary passage: "Do not eat food for their soldiers." Elsewhere, Sun-tzu has told us to plunder the enemy's stores, but now we're not supposed to eat the food? The Tang dynasty commentator Du Mu solves the puzzle nicely, "If the enemy suddenly abandons their food supplies, they should be tested first before eating, lest they be poisoned." Most passages, however, are the pinnacle of succinct clarity: "Lure them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion" or "Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent." Sun-tzu's maxims are widely applicable beyond the military because they speak directly to the exigencies of survival. Your new tools will serve you well, but don't flaunt them. Remember Sun-tzu's advice: "Though effective, appear to be ineffective." --Brian Bruya [via]
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The Atlantic Soundby Caryl PhillipsISBN 0375701036 (0-375-70103-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Autobiography of Redby Anne CarsonISBN 037570129X (0-375-70129-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Autobiography of Red'Book summary:Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red is a novel in verse, the author's first. A classicist by profession as well as a poet, Carson has drawn on antiquity for her cast, updating the myth of Geryon and Herakles. In the original version, of course, Herakles killed the red-skinned, winged Geryon. In Carson's very contemporary retelling, he merely inspires, but does not return, the monster's passion. By choosing Geryon as her central character, Carson can bring up the questions of existence as if they hadn't been asked before. After all, the monster's instincts have not been numbed by civilization. Fires twist through him. We feel the pain of learning the most elementary things, and then the volcanic intensity that comes with that more advanced thing, love. Yet Carson doesn't so much tell the story of Geryon's love as mediate his very being through semiological surfaces: cafes, video stores, lipstick, a library where he shelves government documents with a "forlorn austerity, / tall and hushed in their ranges as veterans of a forgotten war." Carson seldom satisfies herself with an image of the world. Instead she atomizes the world, leaving it broken down, refracted, and glinting. At times her verbal pyrotechnics manage to render pure energy:
A little button at the end of each range activated the fluorescent track above it.
No novelist could have gotten away with that last line. Yet it's very much to the point: Carson's Geryon is, among other things, a camera freak who doesn't understand that an observer must inevitably alter the nature of the thing observed. Here is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, cheek-by-jowl with the ancients! And indeed, Carson's achievement is to interweave the archaic and the modern so seamlessly that by the time we finish reading Autobiography of Red, the entire landscape looks inside out. --Mark Rudman [via]
A yellowing 5 x 7 index card
Scotch-taped below each button said EXTINGUISH LIGHT WHEN NOT IN USE.
Geryon went flickering
through the ranges like a bit of mercury flipping the switches on and off.
The librarians thought him
a talented boy with a shadow side.
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Autumn Quailby Naguib Mahfouz, John Rodenbeck, Roger AllenISBN 0385264542 (0-385-26454-2)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Autumn Quail'Book summary:A tale of moral responsibility, alienation and political downfall featuring a corrupt young bureaucrat, Isa ad-Dabbagh, who is one of the early victims of the purge after the 1952 Revolution in Egypt. The conflict is between his emotional instincts and his acceptance of the Revolution. [via]
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The Beginning And the Endby Naguib MahfouzISBN 0385264585 (0-385-26458-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Beginning And the End'Book summary:First published in 1956, this is a powerful portrayal of a middle-class Egyptian family confronted by material, moral, and spiritual problems during World War II. [via]
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Beowulf : A Dual Language Editionby Howell D. ChickeringISBN 0385062133 (0-385-06213-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beowulf : A Dual Language Edition'Book summary:This presentation of the translation and the Old English Text on facing pages allows the reader to approach the first major poem in English literature in a fresh and exciting new way. Includes a Guide to Reading Aloud, Introduction, Commentary and notes for translation from the original. [via]
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The Blithedale Romanceby Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gretchen Kay ShortISBN 0375757201 (0-375-75720-1)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Blithedale Romance'Book summary:The Blithedale Romance, considered one of Hawthorne's major novels, explores the limitations of human nature set against an experiment in communal living. From mesmerism to illicit love, The Blithedale Romance represents one of Hawthorne's best and most sharply etched works, one that Henry James called his "brightest" and "liveliest" novel, and that Roy Male, acclaimed Americanist scholar, said is "one of the most underrated works in American fiction."
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition is set from the definitive Ohio State University Press Centenary edition of the novel. [via]More editions of The Blithedale Romance:
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The Book of Warby Sun-TzuISBN 0375754776 (0-375-75477-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of War'Book summary:Civilization might have been spared much of the damage suffered in the world wars this century if the influence of Clausewitz's On War had been blended with and balanced by a knowledge of Sun-tzu's The Art of Warfare. --B.H. Liddel Hart
For two thousand years, Sun-tzu's The Art of Warfare was the indispensable volume of warcraft. Although his work is the first known analysis of war and warfare, Sun-tzu struck upon a thoroughly modern concept: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." Karl von Clausewitz, the canny military theorist who famously declared that war is a continuation of politics by other means, also claims paternity of the notion "total war." His is the magnum opus of the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic vars.
Now these two great military minds are made to share the same tent, metaphorically speaking, in The Book of War. What a bivouac it is, and what a conversation into the night.
Military writer Ralph Peters has written a new Introduction for this Modern Library edition. [via]More editions of The Book of War:
Borderlinersby Peter HoegISBN 0385315082 (0-385-31508-2)
Softcover, Dell Publishing
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The Butcher Boyby Patrick McCabeISBN 0385312377 (0-385-31237-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Cast upon the Breakersby Horatio AlgerISBN 0385083866 (0-385-08386-6)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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Cat's Eyeby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0385260075 (0-385-26007-5)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cat's Eye'Book summary:Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman--but above all she must seek release from her haunting memories. Disturbing, hilarious, and compassionate, Cat's Eye is a breathtaking novel of a woman grappling with the tangled knot of her life. [via]
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Childhood, Boyhood and Youthby Leo Tolstoy, Michael ScammellISBN 0375759441 (0-375-75944-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Children of the Alleyby Naguib Mahfouz, Peter TherouxISBN 0385264739 (0-385-26473-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Children of the Alley'Book summary:There are nineteen works of fiction currently available in paperback from Anchor. Because of the many universal themes of Mahfouz's work, and the variety of titles from which one can choose, this guide has been designed to provide you with questions that can apply to any or all of the books by Mahfouz which you choose to read. The questions offer new perspectives and context for your conversations. Although each of Mahfouz's novels is a unique reading experience, in an effort to guide you in making a selection, it is suggested that you might particularly be interested in one of the four following titles, each of which represents a different decade of his career: Palace Walk (1956), Midaq Alley (1966), The Harafish (1977), and The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (1983). [via]
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Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politicianby Anthony EverittISBN 037575895X (0-375-75895-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician'Book summary:All ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher combined.
John Adams
He squared off against Caesar and was friends with young Brutus. He advised the legendary Pompey on his somewhat botched transition from military hero to politician. He lambasted Mark Antony and was master of the smear campaign, as feared for his wit as he was for exposing his opponents sexual peccadilloes. Brilliant, voluble, cranky, a genius of political manipulation but also a true patriot and idealist, Cicero was Romes most feared politician, one of the greatest lawyers and statesmen of all times. Machiavelli, Queen Elizabeth, John Adams and Winston Churchill all studied his example. No man has loomed larger in the political history of mankind.
In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life in these pages as a witty and cunning political operator.
Cicero leapt onto the public stage at twenty-six, came of age during Spartacus famous revolt of the gladiators and presided over Roman law and politics for almost half a century. He foiled the legendary Catiline conspiracy, advised Pompey, the victorious general who brought the Middle East under Roman rule, and fought to mobilize the Senate against Caesar. He witnessed the conquest of Gaul, the civil war that followed and Caesars dictatorship and assassination. Cicero was a legendary defender of freedom and a model, later, to French and American revolutionaries who saw themselves as following in his footsteps in their resistance to tyranny.
Anthony Everitts biography paints a caustic picture of Roman politicswhere Senators were endlessly filibustering legislation, walking out, rigging the calendar and exposing one anothers sexual escapades, real or imagined, to discredit their opponents. This was a time before slander and libel laws, and the storiesabout dubious pardons, campaign finance scandals, widespread corruption, buying and rigging votes, wife-swapping, and so onmake the Lewinsky affair and the U.S. Congress seem chaste.
Cicero was a wily political operator. As a lawyer, he knew no equal. Boastful, often incapable of making up his mind, emotional enough to wander through the woods weeping when his beloved daughter died in childbirth, he emerges in these pages as intensely human, yet he was also the most eloquent and astute witness to the last days of Republican Rome.
On Cicero:
He taught us how to think."
Voltaire
I tasted the beauties of language, I breathed the spirit of freedom, and I imbibed from his precepts and examples the public and private sense of a man.
Edward Gibbon
Who was Cicero: a great speaker or a demagogue?
Fidel Castro [via]More editions of Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician:
Cirqueby Terry CarrISBN 0385131402 (0-385-13140-2)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Clownby Heinrich BollISBN 0380003333 (0-380-00333-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Clown'Book summary:Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schneir collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he wont marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his lifethe loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to save Germany from the Jews, then worked for reconciliation
afterwards.
Heinrich Bölls gripping consideration of how to overcome guilt and live up to idealismhow to find something to believe ingives stirring evidence of why he was such an unwelcome presence in post-War German consciousness . . . and why he was such a necessary one. [via]More editions of Clown:
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogolby Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Nikolai Vasilevich GogolISBN 0375706151 (0-375-70615-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Filmby Michael OndaatjeISBN 0375709827 (0-375-70982-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film'Book summary:The Conversations is a treasure, essential for any lover or student of film, and a rare, intimate glimpse into the worlds of two accomplished artists who share a great passion for film and storytelling, and whose knowledge and love of the crafts of writing and film shine through.
It was on the set of the movie adaptation of his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, that Michael Ondaatje met the master film and sound editor Walter Murch, and the two began a remarkable personal conversation about the making of films and books in our time that continued over two years. From those conversations stemmed this enlightened, affectionate book -- a mine of wonderful, surprising observations and information about editing, writing and literature, music and sound, the I-Ching, dreams, art and history.
The Conversations is filled with stories about how some of the most important movies of the last thirty years were made and about the people who brought them to the screen. It traces the artistic growth of Murch, as well as his friends and contemporaries -- including directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Fred Zinneman and Anthony Minghella -- from the creation of the independent, anti-Hollywood Zoetrope by a handful of brilliant, bearded young men to the recent triumph of Apocalypse Now Redux.
Among the films Murch has worked on are American Graffiti, The Conversation, the remake of A Touch of Evil, Julia, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather (all three), The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The English Patient.
Walter Murch is a true oddity in Hollywood. A genuine intellectual and renaissance man who appears wise and private at the centre of various temporary storms to do with film making and his whole generation of filmmakers. He knows, probably, where a lot of the bodies are buried. [via]More editions of The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film:
The Death of an Irish Tinkerby Bartholomew GillISBN 0380725797 (0-380-72579-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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A Dictionary of Maqiaoby Han Shaogong, Julia LovellISBN 0385339356 (0-385-33935-6)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Dictionary of Maqiao'Book summary:From the daring imagination of one of Chinas greatest living novelists comes a work of startling power and originalitythe story of a young man displaced to a small village in rural China during the 1960s. Told in the format of a dictionary, with a series of vignettes disguised as entries, A Dictionary of Maqiao is a novel of bold inventionand a fascinating, comic, deeply moving journey through the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution.
Entries trace the wisdom and absurdities of Maqiao: the petty squabbles, family grudges, poverty, infidelities, fantasies, lunatics, bullies, superstitions, and especially the odd logic in their use of languagewhere the word for beginning is the same as the word for end ; little big brother means older sister; to be scientific means to be lazy; and streetsickness is a disease afflicting villagers visiting urban areas. Filled with colorful charactersfrom a weeping ox to a man so poisonous that snakes die when they bite himA Dictionary of Maqiao is both an important work of Chinese literature and a probing inquiry into the extraordinary power of language. [via]More editions of A Dictionary of Maqiao:
Doctor Faustustby Thomas Mann, John E. WoodsISBN 0375701168 (0-375-70116-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Dream of the Red Chamberby Chan TsaoISBN 0385093799 (0-385-09379-9)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Elementary Particlesby Michel HouellebecqISBN 0375727019 (0-375-72701-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elementary Particles'Book summary:Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible.
Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock:
The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass.
Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White [via]More editions of The Elementary Particles:
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Epilepticby David B.ISBN 0375714685 (0-375-71468-5)
Softcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Epileptic'Book summary:Hailed by The Comics Journal as one of Europes most important and innovative comics artists, David B. has created a masterpiece in Epileptic, his stunning and emotionally resonant autobiography about growing up with an epileptic brother. Epileptic gathers together and makes available in English for the first time all six volumes of the internationally acclaimed graphic work.
David B. was born Pierre-François Beauchard in a small town near Orléans, France. He spent an idyllic early childhood playing with the neighborhood kids and, along with his older brother, Jean-Christophe, ganging up on his little sister, Florence. But their lives changed abruptly when Jean-Christophe was struck with epilepsy at age eleven. In search of a cure, their parents dragged the family to acupuncturists and magnetic therapists, to mediums and macrobiotic communes. But every new cure ended in disappointment as Jean-Christophe, after brief periods of remission, would only get worse.
Angry at his brother for abandoning him and at all the quacks who offered them false hope, Pierre-François learned to cope by drawing fantastically elaborate battle scenes, creating images that provide a fascinating window into his interior life. An honest and horrifying portrait of the disease and of the pain and fear it sowed in the family, Epileptic is also a moving depiction of one familys intricate history. Through flashbacks, we are introduced to the stories of Pierre-Françoiss grandparents and we relive his grandfathers experiences in both World Wars. We follow Pierre-François through his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, all the while charting his complicated relationship with his brother and Jean-Christophe s losing battle with epilepsy. Illustrated with beautiful and striking black-and-white images, Epileptic is as astonishing, intimate, and heartbreaking as the best literary memoir. [via] 
The Essential Playsby Michael Henry Heim, Anton ChekhovISBN 0375761349 (0-375-76134-9)
Softcover, Modern Library
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Falloutby James W. HustonISBN 0380732831 (0-380-73283-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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A Fine Balance : A Novelby Rohinton MistryISBN 0375414819 (0-375-41481-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Fine Balance : A Novel'Book summary:With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state. [via]More editions of A Fine Balance : A Novel:
Forbidden Colorsby Yukio MishimaISBN 0375705163 (0-375-70516-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamonby Jorge AmadoISBN 0380012057 (0-380-01205-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon'Book summary:The beloved Brazilian classic from the acclaimed author of "Dona Flor and her Two Husbands". One spring day in 1925, a disheveled Gabriela arrives in the seaside port of IlhEus and takes a job as cook in a local establishment in desperate need. Soon, the proprietor finds that he has the best business in town and that he employs the most sought-after woman. [via]
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Ghost Moonby Karen RobardsISBN 038531972X (0-385-31972-X)
Hardcover, Dell Publishing
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The Glass Palaceby Amitav GhoshISBN 0375758771 (0-375-75877-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Glass Palace'Book summary:Brilliant and impassioned, The Glass Palace is a masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh, the gifted novelist Peter Matthiessen has called an exceptional writer. This superb story of love and war begins with the shattering of the kingdom of Burma and the igniting of a great and passionate love, and it goes on to tell the story of a people, a fortune, and a family and its fate.
The Glass Palace tells of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who creates an empire in the Burmese teak forest. During the British invasion of 1885, when soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, the woman whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. [via] 
Half a Lifeby V.S. NaipaulISBN 037570728X (0-375-70728-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Heart of Chinese Poetryby Greg WhincupISBN 038523967X (0-385-23967-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Heart of Thunderby Johanna LindseyISBN 0380851180 (0-380-85118-0)
Softcover, Avon Books
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Hopscotchby Julio CortazarISBN 0380003724 (0-380-00372-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hopscotch'Book summary:This is the tragic history of two men and their circle of friends who live in Buenos Aires and Paris. Anticipating the age of the Web with a non-structure that allows readers to take the chapters in any order they wish, the book invites them to be the architects of the novel themselves. [via]
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The House of Seven Mabelsby Jill ChurchillISBN 0380804921 (0-380-80492-1)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The House of Seven Mabels'Book summary:Harried suburban single mom and delightfully incorrigible busybody Jane Jeffry returns to do some dangerous housecleaning in another charming whodunit from America's Agatha Award-winning answer to Dame Agatha Christie: Jill Churchill.
Homemaking is about to take on a whole new meaning for Jane Jeffry now that she's agreed to help restore and redecorate a decrepit old neighborhood mansion. The home's owner, the prosperously divorced Bitsy Burnside, considers herself to be a feminist to the max and wants an almost all-female crew to do the dirty work -- prompting the quick-witted Shelley Nowack to dub the project "the House of Seven Mabels." With her best friend and decorating whiz Shelley on the estrogen-heavy team, Jane thinks this exhausting, plaster-dusty job may not be as unpleasant as it initially appeared to be.
Until, of course, things start to get very messy. It begins with a series of mean-spirited "pranks" -- strange odors, mysterious electrical shorts, a myriad of petty annoyances designed to impede the progress of the fixer-uppers. And then the pranks turn deadly, leaving one of the workers lying lifeless at the foot of a staircase.
Tragic, yes, but an accident? Jane thinks not. And with the able assistance of Shelley, not to mention a little help from her best beau, Chicago detective Mel VanDyne, Jane's hoping she can construct a solid case and nail the assassin. Suspects are certainly in abundant supply. The surviving members of Bitsy's building brigade all had the opportunity. Joe Budley -- the contractor originally hired, then fired when Bitsy had her "no men allowed" epiphany -- had a motive. But the more Jane saws away at the truth, the more complicated the criminal blueprint appears. And she may be painting herself into a comer, leaving no exit if a crafty killer decides to make Jane Jeffry the next demolition project.
[via]
Japanese Talesby Royall TylerISBN 0375714510 (0-375-71451-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Lafcadio's Adventuresby Andre Gide, Dorothy BussyISBN 0375713387 (0-375-71338-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lafcadio's Adventures'Book summary:Passing with cinematographic speed across the capitals of Europe, Nobel laureate André Gides Lafcadios Adventures is a brilliantly sly satire and one of the clearest articulations of his greatest theme: the unmotivated crime.
When Lafcadio Wluiki, a street-smart nineteen-year-old in 1890s Paris, learns that hes heir to an ailing French noblemans fortune, hes seized by wanderlust. Traveling through Rome in expensive new threads, he becomes entangled in a Church extortion scandal involving an imprisoned Pope, a skittish purveyor of graveyard statuary, an atheist-turned-believer on the edge of insolvency, and all manner of wastrels, swindlers, aristocrats, adventurers, and pickpockets. With characteristic irony, Gide contrives a hilarious detective farce whereby the wrong man is apprehended, while the charmingly perverse Lafcadioone of the most original creations in all modern fictiongoes free. [via]More editions of Lafcadio's Adventures:
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Lambby Christopher MooreISBN 0380813815 (0-380-81381-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lamb'Book summary:While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial) account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that Christopher Moore presents a funny, lighthearted satire of the life of Christ--from his childhood days up to his crucifixion--in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.
Joshua (a.k.a. Jesus) knows he is unique and quite alone in his calling, but what exactly does his Father want of him? Taking liberties with ancient history, Moore works up an adventure tale as Biff and Joshua seek out the three wise men so that Joshua can better understand what he is supposed to do as Messiah. Biff, a capable sinner, tags along and gives Joshua ample opportunities to know the failings and weaknesses of being truly human. With a wit similar to Douglas Adams, Moore pulls no punches: a young Biff has the hots for Joshua's mom, Mary, which doesn't amuse Josh much: "Don't let anyone ever tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone." And the origin of the Easter Bunny is explained as a drunken Jesus gushes his affection for bunnies, declaring, "Henceforth and from now on, I decree that whenever something bad happens to me, there shall be bunnies around."
One small problem with the narrative is that Biff and Joshua often do not have distinct voices. A larger difficulty is that as the tone becomes more somber with Joshua's life drawing to its inevitable close, the one-liners, though not as numerous, seem forced. True to form, Lamb keeps the story of Joshua light, even after its darkest moments. --Michael Ferch [via]
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Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Palby Christopher MooreISBN 0380978407 (0-380-97840-7)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lamb : The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal'Book summary:While the Bible may be the word of God, transcribed by divinely inspired men, it does not provide a full (or even partial) account of the life of Jesus Christ. Lucky for us that Christopher Moore presents a funny, lighthearted satire of the life of Christ--from his childhood days up to his crucifixion--in Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. This clever novel is surely blasphemy to some, but to others it's a coming-of-age story of the highest order.
Joshua (a.k.a. Jesus) knows he is unique and quite alone in his calling, but what exactly does his Father want of him? Taking liberties with ancient history, Moore works up an adventure tale as Biff and Joshua seek out the three wise men so that Joshua can better understand what he is supposed to do as Messiah. Biff, a capable sinner, tags along and gives Joshua ample opportunities to know the failings and weaknesses of being truly human. With a wit similar to Douglas Adams, Moore pulls no punches: a young Biff has the hots for Joshua's mom, Mary, which doesn't amuse Josh much: "Don't let anyone ever tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone." And the origin of the Easter Bunny is explained as a drunken Jesus gushes his affection for bunnies, declaring, "Henceforth and from now on, I decree that whenever something bad happens to me, there shall be bunnies around."
One small problem with the narrative is that Biff and Joshua often do not have distinct voices. A larger difficulty is that as the tone becomes more somber with Joshua's life drawing to its inevitable close, the one-liners, though not as numerous, seem forced. True to form, Lamb keeps the story of Joshua light, even after its darkest moments. --Michael Ferch [via]
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Last Respectsby Catherine AirdISBN 0385182562 (0-385-18256-2)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Like Water for Chocolateby Laura Esquivel, Carol ChristensenISBN 0385420161 (0-385-42016-1)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Like Water for Chocolate'Book summary:Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. The classic love story takes place on the De la Garza ranch, as the tyrannical owner, Mama Elena, chops onions at the kitchen table in her final days of pregnancy. While still in her mother's womb, her daughter to be weeps so violently she causes an early labor, and little Tita slips out amid the spices and fixings for noodle soup. This early encounter with food soon becomes a way of life, and Tita grows up to be a master chef. She shares special points of her favorite preparations with listeners throughout the story. [via]
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Like Water for Chocolateby Thomas Christensen, Laura Esquivel, Carol ChristensenISBN 038542017X (0-385-42017-X)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Like Water for Chocolate'Book summary:Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in tum-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. [via]
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Martial Epigramsby James Michie, Shadi BartschISBN 0375760423 (0-375-76042-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Meditations of Marcus Aureliusby George LongISBN 038072216X (0-380-72216-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius'Book summary:The insights and knowledge of this famed philosopher and Emperor are just as applicable to situations in today's world as they were in ancient Rome. When The Wall Street Journal asked Bill Clinton to name one book, other than the Bible, that's important to him, Clinton chose Aurelius' Meditations, which he rereads every couple of years. [via]
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Midaq Alleyby Naguib MahfouzISBN 0385264763 (0-385-26476-3)
Softcover, Doubleday
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midaq Alley'Book summary:Considered by many to be Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley centers around the residents of one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo. No other novel so vividly evokes the sights and sounds of the city. The universality and timelessness of this book cannot be denied. [via]
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The New Lifeby Guneli Gun, Orhan PamukISBN 0375701710 (0-375-70171-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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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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Nightby Elie WieselISBN 0380009951 (0-380-00995-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night'Book summary:127 paged paperback "Night" by Elie Wiesel. 18th printing, Discus Book published by Avon Books. [via]
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Norwegian Woodby Haruki Murakami, Jay RubinISBN 0375704027 (0-375-70402-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Norwegian Wood'Book summary:In 1987, when Norwegian Wood was first published in Japan, it promptly sold more than 4 million copies and transformed Haruki Murakami into a pop-culture icon. The horrified author fled his native land for Europe and the United States, returning only in 1995, by which time the celebrity spotlight had found some fresher targets. And now he's finally authorized a translation for the English-speaking audience, turning to the estimable Jay Rubin, who did a fine job with his big-canvas production The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Readers of Murakami's later work will discover an affecting if atypical novel, and while the author himself has denied the book's autobiographical import--"If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than fifteen pages long"--it's hard not to read as at least a partial portrait of the artist as a young man.
Norwegian Wood is a simple coming-of-age tale, primarily set in 1969-70, when the author was attending university. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the novel's backdrop. But the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs, and the pain and pleasure and attendant losses of growing up. The collapse of a romance (and this is one among many!) leaves him in a metaphysical shambles:
I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.
This account of a young man's sentimental education sometimes reads like a cross between Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women. It is less complex and perhaps ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical work. Still, Norwegian Wood captures the huge expectation of youth--and of this particular time in history--for the future and for the place of love in it. It is also a work saturated with sadness, an emotion that can sometimes cripple a novel but which here merely underscores its youthful poignancy. --Mark Thwaite [via]More editions of Norwegian Wood:
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The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Lifeby Charles DarwinISBN 0375751467 (0-375-75146-7)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life'Book summary:It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable.
To a certain extent it suffers from the Hamlet problem--it's full of clichés! Or what are now clichés, but which Darwin was the first to pen. Natural selection, variation, the struggle for existence, survival of the fittest: it's all in here.
Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T. H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence--on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal--that swept most scientists before it. It's hardly necessary to mention that the book is still controversial: Darwin's remark in his conclusion that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" is surely the pinnacle of British understatement. --Mary Ellen Curtin, Amazon.com [via]
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Out of Africaby Isak DinesenISBN 0375508457 (0-375-50845-7)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Out of Africa'Book summary:In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes--and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful.
The Random House colophon made its debut in February 1927 on the cover of a little pamphlet called "Announcement Number One." Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, the company's founders, had acquired the Modern Library from publishers Boni and Liveright two years earlier. One day, their friend the illustrator Rockwell Kent stopped by their office. Cerf later recalled, "Rockwell was sitting at my desk facing Donald, and we were talking about doing a few books on the side, when suddenly I got an inspiration and said, 'I've got the name for our publishing house. We just said we were go-ing to publish a few books on the side at random. Let's call it Random House.' Donald liked the idea, and Rockwell Kent said, 'That's a great name. I'll draw your trademark.' So, sitting at my desk, he took a piece of paper and in five minutes drew Random House, which has been our colophon ever since." Throughout the years, the mission of Random House has remained consistent: to publish books of the highest quality, at random. We are proud to continue this tradition today.
This edition is set from the first American edition of 1937 and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of Random House. [via]More editions of Out of Africa:
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Palace Walkby Naguib MahfouzISBN 0385264666 (0-385-26466-6)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Palace Walk'Book summary:Palace Walk is the first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouzs magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork.
The novels of the Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sonsthe tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. The familys trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two world wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries.
Translated by William Maynard Hutchins and Olive E. Kenny
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Perfume: The Story of a Murdererby Patrick Suskind, John E. WoodsISBN 0375725849 (0-375-72584-9)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Perfume: The Story of a Murderer'Book summary:An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods. [via]
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Persepolisby Marjane SatrapiISBN 037571457X (0-375-71457-X)
Softcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persepolis'Book summary:Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is an exemplary autobiographical graphic novel, in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's classic Maus. Set in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, young Satrapi is the six-year-old daughter of two committed and well-to-do Marxists. As she grows up, she witness first-hand the effects that the revolution and the war with Iraq have on her home, family and school.
Like Maus, the main strength of Persepolis is its ability to make the political personal.
Told through the eyes of a child (as reflected in Satrapi's simplistic yet expressive black-and-white artwork), young Marjane learns about her family history and how it is entwined with the history of Iran, and watches her liberal parents cope with a fundamentalist regime that gets increasingly rigid as it gains more power. Outspoken and intelligent, Marjane chafes at Iran's increasingly conservative interpretation of Islamic law, especially as she grows into a bright and independent teenager. Throughout, Marjane remains a hugely likeable young woman
Persepolis gives the reader a snapshot of daily life in a country struggling with an internal cultural revolution and a bloody war, but within an intensely personal context. It's a very human history, beautifully and sympathetically told. --Robert Burrow [via]
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Persepolis 2: The Story of a Returnby Marjane SatrapiISBN 0375714669 (0-375-71466-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return'Book summary:Picking up the thread where her debut memoir-in-comics concluded, Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return details Marjane Satrapi's experiences as a young Iranian woman cast abroad by political turmoil in her native country. Older, if not exactly wiser, Marjane reconciles her upbringing in war-shattered Tehran with new surroundings and friends in Austria. Whether living in the company of nuns or as the sole female in a house of eight gay men, she creates a niche for herself with friends and acquaintances who feel equally uneasy with their place in the world.
After a series of unfortunate choices and events leave her literally living in the street for three months, Marjane decides to return to her native Iran. Here, she is reunited with her family, whose liberalism and emphasis on Marjane's personal worth exert as strong an influence as the eye-popping wonders of Europe. Having grown accustomed to recreational drugs, partying, and dating, Marjane now dons a veil and adjusts to a society officially divided by gender and guided by fundamentalism. Emboldened by the example of her feisty grandmother, she tests the bounds of the morality enforced on the streets and in the classrooms. With a new appreciation for the political and spiritual struggles of her fellow Iranians, she comes to understand that "one person leaving her house while asking herself, 'is my veil in place?' no longer asks herself 'where is my freedom of speech?'"
Satrapi's starkly monochromatic drawing style and the keenly observed facial expressions of her characters provide the ideal graphic environment from which to appeal to our sympathies. Bereft of fine detail, this graphic novel guides the reader's attention instead toward a narrative rich with empathy. Don't be fooled by the glowering self-portrait of the author on the back flap; its nearly impossible to read Persepolis 2 without feeling warmth toward Marjane Satrapi. --Ryan Boudinot [via]
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Platformby Michel Houellebecq, Frank WynneISBN 0375414622 (0-375-41462-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Platform'Book summary:Michel Renault is a human void. Following the death of the father he barely knew, he endures his civil ser-
vice job while eking out an existence of prepackaged pleasure, hollow friendships, TV dinners, and pornography. On a group holiday in Thailand, however, he meets the shyly compelling Valérie, who soon pursues an agenda that Michel himself could never have thought possible: his own humanization.
Back in Paris, they plunge into an affair that strays into S&M, public sex, and partner swapping, even as they devise a scheme to save Valéries ailing travel company by capitalizing on the only trade Michel has seen flourish in the Third World. Before long, he quits his job, and their business model for sex tourism is gradually implemented. But when they return to Thailand, where Michels philosophy will be put into practice, he discovers that sex is neither the most consuming nor dangerous of passions . . .
From a suburbanized West crippled by hate crime to an East subsumed by materialism, Michel Houellebecq exploreswith characteristic provocativeness, but also with surprising tendernessthe emotions that seem most resilient to any influence: love and hate. Platform is, as Anita Brookner has written, a brilliant novel, casting a prescient eye on the abuses and inequalities that lead to wider trouble. [via]More editions of Platform:
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Plutarch's Livesby Plutarch, Arthur Hugh CloughISBN 0375756760 (0-375-75676-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Plutarch's Lives'Book summary:Plutarch's Lives, written at the beginning of the second century A.D., is a brilliant social history of the ancient world by one of the greatest biographers and moralists of all time. In what is by far his most famous and influential work, Plutarch reveals the character and personality of his subjects and how they led ultimately to tragedy or victory. Richly anecdotal and full of detail, Volume I contains profiles and comparisons of Romulus and Theseus, Numa and Lycurgus, Fabius and Pericles, and many more powerful figures of ancient Greece and Rome.
The present translation, originally published in 1683 in conjunction with a life of Plutarch by John Dryden, was revised in 1864 by the poet and scholar Arthur Hugh Clough, whose notes and preface are also included in this edition. [via]More editions of Plutarch's Lives:
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Republic and Other Worksby PlatoISBN 0385094973 (0-385-09497-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Republic and Other Works'Book summary:A compilation of the essential works of Plato in one paperback volume: The Republic, The Symposium, Parmenides, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. [via]
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Revelations of Divine Loveby Julian, M. L. Del MastroISBN 0385122977 (0-385-12297-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot: And Arrowrootby Anthony H. Chambers, Jun Ichiro TanizakiISBN 0375719318 (0-375-71931-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Secret Rendezvousby Kobo Abe, Juliet Winters CarpenterISBN 0375726543 (0-375-72654-3)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Smilla's Sense of Snowby Peter Hoeg, Tiina NunnallyISBN 0385315147 (0-385-31514-7)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Smilla's Sense of Snow'Book summary:She thinks more highly of snow and ice than she does of love. She lives in a world of numbers, science and memories--a dark, exotic stranger in a strange land. And now Smilla Jaspersen is convinced she has uncovered a shattering crime... It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice.... [via]
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Sodom and Gomorrahby Marcel Proust, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, D. J. Enright, Terence KilmartinISBN 0375753109 (0-375-75310-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sodom and Gomorrah'Book summary:Sodom and Gomorrah opens a new phase of In Search of Lost Time. While watching the pollination of the Duchess de Guermantess orchid, the narrator secretly observes a sexual encounter between two men. Flower and plant have no conscious will, Samuel Beckett wrote of Prousts representation of sexuality. They are shameless, exposing their genitals. And so in a sense are Prousts men and women . . . shameless. There is no question of right and wrong.
For this authoritative English-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the late Terence Kilmartins acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieffs translation to take into account the new definitive French editions of Á la recherché du temps perdu (the final volume of these new editions was published by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade in 1989). [via]More editions of Sodom and Gomorrah:
A Song of Stoneby Iain BanksISBN 0375501053 (0-375-50105-3)
Hardcover, Villard
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Sputnik Sweetheartby Haruki Murakami, J. Philip Gabriel, Philip GabrielISBN 0375726055 (0-375-72605-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sputnik Sweetheart'Book summary:Haruki Murakami is arguably one of Japan's finest, modern writers and is, increasingly, being seen as one of the top authors working today. The last novel of his to find its way to these shores, Norwegian Wood, was a delightful, if slightly one-dimensional coming-of-age tale. The pyrotechnics of his previous, more surreal novels (Wind Up Bird Chronicle and A Wild Sheep Chase) had disappeared but something of his eccentricity, what made his books such a wonder, had disappeared too. Sputnik Sweetheart is a confident continuation of this more simple style yet one that retains the allegories, the depth of his best work.
The narrator, a teacher, is in love with the beguiling, odd Sumire. As his best friend, she is not adverse to phoning at three or four in the morning to ask a pointless question or share a strange thought. Sumire, though, is in love with a beautiful, older woman, Miu, who does not, can not, return her affections. Longing for Sumire, K (that is all we are told by way of a name) finds some comfort in a purely sexual relationship with the mother of one of his pupils. But the consolation is slight. K is unhappy. Miu and Sumire, now working together, take a business trip to a Greek Island. Something happens, he is not told what, and so K travels to Greece to see what help he can offer.
Themes of love, loss, sexuality, identity and selfhood are all interrogated, woven into a compelling, romantic, serious and sometimes sad book. It is a disarmingly simple, hugely satisfying, intelligent and moving work and one of Murakami's best. Simplicity, sprinkled with a dose of his magic, has enabled Murakami to write candidly, succinctly and beautifully about the complications and difficulties of love and loving. --Mark Thwaite [via]
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The Three-Arched Bridgeby Ismail Kadare, John HodgsonISBN 0375700943 (0-375-70094-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Three-Arched Bridge'Book summary:The year: 1377. The place: the Balkan peninsula. Here in Ismail Kadare's novel, The Three-Arched Bridge, an Albanian monk chronicles the events surrounding the construction of a bridge across a great river known as Ujana e Keqe, or "Wicked Waters." If successful in their endeavor, the bridge-builders will challenge a monopoly on water transportation known simply as "Boats and Rafts." The story itself parallels developments in modern-day Eastern Europe, with the bridge emblematic of a disintegrating economic and political order: just as mysterious cracks in the span's masonry endanger the structure and cast the local community into a morass of uncertainty, superstition, and murder, so the fast-changing conditions in the 14th-century Balkan peninsula threaten to overwhelm the stability of life there.
Dark as the story itself is, Mr. Kadare's prose, skillfully translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson, is elegant, witty, and deft. And with so many twists and turns in its carefully constructed plot, this political parable keeps the reader's interest to the very end. [via]
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Time Machineby H. G. Wells, Ursula K. Le GuinISBN 0375761187 (0-375-76118-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time Machine'Book summary:When the intrepid Time Traveller finds himself in the year 802,701, he encounters a seemingly utopian society of evolved human beings but then unearths the dark secret that sets mankind on course toward its inevitable destruction. An insightful look into a distant, bleak, and disturbing future, The Time Machine goes beyond the reaches of science fiction to provide a strikingly relevant discussion of social progress, class struggle, and the human condition.Hailed as a masterpiece of its genre, H. G. Wells's famous novella about the perils of history and the hubris of modernity comes vividly alive in this remarkable reissue of a unique 1931 illustrated edition. [via]
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Time Out of Jointby Philip K. DickISBN 037571927X (0-375-71927-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Travels Of Marco Poloby Marco Polo, William Marsden, Manuel Komroff, Jason GoodwinISBN 0375758186 (0-375-75818-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Travels Of Marco Polo'Book summary:Marco Polos account of his journey throughout the East in the thirteenth century was one of the earliest European travel narratives, and it remains the most important. The merchant-traveler from Venice, the first to cross the entire continent of Asia, provided us with accurate descriptions of life in China, Tibet, India, and a hundred other lands, and recorded customs, natural history, strange sights, historical legends, and much more. From the dazzling courts of Kublai Khan to the perilous deserts of Persia, no book contains a richer magazine of marvels than the Travels.
This edition, selected and edited by the great scholar Manuel Komroff, also features the classic and stylistically brilliant Marsden translation, revised and corrected, as well as Komroffs Introduction to the 1926 edition. [via]More editions of The Travels Of Marco Polo:
Until Foreverby Johanna LindseyISBN 0380762595 (0-380-76259-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Very Persistent Gappers of Fripby George Saunders, Lane SmithISBN 0375503838 (0-375-50383-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip'Book summary:The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is that rarity, a fable that appeals equally to literate adults and id-crazed kids. Its author, George Saunders, is a Thomas Pynchon-approved, three-time O. Henry Award-winning surrealist writer; its artist, Lane Smith, is the Caldecott-honored illustrator of The Stinky Cheese Man and film designer of James and the Giant Peach. Nothing could evoke Saunders's simple yet extravagant story better than Smith's strange, painterly depictions of the seaside town of Frip, a place of ornery eccentrics and oddball animals. Smith combines some of the virtues of George Grosz, Dr. Seuss, and the Japanese prints called Ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world").
Gappers are baseball-sized, burr-shaped orange creatures with a compulsion to creep up out of the sea and fasten themselves to goats, whom they love. "When a gapper gets near a goat it gives off a continual high-pitched happy shriek of pleasure that makes it impossible for the goat to sleep, and the goats get skinny and stop giving milk," writes Saunders. Since Frip survives by selling goat milk, the children must brush gappers off the herd eight times daily and dump them into the ocean. You simply must see Smith's picture of Capable, the book's plucky heroine, emptying her gapper-sack from a precarious cliff picturesquely menaced by subtly colored waves. You'll be torn between lingering over the gorgeous artwork and flipping the page to see how Capable will ever cope with the gapper invasion of Frip, her obdurately past-obsessed widower papa, and her dumb, mean neighbors (two snooty, boy-obsessed girls and a family of singers who are harder on the ears than a keening gapper attached to the goat of its dreams). This is a slim tale, but unquestionably one quite in keeping with Saunders's prizewinning books. The title story of Pastoralia, for instance, is also a fable involving class struggle and people who get snooty about the difficulties of working with goats.
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a grownups' book, a kids' book, an art book, and a cause for countless happy shrieks of pleasure. --Tim Appelo [via]
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Voices Within the Arkby Howard SchwartzISBN 0380761092 (0-380-76109-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Wizard of the Crowby Ngugi Wa'Thiong'OISBN 037542248X (0-375-42248-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Wuthering Heightsby Emily BronteISBN 0375756442 (0-375-75644-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Zeno's Conscienceby Italo Svevo, William WeaverISBN 0375727760 (0-375-72776-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Spanish
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El profetaby Kahlil Gibran, Mauro ArminoISBN 0375701621 (0-375-70162-1)
Softcover, Random House Espanol
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El profeta'Book summary:La obra maestra de Kahlil Gibrán es uno de los más queridos clásicos de nuestra época, un repositorio rico en sabiduría y alegría que ha inspirado a generaciones de lectores. Con poesía frugal y bellamente resonante, El profeta ofrece inolvidables palabras de esperanza y consolación sobre los temas del nacimiento, del amor, del matrimonio, de la muerte y de los otros hitos de la vida.
Desde su publicación hace más de setenta años, El profeta ha sido traducido a más de veinte idiomas y ha dado inspiración a millones de lectores, quienes encuentran en sus palabras la expresión de los más profundos impulsos, la más profunda poesía, del corazón humano. Ilustrados con los dibujos místicos de Gibrán--comparados por Auguste Rodin a los de William Blake--El profeta es un volumen para disfrutar y al cual volver a lo largo de la vida. [via]More editions of El profeta:
Arabic
Children of the Alleyby Naguib Mahfouz, Peter TherouxISBN 0385420943 (0-385-42094-3)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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Latin
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Odes : With the Latin Textby Horace, James Michie, Gregson DavisISBN 0375759026 (0-375-75902-6)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Odes : With the Latin Text'Book summary:Timeless meditations on the subjects of wine, parties, birthdays, love, and friendship, Horaces Odes, in the words of classicist Donald Carne-Ross, make the commonplace notable, even luminous. This edition reproduces the highly lauded translation by James Michie. For almost forty years, poet and literary critic John Hollander notes, James Michies brilliant translations of Horace have remained fresh as well as strong, and responsive to the varying lights and darks of the originals. It is a pleasure to have them newly available. [via]
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