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La cautiva/ El matadero
By Esteban Echeverría. 2018
Edición definitiva de dos textos fundacionales de la literatura argentina (El matadero es considerado el primer cuento argentino), con prólogo…
del escritor y crítico literario Martín Kohan, y nota preliminar a cargo de Alejandra Laera. «Ella va. Toda es oídos; / sobre salvajes dormidos / va pasando; escucha, mira, / se para, apenas respira, / y vuelve de nuevo a andar. / Ella marcha, y sus miradas / vagan en torno azoradas, / cual si creyesen ilusas / en las tinieblas confusas / mil espectros divisar.»La cautiva La cautiva y El matadero ocupan un lugar fundacional en la literatura argentina. Escritos por Esteban Echeverría a fines de la década de 1830, en ellos se diseña, respectivamente, el espacio del desierto inabarcable y el de la violencia política, dos motivos que recorren la poesía y la narrativa de todo el siglo XIX. La cautiva utiliza los recursos del Romanticismo para idealizar la civilización, corporizada en la protagonista, y demonizar al indio, haciendo de la frontera la cifra del encuentro con el Otro. En cambio, el lenguaje crudo de El matadero -publicado de manera póstuma y considerado con el tiempo el primer cuento argentino- pone en escena el enfrentamiento social y, con su crítica al rosismo, inaugura el uso político de la ficción. «Para Esteban Echeverría [...] la cultura popular adquiere ese doble signo: recelo ideológico y seducción estética. No obstante, en El matadero esta cuestión asume una inflexión particular; porque la cultura popular se despliega en él bajo su forma más crispada e intensa: la de la violencia.»Del prólogo de Martín KohanA Seaman's Book of Sea Stories
By Desmond Fforde. 2009
An attraction that can't be ignored. A spoilt little rich girl. A rough ex-soldier. When Callie Frobisher and Paul Mason…
are stranded after their plane crashes, the mismatched couple are forced into battling each other and their feelings... Callie has it all - rich parents, a private education, and a great job, whilst Paul is harbouring a dark and destructive secret.The trauma of the crash and the harsh media spotlight proves to be challenging for them both. Can their attraction survive when they return to reality?Dred
By Harriet Beecher Stowe. 2006
Harriet Beecher Stowe's second antislavery novel was written partly in response to the criticisms of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by…
both white Southerners and black abolitionists. In Dred (1856), Stowe attempts to explore the issue of slavery from an African American perspective.Through the compelling stories of Nina Gordon, the mistress of a slave plantation, and Dred, a black revolutionary, Stowe brings to life conflicting beliefs about race, the institution of slavery, and the possibilities of violent resistance. Probing the political and spiritual goals that fuel Dred's rebellion, Stowe creates a figure far different from the acquiescent Christian martyr Uncle Tom. In his introduction to the classic novel, Robert S. Levine outlines the antislavery debates in which Stowe had become deeply involved before and during her writing of Dred. Levine shows that in addition to its significance in literary history, the novel remains relevant to present-day discussions of cross-racial perspectives.Marion Jones
By Bill Gutman. 2000
Race for the record! At the Sydney Games, Marion Jones strove to become the first person ever to win five…
gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics, making headlines for simply believeing she could do it. Driven to succeed at a very early age, Marion won multiple titiles at the Junior National Championships and set a junior record in the 200 meters. A multisport athlete, she helped lead the University of North Carolina women's basketball team to a national championship during her freshman year and also competed in track and field, until an injury forced her to reevaluate her priorities. Refocused on her track career, Marion quickly became the woman to beat, racking up an impressive thirty-five wims of the thiry-six events she entred in 1998. And after another injury sidelined her hopes of winning four gold medal at the 1999 World Championships, marion fought back in the 2000 season and is once again dominating the field. Get the full story of this amazing runner's race for the record, from her childhood dreams of gold medals to her tough choice between two sports and her determined drive to become the fastest woman in the world.Writing the Okanagan
By George Bowering. 2015
George Bowering was born in Penticton, where his great-grandfather Willis Brinson lived, and Bowering has never been all that far…
from the Okanagan Valley in his heart and imagination. Early in the twenty-first century, he was made a permanent citizen of Oliver. Bowering has family up and down the Valley, and he goes there as often as he can. He has been asked during his many visits to Okanagan bookstores over the years to publish a collection of his writing about the Valley.Writing the Okanagan draws on forty books Bowering has published since 1960 - poetry, fiction, history, and some forms he may have invented. Selections from Delsing (1961) and Sticks & Stones (1962) are here, as is "Driving to Kelowna" from The Silver Wire (1966). Other Okanagan towns, among them Rock Creek, Peachland, Vernon, Kamloops, Princeton, and Osoyoos, inspire selections from work published through the 1970s and on to 2013. Fairview, the old mining site near Oliver, is the focus of an excerpt from Caprice (1987, 2010), one volume in Bowering's trilogy of historical novels. "Desert Elm" takes as its two main subjects the Okanagan Valley and his father, who, as Bowering did, grew up there. With the addition of some previously unpublished works, the reader will find the wonder of the Okanagan here, in both prose and poetry.The Binding Vine
By Sonita Sarker, Shashi Deshpande. 1992
This moving and exquisitely crafted novel renders visible the extraordinary endurance and grace concealed in women's everyday lives. The lives…
of three women who are "haunted by fears, secrets, and deep grief" (Washington Post) are bound together by strands of life and hope--a binding vine of love, concern, and connection that spreads across chasms of time, social class, and even death. The Baltimore Sun declared the novel, "Chekhovian . . . Deshpande's story of a woman who loses a daughter is linked to the politics of India and its tradition of patriarchy."The Life of a Racehorse
By John Mills. 1865
The Life of a Racehorse is a fictional biography detailing the life of a British racehorse from the horse's point…
of view. This book was republished by Cosimo in 2015 in honor of American race horsing, which got a shot in the arms when American Pharaoh became the first horse to win the "Grand Slam" of American horse racing (the Triple Crown, for the first time since 1978, and the Breeders' Cup Classic.) In this book, the horse, Sheet Anchor, narrates his life, from his time as a colt, through his training and racing days, to his sale as a stud from Tattersall's and his retirement. The story is revealed through Sheet Anchor's experiences and the dialogue of the humans he interacts with, including trainers, grooms, jockeys, and his master, Sir Digby. The Life of a Racehorse was highlighted in a 2015 New York Times article bringing attention to the use of the riding crop; it was cited as one of the only references to how horses might feel about its use. As such, horse lovers and race enthusiasts alike can look to this book for better insight into how horse racing has developed over the ages.The Harris Men
By Rm Johnson. 1999
RM Johnson's extraordinary debut is a stirring family portrait that resonates with emotion and wit, as a father faces death…
-- and the three sons he abandoned so many years before. "Mr. Harris, I'm sorry, but you have cancer." Although devastated to learn he has just one year to live, fifty-five-year-old Julius Harris has always known that the day would come when he would pay for walking out on his wife and three children twenty years earlier. Now, with a sudden and passionate determination to make his family whole again, Julius begins trying to find a way back to his sons. Caleb, the youngest, struggling to support a son and make his way in a relentless world, couldn't care less about his own absentee father. Middle son Marcus can't abide even his father's memory, which gets in the way of his committing to the one woman who has turned his life around. And Austin, Julius' eldest child, so adores what he remembers of his father that he's following in his footsteps, abandoning his wife and children just as Julius had done. Inspired by RM Johnson's own fragile family history, The Harris Men is his poignant exploration of the increasing problem of absentee fathers -- and of the compromises made by the families they leave behind. As the Harris men grapple with their fears and their choices, Johnson gets to the very heart of what it means to be a man.In a Dark Wood Wandering: A Novel of the Middle Ages
By Anita Miller, Hella S. Haasse. 1911
In this novel, set in the 15th century during the Hundred Years War between France and England, Hella Haasse brilliantly…
captures all the drama of one of the great ages of history.Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture: Immersions and Revisitations (Routledge Studies in Nineteenth Century Literature)
By Nadine Boehm-Schnitker, Susanne Gruss. 2014
This book provides a comprehensive reflection of the processes of canonization, (un)pleasurable consumption and the emerging predominance of topics and…
theoretical concerns in neo-Victorianism. The repetitions and reiterations of the Victorian in contemporary culture document an unbroken fascination with the histories, technologies and achievements, as well as the injustices and atrocities, of the nineteenth century. They also reveal that, in many ways, contemporary identities are constructed through a Victorian mirror image fabricated by the desires, imaginings and critical interests of the present. Providing analyses of current negotiations of nineteenth-century texts, discourses and traumas, this volume explores the contemporary commodification and nostalgic recreation of the past. It brings together critical perspectives of experts in the fields of Victorian literature and culture, contemporary literature, and neo-Victorianism, with contributions by leading scholars in the field including Rosario Arias, Cora Kaplan, Elizabeth Ho, Marie-Luise Kohlke and Sally Shuttleworth. Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture interrogates current fashions in neo-Victorianism and their ideological leanings, the resurrection of cultural icons, and the reasons behind our relationship with and immersion in Victorian culture.Wintry Night (Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan)
By Qiao Li. 2001
An epic spanning more than half a century of Taiwan's history, this breathtaking historical novel traces the fortunes of the…
Pengs, a family of Hakka Chinese settlers, across three generations from the 1890s, just before Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese war, through World War II. Li Qiao brilliantly re-creates the dramatic world of these pioneers—and the colonization of Taiwan itself—exploring their relationships with the aboriginal peoples of Taiwan and their struggle to establish their own ethnic and political identities.This carefully researched work of fiction draws upon Li's own experiences and family history, as well as oral and written histories of the era. Originally published in Chinese as a trilogy, this newly translated edition is an abridgement for English-speaking readers and marks the work's first appearance in the English-speaking world. It was well-received in Taiwan as an honest—and influential—recreation of Taiwan's history before the relocation of the Republic of China from the mainland to Taiwan.Because Li's saga is so deeply imbued with the unique culture and complex history of Taiwan, an introduction explaining the cultural and historical background of the novel is included to help orient the reader to this amazingly rich cultural context. This informative introduction and the sweeping saga of the novel itself together provide an important view of Taiwan's little known colonial experience.El último retrato de Goya
By John Berger, Nella Bielski. 1989
El último retrato de Goya está inspirado en diversos episodios de la vida del artista, en una época de agitación…
política y guerras patrióticas. Durante el largo periodo de caos que marcó en España el salto de siglos entre el XVIII y el XIX, en una época de agitación política y guerras patrióticas, Francisco de Goya tuvo que ganarse la vida como pintor de Corte, haciendo retratos de familia real y de la aristocracia. Pero su retrato más importante quizá no sea ninguno de ellos, sino el fenomenal retablo que integran sus dibujos y grabados, hasta pintar el rostro monstruoso y revuelto de su tiempo. El último retrato de Goya está inspirado en diversos episodios de la vida del artista. Es, por así decirlo, una serie de diálogos de alto contenido iconográfico, la antítesis de una «comedia de época». Los autores, dando réplica al genio inventivo y a la tremenda expresividad de Goya, trazan una semblanza del pintor que nos lo sitúa en su tiempo sin dejar de presentárnoslo como un hombre que nos habla desde el presente, como si hubiera conocido nuestros problemas actuales, como si hubiera pintado el futuro.The Canterbury Tales Handbook
By Elizabeth Scala. 2020
The essential student companion for reading and understanding An ideal companion to The Canterbury Tales, this brief, accessible book introduces…
students to Chaucer’s tales and helps them understand the language, genres, forms, historical background, and critical history. This purchase offers access to the digital ebook only.Hamnet and Judith: A novel
By Maggie O'Farrell. 2020
"Remarkable . . . will leave you shaking with loss but also the love from which family is spun." Emma…
Donoghue, author of Room"Without a doubt one of the best novels I've ever read." Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, YesTWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A PLAGUE THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.England, 1580. A young Latin tutor--penniless, bullied by a violent father--falls in love with an eccentric young woman: a wild creature who walks her family's estate with a falcon on her shoulder and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer. Agnes understands plants and potions better than she does people, but once she settles on the Henley Street in Stratford she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband. His gifts as a writer are just beginning to awaken when their beloved twins, Hamnet and Judith, are afflicted with the bubonic plague, and, devastatingly, one of them succumbs to the illness.A luminous portrait of a marriage, a shattering evocation of a family ravaged by grief and loss, and a hypnotic recreation of the story that inspired one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time, Hamnet & Judith is mesmerizing and seductive, an impossible-to-put-down novel from one of our most gifted writers.Ch'oe Yun is a Korean author known for her breathtaking versatility, subversion of authority, and bold exploration of the inner…
life. Readers celebrate her creative play with fantasy and admire her deep engagement with trauma, history, and the vagaries of remembrance.In this collection's title work, There a Petal Silently Falls, Ch'oe explores both the genesis and the aftershocks of historical outrages such as the Kwangju Massacre of 1980, in which a reported 2,000 civilians were killed for protesting government military rule. The novella follows the wanderings of a girl traumatized by her mother's murder and strikes home the injustice of state-sanctioned violence against men and especially women. "Whisper Yet" illuminates the harsh treatment of leftist intellectuals during the years of national division, at the same time offering the hope of reconciliation between ideological enemies. The third story, "The Thirteen-Scent Flower," satirizes consumerism and academic rivalries by focusing on a young man and woman who engender an exotic flower that is coveted far and wide for its various fragrances. Elegantly crafted and quietly moving, Ch'oe Yun's stories are among the most incisive portrayals of the psychological and spiritual reality of post-World War II Korea. Her fiction, which began to appear in the late 1980s, represents a turn toward a more experimental, deconstructionist, and postmodern Korean style of writing, and offers a new focus on the role of gender in the making of Korean history.The Tale of Hansuli Turn
By Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay. 2011
A terrifying sound disturbs the peace of Hansuli Turn, a forest village in Bengal, and the community splits as to…
its meaning. Does it herald the apocalyptic departure of the gods or is there a more rational explanation? The Kahars, inhabitants of Hansuli Turn, belong to an untouchable "criminal tribe" soon to be epically transformed by the effects of World War II and India's independence movement. Their headman, Bonwari, upholds the ethics of an older time, but his fragile philosophy proves no match for the overpowering machines of war. As Bonwari and the village elders come to believe the gods have abandoned them, younger villagers led by the rebel Karali look for other meanings and a different way of life.As the two factions fight, codes of authority, religion, sex, and society begin to break down, and amid deadly conflict and natural disaster, Karali seizes his chance to change his people's future. Sympathetic to the desires of both older and younger generations, Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay depicts a difficult transition in which a marginal caste fragments and mutates under the pressure of local and global forces. The novel's handling of the language of this rural society sets it apart from other works of its time, while the village's struggles anticipate the dilemmas of rural development, ecological and economic exploitation, and dalit militancy that would occupy the center of India's post-Independence politics.Negotiating the colonial depredations of the 1939–45 war and the oppressions of an agrarian caste system, the Kahars both fear and desire the consequences of a revolutionized society and the loss of their culture within it. Lyrically rendered by one of India's great novelists, this story of one people's plight dramatizes the anxieties of a nation and the resistance of some to further marginalization.The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
By Bangqing Han. 2005
Desire, virtue, courtesans (also known as sing-song girls), and the denizens of Shanghai's pleasure quarters are just some of the…
elements that constitute Han Bangqing's extraordinary novel of late imperial China. Han's richly textured, panoramic view of late-nineteenth-century Shanghai follows a range of characters from beautiful sing-song girls to lower-class prostitutes and from men in positions of social authority to criminals and ambitious young men recently arrived from the country. Considered one of the greatest works of Chinese fiction, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is now available for the first time in English. Neither sentimental nor sensationalistic in its portrayal of courtesans and their male patrons, Han's work inquires into the moral and psychological consequences of desire. Han, himself a frequent habitué of Shanghai brothels, reveals a world populated by lonely souls who seek consolation amid the pleasures and decadence of Shanghai's demimonde. He describes the romantic games played by sing-song girls to lure men, as well as the tragic consequences faced by those who unexpectedly fall in love with their customers. Han also tells the stories of male patrons who find themselves emotionally trapped between desire and their sense of propriety. First published in 1892, and made into a film by Hou Hsiao-hsien in 1998, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai is recognized as a pioneering work of Chinese fiction in its use of psychological realism and its infusion of modernist sensibilities into the traditional genre of courtesan fiction. The novel's stature has grown with the recent discovery of Eileen Chang's previously unknown translation, which was unearthed among her papers at the University of Southern California. Chang, who lived in Shanghai until 1956 when she moved to California and began to write in English, is one of the most acclaimed Chinese writers of the twentieth century.The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan (Weatherhead Books on Asia)
By Inoue Yasushi. 2008
One of the world's most ruthless warriors, Chinggis Khan conquered nearly all of Asia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,…
transforming the scattered and impoverished Mongols into an exceptionally proud and powerful nation. In this riveting and thoroughly researched portrait, Japan's celebrated epic novelist drives at the root of the khan's great desires and insatiable appetite for supremacy.Beginning with his birth in 1162, The Blue Wolf follows the crucial alliances that led to Chinggis Khan's great campaigns in North China, Bukhara, and Samarkand, as well as the state of Khorazm. The khan was obsessed with his ancestry, not knowing whether he was the descendent of the blue wolf (mythical progenitor of the Mongols and the noble Borjigin line) or merely the bastard son of a Merkid tribesman. For Inoue Yasushi, Chinggis's ancestral anxiety lies at the center of his relentless push for empire. He struggled with his paternity as intensely as he fought his battles, and his victories stood as proof that the brave warrior was a true Mongol. The question of paternity also formed the largest wedge between Chinggis and his eldest son, Jochi, a boy born in captivity and of similarly questionable heritage. Hailed for its sophistication and rich imagining of a remote world, The Blue Wolf puts a human cast on a legendary force that changed Asia and the world.¡Calcio!
By Juan Esteban Constain. 2010
"Constaín no ha escrito (solamente) una novela sobre fútbol. La suya es una novela erudita sin ser solemne, brutalmente divertida…
pero nunca chabacana". Juan Gabriel Vásquez El profesor Arnaldo Momigliano asiste en Oxford al legendario "zoológico", un exclusivo conciliábulo en el que los más respetados eruditos en el mundo clásico hacían una pausa en sus serísimas faenas para desmelenarse y divertirse en un campeonato de improvisaciones. Su tema parecía ser inocente: los juegos de pelota de la antigüedad. Pero en su intervención sugiere, nada menos que rodeado de pundonorosos británicos, que el fútbol no nació en Inglaterra sino en Italia. El divertimento académico deriva en un asunto de honor nacional, y para dirimirlo Momigliano desempolva un documento que da cuenta del primer partido de fútbol de la historia, un zafarrancho épico en la Florencia renacentista entre los soldados invasores del emperador Carlos V y los sitiados soldados leales al papa Clemente VII. Literatura Random House recupera, diez años después de su publicación, la segunda novela de Juan Esteban Constaín, una obra "extraña, original", como la saludó Arturo Pérez-Reverte cuando la conoció admirado, y también lúdica, inteligente, gratísima de leer.The Way Back: The funny, insightful and hopeful family adventure you need in 2021
By Jamie Fewery. 2020
A moving, funny, sweeping and emotional family drama perfect for fans of David Nicholls, Beth O'Leary, Mike Gayle and Caroline…
Hulse.* * * * * * *If you're reading this, my funeral must have just finished. I've got something to ask of you...Who knows, you might even enjoy it?The Cadogan children haven't spoken to each other for three years. But their father, Gerry, has a plan to bring them together. To scatter his ashes, they must first drive his old camper van up to Scotland...For the trip, Gerry has provided them with three family photo albums and a bottle of single malt whisky.But will the journey help banish their ghosts and turn them back into a family? Or will it show them exactly why they've stayed apart for so long?* * * * * * *Praise for Jamie Fewery:'Moving, honest, sad and hopeful' MIRANDA DICKINSON'Will melt your heart' VERONICA HENRY'Clever, moving, funny, insightful' ZOE FOLBIGG'Made me do a proper ugly cry' DOMESTIC SLUTTERY