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Teatime for the Firefly: A Novel (Mira Ser.)
By Shona Patel. 2015
“Effortlessly transports readers back to India on the brink of independence . . . fans of women’s romantic fiction will be enchanted.” —Booklist,…
starred reviewMy name is Layla and I was born under an unlucky star. For a young girl growing up in India, this is bad news. But everything began to change for me one spring day in 1943, when three unconnected incidents, like tiny droplets on a lily leaf, tipped and rolled into one. It was that tiny shift in the cosmos, I believe, that tipped us together—me and Manik Deb.Despite being born under an inauspicious horoscope, Layla Roy is raised to be educated and independent. By cleverly manipulating the hand fortune has dealt her, she finds love with Manik Deb—a man betrothed to another. All were minor miracles in India that spring of 1943, when women’s lives were predetermined—if not by the stars, then by centuries of family tradition and social order.Layla’s life as a married woman takes her into the jungles of Assam, where the world’s finest tea thrives on plantations run by native labor and British efficiency. Fascinated by the culture of expats who seem unfazed by earthquakes and man-eating leopards, she struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives, and the servants now under her charge.Navigating the tea-garden set won’t be her biggest challenge. Powerful changes are sweeping India on the heels of WWII. Colonial society is at a tipping point, and Layla and Manik are caught in a perilous racial divide that threatens their very lives.“A lyrical novel that touches on themes both huge and intimate.” —Kirkus ReviewsGive My Love to the Savages: Stories
By Chris Stuck. 2021
“A harrowing portrait of race relations in America, as beautiful as it is urgent.”—Entertainment Weekly“Black satire with bite, like Zora…
Neale Hurston used to do, with a smile and a sharp elbow. A touch of Paul Beatty, a dose of Dolemite, and a serving of Dorothy Parker, too. Give My Love to the Savages announces Chris Stuck as a fearless talent, a debut that'll make your sides and your heart hurt.”—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling“Give My Love To The Savages is a wildly inventive collection of provocative stories about navigating the minefield of black masculinity in America. Stuck’s fresh and fearless perspective overturns assumptions about race and identity to reveal complex layers of absurdity. At times merciless, always darkly funny, these are stories of unexpected communion, connection, and compassion.”—Chanelle Benz, author of The Gone DeadA provocative and raw debut collection of short fiction reminiscent of Junot Diaz’s Drown. A Black man’s life, told in scenes—through every time he’s been called nigger. A Black son who visits his estranged white father in Los Angeles just as the ’92 riots begin. A Black Republican, coping with a skin disease that has turned him white, is forced to reconsider his life. A young Black man, fetishized by an older white woman he’s just met, is offered a strange and tempting proposal. The nine tales in Give My Love to the Savages illuminate the multifaceted Black experience, exploring the thorny intersections of race, identity, and Black life through an extraordinary cast of characters. From the absurd to the starkly realistic, these stories take aim at the ironies and contradictions of the American racial experience. Chris Stuck traverses the dividing lines, and attempts to create meaning from them in unique and unusual ways. Each story considers a marker of our current culture, from uprisings and sly and not-so-sly racism, to Black fetishization and conservatism, to the obstacles placed in front of Black masculinity and Black and interracial relationships by society and circumstance.Setting these stories across America, from Los Angeles, Phoenix and the Pacific Northwest, to New York and Washington, DC, to the suburbs and small Midwestern towns, Stuck uses place to expose the absurdity of race and the odd ways that Black people and white people converge and retreat, rub against and bump into one another.Ultimately, Give My Love to the Savages is the story of America. With biting humor and careful honesty, Stuck riffs on the dichotomy of love and barbarity—the yin and yang of racial experience—and the difficult and uncertain terrain Black Americans must navigate in pursuit of their desires.Great Japanese Stories: 10 Parallel Texts (Parallel Texts)
By Various. 1982
A captivating selection of short stories in the original Japanese alongside their English translationsThis new dual-language edition of ten stories…
selected from The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories celebrates some of the very best Japanese literature from the past hundred years. Each story appears in the original Japanese alongside an expert English translation, providing unique cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners. Ranging from a witty send-up of modern social graces to a powerful evocation of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, this remarkable collection includes works from beloved authors Abe Akira, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Betsuyaku Minoru, Hoshi Shin'ichi, Kawakami Mieko, Kono Taeko, Murakami Haruki, Oba Minako, Ota Yoko and Uchida Hyakken.Great Italian Stories: 10 Parallel Texts (Parallel Texts)
By Various. 2019
A spellbinding selection of short stories in the original Italian alongside their English translationsThis new dual-language edition of ten stories…
selected from The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories celebrates some of the very best twentieth-century literature from Italy. Each story appears in the original Italian alongside an expert English translation, providing unique cultural insight and literary inspiration for language learners. Ranging from a spellbinding tale of the supernatural to a powerful portrait of post-war Italy, this revelatory collection includes works from beloved authors, Italo Calvino, Fausta Cialente, Alba de Céspedes, Grazia Deledda, Natalia Ginzburg, Elsa Morante, Lalla Romano, Umberto Saba, Alberto Savinio, and Elio Vittorini.The Penguin Book of Dutch Short Stories (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Joost Zwagerman. 2016
'The stories here will provoke, delight and impress. Joost Zwagerman's selection forms a fascinating guidebook to a landscape you'll surely…
want to wander in again.' Clare Lowden, TLS'There is a lot of northern European melancholy in the collection, though often tinged with wry humour...an excellent book' Jonathan Gibbs, Minor Literatures'We were kids - but good kids. If I may say so myself. We're much smarter now, so smart it's pathetic. Except for Bavink, who went crazy'A husband forms gruesome plans for his new fridge; a government employee has a haunting experience on his commute home; prisoners serve as entertainment for wealthy party guests; an army officer suffers a monstrous tropical illness. These short stories contain some of the most groundbreaking and innovative writing in Dutch literature from 1915 to the present day, with most pieces appearing here in English for the first time. Blending unforgettable snapshots of the realities of everyday life with surrealism, fantasy and subversion, this collection shows Dutch writing to be an integral part of world literary history.Joost Zwagerman (1963-2015) was a novelist, poet, essayist and editor of several anthologies. He started his career as a writer with bestselling novels, describing the atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, such as Gimmick!(1988) and False Light (1991). In later years, he concentrated on writing essays - notably on pop culture and visual arts - and poetry. Suicide was the theme of the novel Six Stars (2002). He took his own life just after having published a new collection of essays on art, The Museum of Light.A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel): A Novel
By James Kincaid, Percival Everett. 2004
Praise for Percival Everett:"If Percival Everett isn't already a household name, it's because people are more interested in politics than…
truth."--Madison Smartt Bell, author of The Washington Square Ensemble"Everett's talent is multifaceted, sparked by a satiric brilliance that could place him alongside Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison . . ."--Publishers Weekly"I think Percival Everett is a genius. I've been a fan since his first novel. He continues to amaze me with each novel--as if he likes making 90-degree turns to see what's around the corner, and then over the edge . . . He's a brilliant writer and so damn smart I envy him."--Terry McMillan, author of MamaA fictitious and satirical chronicle of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's desire to pen a history of African-Americans--his and his aides' belief being that he has done as much, or more, than any American to shape that history. An epistolary novel, The History follows the letters of loose cannon Congressional office workers, insane interns at a large New York publishing house and disturbed publishing executives, along with homicidal rival editors, kindly family friends, and an aspiring author named Septic. Strom Thurmond appears charming and open, mad and sure of his place in American history.Percival Everett is the author of 15 works of fiction, among them Glyph, Watershed and Frenzy. His most recent novel, Erasure, won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and did little to earn him friends.James Kincaid is an English professor at the University of Southern California and has written seven books in literary theory and cultural studies. These books and Kincaid himself have gradually lost their moorings in the academic world, so there was nothing left for him to do but to adopt the guise of fiction writer. Writing about madness comes easy to him.