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Showing 1 - 20 of 101 items
By Avner Mandelman. 2005
Nine stories about the Israeli experience. In "Terror" a father beats the son who fails to stand up for his…
five-year-old brother, thus instilling the precept that, right or wrong, family comes first, even before justice or fear. Strong language and some violence. Sophie Brody Medal. 2005By Antonia Arslan. 2006
"[...] En racontant l'histoire de son grand-oncle Sempad et de sa famille pendant le génocide arménien, Antonia Arslan écrit la…
chronique passionnante d'une des plus grandes tragédies du XXe siècle. Porté par une langue chatoyante qui rend hommage à la littérature populaire arménienne, un livre pudique, intense et émouvant. -- 4e de couvBy Constantin Melnik. 1997
A travers ces Lettres à une jeune espionne, l'auteur, responsable des services secrets sous de Gaulle et maître incontesté du…
Renseignement, nous dévoile les mécanismes, "la psychologie et les techniques du plus obscur des mondes", celui des services secrets. [SDMBy Suzanne Kamata. 2007
A young mother fights impossible odds to be reunited with her child in this acutely insightful first novel about an…
intercultural marriage gone terribly wrong.Jill Parker is an American painter living in Japan. Far from the trendy gaijin neighborhoods of downtown Tokyo, she's settled in a remote seaside village where she makes ends meet as a bar hostess. Her world appears to open when she meets Yusuke, a savvy and sensitive art gallery owner who believes in her talent. But their love affair, and subsequent marriage, is doomed to a life of domestic hell, for Yusuke is the chonan, the eldest son, who assumes the role of rigid patriarch in his traditional family while Jill's duty is that of a servile Japanese wife. A daily battle of wills ensues as Jill resists instruction in the proper womanly arts. Even the long-anticipated birth of a son, Kei, fails to unite them. Divorce is the only way out, but in Japan a foreigner has no rights to custody, and Jill must choose between freedom and abandoning her child.Told with tenderness, humor, and an insider's knowledge of contemporary Japan, Losing Kei is the debut novel of an exceptional expatriate voice. Suzanne Kamata's work has appeared in over one hundred publications. She is the editor of The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and a forthcoming anthology from Beacon Press on parenting children with disabilities. A five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, she has twice won the Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest.By Ryu Okazaki, Joseph Sigrist, Kenji Miyazawa, D. M. Stroud. 2008
One night, alone on a hilltop, a young boy is swept aboard a magical train bound for the Milky Way.…
A classic in Japan, this tender fable is a book of great wisdom, offering insight into the afterlife.One of Japan's greatest storytellers, Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) was a teacher, author, poet, and scientist.By Lucie Wilk. 2013
An Amazon.ca Best Book of 2013: Top 100/Editors' Pick"A gorgeous debut."-JOSEPH BOYDEN, author of Through Black Spruce and The OrendaAt…
the hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, Bryce is learning to predict the worst. Racing heart: infection, probably malaria. He'll send Iris for saline. Shortness of breath? TB. Another patient rolled to the ward. And the round swellings, the rashes with dimpled centres, the small rough patches on a boy's foot? HIV. Iris will make him comfortable. They'll move on.Then there will be sleeplessness, rationed energy, a censuring of hope: the doctor's disease. Iris sees that one all the time.Henry Bryce has come to Blantyre to work off the grief he feels for his old life, but he can't adjust to the hopelessness that surrounds him. He relies increasingly upon Sister Iris's steady presence. Yet it's not until an accident brings them both to a village outpost that Bryce realizes the personal sacrifices Iris has made for her medical training, or that Iris in turn comes to fathom the depth of Henry's loss.The Strength of Bone is the story of a Western doctor, a Malawian nurse, and the crises that push both of them to the brink of collapse. With biting emotion and a pathological eye for detail, novelist and medical doctor Lucie Wilk demonstrates how, in a place where knowledge can frustrate as often as it heals, true strength requires the flexibility to let go.Advance Praise for The Strength of Bone"In supple, beautiful prose, Lucie Wilk recounts a doctor's struggle with technology and faith, and with the mysteries of death and love ... The Strength of Bone is an extraordinary look at the clash of worlds."-ANNABEL LYON, author of The Golden Mean and The Sweet GirlLucie Wilk grew up in Toronto and completed her medical training in Vancouver. Her short fiction has been nominated for the McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize Anthology, longlisted for a CBC Canada Writes literary prize, and has appeared in Descant, Prairie Fire and Shortfire Press. She is working toward an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. She practices medicine and lives with her husband and two children in London, UK.By David Homel, Fred A. Reed, Serge Lamothe. 2004
In the post-apocalyptic future, 50 years after the last government of turbo-liberals and its president-for-life have been elected, a group…
of researchers convenes a Congress to address the curious cultural phenomenon of the Baldwins, whose stories have been gathered and archived by the chroniclers. This novel of fragments represents contemporary prose at its most daring and experimental.By David Homel, Fred Reed, Serge Lamothe. 2004
In the post-apocalyptic future, 50 years after the last government of turbo-liberals and its president-for-life have been elected, a group…
of researchers convenes a Congress to address the curious cultural phenomenon of the Baldwins, whose stories have been gathered and archived by the chroniclers. This novel of fragments represents contemporary prose at its most daring and experimental.By Niccolò Machiavelli, Christopher Celenza. 2018
Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential works. From the musings of intellectuals…
such as Thomas Paine in Common Sense to the striking personal narrative of Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our intellectual history through the words of the exceptional few.Widely acknowledged as Machiavelli’s defining work, The Prince is an innovative and rich treatise marked by his political theories and the principles of leadership. Based upon his own experiences witnessing “the actions of great men” and the often immoral aspects that come with power, Machiavelli encouraged ambition amongst leaders—which was a break from the philosophy of other contemporary thinkers. The Prince identifies the aims of powerful leaders, which can help to justify the use of largely immoral means in their methods.With a new foreword by scholar Christopher Celenza, this essential work on politics contemplates leadership in a manner still relevant today. This lesson in autocratic rule will provide the reader with the author’s rational approach to control and the contextualization for the term “Machiavellian.”By Olga Grjasnowa. 2019
Syria - a country at war Amal, Hammoudi and Youssef are young and ambitious, the face of modern Syria. But…
when civil war tears through their homeland, they are left with a horrifying choice: risk death by staying in the country they love, or flee in search of a new life elsewhere? From one of Germany's most talented literary voices comes this intricately woven story of brutality, loss, and how hope can shine through when darkness feels overwhelming.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.By Kōbō Abe. 2017
In the aftermath of World War II, Kuki Kyūzō, a Japanese youth raised in the puppet state of Manchuria, struggles…
to return home to Japan. What follows is a wild journey involving drugs, smuggling, chases, and capture. Kyūzō finally makes his way to the waters off Japan but finds himself unable to disembark. His nation remains inaccessible to him, and now he questions its very existence. Beasts Head for Home is an acute novel of identity, belonging, and the vagaries of human behavior from an exceptional modern Japanese author.By Mr Sidhhartha Sarma. 2020
The soil of central India hides more than the bones of long-dead giants. The East India Company is master of…
almost the entire subcontinent, but real power is now with the Crown. Far from the great games of the empire, Captain William Henry Sleeman is content to administer Jabalpur district and dig for remnants of petrified bones with his charming and knowledgeable wife. Until he is tasked with investigating the activities of an obscure group of criminals who are said to strangle their victims. As Sleeman uncovers the many layers of the Phansigar problem, he finds a language unlike any other, and a set of beliefs, lore and superstitions seemingly drawn from the soul of the countryside. He finds orchards of corpses, and a hierarchy of stranglers, but also ordinary men driven to murder. He hears subtle murmurs of discontentment at the changes which have come to a land believed by some to be unchanging. He finds auguries of a conflict to come. And behind it all, the legend of a mysterious, beautiful man, whose capture might be the key to understanding the Phansigars. Sleeman&’s inquiries will make him confront the nature of his beloved adopted homeland and of the mighty people in Calcutta who he serves. Through the prism of caste, the consequent web of intricate social and cultural relationships, and the nature of travel in the hinterland, he will see the real face of India and come across its uncomfortable, bleak truths. But to unravel such truths is not easy…By Huang Huang Chun-ming. 2001
From the preeminent writer of Taiwanese nativist fiction and the leading translator of Chinese literature come these poignant accounts of…
everyday life in rural and small-town Taiwan. Huang is frequently cited as one of the most original and gifted storytellers in the Chinese language, and these selections reveal his genius. In "The Two Sign Painters," TV reporters ambush two young workers from the country taking a break atop a twenty-four-story building. "His Son's Big Doll" introduces the tortured soul inside a walking advertisement, and in "Xiaoqi's Cap" a dissatisfied pressure-cooker salesman is fascinated by a young schoolgirl.Huang's characters—generally the uneducated and disadvantaged who must cope with assaults on their traditionalism, hostility from their urban brethren and, of course, the debilitating effects of poverty—come to life in all their human uniqueness, free from idealization.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.By T'Ien-Hsin Chu. 2007
Chu T'ien-hsin's The Old Capital is a brilliant evocation of Taiwan's literature of nostalgia and remembrance. The novel is centered…
on the question, "Is it possible that none of your memories count?" and explores the reliability of remembrances and the thin line that separates fact from fantasy.Comprised of four thematically linked stories and a novella, The Old Capital focuses on the cultural and psychological realities of contemporary Taiwan. The stories are narrated by individuals who share an aching nostalgia for a time long past. Strolling through modern Taipei, they return to the lost, imperfect memories called forth by the smells and sensations of their city, and try to reconcile themselves to their rapidly changing world. The novella is built on the memories and recollections of a woman trying to make sense of herself and her homeland. After a trip to Kyoto to meet with a friend, she returns to Taipei, where, having been mistaken for a Japanese tourist, she revisits the sites of her youth using a Japanese colonial map of the city. Seeing Taipei anew, the narrator confronts the complex nature of her identity, embodied in the contrast between a serene and preserved Kyoto and a thoroughly modernized and chaotic Taipei. The growing angst of these narrators reflects a deeper anxiety over the legacy of Japan and America in Taiwan. The titles of the stories themselves-"Death in Venice," "Man of La Mancha," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Hungarian Water"-reveal the strong currents of influence that run throughout the collection and shape the content and texture of the writing. In his meticulous translation, Howard Goldblatt captures the casual, intimate feel of Chu T'ien-hsin's writing while also maintaining its multiple layers of meaning. An intertextual masterpiece, The Old Capital is a moving and highly sensual meditation on the elasticity of memory and its power to shape personal identity.By Tim MacGabhann. 2020
Life is finally on the right track for reporter and recovering addict Andrew: he is slowly coming to terms with…
the murder of his photographer boyfriend Carlos, pursuing sobriety and building a new home with a new partner. Andrew has almost forgotten about the story that ruined his life - but that story hasn't forgotten about him, and a series of deadly threats forces him into helping the very man whose gang murdered his boyfriend and left him homeless.A literary take on the classic chase movie, HOW TO BE NOWHERE is the sequel to Tim MacGabhann's genre-busting and critically-acclaimed debut CALL HIM MINE, and a blistering thrill-ride deep into the fog of Central America's murky present and tragic future.By Mahi Binebine. 2017
Sidi is dying.In the last days of this all-powerful tyrant, his faithful court fool takes stock of the decades he…
has spent in the king's service. For the many years have left certain indelible wounds.During his service, the fool has been the king's closest counsel, his most trusted companion and adviser, privy to the king's deepest secrets and most intimate thoughts. It is an honoured position for which many other courtiers would pay a hefty price. Something the fool understands only too well, for this closeness has indeed come at a terrible cost.What price the confidence of a great king? Is it stories, jokes, witty repartee? Or does the debt fall closer to home? Perhaps it must be paid far from the magnificent palaces, feasting and festivities of the royal court. Perhaps it must be paid in the death jails of a formidable prison fortress far out in the desert; a place so feared that few dare to speak its name . . .In his preface, the anonymous author of Courtesans and Opium describes his book as an act of penance for thirty…
years spent patronizing the brothels of Yangzhou. Written in the 1840s, his story is filled with vice and dark consequence, portraying the hazards of the city's seedy underbelly and warning others against the example of the Fool.Chinese literature's first true "city novel," Courtesans and Opium recounts the illustrious career of a debauched soul enveloped by enthralling pursuits and romantic illusions. While socially acceptable marriages were arranged and often loveless, brothels offered men accomplished courtesans who served as both enchanting companions and sensual lovers. These professional sirens dressed in the latest styles and dripped with gold, silver, and jewels. From an early age, they were taught to excel at various arts and graces, which transformed the brothel into a kind of club for men to meet, exchange gossip, and smoke opium at their leisure.The Fool's fable follows five sworn brothers and their respective relationships with Yangzhou courtesans, revealing in acute detail the lurid materialism of this dangerous world—its violence and corruption as well as its seductive but illusory promise. Never before translated into English, Courtesans and Opium offers a brilliant window into the decadence of nineteenth-century China.By Henning Mankell. 1973
An early gem from the creator of the Kurt Wallander series, charting the life of a principled man through tragedy,…
heartbreak, true love and the battle for a nation's soul."A very engaging portrait . . . There is a powerful lack of sentimentality to the telling of the story [and] a lovely and genuinely moving love story at the heart of the book." Liam Heylin, Irish ExaminerAt 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon in 1911, Oskar Johansson is caught in a blast in an industrial accident. The local newspaper reports him dead, but they are mistaken.Because Oskar Johansson is a born survivor.Though crippled, Oskar finds the strength to go on living and working. The Rock Blaster charts his long professional life - his hopes and dreams, sorrows and joys. His relationship with the woman whose love saved him, with the labour movement that gave him a cause to believe in, and with his children, who do not share his ideals.Henning Mankell's first published novel is steeped in the burning desire for social justice that informed his bestselling crime novels. Remarkably assured for a debut, it is written with scalpel-like precision, at once poetic and insightful in its depiction of a true working-class hero.Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding