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Presents Wright's complete autobiography for the first time, combining his childhood in the South (Black Boy) with his life as…
an adult in the North (American Hunger). Also contains his 1953 novel (The Outsider), a literary chronology, and extensive notes. Sequel to Richard Wright: Early Works (DB 41552, BR 10299). Violence, some strong language, and some descriptions of sexThis boy's life: a memoir
By Tobias Wolff. 1989
I remember nothing, and other reflections: and Other Reflections
By Nora Ephron. 2010
Continuing the lighthearted I Feel Bad about My Neck (DB 63378), screenwriter Ephron (b. 1941) discusses growing up with show-business…
parents, fantasizing about a potential inheritance, learning that no one likes her Christmas desserts, growing old, and dealing with her longtime memory problems. Bestseller. 2010The Manzoni Family: A Novel
By Natalia Ginzburg. 2019
Winner of the Bagutta Prize, The Manzoni Family set in ducal Italy and post-revolutionary France, captures the story of Alessandro…
Manzoni—celebrated Milanese nobleman, man of letters, and author of the masterpiece of nineteenth-century Italian literature, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed)—and the women of his life. The dynastic tale begins with the matriarchal figure of Giulia, the mother whom the young Alessandro Manzoni found in Paris after she had abandoned him as an infant. Following her, there is Enrichetta, the woman he and his mother chose to be his wife, and the many children she had by him until her death; literary friends from the beau monde in Italy and Paris; and Alessandro's second wife, Teresa, and her children. Against the background of Napoleonic occupation, the reestablishment of Austrian hegemony, and the stirrings of the revolutionary urge for unification and independence, Ginzburg gracefully weaves the story of the Manzoni dynasty, a family that seems to grow autonomously around the life of the writer, effortlessly incorporating the epic tumult and emotion of the age. Ginzburg explores this fascinating true story and celebrated author with the elegance that has assured her rightful place among history’s acclaimed literary titans.The City and the House: A Novel
By Natalia Ginzburg, Cynthia Zarin. 2019
A sophisticated new package for Natalia Ginzburg's classic fiction This powerful novel is set against the background of Italy from…
1939 to 1944, from the anxious months before the country entered the war, through the war years, to the Allied victory with its trailing wake of anxiety, disappointment, and grief.The city is Rome, the hub of Italian life and culture. The house is Le Margherite, a home where the sprawling cast of The City and the House is welcome. At the center of this lush epistolary novel is Lucrezia, mother of five and lover of many. Among her lovers-and perhaps the father of one of her children-is Giuseppe. After the sale of Le Margherite, the characters wander aimlessly as if in search of a lost paradise.What was once rooted, local, and specific has become general and common, a matter of strangers and of pointless arrivals and departures. And at the edge of the novel are people no longer able to form any sustained or sustaining relationships. Here, once again, Ginzburg pulls us through a thrilling and true exploration of the disintegration of family in modern society. She handles a host of characters with a deft touch and her typical impressionist hand, and offers a story full of humanity, passion, and keen perception.Drunken Angel
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the…
PTSD that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel that he hung on long enough to get into recovery. With his estranged daughter as inspiration, Kaufman cleaned himself up at age 40, taking full responsibility for nearly destroying himself, his work, and so many loved ones along the way. Kaufman minces no words as he looks back on a life pickled in self-pity, self-loathing, and guilt. Reading Drunken Angel is like watching an accident to see if any of the victims crawl away barely alive. Kaufman did, and here he delivers a lacerating, cautionary tale of a life wasted and reclaimed.Drunken Angel: A Memoir
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman has been compared to Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hubert Selby Jr., even Ernest Hemmingway--his life reads so much…
like a great movie that the world of cinema has just optioned his first memoir, Jew Boy, for a feature film. Drunken Angel, his new autobiographical work, drops like a sledgehammer. It is the most gripping, chilling and inspiring account ever written of a life-long battle with alcoholism and the struggle to write. Graphic in its grit, an education in pain, Drunken Angel is being hailed as "the Naked Lunch of memoirs." The book chronicles Kaufman's headlong plunge into the piratical life of a literary drunk, and takes us shamelessly through noirish alleyways of S&M sensuality, forbidden pleasures and pitfalls of adultery, the thrilling horrors of war, plus raging poetry nights, mental illness, homelessness, literary struggle and his strange, magnificent rise into a sobriety of personal triumph as crazily improbable as the famous and notorious figures he meets along the way. Drunken Angel contains revealing portraits of such literary figures as Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Acker, Barney Rosset, Anthony Burgess, Elie Wiesel, Ron Kolm, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jim Feast, Bernard Malamud, Hubert Selby Jr., Bob Holman, Sapphire, not to speak of the gutter dreamers, Nuyorican Poets, Unbearables, Babarians, Slammers, Black foot Indians, commandos, criminals, junkies, renegade cocktail waitresses, hoboes, painters, and a host of others who each in some way, big or small, play their part in peopling the wildly exilerating drama of Kaufman's passionate and exotic life. Whether the addiction be booze, women, violence, writing or fame, Kaufman honors us with an explicit honesty that only a writer of enormous power and artistic greatness can attain, and his life, as Drunken Angel poignantly shows, is a profoundly meaningful quest for truth and spiritual values.Drunken Angel
By Alan Kaufman. 2011
Alan Kaufman recounts with unvarnished honesty the story of the alcoholism that took him to the brink of death, the…
PTSD that drove him to the edge of madness, and the love that brought him back. Son of a French Holocaust survivor, Kaufman was a drinker so mauled by his indulgences that it is a marvel that he hung on long enough to get into recovery. With his estranged daughter as inspiration, Kaufman cleaned himself up at age 40, taking full responsibility for nearly destroying himself, his work, and so many loved ones along the way. Kaufman minces no words as he looks back on a life pickled in self-pity, self-loathing, and guilt. Reading Drunken Angel is like watching an accident to see if any of the victims crawl away barely alive. Kaufman did, and here he delivers a lacerating, cautionary tale of a life wasted and reclaimed.The right cheek: an autobiography (The French writers of Canada series)
By Claire Martin. 1968
In the second part of her autobiography, the author describes her adolescence and early womanhood in her father's house, one…
of gloom and oppressive brutality. The attitudes of the times towards sex and women are bitterly attacked and ridiculed. Sequel to "In an iron glove" (DC00901). 1975, c1968. Uniform title: Dans un gant de fer, v. 2, La joue droite.Shadow maker: the life of Gwendolyn MacEwen
By Rosemary Sullivan. 1995
Using the personal impressions of the poet's intimate friends, Rosemary Sullivan builds a composite portrait of Gwendolyn MacEwan, the Toronto…
poet who died in 1987 at the age of 46. The daughter of an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother, MacEwen's story is a painful one, yet the richness of her art and inner life redeemed the pain. Winner of the 1995 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction.With Borges
By Alberto Manguel. 2004
During the 1960s, Manguel, then a teenager, spent many evenings reading to Jorge Luis Borges, a giant of modern literature,…
because Borges had gradually become blind. As the author describes his visits to Borges in his dark, modest apartment, reading out loud and talking about books, we have a privileged look into the inner world of a literary legend, a window into the private life of one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. Winner of the Prix du Livre en Poitou-Charentes 2003.Molière
By Roger Duchêne. 1998
Molière n'a pas laissé de confidences. Pas une lettre, pas un mot. Il a près de quarante ans quand il…
commence à faire parler de lui. Sa vie et son oeuvre font scandale. On l'accuse de ruiner la religion, la famille, la morale. Et d'avoir épousé la fille de sa maîtresse, sa propre fille... Qui ne se priverait pas de le cocufier abondamment. Ses ennemis forgent sa légende noire, ses amis une légende dorée. Cette biographie les replace enfin dans leur contexte. En les prenant au sérieux, sans les tenir pour vraies, en les présentant au lecteur pour qu'il puisse juger à son tour. 1998.Willie, the life of W. Somerset Maugham: The Life Of W. Somerset Maugham
By Robert Calder. 1989
An examination of writer Maugham's homosexuality and unhappy marriage, his Victorian sense of propriety, his wanderlust, his verbal and financial…
generosity, and his turbulent relationship with his daughter. Winner of the 1989 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. 1989.Northrop Frye: a biography
By John Ayre. 1989
Northrop Frye authored three of the most influential books of literary criticism and his revolutionary theories established his international fame.…
In this biography, Ayre describes Frye's impoverished childhood and traces the progression of his work. Nominated for the City of Toronto and Trillium Awards.