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The Sixteen Satires
By Juvenal. 1998
Perhaps more than any other writer, Juvenal (c. AD 55-138) captures the splendour, the squalor and the sheer energy of…
everyday Roman life. In The Sixteen Satires he evokes a fascinating world of whores, fortune-tellers, boozy politicians, slick lawyers, shameless sycophants, ageing flirts and downtrodden teachers. A member of the traditional land-owning class that was rapidly seeing power slip into the hands of outsiders, Juvenal also creates savage portraits of decadent aristocrats - male and female - seeking excitement among the lower orders of actors and gladiators, and of the jumped-up sons of newly-rich former slaves. Constantly comparing the corruption of his own generation with its stern and upright forebears, Juvenal's powers of irony and invective make his work a stunningly satirical and bitter denunciation of the degeneracy of Roman societyThe Pancatantra
By Visnu Sarma, Visnu Sarma. 1993
First recorded 1500 years ago, but taking its origins from a far earlier oral tradition, the Pancatantra is ascribed by…
legend to the celebrated, half-mythical teacher Visnu Sarma. Asked by a great king to awaken the dulled intelligence of his three idle sons, the aging Sarma is said to have composed the great work as a series of entertaining and edifying fables narrated by a wide range of humans and animals, and together intended to provide the young princes with vital guidance for life. Since first leaving India before AD 570, the Pancatantra has been widely translated and has influenced a cast number of works in India, the Arab world and Europe, including the Arabian Nights, the Canterbury Tales and the Fables of La Fontaine. Enduring and profound, it is among the earliest and most popular of all books of fables.The Modern Library: The 200 Best Novels in English Since 1950
By Carmen Callil, Colm Toibin. 2011
For Colm Toíbín and Carmen Callil there is no difference between literary and commercial writing - there is only the…
good novel: engrossing, inspirational, compelling. In their selection of the best 200 novels written since 1950, the editors make a case for the best and the best-loved works and argue why each should be considered a modern classic. Enlightening, often unexpected and always engaging this tour through the world of fiction is full of surprises, forgotten masterpieces and a valuable guide to what to read next. Authors in the collection include Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Daphne du Maurier, Patrick Hamilton, Carson McCullers, J. D. Salinger, Bernard Malamud; Flannery O'Connor, Mulk Raj Anand, Raymond Chandler, L. P. Hartley, Amos Tutuola, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Samuel Beckett, Patricia Highsmith, Chinua Achebe, Isak Dineson, Alan Sillitoe, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Grace Paley, Harper Lee, Olivia Manning and Mordecai Richler.The Ambivalent Detective in Victorian Sensation Novels studies how the detective as a literary character evolved through the mid-nineteenth century…
in England, as seen in sensation novels. In contrast to most assumptions about the English detective, Yoon argues that the detective was more often tolerated than admired following the establishment of professional detectives in the London Metropolitan Police Force in 1842. Through studying the historical and literary contexts between the 1840s to the 1860s, Yoon argues that the detective was seen as a suspicious, even mistrusted and disdained, figure who was nonetheless viewed as necessary to combat rising levels of crime. The detective as a literary character responded to the often contradictory values and aspirations of the middle class, representing an independent masculinity and laying claim to scientific authority. This study surveys novels by Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and Wilkie Collins, alongside lesser-known writers like William Russell, James Redding Ware (pseudonym Andrew Forrester), and William Stephens Hayward. This book contributes to the study of mid-nineteenth-century Victorian culture and connects with broader studies of the detective fiction genre.Evelyn's Husband
By Charles W. Chesnutt. 2005
The critique of white male society that Charles W. Chesnutt launched in A Marrow of Tradition continues in Evelyn's Husband,…
one of six manuscripts left unpublished when this highly regarded African American innovator died. Set in Boston society, on a deserted Caribbean island, and in Brazil, Evelyn's Husbandis the story of two men—one old, one young—in love with the same young woman. Late in his career Chesnutt embarked on a period of experimentation with eccentric forms, finishing this hybrid of a romance and adventure story just before publishing his last work, The Colonel's Dream. In Evelyn's Husband, Chesnutt crafts a parody examining white male roles in the early 1900s, a time when there was rampant anxiety over the subject. In Boston, the older man is left at the altar when his bride-to-be flees and marries a young architect. Later, trapped on an island together, the jilted lover and the young husband find a productive middle ground between the dilettante and the primitive. Along with A Business Career, this novel marks Chesnutt's achievement in being among the first African American authors to defy the color barrier and write fiction with a white cast of main characters.Selected works and incidental writings by the celebrated author of A River Runs Through It, plus excerpts from a 1986…
interview.In his eighty-seven years, Norman Maclean played many parts: fisherman, logger, firefighter, scholar, teacher. But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career.In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.Various and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices.Praise for The Norman MacLean Reader“A solid, satisfying, well-made body of work by a patient craftsman.” —Chicago Tribune“The Norman Maclean Reader fills out and makes more human the impressions of the restless, inquiring storyteller we saw in previously published works. In his writings, at their best, we too feel the thrusts and strains. He is a writer of great beauty, in his own terms.” —Financial Times“Weltzien has not only done great service for Norman Maclean’s readers, he has rightly expanded Maclean’s place in American literature . . . . For me, The Norman Maclean reader is discovered treasure.” —Bloomsbury ReviewStudying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction
By Eric Sandberg. 2024
The primary aim of Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction is to introduce the emerging cross-disciplinary area of study that…
combines the fields of crime fiction studies and criminology. The study of crime fiction as a genre has a long history within literary studies, and is becoming increasingly prominent in twenty-first-century scholarship. Less attention, however, has been paid to the ways in which elements of criminology, or the systematic study of crime and criminal behaviour from a wide range of perspectives, have influenced the production and reception of crime narratives. Similarly, not enough attention has been paid to the ways in which crime fiction as a genre can inform and enliven the study of criminology. Written largely for undergraduate and graduate students, but also for scholars of crime fiction and criminology interested in thinking across disciplinary boundaries, Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction provides full coverage of the backgrounds of the related fields of crime fiction studies and criminology, and explores the many ways they are reciprocally illuminating. The four main chapters in Section 1 (Orient You) familiarize readers with the history and contours of the broad fields within which Studying Crime in Fiction: An Introduction operates. It introduces the history of crime and criminology, as well the history of crime fiction and the academic field dedicated to its study. In its final chapter it looks at the ways these areas of study can be conceptually interrelated. Section 2 of the book (Equip You) is dedicated to examining aspects of criminological theory in relation to various forms of crime fiction. It highlights a range of the most relevant theories, paradigms, and problematics of criminology that appear in, shed light on, or can be effectively illuminated through reference to crime fiction. Its five chapters deal with the definition of crime; explanations for crime and criminal behaviour; investigations into crime; the experience of crime; and, finally, punishments for crime. All of these areas are examined alongside examples of crime fiction drawn from across the genre’s history. Section 3 (Enable You) presents six case studies. Each of these reads a work of crime fiction alongside one or more criminological approaches. Each case study is supplemented with a set of questions addressing issues central to the study of crime in fiction.The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction
By Pamela Bedore. 2024
Who are the most important Canadian crime and detective writers? How do they help represent Canada as a nation? How…
do they distinguish Canada’s approach to questions of crime, detection, and social justice from those of other countries? The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction provides a much-needed investigation into how crime and detection have been, are, and will be represented within Canada’s national literature, with an attention to contemporary popular and literary texts. The book draws together a representative set of established Canadian authors who would appear in most courses on Canadian crime and detective fiction, while also introducing a few authors less established in the field. Ultimately, the book argues that crime fiction is a space of enormously productive hybridity that offers fresh new approaches to considering questions of national identity, gender, race, sexuality, and even genre.The art of mystery: the search for questions (Art Of... Ser.)
By Maud Casey. 2018
Where does mystery reside in a work of fiction Maud Casey takes us into the Land of Un a space…
of uncertainty and unknowing to find out and looks at the variety of ways mystery is created through character, image, structure, and haunted texts, including the novels of Shirley Jackson, Paul Yoon, J. M. Coetzee, and more. Casey's wide-ranging discussion encompasses spirit photography, the radical nature of empathy, and contradictory characters, as she searches for questions rather than answers. Adult. UnratedSouthland
By Nina Revoyr. 2003
A compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. "I'm an LA…
native with a lot of love for LA crime fiction, but instead of preaching to the noir choir about The Long Goodbye, I'd like to gush about Southland by Nina Revoyr. It's a brilliant, ambitious, moving literary crime novel about two families in South Los Angeles and their tangled history between the 1930s and the 1990s. The central mystery is the death of four black boys in a Japanese-American man's store during the Watts Rebellion of 1965. It's a powerful book, one that I think about often, as well as a huge influence on my work. Right up there with Chandler." --Stephanie Cha (of the LARB) in GQ on "The Greatest Crime Novelists on Their Favorite Crime Novels Ever" "A story about injustice dressed up as a detective novel, Southland reminds us that activism is both an ongoing project and a deeply personal choice." --Vallaire Wallace in Electric Lit on "The Novel That Shows Us How to Face our Past to Change Our Future" "Jackie Ishida's grandfather had a store in Watts where four boys were killed during the riots in 1965, a mystery she attempts to solve." --New York Times Book Review, Ross MacDonald on "Where Noir Lives in the City of Angels" "It is the kind of saga that often epitomizes and shocks LA--friction and violence between races and cultures." --Los Angeles Times, named one of the 20 Essential LA Crime Books "When I started working on Your House Will Pay, I hoped to write something that was half as smart and affecting as Southland. Revoyr's novel takes place in the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles, following two families--one black, one Japanese--over several decades. It's a character-driven saga with the engine of a crime novel, unravelling a horrific multiple murder that took place in the chaotic days of the Watts Rebellion in 1965." --The Guardian (UK), one of Steph Cha's Top 10 Books About Trouble in Los Angeles "[A]n absolutely compelling story of family and racial tragedy. Revoyr's novel is honest in detailing southern California's brutal history, and honorable in showing how families survived with love and tenacity and dignity." --Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon Southland brings us a fascinating story of race, love, murder and history, against the backdrop of an ever-changing Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four African-American boys were killed in the store Frank owned during the Watts Riots of 1965. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, Jackie tries to piece together the story of the boys' deaths. In the process, she unearths the long-held secrets of her family's history. Southland depicts a young woman in the process of learning that her own history has bestowed upon her a deep obligation to be engaged in the larger world. And in Frank Sakai and his African-American friends, it presents characters who find significant common ground in their struggles, but who also engage each other across grounds--historical and cultural--that are still very much in dispute. Moving in and out of the past--from the internment camps of World War II, to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s, to the streets of Watts in the 1960s, to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s--Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.The figure of the detective: a literary history and analysis
By Charles Brownson. 2014
"This book begins with a history of the detective genre, coextensive with the novel itself, identifying the attitudes and institutions…
needed for the genre to emerge in its mature form around 1880. The theory of the genre is laid out along with its central theme of the getting and deployment of knowledge. Sherlock Holmes, the English Classic stories and their inheritors are examined in light of this theme and the balance of two forms of knowledge used in fictional detection--cool or rational, and warm or emotional. The evolution of the genre formula is driven by changes in the social climate in which it is embedded. These changes explain the decay of the English Classic and its replacement by noir, hardboiled and spy stories, to end in the cul-de-sac of the thriller and the nostalgic Neo-Classic. Possible new forms of the detective story are suggested." -- Provided by publisherHope Leslie, or, Early times in the Massachusetts: Or, Early Times In The Massachusetts (American Women Writers Ser.)
By Catharine Maria Sedgwick. 1987
Set in seventeenth-century New England, Hope Leslie portrays early American life and celebrates the role of women in history. At…
the heart of the story is a cross-cultural friendship between Hope-Leslie, a spirited thinker in a repressive Puritan society and Magawisca, the passionate daughter of a Pequot chief. It challenges the conventional view of Indians, tackles interracial marriage and claims for women their rightful place in history. Adult. UnratedThis book presents an innovative and imaginative reading of contemporary Australian literature in the context of unprecedented ecological crisis. The Australian…
continent has seen significant, rapid changes to its cultures and land-use from the impact of British colonial rule, yet there is a rich history of Indigenous land-ethics and cosmological thought. By using the age-old idea of ‘cosmos’—the order of the world—to foreground ideas of a good order and chaos, reciprocity and more-than-human agency, this book interrogates the Anthropocene in Australia, focusing on notions of colonisation, farming, mining, bioethics, technology, environmental justice and sovereignty. It offers ‘cosmological readings’ of a diverse range of authors—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—as a challenge to the Anthropocene’s decline-narrative. As a result, it reactivates ‘cosmos’ as an ethical vision and a transculturally important counter-concept to the Anthropocene. Kathrin Bartha-Mitchell argues that the arts can help us envision radical cosmologies of being in and with the planet, and to address the very real social and environmental problems of our era. This book will be of particular interest to scholars and students of Ecocriticism, Environmental Humanities, and postcolonial, transcultural and Indigenous studies, with a primary focus on Australian, New Zealand, Oceanic and Pacific area studies.The Financier: The Critical Edition (The Dreiser Edition)
By Theodore Dreiser. 2010
First published in 1912, Theodore Dreiser's third novel, The Financier, captures the ruthlessness and sparkle of the Gilded Age alongside…
the charismatic amorality of the power brokers and bankers of the mid-nineteenth century. This volume is the first modern edition of The Financier to draw on the uncorrected page proofs of the original 1912 version, which established Dreiser as a master of the American business novel. The novel was the first volume of Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire, also known as the Cowperwood Trilogy, which includes The Titan (1914) and The Stoic (1947). Dreiser laboriously researched the business practices and personal exploits of real-life robber baron Charles Yerkes to narrate Frank Algernon Cowperwood's early career in The Financier, which explores the unscrupulous world of finance from the Civil War through the panic incited by the 1871 Chicago fire. In 1927, the monumental novel reappeared in a radically revised version for which Dreiser, notorious for lengthy novels, agreed to cut more than two hundred and seventy pages. This revised version became the most familiar, reprinted by publishers and studied by scholars for decades. For this new edition, Roark Mulligan meticulously reviewed earlier versions of the novel and its publication history, including the last-minute removal of paragraphs, pages, and even whole chapters from the 1912 edition, cuts based mainly on the advice of H. L. Mencken. The restored text better matches Dreiser's original vision for the work. More than three hundred additional pages not available to modern readers--including those cut from the 1927 edition and more than seventy hastily removed from the manuscript just days before publication in 1912--more effectively establish characterization and motivation. Restored passages dedicated to the internal thoughts of major and minor characters bring a softer dimension to a novel primarily celebrated for its realistic attention to the cold external world of finance. Mulligan's historical commentary reveals new insights into Dreiser's creative practices and how his business knowledge shaped The Financier. This supplemental material considers the novel's place within the tradition of American business novels and its reflections on the scandalous business practices of the robber baron era.Fifteen stories set in California during the 1850s Gold Rush. Archetypal characters--gold-fevered pioneers, gamblers, preachers, drunkards, cattle-robbers, and iron-willed women--experience…
twists of fortune and the realities of frontier life. Reuben H. Margolin introduces the collection, which spans the career of this author, poet, and literary critic. 1997Gaston Leroux, le vrai Rouletabille
By Gaston Leroux. 2003
"Né à Paris le 6 mai 1868, Gaston Leroux est mort à Nice le 15 avril 1927. Entre ces dates,…
le temps d'une oeuvre remplie d'énigmes a fait de son auteur un maître du roman policier. Gaston Leroux a donc vécu un peu plus d'un demi-siècle, mais avec l'éternité devant lui. Des générations de lecteurs ont prolongé son existence bien au-delà de ses rêves d'écrivain voulant échapper aux incertitudes terrestres. Ses deux romans les plus célèbres, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune et Le Parfum de la dame en noir, suffisent à sa gloire qui s'est incarnée à travers le personnage du jeune journaliste Joseph Rouletabille. Gaston Leroux, lui-même reporter, a été chasseur de mystères, aussi débrouillard que son héros lancé dans des aventures extraordinaires. Le vrai Rouletabille, c'est lui, comme le raconte Jean-Claude Lamy dans cette biographie, la seule existante à ce jour. Les Six Histoires épouvantables qui complètent ce volume montrent aussi de quelle merveilleuse façon ce constructeur d'intrigues incroyables pouvait faire irruption dans le fantastique - sans pour autant perdre le bon bout de la raison ." -- 4e de couv