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"Part social commentary, part mystery thriller...[Andean Express] is a chilling, tragic tale."-MultiCultural ReviewThis murder mystery follows a tragic overnight train… journey in 1952 from Bolivia to Chile, presenting a moving environment at once carnivalesque and sinister. The novel explores the social tensions characteristic of Bolivian society in a way that is both accessible and highly entertaining.Juan de Recacoechea was born in La Paz, Bolivia, and worked as a journalist in Europe for almost twenty years. After returning to his native country, he helped found Bolivia's first state-run television network and dedicated himself to fiction writing. His novel American Visa won Bolivia's National Book Prize, was adapted into an award-winning film, and was translated into English and published by Akashic Books to great critical acclaim.
A Depression-era comic masterpiece, E. P. O'Donnell's The Great Big Doorstep centers on the Crochets, a Cajun family who live… in a ramshackle house between the levee and the Mississippi River. The Crochets dream of one day owning a stately plantation befitting the magnificent cypress doorstep they have salvaged from the river and proudly display outside their humble home. The memorable characters in this novel have their own concerns: the patriarch, Commodo, is full of wild bravado as he fluctuates between scheming, laboring, and malingering; his wife reigns as the queen of retort, though toughened by years of making do and doing without. The Crochet children also cope with personal struggles: Topal, twenty, restless, and moody, and recently dumped by her fiancé; Arthur, eighteen, attempts to strike out on his own while dodging the coddling of his mother and the fury of his father; Evvie, almost fifteen, plans to join a religious order after renouncing a lover; and twins Gussie and Paul, and baby T. J., provide an ongoing chorus of laughter and tears. The Great Big Doorstep has remained a literary and cultural classic since its publication in 1941. In an 1979 afterword, Eudora Welty praises O'Donnell's comic genius, citing his "supreme gift" for dialogue, while Bryan Giemza's introduction underscores the work's place in the tradition of comic Southern novels.
A graphic memoir about the treatment of mental illness treating mental illness as a commodity and the often… unavoidable choice between sanity and happiness In her early twenties in New York City diagnosed with bipolar disorder Rachel Lindsay takes a job in advertising in order to secure healthcare coverage for her treatment But work takes a strange turn when she is promoted onto the Pfizer account and suddenly finds herself on the other side of the curtain developing ads for an antidepressant drug She is the audience of the work she s been pouring over and it highlights just how unhappy and trapped she feels stuck in an endless cycle of treatment insurance and medication Overwhelmed by the stress of her professional life and the self-scrutiny it inspires she begins to destabilize and while in the midst of a crushing job search her mania takes hold Her altered mindset yields a simple solution to quit her job and pursue life as an artist an identity she had abandoned in exchange for medical treatment When her parents intervene she finds herself hospitalized against her will and stripped of the control she felt she had finally reclaimed Over the course of her two weeks in the ward she struggles in the midst of doctors nurses patients and endless rules to find a path out of the hospital and this cycle of treatment One where she can live the life she wants finding freedom and autonomy without sacrificing her dreams in order to stay well
This five-volume series, British Women’s Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940, historically contextualizes and traces developments in women’s fiction from… 1840 to 1940. Critically assessing both canonical and lesser-known British women’s writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscape of women’s authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each of its volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined. Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s inaugurates the series by historically and culturally contextualizing Victorian women’s writing distinctly within the 1840s and 1850s. Using a range of critical perspectives including political and literary history, feminist approaches, disability studies, and the history of reading, the volume’s 16 original essays consider such developments as the construction of a post-Romantic tradition, the politicization of the domestic sphere, and the development of crime and sensation writing. Centrally, it reassesses key mid-nineteenth-century female authors in the context in which they first published while also recovering neglected women writers who helped to shape the literary landscape of the 1840s and 1850s.
This is the first book on Irish literature to focus on the theme of loss, and how it is represented… in Irish writing. It focuses on how literature is ideally suited to expressions and understanding of the nature of loss, given its ability to access and express emotions, sensations, feelings, and the visceral and haptic areas of experience. Dealing with feelings and with sensations, poems, novels and drama can allow for cathartic expressions of these emotions, as well as for a fuller understanding of what is involved in loss across all situations. The main notion of loss being dealt with is that of death, but feelings of loss in the wake of immigration and of the loss of certainties that defined notions of identity are also analysed. This volume will be of interest to scholars, students and researchers in Irish Studies, loss, memory, trauma, death, and cultural studies.
Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language --Ricardo Piglia What Saer presents marvelously is… the experience of reality and the characters attempts to write their own narratives within its excess --BookforumIn modern-day Paris Pich n Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript--which might be fictional or could be a memoir--by Doctor Real a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum Their trip which ends in disaster and fire is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone--even the other patients--into sleeping with her Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer s typically gorgeous Proustian style The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile--a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers--as well as an examination of madness Juan Jos Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation The author of numerous novels and short-story collections including Scars and La Grande Saer was awarded Spain s prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University She is the author of two manuscripts and in addition to Saer she has translated work by Carlos Pintado
This book introduces readers to linguistic stylistic analysis and combines both literary and linguistic analysis to explore suspense in crime… fiction. Employing critical linguistics, discourse analysis and functional grammar, it demonstrates that suspense in plot-based stories is created through non-linear, causative presentation of the narrative. The author investigates how plot sequence is manipulated to ensure the reader cannot resolve the order of events until the end of the tale. From two-dimensional circumstantial detection in mystery stories to three-dimensional re-evaluation of offender orientation, she uses a linguistic-based stylistic framework to analyse offender motive. She also employs a 'discourse-based' frame analysis to examine the plot structure of crime stories for micro context and set-up scenarios, demonstrating that it is the unravelling of these devices that creates the suspense in murder mysteries and thrillers alike. Finally, she shows how grammaticization of the offending-self reveals an embedded diegetic space in the offender engagement discourse, provoking an intellectual and affective response and reshaping our overall outlook of the crime in the story. This book will appeal to researchers and students from literary and non-literary backgrounds looking for theoretical and practical advice on the linguistic stylistic approach to reading texts.
The first translation of The Countess von Rudolstadt in more than a century brings to contemporary readers one of George… Sand's most ambitious and engaging novels, hailed by many scholars of French literature as her masterpiece. Consuelo, or the Countess von Rudolstadt, born the penniless daughter of a Spanish gypsy, is transformed into an opera star by the great maestro Porpora. Her peregrinations throughout Europe (especially Vienna, Berlin, and the Bohemian forest), become a quest undertaken on a number of levels: as a singer, as a woman, and as an unwilling subject of alienation and oppression.Sand's heroine moves through a mid-eighteenth-century Europe where absolute rulers mingle with Enlightenment philosophers and gender-bending members of secret societies plot moral and political revolution. As the old order breaks down, she undergoes a series of grueling initiations into radically redefined notions of marriage and social organization. In a novel by equal measures philosophical and lurid, nothing is what it seems. Written some fifty years after the French Revolution, the book taps into many of the political and religious currents that contributed to that social upheaval—and aims to channel their potential for future change.Fed by Sand's rich imagination and bold aspirations for social reform, The Countess von Rudolstadt is a sinuous novel of initiation, continuing the coming of age tale of the titular heroine of Sand's earlier Consuelo and drawing on such diverse models as Ann Radcliffe's Gothic tales and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.
A woman's place is saving the universe. Think comic books can’t feature strong female protagonists? Think again! In The Spectacular… Sisterhood of Superwomen you’ll meet the most fascinating exemplars of the powerful, compelling, entertaining, and heroic female characters who’ve populated comic books from the very beginning. This spectacular sisterhood includes costumed crimebusters like Miss Fury, super-spies like Tiffany Sinn, sci-fi pioneers like Gale Allen, and even kid troublemakers like Little Lulu. With vintage art, publication details, a decade-by-decade survey of industry trends and women’s roles in comics, and spotlights on iconic favorites like Wonder Woman and Ms. Marvel, The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen proves that not only do strong female protagonists belong in comics, they’ve always been there.
This book is the first comprehensive study of mainstream British dystopian fiction and the Cold War. Drawing on over 200 novels… and collections of short stories, the monograph explores the ways in which dystopian texts charted the lived experiences of the period, offering an extended analysis of authors' concerns about the geopolitical present and anxieties about the national future. Amongst the topics addressed are the processes of Cold War (autocracy, militarism, propaganda, intelligence, nuclear technologies), the decline of Britain's standing in global politics and the reduced status of intellectual culture in Cold War Britain. Although the focus is on dystopianism in the work of mainstream authors, including George Orwell, Doris Lessing, J. G. Ballard, Angela Carter and Anthony Burgess, a number of science-fiction novels are also discussed, making the book relevant to a wide range of researchers and students of twentieth-century British literature.
God and Self in the Confessional Novel explores the question what happened to the theological practice of confession when… it entered the modern novel Beginning with the premise that guilt remains a universal human concern this book considers confession via the classic confessional texts of Augustine and Rousseau Employing this framework John D Sykes Jr examines Goethe s The Sorrows of Young Werther Dostoevsky s Notes from Underground Percy s Lancelot and McEwan s Atonement to investigate the evolution of confession and guilt in literature from the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century
This book is a journey through the fairy-tale wardrobe, explaining how the mercurial nature of fashion has shaped and transformed… the Western fairy-tale tradition. Many of fairy tale’s most iconic images are items of dress: the glass slippers, the red capes, the gowns shining like the sun, and the red shoes. The material cultures from which these items have been conjured reveal the histories of patronage, political intrigue, class privilege, and sexual politics behind the most famous fairy tales. The book not only reveals the sartorial truths behind Cinderella’s lost slippers, but reveals the networks of female power woven into fairy tale itself.
George Eliot for the Twenty-First Century reexamines Eliot two hundred years after her birth and offers an innovative critical reading… that seeks to change perceptions of Eliot. Tracing Eliot’s literary reception from the nineteenth century to the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, K. M. Newton frames Eliot as an unorthodox radical and considers the philosophical, ethical, political, and artistic subtleties permeating her writings. Drawing from close readings of her novels, essays, and letters, Newton offers a new critical perspective on George Eliot and reveals her enduring relevance in the twenty-first century.
In its first appearance in 1892, Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto created a sensation in both England and America,… becoming the first Anglo-Jewish bestseller and establishing Zangwill as the literary voice of Anglo-Jewry. A novel set in late nineteenth-century London, Children of the Ghetto gave an inside look into an immigrant community that was almost as mysterious to the more established middle-class Jews of Britain as to the non-Jewish population, providing a compelling analysis of a generation caught between the ghetto and modern British life. This volume brings back to print the 1895 edition of Children of the Ghetto, the latest American version known to have been corrected by the author. Meri-Jane Rochelson places the novel in proper context by providing a biographical, historical, and critical introduction; a bibliography of primary and secondary sources; and notes on the text, making this ground-breaking novel accessible to a new generation of readers, both Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
Whereas in English-speaking countries comics are for children or adults 'who should know better', in France and Belgium the form… is recognized as the 'Ninth Art' and follows in the path of poetry, architecture, painting and cinema. The bande dessinée [comic strip] has its own national institutions, regularly obtains front-page coverage and has received the accolades of statesmen from De Gaulle onwards. On the way to providing a comprehensive introduction to the most francophone of cultural phenomena, this book considers national specificity as relevant to an anglophone reader, whilst exploring related issues such as text/image expression, historical precedents and sociological implication. To do so it presents and analyses priceless manuscripts, a Franco- American rodent, Nazi propaganda, a museum-piece urinal, intellectual gay porn and a prehistoric warrior who's really Zinedine Zidane.
Sleep and the Novel is a study of representations of the sleeping body in fiction from 1800 to the present… day which traces the ways in which novelists have engaged with this universal, indispensable -- but seemingly nondescript -- region of human experience. Covering the narrativization of sleep in Austen, the politicization of sleep in Dickens, the queering of sleep in Goncharov, the aestheticization of sleep in Proust, and the medicalization of sleep in contemporary fiction, it examines the ways in which novelists envision the figure of the sleeper, the meanings they discover in human sleep, and the values they attach to it. It argues that literary fiction harbours, on its margins, a “sleeping partner”, one that we can nickname the Schlafroman or “sleep-novel”, whose quiet absorption in the wordlessness and passivity of human slumber subtly complicates the imperatives of self-awareness and purposive action that traditionally govern the novel.
Every writer's way to becoming a writer is unique, I am sure, though perhaps we all have much more in… common than we believe. My way will not be the only way, but it is my way, and I hope it might be interesting and maybe even useful and encouraging to tell the story of how I became the writer I am.
Laure Conan was the first woman novelist in French Canada and the first writer in all Canada to attempt a… roman d'analyse. As she refused to have her true identity revealed, the author of the preface to her book, Abbé H.-R. Casgrain, made a point of confirming that it was indeed a woman hiding behind the pen-name. Her daring in writing a psychological novel was 'forgiven' because she was a woman, and her anticipating the trend towards this type of novel was attributed to 'that intuition natural to her sex.' In Angéline de Montbrun, Laure Conan broke with what has been called the 'collective romanticism' of nineteenth-century French-Canadian land, with the rural myth, the exhortative tone, and the vast canvas. These concerns are basically absent in her work. Further, she eschewed the details of adventure and intrigue, the wooden, predictable characters, and the transparent intricacies of romantic love in favour of writing about the inner turmoil of an individual, live character, a young woman caught in a complex web of human appetites, aspirations, and relationships. Because of the novel's realism, one of the most persistent topics of discussion about Laure Conan has been whether or not Angéline de Montbrun is autobiographical. Recent studies indicate it may be. In any case, Angéline was the most complex character in Canadian fiction to 1882 and for some time to come. Traditionally, Angéline de Montbrun was regarded as a novel of Christian renunciation, and Angéline as the most holy of heroines. For a long time no one went too deeply into the relationships between the characters, but in 1961 Jean Le Moyne bluntly stated that 'the lovers in the novel are not Maurice Darville and Angéline, but M. de Montbrun and his daughter.' Since then there has been a proliferation of interpretations and psychological studies of the novel, and there is no going back to the simpler view of it.
Sturla Jón Jónsson is invited to represent Iceland at a poetry festival in Lithuania, which is the beginning of his… troubles. While at the conference, his overcoat is stolen, his article about how stupid literary festivals are causes a huge controversy, and he's accused of plagiarism. And that doesn't even include his encounters with the bizarre festival attendees.
In this five-book compilation by the author of the Baby-Sitters Club, a group of teenage friends struggles with friendships, family,… and romanceDawn and Sunny aren't speaking. Maggie's eating disorder has become extreme and Amalia is making it her mission to help. Ducky's parents have left him alone--again--and this time he could really use their advice.A spin-off of the bestselling Baby-Sitters Club, the California Diaries are first-person accounts of five teenagers dealing with the ups and downs of growing up. Diary Two contains the second journal of each of the main characters, books six through ten in the series.This ebook features an illustrated personal history of Ann M. Martin, including rare images from the author's collection.