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Le patron de Dallaire parle: révélations sur les dérives d'un général de l'ONU au Rwanda
By Jacques-Roger Booh Booh. 2005
Le dernier roi d'Écosse
By Giles Foden. 2000
Un livre sombre et comique, en tous points conforme à la vérité historique et qui aussi une galerie de portraits.…
On y rencontre des femmes de diplomates qui "bovarysent", des ministres flagorneurs, des paramilitaires sanguinaires... qui gravitent autour de ce "dernier roi d'Ecosse", titre parmi d'autres tout aussi ronflants, que s'est généreusement attribué Idi Amin Dada, ce dictateur ougandaisThe Post-Office Girl
By Joel Rotenberg, Stefan Zweig. 1982
2009 PEN Translation Prize FinalistThe logic of capitalism, boom and bust, is unremitting and unforgiving. But what happens to human…
feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post-World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine's rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same.Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig's haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master's achievement.The Attempt
By Magdaléna Platzová, Alex Zucker. 2016
"The Attempt is historical fiction at its best. Through its narrator's archival approach to his material, the book explores the…
intimate lives of a pair of fervent idealists, as well as a robber baron and his family. The result is a vivid, poignant narrative about political upheaval, both in the past and the present." -SIRI HUSTVEDT, author of The Blazing WorldWhen a Czech historian becomes convinced he's the illegitimate great-grandson of an infamous anarchist who attempted an assassination while living in the United States, he travels to New York to investigate. Arriving in Manhattan during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement, his research takes him further back into the past-from the Pittsburgh home of a nineteenth-century US industrialist to 1920s Europe, where a celebrated anarchist couple is on the run from the law.Based on the lives of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, The Attempt is a novel about the legacy of radical politics and relationships-one that traverses centuries and continents to deliver a moving, powerful story of personal and political transformation.Magdaléna Platzová is the author of six books, including two novels published in English: Aaron's Leap, a Lidové Noviny Book of the Year Award finalist, and The Attempt, a Czech Book Award finalist. Her fiction has also appeared in A Public Space and Words Without Borders. Platzová grew up in the Czech Republic, studied in Washington, DC, and England, received her MA in Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, and has taught at New York University's Gallatin School. She is now a freelance journalist based in Lyon, France.Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
By Peter Quinn, William L. Riordan. 1995
Plunkitt of Tammany HallA Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical PoliticsWilliam L. Riordan "Nobody thinks of drawin' the…
distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft." This classic work offers the unblushing, unvarnished wit and wisdom of one of the most fascinating figures ever to play the American political game and win. George Washington Plunkitt rose from impoverished beginnings to become ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District in New York, a key player in the powerhouse political team of Tammany Hall, and, not incidentally, a millionaire. In a series of utterly frank talks given at his headquarters (Graziano's bootblack stand outside the New York County Court House), he revealed to a sharp-eared and sympathetic reporter named William L. Riordan the secrets of political success as practiced and perfected by him and fellow Tammany Hall titans. The result is not only a volume that reveals more about our political system than does a shelfful of civics textbooks, but also an irresistible portrait of a man who would feel happily at home playing ball with today's lobbyists and king makers, trading votes for political and financial favors. Doing for twentieth-century America what Machiavelli did for Renaissance Italy, and as entertaining as it is instructive, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is essential reading for those who prefer twenty-twenty vision to rose-colored glasses in viewing how our government works and why. With an Introduction by Peter Quinnand a New AfterwordHappy New Year! and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
By Curt Leviant, Sholom Aleichem. 1995
One of the most beloved and prolific writers of Yiddish literature, Sholom Aleichem (1859–1916) produced a wealth of wonderful stories…
that combine traditional Jewish oral humor with Western literary tradition. For years a living legend, he wrote enduring gems of fiction, eleven of which are included in this entertaining collection.The master storyteller brilliantly recaptures the joy and tribulations of Jewish life in such tales as "Geese," "At the Doctor's," "Three Widows," "The Passover Eve Vagabonds," "On America," "Someone to Envy," "Three Calendars," "The Ruined Passover," the title story, and two others. Introduced and ably translated by Curt Leviant, these tales sparkle with wit, wisdom, and a warm humanity that will appeal to a wide audience of readers, especially those with an interest in Jewish cultural life.Chronicle of the Murdered House
By Margaret Jull Costa, Benjamin Moser, Lúcio Cardoso, Robin Patterson. 2016
Lúcio Cardoso's 1959 novel-a true modern classic-tells the story of a traditional family's slippage into social and moral decline. Employing…
a variety of narrative devices-including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters-the author weaves a complex and thoroughly engaging tale, hauntingly brought to life by a prose style unique in Brazilian literature."America's preeminent writer of prehistoric history [writes] ... . a book of hearts and minds." Grace Cavalieri, award-winning author, host…
of The Poet and the Poem from the US Library of Congress.After years of abuse from his father, Wing leaves the only home he's ever known. As the male lion leaves its pride, he must find a new home or die. He is sixteen, frail, injured, and alone in the mountainous untamed and untouched wilderness of Mexico of 250,000 BC. Wing struggles to survive, proving himself against a bear, where he learns elementary freedom. Award-winning writer of prehistoric fiction Bonnye Matthews' novella, Freedom, 250,000 BC, brings to life primitive early Americans through Wing's growing understanding of what freedom is and its importance for life.Freedom, 250,000 BC is dedicated to the archaeological site south of Puebla, Mexico at the Valsequillo Reservoir. The site is an amazingly rich prehistoric view of the glory and infamy of human life in the Americas, specifically Mexico, in 250,000 BC. "The outstanding Winds of Change series is highly and enthusiastically recommended for personal reading lists, as well as both community and academic library historical fiction collections." Midwest Book ReviewA Month in the Country
By Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, Ivan Turgenev, Richard Nelson. 2014
"Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English."-The New YorkerOne week before her thirtieth birthday,…
the simple life of dutiful wife and mother Natalya is upended when the arrival of her son's charming new tutor unleashes a whirlwind of love, lust, and jealousy. This revelatory new translation by renowned playwright Richard Nelson along with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky-the foremost contemporary translators of classic Russian literature, including the best-selling Oprah's Book Club selection, Anna Karenina-marks the second of a series of translations of important Russian plays to be published over the next ten years.Richard Nelson's many plays include Rodney's Wife, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Drama Desk-nominated Franny's Way and Some Americans Abroad, Tony Award-nominated Two Shakespearean Actors, and James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), for which he won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. His The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country will be published by Theatre Communications Group in early 2014.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have produced acclaimed translations of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the 1991 and 2002 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prizes. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married to each other and live in Paris.Sleep of Memory (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
By Mark Polizzotti, Patrick Modiano. 2018
The newest best-seller by Patrick Modiano is a beautiful tapestry that brings together memory, esoteric encounters, and fragmented sensations Patrick…
Modiano’s first book since his 2014 Nobel Prize revisits moments of the author’s past to produce a spare yet moving reflection on the destructive underside of love, the dreams and follies of youth, the vagaries of memory, and the melancholy of loss. Writing from the perspective of an older man, the narrator relives a key period in his life through his relationships with several enigmatic women—Geneviève, Martine, Madeleine, a certain Madame Huberson—in the process unearthing his troubled relationship with his parents, his unorthodox childhood, and the unsettled years of his youth that helped form the celebrated writer he would become. This is classic Modiano, utilizing his signature mix of autobiography and invention to create his most intriguing and intimate book yet.The Greatest Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Suicide Club, The Body Snatcher, and Other Short Stories
By Herman Graf, Robert Louis Stevenson. 2018
The Best Short Works of One of English Literature’s Most Masterful Storytellers Collected in a Single Volume Known mostly for…
his seminal full-length works, such as the famous classics Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterful short fiction is often overshadowed. Now these pioneering works in the English short story tradition are presented here, collected in a single volume. Including the beloved novella "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which G. K. Chesterton called “a double triumph,” and “The Merry Men,” as well as stories like “The Suicide Club” and “The Rajah’s Diamond” from the acclaimed 1882 collection New Arabian Nights, The Greatest Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson immerses you in Stevenson’s extraordinary worlds—thrilling tales of pure adventure and suspense, glorious evocations of the beauty of the Scottish countryside, and characters painted with the same vigor and energy as his most well-known creations. Showcasing his brilliant and lucid prose, his dramatic skill, and his perfect sense of pace that made him a celebrity during his time and a landmark author in the history of English literature, Stevenson’s enduring stories continue to capture the imagination of the contemporary reader and rightly belong to popular mythology today.The Book of Collateral Damage (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
By Sinan Antoon. 2016
Sinan Antoon returns to the Iraq war in a poetic and provocative tribute to reclaiming memory Widely-celebrated author Sinan Antoon’s…
fourth and most sophisticated novel follows Nameer, a young Iraqi scholar earning his doctorate at Harvard, who is hired by filmmakers to help document the devastation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the excursion, Nameer ventures to al-Mutanabbi street in Baghdad, famed for its bookshops, and encounters Wadood, an eccentric bookseller who is trying to catalogue everything destroyed by war, from objects, buildings, books and manuscripts, flora and fauna, to humans. Entrusted with the catalogue and obsessed with Wadood’s project, Nameer finds life in New York movingly intertwined with fragments from his homeland’s past and its present—destroyed letters, verses, epigraphs, and anecdotes—in this stylistically ambitious panorama of the wreckage of war and the power of memory.The Housing Lark (Penguin Modern Classics Ser.)
By Sam Selvon. 2020
The humorous yet poignant novel of West Indian migrant life in London that adds an iconic voice to the growing…
Caribbean canonA Penguin ClassicSet in London in the 1960's, when the UK encouraged its Commonwealth citizens to emigrate as a result of the post-war labor shortage, The Housing Lark explores the Caribbean migrant experience in the "Mother Country" by following a group of friends as they attempt to buy a home together. Despite encountering a racist and predatory rental market, the friends scheme, often comically, to find a literal and figurative place of their own. Will these motley folks, male and female, Black and Indian, from Trinidad and Jamaica, dreamers, hustlers, and artists, be able to achieve this milestone of upward mobility? Unique and wonderful, comic and serious, cynical and tenderhearted, The Housing Lark poses the question of whether their "lark," or quixotic idea of finding a home, can ever become a reality. Kittitian-British novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips contributes a foreword, while postcolonial literature scholar Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction.The Lost Book of Adana Moreau: A Novel
By Michael Zapata. 2020
A Boston Globe Most Anticipated Book of 2020A Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from The Millions“A stunner—equal parts epic and…
intimate, thrilling and elegiac.”—Laura Van den Berg, author of The Third HotelThe mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New OrleansIn 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript.Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers.What results is a brilliantly layered masterpiece an ode to home, storytelling and the possibility of parallel worlds.Return of the Spirit (Three Continents Press Ser.)
By Tawfiq Al-Hakim. 2012
The celebrated, revolutionary novel from a pioneering Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim, now for the first time in Penguin Classics with…
a foreword by Egyptian writer Alaa Al-AswanyFirst published in Arabic in 1933, Egyptian playwright and novelist Tawfiq Al-Hakim's Return of the Spirit follows a patriotic young Egyptian and his extended family as they grapple with the events leading up to the 1919 Egyptian revolution. Though often cited as an apprenticeship novel in the vein of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with a touch of failed romance a la Goethe's Sorrow of Young Werther, Al-Hakim's classic is most recognized for being a trailblazing political novel that illustrates the way one man's spiritual awakening ties to a political awakening of a nation. While enthusiasm for the book was stifled in the mid-20th century due to a shift in Egyptian government rule, the 2011 Tahrir revolution in Egypt caused it to be examined anew as a strong expression of nationalist solidarity and an exposé of the heritage-stripping power of Western colonialism that resonates with 21st-century Egyptians. Return of the Spirit is considered Al-Hakim's most important novel despite writing more plays than novels, and his adept understanding of class and culture within Egyptian society has cemented his place as one of the country's most celebrated writers and cultural critics.Robinson Crusoe, an adventure tale that fascinated such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and J. M. Coetzee,…
has been an international best-seller for three hundred years. An adventure tale involving cannibals, pirates, and shipwrecks, it embodies economic, social, political, and philosophical themes that continue to be relevant today. Moreover, the notion of isolation on a deserted island and a fascination with survival continue to be central to countless popular cinema and television programs. This edition of the novel with its introduction, line notes, and full bibliographical notes provides a uniquely scholarly presentation of the novel. There has been no other edition like it. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.The Punishment (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
By Tahar Ben Jelloun. 2020
An innocent man’s gripping personal account of terrifying confinement by the Moroccan military during the reign of a formidable twentieth-century…
despot In 1967 Tahar Ben Jelloun, a peaceful young political protestor, was one of nearly a hundred other hapless men taken into punitive custody by the Moroccan army. It was a time of dangerous importance in Moroccan history, and they were treated with a chilling brutality that not all of them survived. This powerful portrait of the author’s traumatic experience, written with a memoirist’s immediacy, reveals both his helpless terror and his desperate hope to survive by drawing strength from his love of literature. Shaken to the core by his disillusionment with a brutal regime, unsure of surviving his ordeal, he stole some paper and began to secretly write, with the admittedly romantic idea of leaving some testament behind, a veiled denunciation of the evils of his time. His first poem was published after he was unexpectedly released, and his vocation was born.Black Shack Alley
By Joseph Zobel. 1997
The semi-autobiographical, Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique, with a foreword by Martinican author…
Patrick ChamoiseauA Penguin ClassicFollowing in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of José, a young boy grappling with issues of power and identity in colonial Martinique. As José transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. His ally in this struggle is his grandmother, M'man Tine, who fights her own weariness to release at least one child from the plantation village, a dirt street lined with the shacks of sugarcane workers. Zobel's masterpiece, the basis for the award-winning film Sugar Cane Alley directed by Euzhan Palcy, is a powerful testament to twentieth-century life in Martinique, with a foreword by award-winning Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau.The Orphanage: A Novel (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)
By Serhiy Zhadan. 2021
A devastating story of the struggle of civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine&“A nightmarish, raw vision of…
contemporary eastern Ukraine under siege. . . . With a poet&’s sense of lyricism . . . [Zhadan] unblinkingly reveals a country&’s devastation and its people&’s passionate determination to survive.&”—Publishers Weekly, starred review Recalling the brutal landscape of The Road and the wartime storytelling of A Farewell to Arms, The Orphanage is a searing novel that excavates the human collateral damage wrought by the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine. When hostile soldiers invade a neighboring city, Pasha, a thirty-five-year-old Ukrainian language teacher, sets out for the orphanage where his nephew Sasha lives, now in occupied territory. Venturing into combat zones, traversing shifting borders, and forging uneasy alliances along the way, Pasha realizes where his true loyalties lie in an increasingly desperate fight to rescue Sasha and bring him home. Written with a raw intensity, this is a deeply personal account of violence that will be remembered as the definitive novel of the war in Ukraine.The King's Fool
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 . . .