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Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary
Par Lydia Lunch. 2003
The unspeakable sexual confessions of legend Lydia Lunch; introduction by Jerry Stahl, afterword by Thurston Moore. “Paradoxia reveals that Lunch…
is at her best when she’s at her worst . . . [and] gives voice to her sometimes scary, frequently funny, always canny, never sentimental siren song."—Barbara Kruger, Artforum Lydia Lunch relays in graphic detail the true psychic repercussions of sexual misadventure. From New York to London to New Orleans, Paradoxia is an uncensored, novelized account of one woman’s assault on men. Lydia Lunch was the primary instigator of the No Wave Movement and the focal point of the Cinema of Transgression. A musician, writer, and photographer, she exposes the dark underbelly of passion confronting the lusty demons whose struggle for power and control forever stalk the periphery of our collective obsessions.The Best Strangers in the World: Stories from a Life Spent Listening
Par Ari Shapiro. 2023
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“The Best Strangers in the World is a witty, poignant book that captures Ari Shapiro’s love…
for the unusual, his pursuit of the unexpected, and his delight at connection against the odds.”—Ronan Farrow, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and New York Times-bestselling author of Catch and Kill and War on PeaceFrom the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered, a stirring memoir-in-essays that is also a lover letter to journalism.In his first book, broadcaster Ari Shapiro takes us around the globe to reveal the stories behind narratives that are sometimes heartwarming, sometimes heartbreaking, but always poignant. He details his time traveling on Air Force One with President Obama, or following the path of Syrian refugees fleeing war, or learning from those fighting for social justice both at home and abroad.As the self-reinforcing bubbles we live in become more impenetrable, Ari Shapiro keeps seeking ways to help people listen to one another; to find connection and commonality with those who may seem different; to remind us that, before religion, or nationality, or politics, we are all human. The Best Strangers in the World is a testament to one journalist’s passion for Considering All Things—and sharing what he finds with the rest of us.Victorian England's Bestselling Author: The Revolutionary Life of G. W. M. Reynolds
Par Stephen Basdeo, Mya Driver. 2022
George W.M. Reynolds (1814–79) was one of the biggest-selling novelists of the Victorian era. He was the author of over…
58 novels and short stories and his “penny blood” The Mysteries of London, serialised in weekly numbers between 1844 and 1848, sold over a million copies. A controversial figure in his lifetime, Reynolds’s Mysteries, and its follow-up The Mysteries of the Court of London (1849–56), contained tales of crime, vice, and highly sexualised scenes. For this reason Charles Dickens remarked that Reynolds’s name was one “with which no lady’s, and no gentleman’s, should be associated.” Yet Reynolds was much more than just a novelist; he was lauded by the working classes as their champion and campaigned for universal suffrage. To further the working classes’ cause, he established two newspapers: Reynolds’s Political Instructor and Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper. The latter newspaper, as Karl Marx recognized, became the principal organ of radical and labour politics. This book provides a biography of Reynolds and reproduces his editorials from Reynolds’s Political Instructor as well as excerpts from his fiction.Nadine Gordimer's Fiction: Transitional Phases in South African History, Politics and Society
Par Syeda Faiqa Mazhar. 2023
Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction is a major study of the life and writings of Nadine Gordimer, a towering figure in the…
literary and cultural life of South Africa in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, recognised for her fiction through several prizes, most notably the 1991 Nobel Prize for Literature. It has the makings of a guide, taking the reader through the complexities in Gordimer’s life, literature, and society, backed by academic research (doctoral and postdoctoral) and informed by Dr. Mazhar’s study visit to South Africa, including a face-to-face interview with Gordimer. The reader gets a rich picture mediated by the author’s own intellectual journey from Pakistan – the country of her birth – and the United Kingdom. Dr. Mazhar maps the complexities of colonialism in South Africa and beyond in different forms, most notably in the legislated discrimination based on race/ethnicity, Apartheid (1948–1994). Covering the literary writings and political activism of Gordimer both during and after Apartheid, the book provides the reader with a detailed account of individual works of fiction, and vistas of critical thought and action that serve as their source and backdrop. Dr. Mazhar draws on the cultural theories of Homi Bhabha, especially on the notion of The Third Space, a fictional space/borderland between social and political polarisations, which allows for reflection, refinement, and re-action that is transformational and psychologically uplifting. She demonstrates that Gordimer takes her characters through such spaces, which allow for a transformational experience that leads to perspectives/realisations that were missing as a result of constraints that were externally imposed by law and tradition and interiorised as a survival mode. Dr. Mazhar concludes that Gordimer gracefully articulates her vision for a world free of complexities, which one must strive for. Although the book presents the academic analysis of Gordimer‘s fiction and the memoir as separate parts, there are organic connections between the two, which link the social ethos, political struggles, varied ideological perspectives, and ethnic and trans-ethnic identities from which Gordimer draws her subjects and their lives and depicts them through appropriate narrative techniques. Nadine Gordimer’s Fiction is a welcome addition to books on author studies, literary criticism, and South African culture and society. It offers excellent material for both academic and non-academic readers. The style of writing used in the book is clear and simple, yet powerful. This can help the reader to appreciate the enormous achievement of Gordimer, which has established her as a major literary figure in South Africa and beyond. Dr. Balasubramanyam Chandramohan PhD (Shef), FHEA, Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of LondonRepairman Jack (Mysterious Profiles)
Par F. Paul Wilson. 2023
The New York Times–bestselling author of The Keep tells the real and fictional origins of the mysterious man who battles…
criminals and the supernatural. In 1984, Repairman Jack debuted in F. Paul Wilson&’s horror thriller The Tomb. Jack would go on to star in twenty-three novels, ten short stories, and a graphic novel. But how did the antithesis of James Bond and Jason Bourne get his start in the battle between good and evil? In this essay, Wilson lets his readers in on how his beloved hero came to be. Wilson begins his personal story after he scored a hit with The Keep, when he found his inspiration for his next book in a dream. He discusses selecting and researching a monster, as well as developing Jack, his supporting cast, and settling on a villain. He also shares how the first title in the series came to be—it wasn&’t always The Tomb. Wilson closes with Jack&’s fictional backstory and his thoughts on Jack&’s potential future—if there is one . . .Praise for Repairman Jack &“One of the all-time great characters in one of the all-time great series.&” —Lee Child, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series &“Repairman Jack is one of the most original and intriguing characters to arise out of contemporary fiction in ages. His adventures are hugely entertaining.&” —Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of StrangersSufferah: The Memoir Of A Brixton Reggae-head
Par Alex Wheatle. 2023
In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed author Alex Wheatle details how reggae music became his salvation through a childhood marred by…
abuse, imprisonment, and police brutality. Abandoned as a baby to the British foster care system, Alex Wheatle grew up without any knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history. Preoccupied with his own roots, Alex grew inexorably drawn to reggae music, which became his primary solace through years of physical and mental abuse in a children’s home. Although riven by loneliness and depression, Alex found joy and empathy among his reggae heroes: Dennis Brown, Bob Marley, Marcia Griffiths, the Mighty Diamonds, Sister Nancy, Gregory Isaacs, Barrington Levy, King Yellowman, and so many others. These were friends and mentors who understood the enormous challenges facing a young Black man, gave purpose to despair, provided a sense of belonging when Alex had no one, and who educated him in ways no school ever could. From the abuse he suffered in foster care, to the challenges he faced on the streets of South London as a young man and his eventual imprisonment for participating in the legendary 1981 Brixton uprising against racial injustice, reggae music always provided a lifeline to Alex. Alex’s life story was portrayed in Oscar Award–winning director Steve McQueen’s 2020 Small Axe. In Sufferah, he vividly tells his own story, putting the reader in his shoes through the many challenges of his younger years, answering the question: how on earth did he make it? By his example we are reminded that words can be our sustenance, and music can be our heartbeat.Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side
Par Jenniffer Weigel. 2007
This Emmy Award–winning broadcaster’s memoir “takes you on a fun ride. Enjoy the journey to self-awareness and have a good…
laugh along the way” (James Van Praagh, author of Talking to Heaven).Television journalist Jenniffer Weigel takes readers on a humorous, yet deeply moving journey as she struggles to find her own spiritual path during the illness and death of her father, popular sportscaster Tim Weigel. During his illness, while Tim turns to alternative treatments like chi gong and reiki sessions, Jenniffer reads Neale Donald Walsch, starts a spiritual diet plan, and uses the law of attraction to find free parking spaces. After his death, she does everything she can to have one more conversation with her dad from the “other side.” Stay Tuned is a witty, irreverent trip through popular spiritual beliefs and the insights of masters and celebrities, including conversations with don Miguel Ruiz, James Van Praagh, Caroline Myss, Deepak Chopra, and Russell Crowe. This is the funny, heart-breaking, and touching story of one skeptical journalist’s transformation from “cynical daughter” to “spiritual woman.”The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile (Mysterious Profiles)
Par Michael Connelly. 2008
The #1 New York Times–bestselling author tells the origin story of LA defense attorney Mickey Haller. In this concise,…
absorbing account, Michael Connelly reveals the work—and the strokes of luck—that contributed to his creation of the character Mickey Haller, the subject of multiple bestselling novels as well as the hit Netflix series. He reveals the lawyers, both fictional and real-life, who played a role in shaping the sharp-witted attorney who does his best work in the back seat—and the librarian who planted the seeds of his future literary career in the steamy, sticky Florida of his childhood. This is not only a portrait of Mickey Haller, but a fascinating look at the award-winning crime novelist who created him, along with Harry Bosch and other unforgettable characters. &“Haller is the kind of slick, cynical showman who can&’t resist making high drama out of every legal procedure. . . . There&’s always something deadly serious behind Connelly&’s entertaining courtroom high jinks.&” ―Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times &“If at first encounter Connelly seems primarily an exceptionally accomplished writer of crime novels, at closer examination he is also a mordant and knowing chronicler of the world in which crime takes place, i.e., our world.&” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington PostIn Due Season: A Catholic Life
Par Paul Wilkes. 2009
The noted author recounts the struggles and triumphs of his search for spiritual meaning in this &“exquisite memoir that often…
reads like a novel&” (Publisher&’s Weekly). Acclaimed for his writings on religious belief and spirituality, Paul Wilkes now recounts his lifelong search for God. Starting with his working class upbringing in Cleveland, his story continues through lonely nights in a factory; working his way through college; a surprising confrontation during the Cuban Missile Crisis; a torrid romance on the Indian Ocean; acceptance into an Ivy League school; and entering the &“perfect&” marriage, which would eventually fail. A man who seemingly had everything, Wilkes gave it all up to live with the poor. Then, in a dizzying turnabout, he became a person he could hardly recognize—a celebrity author. Spending his summers in the Hamptons, he knew Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, and Kurt Vonnegut, but not himself. He sat at the feet of the Dalai Lama. He was an avowed hedonist. He lived as a hermit at a Trappist monastery. He found true love and ran from it. He was a true son of the Church and a sinner beyond anything he might have imagined. In Due Season is Paul Wilkes's candid and probing memoir of seeking and getting lost, of abysmal failure and ultimate triumph, with a faith in God battered and tried in the crucible of his life.The Lights of Pointe-Noire: A Memoir
Par Alain Mabanckou. 2015
A dazzling meditation on home-coming and belonging from one of &“Africa&’s greatest writers&” and the Man Booker International Prize finalist…
(The Guardian). Alain Mabanckou left Congo in 1989, at the age of twenty-two, not to return until a quarter of a century later. When he finally came back to Pointe-Noire, a bustling port town on the Congo&’s southwestern coast, he found a country that in some ways had changed beyond recognition: The cinema where, as a child, Mabanckou gorged on glamorous American culture had become a Pentecostal church, and his secondary school has been renamed in honor of a previously despised colonial ruler. But many things remain unchanged, not least the swirling mythology of Congolese culture that still informs everyday life in Pointe-Noire. Now a decorated writer and an esteemed professor at UCLA, Mabanckou finds he can only look on as an outsider in the place where he grew up. As he delves into his childhood, into the life of his departed mother, and into the strange mix of belonging and absence that informs his return to the Republic of the Congo, his work recalls the writing of V. S. Naipaul and André Aciman, offering a startlingly fresh perspective on the pain of exile, the ghosts of memory, and the paths we take back home. Grand Prize Winner at the 2015 French Voices Awards &“This is a beautiful book, the past hauntingly reentered, the present truthfully faced, and the translation rises gorgeously to the challenge.&” —Salman Rushdie &“A tender, poetic chronicle of an exile&’s return.&” —Kirkus ReviewsDream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile's Journey (Jewish Women Writers Ser.)
Par Joyce Zonana. 2007
The American daughter of Egyptian Jewish immigrants journeys in search of belonging from Brazil to New Orleans and beyond—includes recipes…
and photos! Born to Egyptian Sephardic Jews who fled to the United States after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Joyce Zonana spent her childhood in Brooklyn. But her experience of Jewish culture was very different from that of the other children she knew, from the foods they ate to the language they spoke. As she struggled to find a sense of inclusion, never feeling completely American or completely Egyptian, a childhood trip to Brazil became the basis for a lifelong quest to find her place in the world. Meeting members of her extended family who had migrated to Brazil was one step in discovering the kind of life she might have lived in Egypt, and exploring the woman she was becoming. Through travels that ranged from Cairo to Oklahoma and finally New Orleans in the shadow of Katrina, and including an evocative exploration of the way food varies from culture to culture, this is a &“frank, spirited memoir of identity from a Brooklyn-raised, Egyptian-born Jewish feminist.&” (Kirkus Reviews) &“Zonana makes every human encounter lively&” —BooklistCapote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era
Par Laurence Leamer. 2021
DON&’T MISS FX&’s FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS—THE ORIGINAL SERIES BASED ON THE BESTSELLING BOOK—COMING SOON!New York Times bestselling author Laurence…
Leamer reveals the complex web of relationships and scandalous true stories behind Truman Capote's never-published final novel, Answered Prayers—the dark secrets, tragic glamour, and Capote's ultimate betrayal of the group of female friends he called his "swans."&“There are certain women,&” Truman Capote wrote, &“who, though perhaps not born rich, are born to be rich.&” Barbara &“Babe&” Paley, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C. Z. Guest, Lee Radziwill (Jackie Kennedy&’s sister)—they were the toast of midcentury New York, each beautiful and distinguished in her own way. Capote befriended them, received their deepest confidences, and ingratiated himself into their lives. Then, in one fell swoop, he betrayed them in the most surprising and startling way possible.Bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer delves into the years following the acclaimed publication of Breakfast at Tiffany&’s in 1958 and In Cold Blood in 1966, when Capote struggled with a crippling case of writer&’s block. While enjoying all the fruits of his success, he was struck with an idea for what he was sure would be his most celebrated novel…one based on the remarkable, racy lives of his very, very rich friends.For years, Capote attempted to write Answered Prayers, what he believed would have been his magnum opus. But when he eventually published a few chapters in Esquire, the thinly fictionalized lives (and scandals) of his closest female confidantes were laid bare for all to see, and he was banished from their high-society world forever. Laurence Leamer re-creates the lives of these fascinating swans, their friendships with Capote and one another, and the doomed quest to write what could have been one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum
Par Rebecca Loncraine. 2009
In the first major literary biography of L. Frank Baum, Rebecca Loncraine tells the story of Oz as you've never…
heard it, with a look behind the curtain at the vivid life and eccentric imagination of its creator.L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1899 and it was first published in 1900. A runaway hit, it was soon recognized as America's first modern fairy tale. Baum's life story, like the fictional world he created, is uniquely American, rooted in the transforming historical changes of his times. Baum was a complex and eccentric man who could never stay put for long; his restless creative spirit and voracious appetite for new projects led him across the U.S. during his lifetime, and he drew energy and inspiration from each new dramatic landscape he encountered,. Born in 1856, Baum spent his youth in the Finger Lakes region of New York as amputee soldiers returned from the Civil War; childhood mortality was also commonplace, blurring the lines between the living and the dead, and making room in Baum's young imagination for vividly real ghosts. When Baum was growing up, P. T. Barnum ruled the minds of small towns and his traveling circus was the most famous act around. Baum married a headstrong young woman named Maud Gage and they ventured out west to Dakota Territory, where they faced violent tornadoes, Ghost Dancing tribes and desperate droughts, before trading the hardships on the Great Plains for the excitement of Chicago and the fantastical White City of the World's Fair.Baum's writing tapped into an inner world that blurred his own sense of reality and fantasy. The Land of Oz, which Baum believed he had "discovered" rather than invented, grew into something far bigger and more popular than he'd ever imagined. After the roaring success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900, he became a kind of slave to his creation, trapped inside Oz as his army of demanding child fans kept sending him back there to create new adventures for Dorothy, Toto and the humbug wizard. He went on to write thirteen sequels to his first Oz book. He also wrote the first Broadway adaptations of his Oz tales, and turned his Oz books into some of the first motion pictures in a small and undiscovered rural settlement called "Hollywood". Baum co-founded the Oz Film Manufacturing Company, even as critics warned that no one would pay to see a children's story. And they were right- his early ventures were box office flops and the world was not ready for Oz on screen until 1939, when MGM released "The Wizard of Oz" in brilliant Technicolor. Baum was not around to see it-he'd died in bed in 1919 just weeks after completing his final Oz book. But the book and film alike have become classics, just as well-loved today as they were when they first appeared.The Real Wizard of Oz is an imaginatively written work that stretches the genre of biography and enriches our understanding of modern fairytales. L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its thirteen sequels, lived during eventful times in American history-- from 1856 to 1919-- that influenced nearly every aspect of his writing, from the Civil War to Hollywood, which was emerging as a modern Emerald City full of broken dreams and humbug wizards, to the gulf between America's prairie heartland, with its wild tornadoes, and its cities teeming with "Tin Man" factory workers. This is a colorful portrait of one man's vivid and eccentric imagination and the world that shaped it. Baum's famous fairytale is filled with the pain of the economic uncertainties of the Gilded Age and with a yearning for real change, ideas which many contemporary Americans will recognize. The Wizard of Oz continues to fascinate and influence us because it explores universal themes of longing for a better world, homesickness and finding inner strength amid the storms.Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown, the Woman Behind Cosmopolitan Magazine
Par Jennifer Scanlon. 2009
The biography of the revolutionary magazine editor who created the &“Cosmo Girl&” before Sex and the City&’s Carrie Bradshaw was…
even bornAs the author of the iconic Sex and the Single Girl (1962) and the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine for over three decades, Helen Gurley Brown (1922–2012) changed how women thought about sex, money, and their bodies in a way that resonates in our culture today. In Jennifer Scanlon's widely acclaimed biography, the award-winning scholar reveals Brown&’s incredible life story from her escape from her humble beginnings in the Ozarks to her eyebrow-raising exploits as a young woman in New York City, and her late-blooming career as the world's first "lipstick feminist." A mesmerizing tribute to a legend, Bad Girls Go Everywhere will appeal to everyone from Sex and the City and Mad Men fans to students of women's history and media studies.Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club that Sparked Modern Feminism
Par Joanna Scutts. 2022
The dazzling story of the Greenwich Village feminists who blazed the trail for the movement&’s most radical ideasOn a Saturday…
in New York City in 1912, around the wooden tables of a popular Greenwich Village restaurant, a group of women gathered, all of them convinced that they were going to change the world.It was the first meeting of &“Heterodoxy,&” a secret social club. Its members were passionate advocates of free love, equal marriage, and easier divorce. They were socialites and socialists; reformers and revolutionaries; artists, writers, and scientists. Their club, at the heart of America&’s bohemia, was a springboard for parties, performances, and radical politics. But it was the women&’s extraordinary friendships that made their unconventional lives possible, as they supported each other in pushing for a better world.Hotbed is the never-before-told story of the bold women whose audacious ideas and unruly acts transformed a feminist agenda into a modern way of life.Listen, World!: How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America's Most-Read Woman
Par Julia Scheeres, Allison Gilbert. 2022
*Winner of the 2023 Northern California Book Award* The first biography of Elsie Robinson, the most influential newspaper columnist you&’ve…
never heard of At thirty-five, Elsie Robinson feared she&’d lost it all. Reeling from a scandalous divorce in 1917, she had no means to support herself and her chronically ill son. She dreamed of becoming a writer and was willing to sacrifice everything for this goal, even swinging a pickax in a gold mine to pay the bills. When the mine shut down, she moved to the Bay Area. Armed with moxie and samples of her work, she barged into the offices of the Oakland Tribune and was hired on the spot. She went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist and household name whose column ran for over thirty years and garnered more than twenty million readers. Told in cinematic detail by bestselling author Julia Scheeres and award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert, Listen, World! is the inspiring story of a timeless maverick, capturing what it means to take a gamble on self-fulfillment and find freedom along the way.Fierce Ambition: The Life and Legend of War Correspondent Maggie Higgins
Par Jennet Conant. 2023
A spirited portrait of twentieth-century war correspondent Maggie Higgins and her tenacious fight to the top in a male-dominated profession.…
Marguerite Higgins was both the scourge and envy of the journalistic world. A longtime reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, she first catapulted to fame with her dramatic account of the liberation of Dachau at the end of World War II. Brash, beautiful, ruthlessly competitive, and sexually adventurous, she forced her way to the front despite being told the combat zone was no place for a woman. Her headline-making exploits earned her a reputation for bravery bordering on recklessness and accusations of “advancing on her back,” trading sexual favors for scoops. While the Herald Tribune exploited her feminine appeal—regularly featuring the photogenic "girl reporter" on its front pages—it was Maggie’s dogged determination, talent for breaking news, and unwavering ambition that brought her success from one war zone to another. Her notoriety soared during the Cold War, and her daring dispatches from Korea garnered a Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence—the first granted to a woman for frontline reporting—with the citation noting the unusual dangers and difficulties she faced because of her sex. A star reporter, she became part of the Kennedy brothers’ Washington circle, though her personal alliances and politics provoked bitter feuds with male rivals, who vilified her until her untimely death. Drawing on new and extensive research, including never-before-published correspondence and interviews with Maggie’s colleagues, lovers, and soldiers and generals who knew her in the field, journalist and historian Jennet Conant restores Maggie’s rightful place in history as a woman who paved the way for the next generation of journalists, and one of the greatest war correspondents of her time.Anna Komnene and the Alexiad: The Byzantine Princess and the First Crusade
Par Ioulia Kolovou. 2020
&“Kolovou . . . rescues Anna from the talons of misogynist historians and places her where she belongs as an extraordinary, but…
very human, woman.&” —Beating Tsundoku A woman of extraordinary education and intellect, Anna Komnene was the only Byzantine female historian and one of the first and foremost historians in medieval Europe. Yet few people know of her and her extraordinary story. Subsequent historians and scholars have skewed the picture of Anna as an intellectual princess and powerful author. She has been largely viewed as an angry, bitter old woman, who greedily wanted a throne that did not belong to her. After being exiled to a convent, she composed the Alexiad, the history of the First Crusade and the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118), her father. This book aims to present Anna Komnene—the fascinating woman, pioneer intellectual, and charismatic author—to the general public. Drawing on the latest academic research to reconstruct Anna&’s life, personality and work, it moves away from the myth of Anna the conspirator and &“power-hungry woman&” which has been unfairly built around her over centuries of misrepresentation. It places Anna Komnene in the context of her own time: the ancient Greek colony and medieval Eastern Roman empire, known as Byzantium, with the magnificent city of Constantinople at its heart. At the forefront of an epic clash between East and West, this was a world renowned for its dazzling wealth, mystery and power games. This was a world with Anna Komnene directly at the center.&“Well-written, well-researched, and an overall fascinating read . . . A brilliant addition to women&’s history.&” —Where There&’s Ink There&’s PaperThe diarist&’s account of her life in the early 1920s explores &“the conflict she felt between artistic longings and her…
pre-ordained female fate&” (The Detroit News). Continuing the journey of self-education and self-discovery she began in Linotte, Anaïs Nin discloses a part of her life that had previously remained private. She discusses the period in which she met Hugo Guiler, the young man who later became her husband, and made the wrenching transition from the shelter of her family to the world of artists and models. She also reveals the struggle she faced between her expected role as a woman and her determination to be a writer—a negotiation that still poses difficulties for many of us almost a century after Nin wrote this diary. &“Through sheer nerve, confidence, and will, Nin made of the everyday something magical. This was a gift, indeed, and it&’s a fascinating process to witness.&” —The Christian Science Monitor With a preface by Joaquin Nin-CulmellThe Road to San Giovanni
Par Italo Calvino. 1993
From the Italian author, personal essays featuring his relationship with his father, his love of movies, and fighting fascism during…
World War II. &“In each other&’s presence we became mute, would walk in silence side by side along the road to San Giovanni. To my father&’s mind, words must serve as confirmations of things, and as signs of possession; to mine, they were foretastes of things barely glimpsed, not possessed, presumed.&” —from The Road to San Giovanni In these autobiographical essays, published after Italo Calvino&’s death, the intellectually vibrant writer not only reflects on his own past but also inquires into the very workings of memory itself. From the title essay&’s lyrical evocation of the author&’s relationship with his father, and a charming account of teenage years spent in the glow of the cinema screen, to Calvino&’s reminiscences of his experiences in the Italian Resistance during World War II and of his years in Paris, to his declaration of purpose as a writer in the final essay&’s visionary fragments, these five &“memory exercises&” are heartfelt, affecting, and wise.Praise for The Road to San Giovanni&“Brimming with Calvino&’s beautifully crafted prose, dry humor, and continual questioning . . . Calvino has been very well served by his translator, Tim Parks.&” —Observer&“In five elegant &“memory exercises&” written between 1962 and 1977, Italian fiction writer Calvino (1923-85) presents an affecting self-portrait and offers indirect insights into how he conjured up his imaginary worlds . . . . This sparkling translation concludes with Calvino's lyric, metaphorical, highly elliptical description of his creative process.&” —Publishers Weekly