In cool, precise prose, and with an unerring sense of the absurd, the four novellas of "Compulsory Happiness" create a picture of everyday life in a grotesque police state, expressing terror and hope, fear and solidarity, the humorous triviality of the ordinary, and the painful search for an ideal. "Norman Manea's four novellas, written during the later Ceausescu years, offer a comparable contrast to other Eastern European dissident writing. Instead of the energetic irony, the ebullient absurdism, the sharp-eyed wit, we find a dreamy disconnection, a voice that shock has lowered, an air of sweetness driven mad."--Richard Eder, "Los Angeles Times" "Mr. Manea's voice is radically new, and we are blessedly awakened and alerted by the demand his fiction makes on our understanding."--Lore Segal, "New York Times Book Review"

"Although Jewish participation in German society increased after World War I, Jews did not completely assimilate into that society. In fact, says Michael Brenner in this intriguing book, the Jewish population of Welmar Germany became more aware of its Jewishness and created new forms of German-Jewish culture in literature, music, fine arts, education , and scholarship. Brenner presents the first in-depth study of this culture, drawing a fascinating portrait of people in the midst of redefining themselves." "The Weimar Jews chose neither a radical break with the past nor a return to the past but instead dressed Jewish traditions in the garb of modern forms of cultural expression. Brenner describes, for example, how modern translations made classic Jewish texts accessible, Jewish museums displayed ceremonial artifacts in a secular framework, musical arrangements transformed synagogue liturgy for concert audiences, and popular novels recalled aspects of the Jewish past. Brenner's work, while bringing this significant historical period to life, illuminates contemporary and even enhancement of Jewish distinctiveness, combined with the seemingly successful participation of Jews in a secular, non-Jewish society, offer fresh insight into modern questions of Jewish existence, identity, and integration into other cultures."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This definitive anthology gathers stories, essays, memoirs, excerpts from novels, and poems by more than 130 Jewish writers of the past two centuries who worked in the Russian language. It features writers of the tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, both in Russia and in the great emigrations, representing styles and artistic movements from Romantic to Postmodern. The authors include figures who are not widely known today, as well as writers of world renown. Most of the works appear here for the first time in English or in new translations. The editor of the anthology, Maxim D. Shrayer of Boston College, is a leading authority on Jewish-Russian literature. The selections were chosen not simply on the basis of the author's background, but because each work illuminates questions of Jewish history, status, and identity. Each author is profiled in an essay describing the personal, cultural, and historical circumstances in which the writer worked, and individual works or groups of works are headnoted to provide further context. The anthology not only showcases a wide selection of individual works but also offers an encyclopedic history of Jewish-Russian culture. This handsome two-volume set is organized chronologically. The first volume spans the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century, and includes the editor's extensive introduction to the Jewish-Russian literary canon. The second volume covers the period from the death of Stalin to the present, and each volume includes a corresponding survey of Jewish-Russian history by John D. Klier of University College, London, as well as detailed bibliographies of historical and literary sources.

• Contains autobiographical material from Maria de Naglowska's life• Continues, in symbolic story form, the sexual initiatory teachings expounded in Naglowska's 'The Light of Sex' and 'Advanced Sex Magic'• Includes a summary of Naglowska's religious doctrine in her own wordsAvailable for the first time in English, THE SACRED RITE OF MAGICAL LOVE is a mystical, sexually magical novella written by M[Bokinfo]

The internationally renowned novelist and poet creates a very contemporary version of the story of Romeo and Juliet set in the twin realms of college and national politics. In the prominent political family of the Dickensons, ambition comes first, and Melissa, the third child, has always felt she came last. Going away to college offers a chance at love and a life free from her brilliant mother's constant scrutiny. Blake, a child of mixed race and apparently unknown parentage, has been raised by lawyers whose defence of death row cases has brought them into fierce dispute with Melissa's father, now a senator, then governor of Pennsylvania. When Melissa meets Blake at College, their passion is immediate. Yet Blake is keeping a dangerous secret from Melissa, one that could destroy both them and their families. Dealing with themes of love, honesty, identity and the consequences of ambition, this thoughtful beautifully written story is a page turner with an edge.

Sleeping with Cats is the intimate memoir of acclaimed author and poet, Marge Piercy whose bestselling novels include Woman on the Edge of Time, Body of Glass and Braided Lives. Focusing on her emotional life, rather than her literary or political adventures, here she reveals the life behind her poems and novels, and the origins of her remarkable literary career. Piercy includes several of her memorable poems and revisits the people, the circumstances, and the actions which inspired her to write them, laying bare the origins of both her fiction and poetry. Throughout her life are her cats, steadfast companions who remain while the people in her life come and go. Always honest and thoroughly compelling, Sleeping with Cats is a fascinating account of this extraordinary and complex woman's life.

"North has always been faithful to his wife, Lydia, but when one of his novels achieves a special success, he allows himself a dalliance with Lea, a starstruck young journalist. Coolly planning to make sure that his life with Lydia will not be disturbed, North is taken off guard when Lea becomes obsessed with him and he with her elaborate erotic games. As the hypnotic and serpentine confession unfurls, we gradually discover the extraordinary lengths to which North has gone to indulge a powerful desire for self-destruction."--BOOK JACKET.

“Intelligent but accessible, and often poignant . . . [by] the biggest talents on the essay and blog beat.” —Publishers Weekly (on Vol. 2) Anyone still asking, “What is creative nonfiction?” will find the answer in this collection of artfully crafted, true stories. Selected by Lee Gutkind, the “godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and the staff of Creative Nonfiction, these stories—ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays—illustrate the genre’s power and potential. Edwidge Danticat recalls her Uncle Moïse’s love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of the word near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. In “Literary Murder,” Julianna Baggott traces her roots as a novelist to her family’s “strange, desperate (sometimes conniving and glorious) past” and writes about her decision, in The Madam, to kill off a character based on her grandfather. And Sean Rowe explains why, if you must get arrested, Selma, Alabama, is the place to do it. This exciting and expansive array of works and voices is sure to impress and delight.

The romance of Charles Dickens's novels.

Lovers is pure Krantz, an intoxicating dance of love lost, stolen, and found among women and men who lure each other with potent combinations of money, talent, ambition, and passion. Chief among them is irresistible Gigi Orsini, the high-spirited, merry, adventurous creature who grew up into enchanting womanhood in Scruples Two . Now Gigi is working as a copywriter in a new Los Angeles advertising agency, with her creative "teammate," David Melville, a brilliant young art director who joins her in seeking new accounts. The agency is headed by dashing Archie Rourke, humorous Byron Bernheim and the severely difficult beauty, Victoria Frost, daughter of the famed Millicent Frost Caldwell who, with her husband Angus Caldwell, owns one of New York's largest advertising agencies. Ben Winthrop, a proper Bostonian and an enormously successful mall builder, attempts to capture Gigi's quicksilver affections, although his fierce contenders for the same prize include both David Melville and the dominating film director, Zach Nevsky. Meanwhile, Billy Winthrop Ikehorn Orsini Elliott, the unforgettably impulsive heroine of Scruples , and her new husband, the great charmer, Spider Elliott, are busy with their own fascinating lives, as are Gigi's father, canny film producer Vito Orsini, and her best friend, the ravishing Sasha Nevsky, none of whom can be forgotten from Scruples and Scruples Two . Lovers completes all the stories set in motion in the first two novels, yet it stands entirely on its own as a slice of life in the exciting years of 1983 and 1984.

About the Book First published in this country in 1937, and long unavailable English, Confession of a Murderer is a subtle, profoundly moral masterpiece by one of the greatest European novelists of the century, and a terrifying insight into the insidious, corrupting powers of jealousy, ambition and unrequited love. An exile in Paris since the Revolution, the narrator tells of how he grew up, the son of a forester, in the knowledge that his real father was the dissolute, powerful Prince Krapothin; of his futile, begging visit to the Prince in his enormous white place by the sea near Odessa, and his obsessive hatred for Kropotkin's legitimate son; of his wretched, destructive passion for Lutetia, the heartless Paris mannequin; of his enrolment in the Ochrana, the Tsar's dreaded secret police, and the betrayal of the innocent in the cause of his twin obsessions; of the devilish, ubiquitous Jeno Lakatos-dandified, limping, reeking of violets, the emissary from Hell who leads him into the realms of the eternally lost. Vivid, compelling, combining a detailed evocation of prerevolutionary Russia with the moral truths of a parable, Confession of a Murderer is a supreme embodiment of Joseph Roth's belief that' aman's private life, simple humanity, is more important, greater, more tragic, than all the public affairs in the world.' About the Author Joseph Roth (1894-1939) was brought up on the eastern frontiers of the Austro-hungarian Empiere; he spent time in Russia during the First World Was and later as a journalist. He left Germany in 1933 and settled in France, where he became a central figure in the intellectual opposition to the Nazis. His novels include Job: The story of a Simple Man and The Emperor's Tomb and The Radetzky March.

"In Bitter Bronx, one of our most gifted and original novelists depicts a world before and after modern urban renewal destroyed the gritty sanctity of a land made famous by Ruth, Gehrig, and Joltin' Joe. Bitter Bronx is suffused with the texture and nostalgia of a lost time and place, combining a keen eye for detail with Jerome Charyn's lived experience. These stories are informed by a childhood growing up near that middle-class mecca, the Grand Concourse; falling in love with three voluptuous librarians at a public library in the Lower Depths of the South Bronx; and eating at Mafia-owned restaurants along Arthur Avenue's restaurant row, amid a "land of deprivation…where fathers trundled home…with a monumental sadness on their shoulders." In "Lorelei," a lonely hearts grifter returns home and finds his childhood sweetheart still living in the same apartment house on the Concourse; in "Archy and Mehitabel" a high school romance blossoms around a newspaper comic strip; in "Major Leaguer" a former New York Yankee confronts both a gang of drug dealers and the wreckage that Robert Moses wrought in his old neighborhood; and in three interconnected stories―"Silk & Silk," "Little Sister," and "Marla"―Marla Silk, a successful Manhattan attorney, discovers her father's past in the Bronx and a mysterious younger sister who was hidden from her, kept in a fancy rest home near the Botanical Garden. In these stories and others, the past and present tumble together in Charyn's singular and distinctly "New York prose, street-smart, sly, and full of lurches" (John Leonard, New York Times)".--Dust jacket.

A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's award winning collection of novellas, which inspired his masterpiece The Garden of the Finzi-Continis. A young working class woman abandoned by her bourgeois lover; the tensions of intermarriage between established classes and communities; a holocaust survivor seemingly back from the dead; a formidable socialist activist defying house arrest; the only surviving witness to the first local atrocity of the Second World War. In these five unforgettable stories, Bassani gave life to the characters that would inform the Romanzo di Ferrara, his suite of novels depicting life in the city. Moving, poetic, atmospheric and artfully observed, this collection is a distillation of Bassani's genius. It won the Strega Prize on first publication as Cinque Storie Ferraresi in 1956, and established Bassani as one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century. 'Giorgio Bassani is one of the great witnesses of this century, and one of its great artists' Guardian 'The most uncompromising, merciful and merciless writer' Ali Smith

About the Author Erich Segal taught at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and was a Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford. He is the author of nine bestselling novels.

Erica Jong--like Isadora Wing, her fictional doppelganger--was rich and famous, brainy and beautiful, and soaring high with erotica and marijuana in 1977, the year this book was first published. Erica/Isadora are the perfect literary and libidinous guides for those readers who want to learn about-or just be reminded of-the sheer hedonistic innocence of the time. "How to Save Your Own Life" was praised by "People" for being "shameless, sex-saturated and a joy," and hailed by Anthony Burgess as one of the ninety-nine best novels published in English since 1939.

Andy's not your average resident of exclusive Foxmeadow -- whenever he sits down to draw something, it turns out to be a dragon. And he wants to be a detective when he grows up -- not just an ordinary, everyday police detective, but a tough, cool, famous detective like the ones he reads about in mystery novels. Everyone knows a famous detective needs a sidekick, but Mrs. Edie Yakots, a lonely new bride who's just moved into Foxmeadow, isn't exactly what Andy had in mind -- he sometimes has a hard time just figuring out what's she's talking about. But she's the only volunteer for the job, and before he knows it, she's led him right into the middle of his first real crime -- in an inner-city neighborhood a short drive, and light years away, from Foxmeadow.

A brazen guide for sane Americans to bypass trench warfare and win our life or death struggle for civilization. Are we in phase 8 of America's 250 year civil war? This book explores the possibility of using agility -- winning political battles with the shifting dexterity of jiu jitsu -- that never occurs to many politicians or strategists. Sure, talk show hosts milk each day's outrage for humor, indignation and ratings. But does anyone consider ways to get off the hoary, insipid "left-right political axis" and maneuver in three dimensions? Amid the latest tweet-storm and news-grabbing stunt, what pundit ever steps back to ask "Hey, what actually just happened?" Across today's fast-changing political landscape, Brin explores how to confront our neighbors not with familiar chasms, but commonalities - things both you and they know to be true. How to counter the all-out war against facts and all fact-using professions, including science and the "fake news" media. Using actual outcomes to demolish comfy oft-told narratives -- by seeking better strategies against deficits, at engendering a healthy economy and even at fostering open-creative-competitive enterprise. Polemical Judo ranges from electoral cheating to the economy; from saving the planet to troubles with Russia and China; from conspiracies to racism, to forging a Big Tent Coalition. It also explores more extreme "exit strategies" -- impeachment, indictment, the 25th Amendment and all that, as well as incorporating bold ideas from Lincoln, FDR, MLK and the Greatest Generation. Because those brave geniuses fought earlier battles for us. And they won.... plus tactics, tactics, tactics that you've never seen before. They might -- or might not work. But shouldn't someone at least try some of them? David Brin's best-selling novels include The Postman (filmed in 1997) plus explorations of our near-future in Earth and Existence. His award-winning novels and short stories explore vividly speculative ideas through a hard-science lens. His nonfiction book, The Transparent Society, won the American Library Association's Freedom of Speech Award for exploring 21st Century concerns about security, secrecy, accountability and privacy.

One hundred years after the publication of Looking Backward, Bellamy remains a controversial figure in American literary and social history. The collection of essays in this volume, commemorating the novel's appearance in 1888, attests to his continued importance.

Three plays from one of Britain's leading and best loved literary figures: House of Cowards, The Dogs of Pavlov and Pythagoras (Smith). All previously performed in London, these prize-winning plays originate in Abse's preoccupation with personal and public themes. House of Cowards, which won the Foyle Award for the best play produced outside the West End, concerns the willingness of people to surrender their individuality to a charismatic leader. The Dogs of Pavlov, which the Financial Times described as "a work of exceptional merit" and "a superb creation", explores the conditioning of people to perform un-thinking evil. Pythagoras (Smith), which was awarded a Welsh Arts Council Literature Prize, focuses on the relationship between patient and doctor and of medicine and magic. Dannie Abse (b.1923) was born in Cardiff and studied Medicine at Cardiff, King's College and Westminster Hospital. A poet, novelist, playwright, he has also published diaries and autobiography. He has published eleven volumes of poetry including a Collected Poems.

Throughout history, numerous famous and infamous men and women have contributed in their sometimes perverted but always intriguing ways to the world of gastronomy. The stories of those people--their culinary habits and the dishes created by them, named after them or cherished by them--are the subject of this book. Kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, chefs and restaurateurs, novelists and composers, generals and courtesans--all have had dishes named after them. Follow the fortunes and discover the recipes of almost seventy rogues, writers, and whores, from Apicius to Zola, or if you prefer chronologically, Lucullus through Hemingway.