The Twelfth Hour (1907) is a novel by Ada Leverson. Having established herself as a journalist and short story writer, Leverson published her debut novel to moderate acclaim. Entertaining and effortlessly witty, Leverson's prose paints a stunning portrait of the Edwardian era, a time when hope and relative peace proved prosperous for many. Often compared to her close friend Oscar Wilde, Leverson, a pioneering Jewish woman, remains a unique and refreshing voice in English literature. Felicity, Sylvia, and Savile Crofton all feel the pressure placed on upper-class youths to marry wisely. At 25, Felicity appears to have found herself a good husband, a man of wealth and social standing who on closer appearance seems more interested in leisure than love. Determined not to fall into a similarly unhappy marriage, her 20-year-old sister Sylvia hopes to thwart her father's wish that she marry millionaire Mr. Ridokanski. Although he is only 16, Eton student Savile is deeply in love with a famous opera singer--from a distance--but also feels obliged to entertain the affections of Dolly Clive, a girl his own age. Finding company in their own unique miseries of the heart, the Crofton siblings hatch a plan to achieve happiness for themselves, satisfaction for their father, and whatever it is young people are meant to owe to society. The Twelfth Hour is a humorous tale of romance and desire from Ada Leverson, an underappreciated novelist of the Edwardian era. This edition of Ada Leverson's The Twelfth Hour is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

In London, before the First World War, where in society love and money predominate, Bertha and Nigel had been inseparable. But then Nigel felt he had to focus on the economics of life, and after all Bertha's family were quite modestly off. Whereas the heiress Mary, also interested in him but not anywhere near so charming, was very well set up. His decision was made. Though initially heartbroken, Bertha realises quickly that she has escaped from a delusion. Equanimity returns, and she finds in Percy Kellynch a devoted lover, though one a little more sober and less racy. They marry, as do Nigel and Mary, and over time the two become friends again, though now with wise awareness on Bertha's side. Nigel begins to see his error, as Mary's jealousy and her wish to supervise his life take their toll. He finds comfort in simply seeing Bertha initially, but inevitably begins to wish for more. Bertha is not interested, having moved on, but, if noticed, Nigel's attentions could be misconstrued... In the meantime, Bertha is also looking out for the future of a young friend, Madeline Irwin, who is smitten with Rupert Denison, a young man with rather too much of a penchant for patronising and "educating" young women. Madeline is impulsive, a little inexperienced and quite needy. Her headlong qualities precipitate problems very readily. As Bertha negotiates several crises arising from Nigel's reviving attachment, she also tries to assist Madeline in avoiding her own self-created disasters. Much depends on Bertha's talent for good management and wise counsel in the perils of both their lives. She is determined to win over adversity, but it will be a strong test of her skills.... Bird of Paradise, Leverson's fifth novel, as radiant with wit and wisdom as those which preceded it, was first published in 1914.

James Joyce left Dublin in 1904, bound for Trieste and a job teaching English at the Berlitz School. He was to live there for the next eleven years. Italo Svevo, born and bred in Trieste, worked there for his family's marine paint company. He had also written two novels, published privately and unsuccessfully. In 1907, wanting to improve his English to do business with the British Admiralty, Svevo went to Berlitz, where Joyce became his teacher. Svevo was then 46 and Joyce 25. Despite their different backgrounds, Irish Catholic and Triestene Jewish, they had, intellectually, much in common. They admired each other's writing. Joyce improved Svevo's English. Svevo helped Joyce stay solvent, and also became the inspiration for Leopold Bloom. In Ulysses, the near father-son relationship between Stephen Dedalus and Bloom in Dublin was very close to that of Svevo and Joyce in Trieste. The two writers lived through the great political and cultural upheavals of the early twentieth century, and their story has a fascinating supporting cast - W.B. Yeats and G.B. Shaw, Proust and Hemingway, Freud and Jung, H.G. Wells and T.S. Eliot. Although often living in different cities - Zurich, Paris, London - their friendship survived. When Ulysses was finally published in Paris in 1922, its success enabled Joyce to help Svevo find a publisher for his great comic masterpiece The Confessions of Zeno. European literature owes a great deal to that meeting in Trieste.

Here are eighteen interviews with this novelist & historian that portray him to be both an admirable writer & spellbinding talker & reveal his evolution into a great narrative artist.

Mariano Siskind’s groundbreaking debut book redefines the scope of world literature, particularly regarding the place of Latin America in its imaginaries and mappings. In Siskind’s formulation, world literature is a modernizing discursive strategy, a way in which cultures negotiate their aspirations to participate in global networks of cultural exchange, and an original tool to reorganize literary history. Working with novels, poems, essays, travel narratives, and historical documents, Siskind reads the way Latin American literary modernity was produced as a global relation, from the rise of planetary novels in the 1870s and the cosmopolitan imaginaries of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, to the global spread of magical realism. With its unusual breadth of reference and firm but unobtrusive grounding in philosophy, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, Cosmopolitan Desires will have a major impact in the fields of Latin American studies and comparative literature.

'Over the years, Ariel Dorfman has written movingly and often brilliantly of the cultural dislocations and political fractures of his dual heritage. Dorfman has, in an impressive body of work, done justice to the two languages that have battled for his voice and the two countries that claim his allegiance.' Shashi Tharoor, New York Times Book ReviewOther Septembers, Many Americas: Selected Provocations, 1980-2004 is the first major collection of acclaimed novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman's best shorter works, including essays, opinion pieces, poems and previously unpublished speeches. Gathered here are writings about America, North and South, that touch on topics as diverse as Scrooge McDuck, barbarians, Vietnam and video games, and as profound as redemption, forgiveness, art and memory. Over and over, in a literary career that has spanned almost a quarter of a century, Dorfman weaves together sentiment and politics with an unmistakable message to his readers that we must never forget to resist and to imagine. This collection forms a rich historical and social text essential for anyone who wishes to understand how the roots of our present crisis are embedded deep within the American psyche, documented by a writer who exists uniquely both inside and out of it.

Shocking, brilliant, and eccentric, the French author, translator, and artist Pierre Klossowski (1905–2001) exerted a profound effect on French intellectual culture throughout the twentieth century. The older brother of the painter Balthus, secretary to the novelist André Gide, friend to Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, and heralded as one of the most important voices in the French “return to Nietzsche” by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, Klossowski pursued his singular vision of mortal embodiment through a variety of scholarly manifestations. In Such a Deathly Desire (Un si funeste désir), Klossowski’s original interpretation of Nietzsche’s eternal return is developed around the enigmatic figure of the “demon,” then deepened with provocative readings of Gide’s correspondence; Barbey d’Aurevilly’s novel A Married Priest; and the intertwining of language and death in the work of Bataille, Blanchot, and Brice Parain. The book concludes with the powerful essay “Nietzsche, Polytheism, and Parody,” in which Klossowski articulates the consequences of the eternal return and the meaning of Nietzsche’s genealogy of the fabulation of the world. Intersecting with and confounding a range of disciplines—including psychoanalysis, literary criticism, gender studies, and philosophy—Klossowski’s critical writings on language, literature, and the aesthetics of embodiment remain powerful and original contributions to contemporary concerns in the theoretical humanities. --

Lind, Jakov. Travels to the Enu. New York, St. Martin's, 1982. Octavo. 125 pages. Original Hardcover with original dustjacket in protective collector's mylar. First edition of this brief satirical novel, Lind's first novel to be composed in English. A fine copy in dust jacket. This copy signed and inscribed by Lind to American novelist Harold Brodkey. Jakov Lind (born Heinz Jakov Landwirth, 10 February 1927 in Vienna - 16 February 2007 in London) was an Austrian-British writer of short stories and novels. After the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Jews were immediately targeted by the new Nazi regime with anti-Semitic decrees designed to make their lives untenable and force them to leave Austria. The decrees included prohibition of using public transportation, of being employed, and of operating businesses. Jews were expelled from schools and universities, had their businesses Aryanized, a euphemism for their theft and confiscation by the Nazi regime, and were harassed with washing street signs of the previous regime in front of cheering and violent mobs. Eventually they were forced out of their apartments and prevented from leaving the country by themselves. While sitting in a cafe, Lind's father was picked up and arrested by the Gestapo, and shortly afterwards the family was ordered to evacuate their apartment within 24 hours. On the run, his mother managed to find a place for Lind and two sisters on a Kindertransport bound to the Netherlands. After Lind's father was somehow released, his parents struggled to leave Austria on a Danube barge bound for the Black Sea. There they boarded the ship Patria which was sunk with great loss of lives at Haifa Port in November 1940 by the Hagana in an effort to prevent the British from turning it back to Europe. As a child of 11 years in the Netherlands, Lind stayed initially in a children home in The Hague with his two sisters, but after a few months the sibl..

Product Description When Jack Rodenko shipped out as a sailor during World War II, he never imagined that real adventure would be waiting for him at home in New Orleans. The Crescent City after the war is at the heart of a rapidly changing America, and ex-sailor Jack Rodenko is caught up in a strange and shifting milieu as he tends bar at a seedy club called L’Êtoile. While struggling to build a new life, Rodenko becomes involved with a corrupt, greedy power broker, and falls in love with a striking photographer - relationships that will force him to choose between two decidedly different futures. First published decades after the author's death in 1972, The Unknown Constellations is the first novel by unsung postwar literary hero Henry Swados. Through these pages, we can trace the origins of a unique voice and an unerring conscience. From Library Journal Written in the 1940s, this is Swados's recently rediscovered first novel. (The late Swados was the author of ten books, including The Will, which received a National Book Award nomination in 1963.) The novel concerns Jack Rodenko, a disaffected seaman who puts ashore in New Orleans, hoping to rebuild a life shattered by an accident that occurred while in college. Soon, he is a protege of corrupt, power-hungry Shepard Ball and becomes enmeshed in Ball's schemes involving drugs, weapons, and politics. In the end, Jack must decide between wealth and easy success with Ball or self-respect and the love of Linda Lester, a beautiful photographer. While generally melodramatic, the novel is significant for sounding themes Swados would develop in later works: father-son conflicts, concern for the working class, and the tensions between public and private commitments. For academic and large public libraries.?Lawrence Rungren, Bedford Free P.L., Mass. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

'Personal Terms IV' follows Raphael's distinguished and eventful career as a novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter, offering a wry take on the glamorous worlds of Hollywood and literary London during the second half of the 1970s.

Against the Stream is the latest volume of Frederic Raphael's acclaimed memoirs Personal Terms , an unrivalled parade of the author's eventful and provocative life, opinions and times drawn from his living and breathing cahiers and journals. "Shrewd, funny, gossipy and elegantly written," as Jeremy Lewis said in the Literary Review , these writings are as unguarded, sardonic and tactless as they are candid. This seventh volume relives Margaret Thatcher's first years in office. Raphael's wide acquaintance in the world of politics, literature, journalism and the movies gives him rare access to the character of those, in England and America, who dominated the times. The unintended result is a Proustian parade of people, famous and otherwise forgotten, and events momentous and strictly personal, presented by an unabashedly partisan, unblinking eye-witness. There is nothing else quite like this unfolding project in English or American literature. "I am not a camera, but--as these carnets prove--I am a pen. The moving finger writes differently from the clicking keys."

"Inspired by a search for the origin of his Lithuanian-immigrant grandfather's unlikely name - Charles Beresford Price - Stanley Price sets out to assemble his own identity from a multitude of fragments: rugby-playing, patriotic Irish; rebellious orthodox Jewish; Cambridge, anti-Establishment British; 1960s immigrant to America; not to mention, eventually, successful novelist and playwright." "Price introduces us to a varied, Woody Allen-esque cast: the eccentric grandfather who was once famously asked by a Dublin policeman whether he was 'a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew'; the ageing spinster aunts Minnie and Hilda, aka 'The Girls'; a wind-obsessed rabbi; and guest appearances from Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marilyn Monroe." "Criss-crossing both the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic, this perfectly paced and witty memoir also tells a little-known story: that of the Jews of Ireland - their history, culture and contribution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"This book provides a wide-ranging survey of a large number of Israeli novels and short stories written in the 1980s and 1990s and brings together a range of fresh critical perspectives that will benefit teachers and students of Hebrew literature and fans of literature in general.

"This volume celebrates the literary oeuvres of David Shrayer-Petrov-poet, fiction writer, memoirist, essayist, and literary translator (and medical doctor and researcher in his parallel career). Author of the refusenik novel Doctor Levitin, Shrayer-Petrov is one of the most important representatives of Jewish-Russian literature. Published in the year of Shrayer-Petrov's eighty-fifth birthday, thirty-five years after the writer's emigration from the former USSR, this is the first volume to gather materials and investigations that examine his writings from various literary-historical and theoretical perspectives. By focusing on many different aspects of Shrayer-Petrov's multifaceted and eventful literary career, the volume brings together some of the leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars of Jewish poetics, exilic literature, and Russian and Soviet culture and history. In addition to fifteen essays and an extensive interview with Shrayer-Petrov, the volume features a detailed bibliography and a pictorial biography"--

"The novel opens in 1945. Five Britons, shipwrecked on an island in the Far East in the early years of World War 2, listen to the general election results on their radio and learn that a Socialist government has been elected. They are rescued and return home by ship. While waiting to disembark at Southampton, James prays to God to "fix the election" and let him see "the England of all decent Conservatives' dreams." He hears a clap of thunder over his right shoulder and once on dry land, finds himself in a society designed entirely to suit people of his class. An entertaining satirical novel"--Review.

This is the latest collation from Frederic Raphael's personal journals. Compulsively readable, wise, and mischievous by turns, this sixth volume chronicles his eventful life in the seemingly glamorous worlds of 1980s Hollywood and literary London.

Exulting in life as few novels do, Jack Ludwig's Above Ground tells the memorable story of Josh, a man devoted to love, sex, and life, a man who roars with lusty pleasure, defiant in the face of pain and death. The novel's infectious commitment to hope and to life is matched in its appeal by the superb prose style that has placed Jack Ludwig among the foremost contemporary authors. Imaginative and sensuous language, deft, vivid characterizations, and an unerring sense of humour draw the reader willingly and pleasurably into the world that is being created. It is a world peopled by fascinating characters, almost all of whom work themselves into Josh's, and the reader's, affections.