The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet writes about her life, the creative process, and the work of other poets.

Notes from the Other Side of Night is a diary-memoir written upon Juliana Geran Pilon's return to her native Romania in 1975, which she had left along with her family when she was just fourteen. Poetically weaving together modern insight and realities with childhood perceptions, Pilon tells the haunting stories of her parents, grandparents, neighbors, and friends. Although the scenery of her native home had remained essentially unchanged since her childhood, Pilon recalls streets that are no more, homes and churches that have been demolished. Yet, the hills and forests, the flowers and mountains, the heat of old Bucharest, remained the same. The scenes and characters described in this book are simply unforgettable. Despite the many tragedies it describes--anti-semitism, political imprisonment, and judicial execution were ruthless realities under communism--Notes from the Other Side of Night is not a depressing book. Pilon writes with a detached melancholy about events and characters that illustrate Hannah Arendt's terrifying "banality of evil." But she remembers, as well, those few who managed to remain human beings until the end. Ultimately, hope triumphs in this memoir. This edition includes a new foreword, which discusses the initial writing and publication of this and previous editions.

Is Faith Darwin Asbury really Grace Paley? Or is it coincidental that the personal history, politics, and relationships of the fictional Asbury seem to mirror those of the well-known author? And do other characters in Paley's stories represent individuals she has known, in scenes and entire episodes she has experienced? A writer who translates her life into art not only saves her own life, according to Paley, but offers others the revelation of its meaning. That idea is at the core of Judith Arcana's biographical reading of this strongly autobiographical writer. Grace Paley's Life Stories interweaves details about Paley with critical discussions of her works, examining her as a woman, mother, activist, and Jew. Arcana visited and interviewed Paley at her homes in Vermont and New York over a period of several years. She also interviewed Paley's family, friends, and colleagues. Such extensive research is unmatched in Paley scholarship; Arcana's focus on the political crucible of Paley's consciousness is rare in contemporary literary criticism.

"This memoir of a radical Jew follows Jack Nusan Porter's journey from his birth in Ukraine during the Holocaust, through the radical 60s and 70s, to the present day, and details his experiences fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, xenophobia, and hate"--

Arthur Szyk (pronounced "Shick") was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1894 and died in New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1951. He was considered the greatest miniaturist and painter-illuminator of his era, and the leading political artist in America during World War II. He was internationally recognized and celebrated, and his works of art continue to be exhibited worldwide. This catalogue of institutional holdings of Arthur Szyk's art was created to provide the best jumping off point for those interested in surveying his originals for the purpose of research, scholarship, and curatorial possibilities. 'Arthur Szyk Preserved' illustrates where Szyk's work can be found today. Ultimately, this catalogue recognizes and celebrates the public institutions that serve as vital caretakers of Arthur Szyk's art and legacy. It is hoped that this publication will encourage them to more fully promote public awareness of Szyk's art and the breadth and beauty of his works in multiple and creative ways.

'In the Lower Saxony region of northwestern Germany sits the city of Osnabrück. This is where, in 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, bringing the Thirty Years' War and one of the most calamitous periods of European history to an end. But the city was later to witness another calamity. Today, as one walks through Old Synagogue Street in a rich neighborhood of Osnabrück, one might miss noticing a pile of pale stones held together by chicken wire that sits between two fashionable homes. These are the well-kept ruins from behind which stares a gaping space--a place of memory and oblivion. Four polished plaques tell the tale of the horror-filled night of November 9, 1938--today known as Kristallnacht--when the synagogue that had stood on this spot was desecrated, looted, set on fire, and eventually demolished by Hitler's forces. On the same day, ninety parishioners were imprisoned by the Gestapo and eventually sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Osnabrück was also home to Eve Klein, a member of the city's early-twentieth-century Jewish community and the mother of author Hélène Cixous. In Well-Kept Ruins, Cixous returns to the historic city in 2019 and reflects on the remains of the synagogue that "express the life lost, the life kept." Walking the streets of the city, plumbing the depths of the past along with her own family's history, looking deep into the future, and punctuating her poetic prose with haunting photographs, Cixous explores the ruins at the heart of humanity. Part memoir, part philosophical meditation, Well-Kept Ruins is a genre-defying and timely reflection of the contemporary human condition.'--Publisher description.

159p hardback with yellow dustjacket, gift inscription signed by the artist, obituary of Brilliant's husband Professor Herbert Marshall taped lightly to front pastedown, very good copy of the first edition

This memoir, a young poet's tragicomic account of crossed loves and rebellions as he grows from boy to man under the vigilant eyes of the state in the Soviet Union between the 1950s and 1970s, can be approached as a bildungsroman. It is set in Tallinn, Riga and Moscow (with episodes in Uzbekistan, Moldavia, and the Ukraine) and, apart from this author's own story, deals with the experiences of young people of that period, their friendships and attempts to form erotic/romantic attachments, as well as their search for national--Baltic, Jewish, Russian--identity while being watched and sometimes interrogated by the secret police. It also includes some reconstruction of the author's family history: expulsion from Spain, the Magician of Prague, the renowned historian Simon Dubnov. The volume progresses from the demonstration of two seven-year-old boys' against Stalin and Lenin, in Tallinn, in the mid-1950s to a dramatic and doomed love affair with a woman married to an army colonel who attempts to shoot the author as the latter is about to make his final exit from the country, with the KGB on his tail, in the early 1970s. While raising a number of important historical and contemporary issues, the memoir is also an involving narrative, a visually descriptive story, varied and engrossing, involving philosophical, theological, and detective elements; popular and literary culture; countries and languages; high seriousness and undercutting irony.

Shipped from UK, please allow 10 to 21 business days for arrival. Fair, Book very good; jacket has some tears to edges.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) kept a journal his entire life, beginning at the age of eleven. In these first journals the most important and formative years of the poet's storied life are captured, his inner thoughts detailed in what the San Francisco Chronicle calls a “vivid first-person account...Ginsberg's unmistakable voice coming into its own for the first time.” Ginsberg's journals-so candid he insisted they be published only after his death-document his complex, fascinating relationships with such figures of Beat lore as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and reveal a growing self-awareness about himself, his sexuality, and his identity as a poet. Illustrated with never-before-seen photos and bolstered by an appendix of his earliest poems, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice is a major literary event.

"I have been a Jew during Fascism, a bourgeois under Communism, a rebel defeated in an uprising, a refugee among the free, and a have-not amid plenty. This book contains over 60 stories that range from my youth in Hungary, the ordeal of a death march and concentration camps, the oppression of the Communist dictatorship, the promise and defeat of the Hungarian Revolution and, finally, my American years"--Preminary pages

From February 1942 to July 1944, Oskar Rosenfeld served in the statistics department of the Lodz ghetto. A playwright and journalist, he kept his own notes on life and conditions in the ghetto for a fictionalized account he hoped to write one day. Though Rosenfeld eventually perished at Auschwitz, In the Beginning Was the Ghetto projects his voice at last to the wider world.

The Western Mind In Transition: An Eyewitness Story is a book written by Franz Alexander, a renowned psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. The book is a first-hand account of the intellectual and cultural changes that swept across Western society in the early 20th century. Through his personal experiences and observations, Alexander traces the evolution of Western thought from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the existentialism and psychoanalysis of the 20th century. He discusses the impact of World War I, the rise of fascism, and the disillusionment of the post-war generation on the Western psyche.The book also delves into the role of psychoanalysis in shaping the modern Western mind. Alexander explores the theories and practices of Sigmund Freud and his followers, as well as his own contributions to the field.Overall, The Western Mind In Transition: An Eyewitness Story is a thought-provoking and insightful examination of the intellectual and cultural changes that have shaped the Western world. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of ideas and the evolution of the human mind.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.