"We all know what Rainbow is," began Lamondois. "Rainbow is a planet colonized by science and designed for physical experiments." "The Far Rainbow was written at one breath, it is full of dynamics and genuine dramatism." - Literary Gazette "Science-fiction stories by the Strugatsky brothers are philosophical pieces. They are full of action but each action is clearly imbued with speculation." - Neva Magazine "Take the Far Rainbow, for instance. 'Authentic' is the word, and this is rather unusual where science fiction is concerned." - The Young Guard Magazine The brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky have chosen different careers. Arkady is a linguist and Boris an astronomer. Perhaps it is this divergence of interest which has helped them to describe the world of the far future so vividly. The brothers Strugatsky are among the most prominent Soviet science-fiction writers. They have written a number of works in the genre.

Anzia Yezierska's "Children of Loneliness" explores the complex experiences of Jewish immigrants in New York City. This literary work delves into the challenges of social alienation and the struggles inherent in cultural assimilation. Through compelling prose, Yezierska examines the conflicts that arise between generations as they navigate new identities in a rapidly changing world. A poignant portrayal of the immigrant experience, "Children of Loneliness" offers a powerful glimpse into the lives of those seeking a new home while grappling with the loss of their traditions. The novel masterfully portrays the universal themes of identity, belonging, and the search for connection in an unfamiliar land, ensuring its enduring relevance. This carefully prepared print republication makes this important historical fiction accessible to all. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Literary, lyrical, and cuttingly satiric, Mother India is a brilliantly original novel about Jews who go to India to find transformation and eternal release from the sufferings of life. Narrated in luminous prose by Meena, a Jewish American lesbian who has claimed India as her home, the novel is vividly populated by the darkly comic universe of three generations of women along with other family members, as well as by the Indians whose world they seek to penetrate. There is Meena’s religiously observant mother, Ma, whose desire to remove herself from the wheel of life plays out in a Faulknerian funeral procession and cremation on the banks of the holy river Ganges; Meena’s daughter, Maya, a misunderstood child coming of age in an emotionally treacherous household; her ex-wife, Geeta, a privileged and hedonistic Indian woman who enters their world with devastating consequences; Meena's twin brother, Shmelke, a charismatic rabbi turned guru and international fugitive; and the Indian servant, Manika, whose loyalty to the family both sustains and shackles them. Identifying with the humanity of its characters, the reader is drawn into a vast, tragicomic, and fascinating epic, Homeric in scope, drama, discovery, and surprise. Universal yet intimate, brutal yet tender, satiric yet sympathetic, Mother India evokes reactions—intellectual, emotional, visceral—that are complex, even contradictory, containing the might and bite that our current cultural hubris and self-involvement deserve. In Mother India, Reich offers us her most poignant and astonishing novel to date.

In quest of the unpublished manuscript of a martyred Yiddish writer, the American novelist Nathan Zuckerman travels to Soviet-occupied Prague in the mid-1970s. There, in a nation straightjacketed by totalitarian Communism, he discovers a literary predicament, marked by institutionalized oppression, that is rather different from his own. He also discovers, among the oppressed writers with whom he quickly becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre and poignant adventures, an appealingly perverse kind of heroism. The Prague Orgy, consisting of entries from protagonist Nathan Zuckerman's notebooks recording his sojourn among these outcast artists, completes the trilogy and epilogue "Zuckerman bound," It provides a startling ending to Roth's intricately designed magnum opus on the unforeseen consequences of art. This Vintage edition is the first paperback publication of the epilogue.

Modern Japanese Short Stories is a remarkable collection of Japanese stories from the pioneers of contemporary Japanese literature. This volume's twenty-five stories by as many authors display a wide range of style and subject matter--offering a revealing picture of modern Japanese culture and society. The stories in this anthology include: "Tattoo" by Junichiro Tanizaki--a large spider tattooed on the back of a young woman results in unexpected changes "Autumn Mountain" by Ryunosuke Akutagawa--vivid memories of a beautiful painting leads a man to wonder if the it ever actually existed "The Priest and His Love" by Yukio Mishima--a Buddhist priest finds his path to enlightenment challenged after falling in love "The Moon on the Water" by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata--a young woman who cared for her ailing first husband through most of their marriage regrets remarrying after his death Featuring a new foreword by Japanese literary scholar Seiji Lippit and striking woodcut illustrations by Masakazu Kuwata, the stories are translated by the editor, Ivan Morris, and Edward Seidensticker, George Saito, and Geoffery Sargent. This collection of short stories shows why Japanese literature is so highly valued today--it teaches not only about Japan, but about the human condition and the possibilities of art.

In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. In the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbé, apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller, and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude's greatest device-a talking mechanical head-that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre. Hailed by critics for the shimmering brilliance of its inventions and its uncanny fidelity to the textures of the past, A Case of Curiosities places Allen Kurzweil securely in the ranks of the finest literary artists of our time.

In this collection of four linked stories, newly reissued by Grove, Will Self takes aim at the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an orderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects, whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. In "Foie Humaine," set at the Plantation Club, it's always a Tuesday afternoon in midwinter, and the shivering denizens of this dusty realm spend their days observing its proprietor as he force-feeds the barman vodka-spiked beer. Joyce Beddoes, protagonist of "Leberknödel," has terminal liver cancer and is on her way to be euthanized in Zurich when, miraculously, her disease goes into remission. In "Prometheus," a young copywriter at London's most cutting-edge ad agency has his liver nibbled by a griffon thrice daily, but he's always in the pink the following morning and ready to make that killer pitch. If blood and bile flow through liverish London, the two arteries meet in "Birdy Num Num," where career junky Billy Chobham performs little services for the customers who gather to wait for the Man, while in his blood a virus pullulates. A moving portrayal of egos, appetites, and addictions, Liver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most talented minds working today.

Grace Sorentino has never known the good life: from childhood hardships, to a marriage that began with lofty dreams and ended with all hopes shattered. Dealt bad hand after bad hand. Grace and Jackie, her rebellious teenage daughter, are now stuck in Florida, on the verge of poverty. Grace is underpaid and under appreciated cosmetician at Saks Fifth Avenue, and Jackie-when she is not spending her time with questionable boys-balances school and two jobs. Just when Grace things couldn't get any worse, Grace is fired after accidentally insulting a snobby customer. However, it is a blessing in disguise. As she walks out the door, her boss offers her an invaluable piece of advice: don't look for a new job, but a vulnerable old rich widower who has just lost his wife; comfort him, and once his guard is down, seduce him. The keys to success and fortune are not a name tag and uniform, but a new last name and a ring on your finger. Marriage should be the number-one priority. At first Grace is appalled by the idea, but as rent, car payments, and credit card bills pile up, her despair turns to desperation. She begins looking through the obituaries for her last chance at a good life-after all, isn't that something everyone deserves?

After serving his Brooklyn district for years, Congressman Sullivan discovers that his once comfortable Irish-American majority has given way to a diverse district of blacks and Hispanics. Challenged by a more liberal opponent, he tries everything possible to maintain his seat only to painfully learn that he and his views are outdated and irrelevant to today's world. But he doesn't bow out of the race gracefully, and the fierce ensuing campaign brings new insights to the meaning of democracy and the terrors of a swiftly changing world. If, as it is said, all politics are local, this compelling story transcends politics and puts a human face on how the American democratic system really operates. Unforgettable characters and a powerful plot offer a remarkable and tense story of how tragic endings affect new beginnings.

There are mutants living among us. People with golden yellow eyes, extraordinary powers and strange abilities. For centuries they have hidden themselves, fearing persecution. After rising tensions in recent decades, the mutants find new hope in the twenty-first century, with one of their own holding high political office. *** But underlying prejudices are hard to eradicate completely. And even as the mutants find greater acceptance in society, a single event threatens to undo everything. *** In 2017, the murder of a prominent politician sets off a series of events that will bring the mutants into direct conflict with "normal" humans, and the world may never again be the same.

Tolstoy famously wrote, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." To Tracy Farber, thirty-three, happily single, headed for tenure at a major university, and content to build a life around friends and work, this celebrated maxim is questionable at best. Because if Tolstoy is to be taken at his word, only unhappiness is interesting; happiness must be as placid and unmemorable as a daisy in a field of a thousand daisies. Having decided to reject the petty indignities of dating, Tracy focuses instead on her secret project: to determine whether happiness can be interesting, in literature and in life, or whether it can be--must be--a plant with thorns and gnarled roots. It's an unfashionable proposition, and a potential threat to her job security. But Tracy is her own best example of a happy and interesting life. Little does she know, however, that her best proof will come when she falls for George, who will challenge all of her old assumptions, as love proves to be even more complicated than she had imagined. Can this young feminist scholar, who posits that "a woman's independence is a hothouse flower--improbable, rare, requiring vigilance," find happiness in a way that fulfills both her head and her heart? Love may be the ultimate cliché, but in Rachel Kadish's hands, it is also a morally serious question, deserving of our sober attention as well as our delighted laughter.

A haunting novel that probes the enigmas of time and memory, by Nobel Prize-winning author Patrick Modiano "Polizzotti's crisp and evocative translation keeps the reader hooked."-- Publishers Weekly In his acclaimed semi-autobiographical novella Suspended Sentences , Patrick Modiano recounted a dramatic season in his childhood, of the home he shared with sinister surrogate parents, the mysterious events that took place there, and an infamous heist that was never solved. In Scene of the Crime , Modiano conjures the aftermath of those years. A decade has passed, and Jean Bosmans, now in his early twenties, becomes aware of a set of disturbing coincidences involving an elusive woman, his childhood home, and a host of disquieting characters who seem inordinately interested in his past, for reasons he can't fathom. As he journeys into the echoes of memory, past and present become increasingly intertwined, forming a web spanning half a century. With the taut suspense of a detective novel, this book slowly peels away layers of time and forgetfulness to reveal the haunting, threatening, ultimately tragic legacies of what we think we know about our lives.

Mike Teak has a classic Harvard profile. He's a twenty-five-year-old scholar/athlete from an upper-class family who was recruited by his godfather to work for a U.S. intelligence agency. On a covert mission in a Somali village, he delivers cash and cell phones to Hatashil, a legendary orphan warrior turned rebel leader. It's a routine assignment until, minutes after they meet, the village is decimated by a missile assault, and although Mike escapes, his life is changed forever. Echoing across continents, the assault disrupts professor Susan Lowell, who has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book celebrating Hatashil. Also shaken is Lowell's student, David Ayan, who was born in the targeted village a world away from Harvard's most exclusive final club, the Porcellian, which is courting him and Jane, the smart, risk-taking daughter of East Coast money who's sleeping with him. David Ayan struggles with his identity and Susan Lowell struggles against rumors about her relationship with Hatashil, who has been accused of ordering the village massacre. But it is Mike Teak who faces a deadly struggle--because when he discovers a horrific conspiracy he immediately realizes that he has become expendable, with nowhere to run and no one to trust.

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 5 - Evil Stalks the Halls of Academe! Welcome to the hothouse world of academia where egos bruise as easily as peaches and vendettas grow like weeds. Nick Hoffman's State University of Michigan is a place where the Borgias and the Marx Brothers would be equally at home. Heading into the Christmas season, SUM is being torn apart by bizarre attempts to make it more diverse while an autocratic new provost pushes for a White Studies program and Nick faces not only a tenure battle but conflicting requests for support in a battle for department chair. With his professional life a mix of seasonal chaos and departmental warfare, Nick discovers that he's not only attracted to the outrageously sexy Juno Dromgoole and disturbed by these disorienting new feelings in his life, but also the target, along with Juno, of a vicious harassment campaign that escalates into stalking, assault, and attempted murder. This new edition contains a 2022 foreword by Martha C. Lawrence (Murder in Scorpio). "Lev Raphael's lacerating wit fillets the fatted calves of academia, roasts them with the hot breath of satire, then serves them up in the sauciest of mysteries." - Val McDermid "Nick Hoffman is back, relegated to the basement of his college so he won't get into trouble. But when someone torches his mailbox, Nick gets the hint that an arsonist is carrying a flame for him. As ever, Lev Raphael is witty, biting and on the nail when it comes to the groves and gripes of academe." - Ian Rankin "Lev Raphael is one of the most sophisticated mystery authors alive, and his latest, Burning Down the House, is witty and charming." - Cleveland Plain Dealer "If conditions on university campuses really are as bizarre and insidiously political as depicted in novelist-critic Lev Raphael's new Burning Down the House, higher education must be at an all-time low. As the author amusingly presents it, the faculty at State University of Michigan is an assortment of eccentric, conniving, self-promoting, not to mention homicidal, half-baked do-nothings." - Los Angeles Times

“A storyteller of refreshing inventiveness and subtlety” ( San Francisco Chronicle ), Jonathan Ames has won critical raves for this delightful “comedy of impeccable manners with a debauched '90s spin” ( Elle ). Meet Louis Ives: well-groomed, romantic, and as captivating as an F. Scott Fitzgerald hero. Only this hero has a penchant for ladies clothes, and he's lost his teaching post at Princeton’s Pretty Brook Day School after an unfortunate incident involving a colleague’s brassiere. Meet Henry Harrison: former actor, failed but brilliant playwright, and a well-seasoned escort for New York City’s women of means. He dances alone to Ethel Merman records, second-acts operas, and performs his scrappy life with the dignity befitting a self-styled man of the world. What can this ageless Don Quixote of the Upper East Side have to offer a young gentleman such as Louis? What, indeed. Well, the answer lies somewhere between the needs of an irascible mentor and the education of his eager apprentice...between cocktails on the Upper East Side and an even more intoxicating treat along the secret fringes of Times Square...and between friendship and longing.

New York City€™s Lower East Side on the eve of WWI. Abraham Cahan, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, receives a letter addressed to his €œBintel Brif€ column from a twenty-three-year-old girl who confesses to living in sin with her uncle and seeks his advice. The girl€™s description of her plight inflames Cahan€™s imagination; the enclosed photograph, a young woman in a white cotton shift gazing languidly up at the camera from her bed, overwhelms him with desire. €œPeering at the photograph, wondering if her slackened, unprotected presentation of herself was the aftermath of a feverish embrace, Cahan felt a ghostly invisible presence possess him, settling into the emptiness in his soul.€ Thus begins the drama of a righteous man€™s struggle to free himself from an obsession that threatens to destroy him and mortally wound his family. Desperate to fathom the mystery of her power, Cahan explores the girl€™s past only to discover that her st

Featuring interviews with Chris Hardwick on The Nerdist Podcast and Marc Maron on WTF with Marc Maron Bad Sex On Speed is a savage, careening, hyper-real nightmare of a novel, taking us to the depths of Amphetamine America. Told with no concession to traditional narrative, in the voices of those in the grips and on the fringes, the stories that emerge are at once devastating, hysterical, and--perhaps most terrifying of all--going on all around you, all the time. Stahl digs deep into the psyche of the most demented and dispossessed among us, returning with a vision so unsparing that those not prepared to experience the screaming depths of speed psychosis up close and on the page should back slowly away and return to their lives unscathed.

Meet Phil Snyder: new father, nursing assistant at a cutting-edge biotech facility on Staten Island, and all-around decent guy. Trouble is, his life is falling apart. His wife has betrayed him, his job involves experimental surgeries with strange side effects, and his father is hiding early-onset dementia. Phil also has a special talent he doesn't want to publicize--he's a mind reader and moonlights as Brainstorm, a costumed superhero. But when Phil wakes up from a blackout drunkand is confronted with photos that seem to show him assaulting an unknown woman, even superpowers won't help him. Try as he might, Phil can't remember that night, and so, haunted by the need to know, he mind-reads his way through the lab techs at work, adoring fans at Toy Polloi, and anyone else who gets in his way, in an attempt to determine whether he's capable of such violence.

Many writers and artists have undertaken the difficult task of recreating the image of Lenin for their contemporaries and future generations. The Blue Notebook by the well-known Soviet author Emmanuil Kazakevich (1913-1962) has become one of the most popular books about Lenin. A notebook in a blue cover actually did exist. In it Lenin jotted down notes for his famous book State and Revolution which he worked on in the difficult days preceding the Great October Socialist Revolution. At the time Lenin was in hiding at Razliv Station, from where he directed the preparations for the armed uprising. "He was a passionate traveler, a hunter, a crack shot, a top-notch driver, the life of the party, witty and full of fun... Moreover, he was a truly courageous soldier." This portrait of Kazakevich was drawn by his contemporary and colleague, the writer Alexander Tvardovsky. During the Second World War Kazakevich, commander of a platoon, was asked to join the staff of the brigade newspaper. After working on the paper for a short while he asked to be transferred back to the front lines. "The front lines are important to me not only as a patriot, but as a writer," he said. Emmanuil Kazakevich was born in the Ukraine in 1913, the son of a teacher. His first book, a volume of poetry, was published in 1932. He translated the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Mayakovsky into Yiddish. Kazakevich's first prose work, The Star, is a harsh, yet sensitive war story which gained him world fame. This was followed by Spring on the Oder, Heart of a Friend, Two in the Steppe, The House on the Square, By the Light of Day and The Blue Notebook, the author's last work. Kazakevich was twice awarded the State Prize for Literature.