Fascinated by the idea of Western civilization as being a sequence of numerous misinterpretations and misrepresentations, these nineteen essays cover a broad range of topics with the unifying theme being the crossroads where politics and the imagination meet. An essay on linguistics and culture discusses the shaping of Latin America's collective identity; Peru's modern history is approached as a bloody battle between enlightenment and darkness; and in critiques of Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez, Stavans reflects on the dichotomy between pen and sword in the Hispanic world. In 'Letter to a German Friend', Stavans returns to his fate as a Jew in the Southern Hemisphere, and in 'The First Book,' he connects his passion for literature to his initiation into Jewishness. Finally, in a meditation on Columbus's afterlife, he reflects on the many ways in which we reinvent ourselves in order to make sense of the chaotic world that surrounds us.

From the beginning, myths have told of women who lived apart from men -- the Sirens who sang on the Aegean rocks, the Amazons of the Brazilian jungle, the self-reproducing women on islands in Polynesia, to mention only a few. As this theme emerged in her own fiction, Batya Weinbaum became intrigued by its persistence across time and cultures and began tracing it in literature and mythology, as well as in actual locales that are or were said to be islands of women. In this fascinating, interdisciplinary book, she explores how the myth of Amazons has served varying psychological needs in different cultures over time. Weinbaum first analyzes various historical interpretations and uses of the Amazon archetype, some designed to empower women, others created by men to disempower them. She next turns to the original Greek context, in Homer's epics and other aspects of Greek culture, and then traces how Amazons eventually evolved into negative representations of paganism. Moving from Rodriguez de Montalvo's fifteenth-century Sergas de Esplandian, which imagined an island of women in the New World, Weinbaum concludes with revealing fieldwork she conducted on Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) off the Yucatan Peninsula, which included giving birth with the participation of a native Maya midwife. Batya Weinbaum is Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University. She founded and edits the journal Femspec.

Spanish American fiction became a world phenomenon in the twentieth century through multilanguage translations of such novels as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude, and Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Yet these "blockbusters" are only a tiny fraction of the total, rich outpouring of Spanish-language literature from Latin America. In this book, Naomi Lindstrom offers English-language readers a comprehensive survey of the century's literary production in Latin America (excluding Brazil). Discussing movements and trends, she places the famous masterworks in historical perspective and highlights authors and works that deserve a wider readership. Her study begins with Rodó's famous essay Ariel and ends with Rigoberta Menchú's 1992 achievement of the Nobel Prize. Her selection of works is designed to draw attention, whenever possible, to works that are available in good English translations. A special feature of the book is its treatment of the "postboom" period. In this important concluding section, Lindstrom discusses documentary narratives, the new interrelations between popular culture and literary writing, and underrepresented groups such as youth cultures, slum dwellers, gays and lesbians, and ethnic enclaves. Written in accessible, nonspecialized language, Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction will be equally useful for general readers as a broad overview of this vibrant literature and for scholars as a reliable reference work.

The African Worker, first published in 1988, was intended as a synthesis considering issues and debates from the work of many writers on labour history and labour studies in Africa. The development of a particular critical literature, spanning a number of disciplines, is critically considered. In some respects, the concerns of past generations have been to align the understanding of labour issues in Africa with those more generally in the modern world. In others, the emphasis remains on the specific and African. Both directions clearly emerge here. The bibliographical essay, as well as the bibliography itself, is meant to point readers further who want a higher order of detail, a regional focus or a more thorough-going theoretical treatment of all or some of the relevant issues.

The scientific achievements of the modern world failed to impress the leading writers of this century, leaving them instead profoundly disturbed by a sense of lost values and of the insignificance of the individual in a universe seemingly indifferent to human concerns. In The Search for Selfhood in Modern Literature Roston explores the strategies adopted by such mid-century authors as Greene, Salinger, Osborne, Baldwin and others in their attempt to cope with the spiritual vacuity - strategies including the emergence of the anti-hero and of literary existentialism - and offer in the course of the investigation fascinatingly new insights into their work.

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.

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.

In this pathbreaking study of responses to the Holocaust in wartime and postwar Polish literature, Rachel Feldhay Brenner explores seven writers' compulsive need to share their traumatic experience of witness with the world. The Holocaust put the ideological convictions of Kornel Filipowicz, Józef Mackiewicz, Tadeusz Borowski, Zofia Kossak, Leopold Buczkowski, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Stefan Otwinowski to the ultimate test. Tragically, witnessing the horror of the Holocaust implied complicity with the perpetrator and produced an existential crisis that these writers, who were all exempted from the genocide thanks to their non-Jewish identities, struggled to resolve in literary form. Polish Literature and the Holocaust: Eyewitness Testimonies,1942-1947 is a particularly timely book in view of the continuing debates about the attitudes of Poles toward the Jews during the war. The literary voices from the past that Brenner examines posit questions that are as pertinent now as they were then. And so, while this book speaks to readers who are interested in literary responses to the Holocaust, it also illuminates the universal issue of the responsibility of witnesses toward the victims of any atrocity--Provided by publisher.

"The Nazi Holocaust & the Exile of Yiddish is a history of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye (General Encyclopedia, Berlin, Paris, & New York, 1932-1966), the only attempt to publish a comprehensive encyclopedia of universal knowledge in the Yiddish language. In the decade after World War I, the potential for Yiddish was seemingly limitless.The global number of speakers of Yiddish was estimated at between nine and ten million, with major communities in Poland, the Soviet Union, and the United States. But by the early 1930s, as Jews were becoming invested in their host states, a dramatic rise in antisemitism from the political right threatened their new status. Extreme nationalists sought to undo Jewish participation in civic life, limit Jewish migration and settlement, and contain - or even purge - Jews' political, economic, cultural, and racial influence. This combination of factors led many within the Yiddishist camp both to reassert their commitment to the language and to a distinct Jewish national identity, increasing the urgency for the Entsiklopedye's architects to embark upon their project. Uncertainty over the Jewish future began to be reflected in the Entsiklopedye itself. The volumes of 1936 and 1937 contain otherwise out-of-place monograph-length entries on the specifically Jewish topics of "Antisemitism" and "Land of Israel," presaging a shift away from general subjects and toward more specifically Jewish content. In September 1939, the German invasion of Poland cut the Entsiklopedye off from its major source of readers and trapped many of its contributors who were based there. Just as the second Yidn volume was being sent to subscribers in Spring 1940, Germany invaded France. Making matters even worse, the copies of the second Yidn volume were sent to the United States, and but most copies were lost at sea. A few volumes that had been sent via the regular mail arrived safely in New York, however. The encyclopedia's editors themselves fled and, after making a harrowing escape via Spain and Portugal, arrived in New York by late summer / early autumn 1940. With the end of World War II and as the enormity of the Nazi Holocaust was becoming understood, the editors decided that the Entsiklopedye should continue. The post-war Yidn volumes contain descriptive essays on Jewish life on the eve of the Holocaust, a study of Jewish life in the Americas, and the last two volumes (1964 and 1966) are historical overviews of the Holocaust. By the release of the final volume in 1966, few of the original editors of The Algemeyne Entsiklopedye were still alive. Many of the great Jewish scholars who contributed to the project had also passed. In the Foreword, the administrator of the Entsiklopedye Iser Goldberg outlined the task of future Jewish scholarship as one of creating a new corpus of work dedicated to the Holocaust. He declared that this project that once was to guide millions of Yiddish readers into the modern world was now dedicated to "the thousands of readers and subscribers in Jewish communities" with the much more modest goal of making "an important contribution to the growing khurbn [Holocaust] literature." By bringing this neglected and unique work of Jewish scholarship back into studies of modern Jewish history, Trachtenberg makes a significant contribution to current historiographical debates on the content and boundaries of Jewish knowledge in the tumultuous middle decades of the twentieth-century. In large measure because of the lack of researchers able to work in the Yiddish language, the significance and history of the Algemeyne Entsiklopedye has been overlooked, despite the fact that it was one of the great (and few) collaborative projects involving the twentieth century's most influential Jewish scholars. This monograph will inform recent scholarly discussions on the function of Yiddish before, during, and after World War II, on the extent to which Eastern European Jews turned away from Diaspora Nationalism on the eve of war, and to what degree Jews in the United States were "silent" in the decades following the Nazi Holocaust"--

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."

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. --