Inspector Michael Ohayon of the Jerusalem police must deal with profound ethical questions when he investigates the murder of a celebrated poet and professor of literature at the Hebrew University.

"The many narratives of The Planetarium, told from various points of view, revolve around a seemingly simple conceit: a young man has his heart and ambition set on his aunt's large apartment. But, as in Sarraute's other books, this plot forms only the surface of what is really happening. Instead, Sarraute focuses on the emotional lives and internal thoughts of her characters in a way that goes beyond what Virginia Woolf did years before. The spite the young man feels toward his mother-in-law for offering him and his wife cheap chairs for their apartment; the terror inspired during a confrontation between the same young man and his aunt; and the need for approval he feels when he's around his Gertrude Stein-like literary icon are some of the many internal conflicts that move the narrative forward through the minds of the conflicted and clashing characters. Always deeply engaging, The Planetarium uses a simple plot to reveal the disparity between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us."--Publisher's website.

The publication of Jacqueline de Romilly's Histoire et raison chez Thucydide in 1956 virtually transformed scholarship on Thucydides. Rather than mining The Peloponnesian War to speculate on its layers of composition or second-guess its accuracy, it treated it as a work of art deserving rhetorical and aesthetic analysis. Ahead of its time in its sophisticated focus upon the verbal texture of narrative, it proved that a literary approach offered the most productive and nuanced way to study Thucydides. Still in print in the original French, the book has influenced numerous Classicists and historians, and is now available in English for the first time in a careful translation by Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings. The Cornell edition includes an introduction by Hunter R. Rawlings III and Jeffrey Rusten tracing the context of this book's original publication and its continuing influence on the study of Thucydides. Romilly shows that Thucydides constructs his account of the Peloponnesian War as a profoundly intellectual experience for readers who want to discern the patterns underlying historical events. Employing a commanding logic that exercises total control over the data of history, Thucydides uses rigorous principles of selection, suggestive juxtapositions, and artfully opposed speeches to reveal systematic relationships between plans and outcomes, impose meaning on the smallest events, and insist on the constant battle between intellect and chance. Thucydides' mind found in unity and coherence its ideal of historical truth.

A genre-defying account of confinement and its literary echoes through history. As the pandemic sweeps through Paris in March 2020, the writer HC faces a choice: stay in Paris or flee to the countryside? The weight of historical responses bears down on her--those of her ancestors and Jewish writers during moments of persecution. Still uncertain, she flees to the country at the last moment, with her cats and her daughter, with her diaries and notebooks. What will she do here? Write? What will she write about? Can she write about the experience of being confined? She will write about her cats; every day she will observe their lives and take notes about how they cope with being housebound, and later, in the spring, with the outdoors. Thucydides, Defoe, Camus, Kafka--she will compare her experiences with those of others who have been confined by malady or persecution. She will write of her mother, who fled impending disaster on many occasions and always kept a suitcase ready. She too will endure. The important thing is to have a good death, surrounded by those she loves, not locked down in a hospital.

A beautifully observed novel by literary star Charlotte Mendelson about the joys of passionate love and those left in its wake, told with Charlotte's signature wit and wisdom.[Bokinfo]

Amid the bustling marketplaces of a rich and vibrant Damascus, where the dark alleyways teem with fear and hostility, Hilu unfolds a story charged with emotional and sexual conflict in this powerful literary tour-de-force from a unique new voice; at times wickedly funny, at others painfully sad, but beautifully told throughout.

"A devastating novel about the attrocities of WWII, and the unspeakable things people did to survive, by one of Yugoslavia's great literary voices. Lamian is a survivor, but a survivor of a very special kind. He was a Kapo, a prisoner who served as a camp guard in order to save himself. But has Lamian saved himself? The war over, he resumes life in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, works in a land-surveying office, rents a room, eats as many hot potatoes as he likes, not even bothering to salt them--the quantity is what matters. If only he could stop looking over his shoulder, and flinching on the street in the fear that some stranger will step forward, smack his face, and say in a loud voice, "Here's one!" If only he could stop worrying about Helena Lifka, who turned out to be Yugoslav too, and Jewish too, one of the women he made come naked into the toolshed where he hid the gold, and sit on his lap in exchange for bread and butter and a little warm milk. She could turn up any day, an old woman now, and point an accusing finger. In this masterful novel, Aleksandar Tišma shows step by step how fear can turn an ordinary human being into a monster"--

"Roth comments, in selected interviews, articles, and essays, on the origins and developments of his five most recent books and on key preoccupations, preferences, experiences, and enthusiasms in his written and unwritten worlds." --Amazon.com.

"With the wit and penetration well known to readers of Balzac's Omelette and Monsieur Proust's Library, Anka Muhlstein's PEN AND BRUSH revisits the delights of the French novel. This time she focuses on late 19th- and 20th-century writers--Balzac, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, and Maupassant--through the lens of their passionate involvement with the fine arts. She delves into the crucial role that painters play as characters in their novels, which she pairs with an exploration of the profound influence that painting exercised on the novelists' techniques, offering an intimate view of the intertwined worlds of painters and writers at the time. Muhlstein's deftly chosen vignettes bring to life a portrait of the nineteenth century's tight-knit artistic community, where Cezanne and Zola befriended each other as boys and Balzac yearned for the approval of Delacroix. She leads the reader on a journey of spontaneous discovery as she explores how a great painting can open a mind and spark creative fire"--

Having a profound experience on a hypnotist's stage in spite of not believing in magic, Arthur abruptly abandons his family in the middle of the night and becomes a famous author while his sons grow into men shaped by loss and doubt.

25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION Nadine Pagan's dyke sister Jane wants to find her. Her lover Rose wants to marry her. And her mother Fay wants to forget her. All Nadine wants is to stop the buzzing in her head. Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound follows Nadine's (née Morningstar) adventures as she escapes from her incendiary Jewish family into the lesbian town of New Chelm--and far beyond. This is the novel Isaac Bashevis Singer might have written if he'd been a lesbian with a keen eye for contemporary middle-class assimilation. It's Jewish magical lesbian realism, a good story, and a dynamic piece of writing. Includes an all new introduction by the author Judith Katz is the author of two published novels, The Escape Artist and Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound , which won the 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction. She teaches cultural studies and literature courses for the University of Minnesota's Center for Jewish Studies.

One of the most distinctive voices in mainstream comics since the 1970s, Howard Chaykin (b. 1950) has earned a reputation as a visionary formal innovator and a compelling storyteller whose comics offer both pulp-adventure thrills and thoughtful engagement with real-world politics and culture. His body of work is defined by the belief that comics can be a vehicle for sophisticated adult entertainment and for narratives that utilize the medium's unique properties to explore serious themes with intelligence and wit. Beginning with early interviews in fanzines and concluding with a new interview conducted in 2010 with the volume's editor, Howard Chaykin: Conversations collects widely ranging discussions from Chaykin's earliest days as an assistant for such legends as Gil Kane and Wallace Wood to his recent work on titles including Dominic Fortune, Challengers of the Unknown, and American Century. The book includes thirty-five line illustrations selected from Chaykin, as well. As a writer/artist for outlets such as DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Heavy Metal, he has participated in and influenced many of the major developments in mainstream comics over the past four decades. He was an early pioneer in the graphic novel format in the 1970s, and his groundbreaking sci-fi satire American Flagg! was an essential contribution to the maturation of the comic book as a vehicle for social commentary in the 1980s. Brannon Costello, Saint Gabriel, Louisiana, is associate professor of English at Louisiana State University, and the author of Plantation Airs: Racial Paternalism and the Transformations of Class in Southern Fiction, 1945-1971. His work has appeared in Mississippi Quarterly; Southern Quarterly; Southern Literary Journal; Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction; and African American Review. 304 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 35 b&w illustrations, introduction, chronology, index

"Beginning with Walt Whitman singing hymns at a wounded soldier's bedside during the Civil War, this surprising and vivid anthology ranges straight through to the twenty-first century to end with Francine Prose crying tears of complicated joy at the sight of Whitman's words in Zuccotti Park during the brief days of the Occupy movement. The first anthology of its kind, Radiant Truths gathers an exquisite selection of writings by both well-known and forgotten American authors and thinkers, each engaged in the challenges of writing about religion, of documenting "things unseen." Their contributions to the genre of literary journalism-the telling of factual stories using the techniques of fiction and poetry-make this volume one of the most exciting anthologies of creative nonfiction to have emerged in years. Jeff Sharlet presents an evocative selection of writings that illuminate the evolution of the American genre of documentary prose. Each entry may be savored separately, but together the works enrich one another, engaging in an implicit and continuing conversation that reaches across time and generations. Including works by: Walt Whitman - Henry David Thoreau - Mark Twain - Meridel Le Sueur - Zora Neale Hurston - Mary McCarthy - James Baldwin - Norman Mailer - Ellen Willis Anne Fadiman - John Jeremiah Sullivan - Francine Prose - Garry Wills - "and many others"--

Winner of the 2007 B.C. Award for Canadian Non-fiction A Globe and Mail Best 100 Book (2006) National Post Best Books (2006) A bold cultural portrait of contemporary Canada through the work of its most celebrated novelists, short story writers, and storytellers. Stories are the surest way to know a place, and at a time when the fabric of the country seems daily more uncertain, Noah Richler looks to our authors for evidence of the true nature of Canada. He argues why fiction matters and seeks to discover — in the extra-ordinary diversity of communities these writers represent — what stories, if any, bind us as a nation. Over two years, Richler has criss-crossed the country and interviewed close to one hundred authors — a who’s who of Canadian literature, including Wayne Johnston, Michael Crummey, Alistair MacLeod, Gil Courtemanche, Jane Urquhart, Joseph Boyden, Miriam Toews, Yann Martel, Fred Stenson, Douglas Coupland, and Rohinton Mistry — about the places and ideas that are most meaningful to their work. The result is a journey through the reality of Canada and its imagination at a critical point in the country’s evolution. Within thematic chapters he exposes our “Myths of Disappointment” and considers the stories of our native peoples, the rise of the city, and how our history as a colony shapes our society and politics even today. This Is My Country, What's Yours? is an impassioned literary travelogue and a vivid portrayal of our society, the work of Canadian authors, and the idea of writing itself. This Is My Country, What's Yours? is based on Noah Richler’s ten-part documentary of the same name originally broadcast on CBC Radio’s flagship Ideas program in spring 2005.

The Beatrix Gates is a colorful mix of science fiction, magic realism, memoir, and myth exploring themes of spirituality and transformation. Courage and cowardice contend in a literary odyssey unlike any other. Written especially for this volume, "Trans Central Station" is Pollacks personal and political take on the transgender experience then and now, and tomorrow? "Burning Beard" is a fiercely revisionist Bible tale of plague and prophecy told through a postmodern prose of many colors. "The Woman Who Didnt Come Back" is about just what it says. And there is of course PM Press usual and unusual Outspoken Interview. --Publisher

Larry McMurtry once wrote that Nelson Algren held the best literary claim to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, though few people realize that "the poet of the Chicago slums" ever lived or wrote here. Yet it was in Depression-era Texas that Algren developed his instinctive need to speak for the powerless--a need that made him one of the foremost chroniclers of the American outcast. The Texas that Algren understood was a world where impoverished people lived among simmering yet casual violence, a world where the law--racist, abusive, and corrupt--ruled with an utter ruthlessness and power. The Texas Stories vividly re-creates this now-vanished world. The collection includes "So Help Me," winner of a 1935 O'Henry Award; "The Last Carousel," which won the 1972 Playboy Fiction Award; and the early "Thundermug," a piece that was censored when it appeared in the radical Windsor Quarterly in 1935. Here too is Algren's unique retelling of the legend of Bonnie and Clyde. Including work from more than four decades, The Texas Stories provides a much-needed overview of Algren's artistic development. It will be enthusiastically welcomed by Algren fans, Texans, literary scholars, Western historians, and many others.

And the Rat Laughed is a unique book. Unlike other Holocaust-related books that focus on the historical horrific events, this novel deals with the act of remembering them. It resembles a relay race in which the characters transfer memory from one another, while travelling on the axis of time. The book begins in the last day of 1999, when a survivor Grandmother in Tel Aviv shares her tragic life story as a hidden child in a pit, with only a rat for company with her granddaughter. The day after – 2000 already – the granddaughter tells the legend of "Girl and Rat" to her teacher and in 2009 those who heard it through her classmates establish an internet website with poems. From now on this memory is spread all over the world and becomes a myth. In 2099 a future anthropologist discovers it and tries to uncover its mysterious roots. In her research, she reveals the first man who created this myth in the past. Father Stanislaw, a Catholic priest, saved that little Jewish girl (who later became the Grandmother in Tel Aviv) and returned her after the war to her Jewish people. In his personal journal he documented everything, to make sure the world will never forget. The chain of remembearers, therefore, moves from the present to the future and back to the past. The novel is written in 5 genres: story, legend, poems, science fiction and diary, creating a cycle of 150 years. And the Rat Laughed got acclaim for its use of unconventional and original literary devices and became a ground breaker for exploring the act of memory itself. How do we tell our painful story? Does it change while we recall it? How will our next recipient recall it in his own individual way? Is Art the only corridor to transfer emotional memory?

Born in Clinton, Mississippi, Barry Hannah has been a major force in southern literature since the 1970 publication of his first novel, Geronimo Rex, which won the Bellman Foundation Award in fiction. It was followed by his first collection of stories, Airships (1978), winner of the prestigious Arnold Gringrich Short Fiction Award, and the acclaimed novel Ray (1980). The honesty of Hannah's vision and his varied narrative voices have won him comparison to Walker Percy, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Connor. One of the South's most original writers, Hannah explores the human psyche; he may write primarily about his experiences in the South, but his experiments with prose are not restricted to region. In this first full-length critical study of Hannah's works--six novels and two volumes of short stories--Mark Jay Charney deftly explores Hannah's connections with southern writers like Faulkner and Welty by examining both his progression as a fiction writer and his experiments with language, voice, and form. Expertly combining biographical information with critical analysis, Charney correlates Hannah's literary themes and techniques with the influences shaping his life. The book is organized chronologically to illustrate Hannah's growing preoccupation with unconventional narrative form and to delineate the thematic shift from violence and isolation to peaceful alternatives and community acceptance. This book is a most welcome introduction to the works of a writer who promises to remain one of South's most startling and iconoclastic voices.

The flowering of literary imagination known as the American Renaissance had few roots in the South. While Hawthorne, Emerson, Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman were creating a body of work that would endure, the only southern writer making a lasting contribution was Edgar Allan Poe. This failure on the part of antebellum southern writers has long been a subject of debate among students of southern history and literature. Now one of the region's most distinguished men of letters offers a cogently argued and gracefully written account of the circumstances that prevented early southern writers from creating transcendent works of art. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., brings forty years of critical integrity and imaginative involvement with the history and literature of the South to his informal inquiry into the foundations of the southern literary imagination. His exploration centers on the lives and works of three of the most important writers of the pre-Civil War South: Poe, William Gilmore Simms, and Henry Timrod. In a close and highly original reading of Poe's poetry and fiction, Rubin shows just how profoundly growing up in Richmond, Virginia, influenced that writer. The sole author of the Old South whose work has endured did not use southern settings or concern himself with his region's history or politics. Poe was, according to Rubin, in active rebellion against the middle-class community of Richmond and its materialistic values. Simms, on the other hand, aspired to the plantation society ideal of his native Charleston, South Carolina. He was not the most devoted and energetic of southern writers and one of the country's best-known and most respected literary figures before the Civil War. Rubin finds an explanation for much of the lost promise of antebellum southern literature in Simms's career. Here was a talented man who got caught up in the politically obsessed plantation community of Charleston, becoming an apologist for the system and an ardent defender of slavery. Timrod, also a Charlestonian native, was a highly gifted poet whose work attained the stature of literature when the Civil War gave him a theme. He was known as the poet laureate of the Confederacy. Only when his region was locked in a desperate military struggle for the right to exist did he suddenly find his enduring voice. Anyone interested in southern life and literature will welcome his provocative and engaging new look at southern writing from one of the region's most perceptive critics.

Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915-February 4, 1958) was a science fiction author born in Los Angeles, California. As a young man he worked for a literaryagency before selling his first story, "The Graveyard Rats", to Weird Tales in 1936. Kuttner was known for his literary prose and worked in close collaboration with his wife, C. L. Moore. They met through their association with the "Lovecraft Circle", a group of writers and fans who corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft. Their work together spanned the 1940s and 1950s andmost of the work was credited to pseudonyms, mainly Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell.