From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Disgraced and author of American Dervish, an American son and his immigrant father search for belonging — in post-Trump America, and with each other. "Passionate, disturbing, unputdownable." —Salman Rushdie A deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home. Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a nation in which debt has ruined countless lives and our ideals have been sacrificed to the gods of finance, where a TV personality is president and immigrants live in fear, and where the unhealed wounds of 9/11 continue to wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense... Views: 612
Taylor Caldwell's unforgettable novel of John Turnbull, who fled Victorian England in heartbreak and disgrace, his life broken by one night of drunken lust, to build an empire of wealth and power in a brash new world... and Eugenia MacNeill, whose naked passion could not be crushed by bitter betrayal, whose hungry desire reached across an ocean to defy the morals of an age.
This is the story of two rebellious spirits, bound together by a forbidden love that spanned two decades and warped the destinies of many.
It is a big novel, vivid with color and bold with the turbulent life that only a great writer could give it. Views: 612
One more journey to the literary universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literatureRoberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into enduring fiction is unmistakable in these three exhilarating novellas. In "Cowboy Graves," Arturo Belano—Bolaño's alter ego—returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. "French Comedy of Horrors," takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen year old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in "Fatherland," a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead.Cowboy... Views: 611
Everyone has an old man, and it's time to celebrate yours!A short collection of short stories by various authors both new and established. Especially made to celebrate fathers everywhere with stories ranging from deeply emotional to uplifting and sentimental.The world's #1 Big-Data Detective returns in yet another extremely unlikely, if not impossible adventure. This time the wrong things are happening at the wrong times in the wrong places while pasts and futures hang in the balance. Part Freakonomics, part Sherlock Holmes, part Doctor Who, part somewhere on the spectrum and 100% completely absurd, The Outlier series continues with "The Outlier #3, Lost Souls, another Dillon Sharif Tall Tale. Views: 611
have been camped out in the back of Hello Yellow (the school bus her mom drives). Still, Amber, the self-proclaimed princess of hope and girl of unyielding optimism, refuses to sweat the bad stuff. But when a fatal tragedy threatens Amber's optimism—and her way of life, can Amber continue to be the rock star of hope? With an oddball cast of characters, and a heartwarming, inspiring story, this novel unveils a beautifully beaten-up world of laughs, loyalty, and hard-earned hope. Views: 611
When The Fountainhead was first published, Ayn Rand''s daringly original literary vision and her groundbreaking philosophy, Objectivism, won immediate worldwide interest and acclaim. This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. This edition contains a special afterword by Rand's literary executor, Leonard Peikoff, which includes excerpts from Ayn Rand's own notes on the making of The Fountainhead. As fresh today as it was then, here is a novel about a hero-and about those who try to destroy him. Views: 611
When Grace married the genial and handsome Captain Leo Waterhouse in Australia in 1943, they were young, in love - and at war. Like many other young men and women, they were ready, willing and able to put the war effort first. They never seriously doubted that they would come through unscathed.But Leo never returned from a commando mission masterminded by his own hero figure, an eccentric and charismatic man who inspired total loyalty from those under his command. The world moved on to new alliances, leaving Grace, like so many widows, to bear the pain of losing the love of her life and wonder what it had all been for.
Sixty years on, Grace is still haunted by the tragedy of her doomed hero when the real story of his ill-fated secret mission is at last unearthed. As new fragments of her hero's story emerge, Grace is forced to keep revising her picture of what happened to Leo and his fellow commandoes - until she learns about the final piece in the jigsaw, and the ultimate betrayal.
As absorbing as it is moving, this timely novel reminds us of the terrible costs of war as it questions why men so willingly and fatally adopt the heroic code. Views: 611
She expected to die saving her world…
Magna’s existence was once filled with laughter, love and joy. Her life changes in a single night when a mysterious object falls from the sky into the ocean and she wakes to find herself held captive in her own body. As the centuries pass, she becomes known as the Sea Witch—a creature who is feared and reviled. Her efforts to save the Seven Kingdoms and destroy the alien creature living inside her should have ended both their lives—instead, Magna wakes to find herself in a strange, new realm.
Gabe Lightfoot and his best friend, Kane Field, have stood side by side through thick and thin. Brothers by circumstance, they have seen the darker side of life and lived to remember it. When Gabe rescues a wounded woman in the waters off the coast of Oregon, they have no idea what’s in store for them.
It doesn’t take long for Magna to learn that she is no safer in this new world than she was in her own. Fearful of endangering the two men who have taken her under their wing, Magna is torn between trying to return to her world or staying in this one.
The choice may be decided for her when strangers come to town searching for clues regarding a series of strange disappearances. Can Gabe and Kane protect her from those who would lock her up to study her, or will the curse of the Sea Witch destroy them as well? Views: 611
A wealthy New England blind woman escaped the shelter of her overprotective family to marry a poor blind rancher in a remote California mountain town, and gets the jolt of reality she'd been longing for. There's more to learning to ride western than just horses, and it has to do with seeing eye bulls, a cabin so small she constantly crashes into her grand piano shipped from home, four elusive children she can't see to feed or care for, and a husband who expects perfection, prays on horseback, makes adobe bricks to build her a proper house, drives a jalopy truck with his seven-year-old son on his lap--and won't ever admit to being blind. Views: 611
With the release of Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives in 1998, journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer “capable of befriending his readers.” After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño’s last.
Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño’s final interview is accompanied by a collection of conversations with reporters stationed throughout Latin America, providing a rich context for the work of the writer who, according to essayist Marcela Valdes, is “a T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf of Latin American letters.” As in all of Bolaño’s work, there is also wide-ranging discussion of the author’s many literary influences. (Explanatory notes on authors and titles that may be unfamiliar to English-language readers are included here.)
The interviews, all of which were completed during the writing of the gigantic 2666, also address Bolaño’s deepest personal concerns, from his domestic life and two young children to the realities of a fatal disease. Views: 611
Parallel German text and English translation.
The influence and popularity of Rilke’s poetry in America have never been greater than they are today, more than fifty years after his death. Rilke is unquestionably the most significant and compelling poet of romantic transformation, of spiritual quest, that the twentieth century has known. His poems of ecstatic identification with the world exert a seemingly endless fascination for contemporary readers.
In Stephen Mitchell’s versions, many readers feel that they have discovered an English rendering that captures the lyric intensity, fluency, and reach of Rilke’s poetry more accurately and convincingly than has ever been done before.
Mr. Mitchell is impeccable in his adherence to Rilke’s text, to his formal music, and to the complexity of his thought; at the same time, his work has authority and power as poetry in its own right. Few translators of any poet have arrived at the delicate balance of fidelity and originality that Mr. Mitchell has brought off with seeming effortlessness.
Originally published: New York : Random House, 1982. Views: 611
A vital, illuminating collection of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner’s elegant, passionately engaged nonfiction
My Generation is the definitive gathering of William Styron’s nonfiction, exposing the core of this greatly gifted, highly convivial, and profoundly serious artist from his literary emergence in the 1950s to his death in 2006.
Here are fifty years of Styron’s essays, memoirs, reviews, op-eds, articles, eulogies, and speeches, reflecting the same brilliant style and informed thinking that he brought to his towering fiction and to a deeply committed public life. Including many newly collected and never-before-published items, this compendium ranges from the original mission statement of The Paris Review, which Styron helped found in 1953, to a 2001 tribute to his friend Philip Roth—creating an essential overview of arts and letters during the post–World War II years.
In these pages, Styron writes vividly of childhood days in Tidewater Virginia spent going to movies, not reading books. (“It does not mean the death of literacy or creativity if one is drenched in popular culture at an early age.”) He recalls being among the group of soldiers who would have been sent to invade Japan and were saved by Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb, which Styron feels was the right choice, “even though its absolute rightness can never be proved.” And he writes as few others have about midlife battles with clinical depression, “a pain that is all but indescribable, and therefore to everyone but the sufferer almost meaningless.”
Here, too, are Styron’s personal encounters with world leaders, fellow authors, and friends, each of whom comes memorably to life. Styron recalls sharing contraband Cuban cigars with JFK (“a naughty memento, a conversation piece with a touch of scandal”), getting lost in the snow with Robert Penn Warren, and party-hopping with the young James Jones (an experience he likens to “keeping company with a Roman emperor”). The beginnings of his masterpieces The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie’s Choice are chronicled here, along with the controversy that greeted the former upon its 1967 publication. Throughout, Styron celebrates the men and women of his generation, whose lives were forged in the crucible of World War II.
Whether he’s recounting a walk with his dog, musing on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century, or contemplating America’s fraught racial legacy from his point of view as the grandson of a woman who owned slaves, William Styron writes always in urgent, finely calibrated prose. These fascinating pieces bring readers closer to this great writer and the world he observed, interacted with, and changed.
Praise for My Generation
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“William Styron’s My Generation: Collected Nonfiction is both unsurpassably charming and unflinchingly honest, whether recounting the fallout from The Confessions of Nat Turner* or reminiscing about the slave-owning grandmother who warned him never to forget he was a Southerner.”—Vogue
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“At its most accomplished, Styron’s non-fiction mixes a conscientious, richly traditional prose style with a strong current of fellow feeling, a certain awe at the human condition, which is what gives power to his best fiction. . . . Styron stood tall in his generation, and the best of him will stand up over time.”—*USA Today
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“A must for every Styron fan’s library.”—BBC* Views: 611
A lost world, abandoned for over a thousand years, all but forgotten, except to the young Clansman who wants to explore the mystery at the heart of his own Clan territory. Young Lord Ryo Camelin, soon to rule his Clan, is eager to solve the mystery of the planet deep within his own territory but hidden for so very long. What he finds will change his life, and the lives of his children, foreverA lost world, abandoned for over a thousand years, all but forgotten, except to the young Clansman who wants to explore the mystery at the heart of his own Clan territory.A boiling nebula full of fire and ice stops all travel through it, at it's heart lies a forgotten and lost world full of potential allies in an oncoming war.For war is coming, sure as the suns rise and the moons make their orbits. The Clans will take sides and everything will change for the young Lord as he tries to weave politics and military tactics within a loose alliance ruled by a Half-Mad Emperor, known as the Confederacy.Young Ryo Camelin, soon to be Lord of Clan Camelin, does not want to be stuck ruling the Clan from the Central Tower of his Clan World. He wants to command the battlecruiser that has been his Clan's for more than four hundred years, and he has an urge to explore. A violent gas nebula in the heart of his own territory has been off limits for more than a thousand years. Deep within it lies a world long thought destroyed, a world surrounded by legend and wrapped in lies and betrayal. Clan World Desinlo. Once the heart of the Confederacy, now banished and abandoned.There are too many questions that need answers, and too many answers that beg more questions, young Lord Camelin must seek out the truth for himself and his children and uncover a mystery that concerns the entire survival of The Center Worlds. Views: 611
The Earl of Shaftesbury's countess must be refined. Cultured. Perfect. It was a lesson that proper Evelyn Ashley-Cooper had learned flawlessly over six oppressive years of marriage. Even when widowhood freed her from the prison her life had become, Eve still floundered under the veneer of perfection that her domineering husband demanded, unable to unleash the lively girl she once was from the confines of her prim exterior.But when her long-lost first love Francis MacKintosh, Earl Glenrothes reappears in her life, Eve is tempted by the desire to escape her proper façade and the longing to truly live once again. Discovering that enticement alone cannot overrule years of tyranny, Eve struggles between her old self and the new, between yearning to be with him and a determination never to put herself under the thumb of another man–even one she discovers she still loves as much as her Glenrothes.Since meeting a vivacious, young Eve many years before, Francis MacKintosh has become a man embittered by life, by a wife who has made him a cuckold to the whole of Scotland and by a humiliating divorce that has rained scandal down upon the heads of himself and his family for years. Never had he thought that he would find Eve, his Eden, once again or that he would dare push aside his disdain of the fairer sex, to trust and love once more. But for Eve, for the love and happiness he is suddenly certain they can find only in each other, he finds himself willing to take a chance.If only he might convince his true love to do the same!Francis' seduction and ability to blend her proper side with the spirited Eve of years past lure the countess back to him but just when happiness seems but a step away, their mutual pasts will come crashing down around them attempting to tear them apart and Eve and Francis will have to risk their lives for a future together.The question remains, will their rediscovered love be enough to conquer all? Views: 610
Bitter Lemons of Cyprus is Lawrence Durrell's unique account of his time in Cyprus, during the 1950s Enosis movement for freedom of the island from British colonial rule. Winner of the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize, it is a document at once personal, poetic and subtly political - a masterly combination of travelogue, memoir and treatise.
'He writes as an artist, as well as a poet; he remembers colour and landscape and the nuances of peasant conversation . . . Eschewing politics, it says more about them than all our leading articles . . . In describing a political tragedy it often has great poetic beauty.' Kingsley Martin, New Statesman
'Durrell possesses exceptional qualifications. He speaks Greek fluently; he has a wide knowledge of modern Greek history, politics and literature; he has lived in continental Greece and has spent many years in other Greek islands . . . His account of this calamity is revelatory, moving and restrained. It is written in the sensitive and muscular prose of which he is so consummate a master.' Harold Nicolson, Observer Views: 610
