seagull books london ltd greenford (Más de 1.000 resultados)

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. My father bought me from the council for 365 francs, recalls the narrator in Monica Cantieni's novel The Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons. She's a young girl, an immigrant to Switzerland whose adoption has yet to be finalized. When she finally moves into her new home with her new family, she recounts her days in the orphanage and how starkly different her life is now. Her new community speaks German, a language foreign to her, and she collects words and phrases in matchboxes. Though her relationship with her adoptive parents is strained, she bonds with her adoptive grandfather, Tat, and together they create the eponymous Encyclopaedia of Good Reasons. Set in the time of the crucial 1970 Swiss referendum on immigration, the book introduces us to a host of colorful characters who struggle to make Switzerland their home: Eli, the Spanish bricklayer; Toni, the Italian factory worker with movie star looks; Madame Jelisaweta, the Yugoslav hairdresser; and Milena, the mysterious girl in the wardrobe. This is a book with a very warm heart, and rarely has a young girl's narrative been at once so uproariously hilarious and so deeply moving. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. The Emperor of Ice-Cream tells the moving tale of an Italian family living in Scotland during the rise of Mussolini and his rule in Italy. The story is told from the point of view of Lucia, the family's daughter, who, at 83, reflects on her childhood. Her tale leads inexorably through the rise of Fascism to the terrible moment in June 1940 when Mussolini declared war on Britain, resulting in the internment of British Italians. Two of Lucia's brothers, Giulio and Emilio, judged to be "enemy aliens," are forced aboard the Arandora Star, the ship that is to lead them into exile. However, the ship is sunk by a U-boat, and only one of the brothers survives. Lucia is writing now, belatedly, to try to reconcile herself to her past, and as a tribute to her beloved lost brother. The Emperor of Ice-Cream is a novel about family, about being an immigrant and dealing with bigotry, about religious sectarianism, political idealism, and disillusionment, about sibling love and sibling rivalry, and about regret, poetry, and war. And of course, it is also about ice cream. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. The extraordinary career of Franz Liszt (1811-86) as a composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist - whose incomparable skill and personal charisma dazzled audiences all over Europe, from London and Paris to Berlin, Moscow, and even Constantinople - made him the nineteenth-century equivalent of a modern international pop star. In the spirit of Liszt's own innovative compositions and sparkling piano transcriptions of other composers' work, John Spurling here takes up the ambitious task of writing a fictionalized biography of Liszt's life. Liszt himself once said, "My biography is more to be invented than written after the fact," and Spurling's fifteen self-contained chapters-themselves virtuoso performances in a variety of styles from a variety of viewpoints - capture precisely this notion of innovation and creativity. Spurling tells of Liszt's mesmeric effect on audiences, his notorious love affairs with remarkable women, and his fraught friendship with Richard Wagner, who deeply offended Liszt by seducing and eventually marrying his daughter Cosima. Inspired by Spurling's own fascination with Liszt's music, "A Book of Liszts" is a highly original, imaginative, and multifaceted portrait of a humorous, romantic, and passionate genius whose work and life is still not as well known as it deserves to be. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Hailed by the poet Paul Eluard as an absolute masterpiece upon its first appearance in 1946, Rene Chars Hypnos is both a remarkable work of literature and a document of unique significance in the history of the French Resistance. Based on a journal Char kept during his time in the Maquis, it ranges in style from abrupt and sometimes enigmatic reflections, in which the poet seeks to establish compass bearings in the darkness of occupied France, to narrative descriptions that throw into vivid relief the dramatic and often tragic nature of the issues he had to confront as the head of his Resistance network. A tribute to the individual men and women who fought at his side, this volume is also a meditation on the white magic of poetry and a celebration of the power of beauty to combat terror and transform our lives.Translated into German by Paul Celan and into Italian by Vittorio Sereni, the book has never been carried over into English with the attention to style and detail that it deserves. Published in full here for the first time, this long-awaited translation does justice at last to the incandescence and pathos of the original French.Superbly translated [. . .] Both inspiring and astonishing to read. Times Literary SupplementSome of [Chars] most incisive writing about poetry [. . .] A superb new translation [. . .] Hutchinsons locution suggests a candid manager with no time to waste on ceremony. On the SeawallA fresh authoritative English translation [. . .] Chars insightful reflections offer a point-of-view thats as intimate as that within which he was living, engaged with the life-and-death consequences of the operation at hand [. . .] The poets work is maintenance of the record by which the rest of us may take stock of our lives. Chars words are abundantly informed by the actions he undertook. The merits of reading them remain as worthwhile today as ever. The RumpusHutchinsons translation of Hypnos is a thing of rare intelligence and beauty. It is as if we were truly hearing Char for the first time in English. Richard Sieburth, New York UniversityGreat books deserve translations in excess of what they actually require, and Hutchinsons version is wonderfully lucid and supple. It was my favorite book of poetry in 2015. Sam Sacks, Open Letters Monthly Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A powerful work by the heralded writer, this collection is a touchstone event in German literature of the post-war era. On April 8, 1945, several American bomber squadrons were informed that their German targets were temporarily unavailable due to cloud cover. As it was too late to turn back, the assembled ordnance of more than two hundred bombers was diverted to nearby Halberstadt. A mid-sized cathedral town of no particular industrial or strategic importance, Halberstadt was almost totally destroyed, and a then-thirteen-year-old Alexander Kluge watched his town burn to the ground. Incorporating photographs, diagrams, and drawings, Kluge captures the overwhelming rapidity and totality of the organized destruction of his town from numerous perspectives, bringing to life both the strategy from above and the futility of the response on the ground. Originally published in German in 1977, this exquisite report, fragmentary and unfinished, is one of Kluges most personal works and one of the best examples of his literary technique. The English edition of Air Rair includes additional new stories by the author and features an appreciation of the work by W. G. Sebald. More than a few of Kluges many books are essential, brilliant achievements. None are without great interest.Susan Sontag Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. In June 1939 Annemarie Schwarzenbach and fellow writer Ella Maillart set out from Geneva in a Ford, heading for Afghanistan. The first women to travel Afghanistans Northern Road, they fled the storm brewing in Europe to seek a place untouched by what they considered to be Western neuroses. The Afghan journey documented in All the Roads Are Open is one of the most important episodes of Schwarzenbachs turbulent life. Her incisive, lyrical essays offer a unique glimpse of an Afghanistan already touched by the fateful laws known as progress, a remote yet sensitive nerve centre of world politics caught amid great powers in upheaval. In her writings, Schwarzenbach conjures up the desolate beauty of landscapes both internal and external, reflecting on the longings and loneliness of travel as well as its grace.Maillarts account of their trip, The Cruel Way, stands as a classic of travel literature, and Schwarzenbachs memoir rounds out the story of the adventure.Few of Schwarzenbachs own writings have been translated into English, and even fewer are available in print.Finally, we have the opportunity to read her: Seagull Books have reissued two recent and excellent translations of Schwarzenbachs literary travel writing. Death in Persia was only published in German in 1998, long after Schwarzenbachs death, and first published in English translation by Lucy Renner Jones in 2012. All the Roads Are Open, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, was first published as a full English collection in 2011. Together, they map Schwarzenbachs dual struggle to overcome her own inner conflicts and, somehow, to resist the fascism that overran Europe as she made her way to Afghanistan in 1939.' Helen Finch, Times Literary SupplementAll the Roads Are Open .collects the wonderful newspaper articles Schwarzenbach wrote during the journey. With our Afghan friends we felt as safe as in Abrahams bosom, she declares, although the cover photo of her trousered, lanky, David Bowie with an Elroy Jetson haircut will inspire readers today to wonder what all she might have left out. Alan Scherstuhl, Village Voice Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Iconic French novelist, playwright and essayist, Jean-Paul Sartre (19051980) is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, whose work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed volumes.Sartre was a prodigious commentator on contemporary art, as is evident from the short but incisive essays that make up this important volume. Sartre examines the work of a wide range of artists here, including recognized masters such as Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder and Andre Masson, as well as unacknowledged greats like French painter Robert Lapoujade and German painter-photographer Wols. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condición: new. Hardcover. An intimate glimpse into the life and letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. In July 1921, displaced European poet Rainer Maria Rilke sequestered himself in the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower perched in the vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. In this sun-flooded landscape of the Rhone Valley, he found beguiling echoes of Spain and his beloved Provence. Here, the Duino Elegies were famously completed and the Sonnets to Orpheus followed. During this time, Rilke's correspondence also bloomed, and Letters around a Garden collects some of those letters together into English for the first time. One intriguing exchange from 1924 to 1926 was with a young aristocratic Swiss woman Antoinette de Bonstetten, a passionate horticulturist who had been recommended as a potential advisor for the redesign and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden. In twenty-two precious letters originally written in French, Rilke relishes the prospect of their elusive meeting, keenly discusses the plans for his garden, and wittily laments the trials of his plants. Beyond the encomium for Paul Valery and poignant memory of place are passages of exquisite writing, in which Rilke evokes with trademark sensitivity the delicate relationship between the changing seasons and the natural world of his adopted region. We also witness the loving relationship evolve between these sometime-fugitive correspondents and how questions of solitariness and companionship impinge on one who faces unaccustomed challenges as his health tragically declines. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: Very Good. In Martin Rowson's "The Waste Land", private detective Chris Marlowe is tasked with getting to the bottom of the most impenetrable of all modernist mysteries: namely T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland". Cunningly contrived, this irreverent graphic parody is inspired in equal parts by the classic modernist poem and by the American noir novels of Raymond Chandler. Marlowe, searching for his dead partner's killers, is lured into a web of murder, deceit, lust, despair, and, of course, a frantic quest for the Holy Grail. Doped, duped, pistol-whipped, framed by the cops, and going nowhere fast, Marlowe enters a nightmare world where Robert Frost, Norman Mailer, and Edmund Wilson drink in the gloom of a London pub; where Auden is glimpsed entering the men's room; where Henry James, Aldous Huxley, and Richard Wagner share an ice cream aboard a Thames pleasure steamer; and where, out of luck and out of clues, Marlowe finally tracks down T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Available again for the first time in a decade, this is an unforgettably strange trip through modern literature with one of Britain's best writers and illustrators. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A meditation on the work of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi and its power to evoke a complexity of emotions and astonishment. In The Pilgrims Bowl, Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet examines Giorgio Morandis ascetic still lifes, contrasting his artistic approach to the life philosophies of two authors whom he cherished, Pascal and Leopardi, and reflecting on the few known autobiographical details we know about Morandi. In this small and erudite tome, Jaccottet draws us into the very heart of the artists calm and strangely haunting oeuvre. In his literary criticism, Jaccottet is known for deeply engaging with the work of his fellow poets and tenaciously seeking the essence of their poetics. In this, his only book-length essay devoted to an artist, his critical prose likewise blends empathy, subtle discernment, and a determination to pinpoint, or at least glimpse, the elusive underlying qualities of Morandi's deceptively simple, dull-toned yet mysteriously luminous paintings. The Pilgrims Bowl is a remarkably elucidating study based on a profound admiration for and a dialogue with Morandis oeuvre. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Ulrike Almut Sandigs second volume of poems to be translated into English is a journey through a world that is imaginary yet entirely recognizable. Precise observation of the concrete is mixed with playful humor, inspired musicality, and an anxious reckoning with undercurrents of violence in these poems from Ulrike Almut Sandig. Borrowing from the Brothers Grimm, the collection explores the darker side of their fairy tales as a backdrop for very contemporary concerns: Migration, war, the rise of the new right, ecological threat, information overload, and political apathy. At the same time, Sandig plays with the German meaning of the word Grimm: rage. That emotion permeates the collection as a reaction to the darkness in the collective German consciousness. Yet the book is also animated by passionate, expansive empathyand reminds us what it is to be human. Always inventive, Sandig teases us here with multiple versions of the self, and multiple voices all in search of the origins of poetry in hidden places: in the silence before language, in the wings, in the field of rapeseed deep in the snow. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A book about bitter fatesboth already known and yet to unfoldand the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. Alexander Kluges work has long grappled with the Third Reich and its aftermath, and the extermination of the Jews forms its gravitational center. Kluge is forever reminding us to keep our present catastrophes in perspectivecalibratedagainst this historical monstrosity. Kluges newest work is a book about bitter fates, both already known and yet to unfold. Above all, it is about the many kinds of organized machinery built to destroy people. These forty-eight stories of justice and injustice are dedicated to the memory of Fritz Bauer, a determined fighter for justice and district attorney of Hesse during the Auschwitz Trials. The moment they come into existence, monstrous crimes have a unique ability, Bauer once said, to ensure their own repetition. Kluge takes heed, and in these pages reminds us of the importance of keeping our powers of observation and memory razor sharp. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A book-length cycle of forty-nine poems written over the course of more than a decade that together serve as a lament for Durs Gruenbeins hometown, Dresden, which was destroyed in the Allied firebombing of February 1945. Porcelain is a book-length cycle of forty-nine poems written over the course of more than a decade that together serve as a lament for Durs Gruenbeins hometown, Dresden, which was destroyed in the Allied firebombing of February 1945. The book is at once a history and declaration of love to the famed Venice on the Elbe, so catastrophically razed by British bombs; a musical fusion of eyewitness accounts, family memories, and stories, of monuments and relics; the story of the citys destiny as seen through a prism of biographical enigmas, its intimate relation to the white gold porcelain that made its fortune and reflections on the power and limits of poetry. Musical, fractured, ironic, and elegiac, Porcelain is controversial, too, in setting itself against what Gruenbein calls the myth of the Germans as innocent victims of a war crime. At the same time, it never loses sight of the horror deliberately visited on an unwitting civilian population, nor the devastation that looms so large in the German memory. Published for the first time in English, on the seventy-fifth year anniversary of the firebombing, this edition contains new images, notes, Gruenbeins own reflections, and an additional cantoan extraordinary act of poetic kintsugi for the fractured remains of Dresdens memory. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Yves Bonnefoys final poetic work, a collection of reflections about poetry, legacy, and life. The international community of letters mourned the recent death of Yves Bonnefoy, universally acclaimed as one of Frances greatest poets of the last half-century. A prolific author, he was often considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize and published a dozen major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of dream-like tales, and numerous studies of literature and art. His oeuvre has been translated into scores of languages, and he himself was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi.Together Still is his final poetic work, composed just months before his death. The book is nothing short of a literary testament, addressed to his wife, his daughter, his friends, and his readers throughout the world. In these pages, he ruminates on his legacy to future generations, his insistence on living in the present, his belief in the triumphant lessons of beauty, and, above all, his courageous identification of poetry with hope. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation. Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchors Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoys earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographicalbut only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up lifes eternal questions with each new poem. Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poems meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoys powerful, discursive poetry. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. An intensely personal and profoundly moving review of Bonnefoys childhood memories. In December 2015, six months before his death at the age of 93, Yves Bonnefoy concluded what was to be his last major text in prose, Lecharpe rouge, translated here as The Red Scarf. In this unique book, described by the poet as "an anamnesis"a formal act of commemorationBonnefoy undertakes, at the end of his life, a profoundly moving exegesis of some fragments written in 1964. These fragments lead him back to an unspoken, lifelong anxiety: My most troubling memory, when I was between ten and twelve years old, concerns my father, and my anxiety about his silence. Bonnefoy offers an anatomy of his fathers silence, and of the melancholy that seemed to take hold some years into his marriage to the poets mother. At the heart of this book is the ballad of Elie and Helene, the poets parents. It is the story of their lives together in the Auvergne, and later in Tours, seen through the eyes of their sonthe solitary boys intense but inchoate experience, reviewed through memories of the now elderly man. What makes The Red Scarf indispensable is the intensely personal nature of the material, casting its slant light, a setting sun, on all that has gone before. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A beautiful collection of poems from various styles and genres by France's foremost poet, Yves Bonnefoy. Praised by Paul Auster as one of the rare poets in the history of literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic excellence throughout an entire lifetime, Yves Bonnefoy is widely considered the foremost French poet of his generation. Proving that his prose is just as lyrical, Rue Traversiere, written in 1977, is one of his most harmonious works. Each of the fifteen discrete or linked texts, whose lengths range from brief notations to long, intense, self-questioning pages, is a work of art in its own right: brief and richly suggestive as haiku, or long and intricately wrought in syntax and thought; and all are as rewarding in their sounds and rhythms, and their lightning flashes of insight, as any sonnet. I can write all I like; I am also the person who looks at the map of the city of his childhood and doesnt understand, says the section that gives the book its title, as he revisits childhood cityscapes and explores the tricks memory plays on us. A mixture of genresthe prose poem, the personal essay, quasi-philosophical reflections on time, memory, and artthis is a book of both epigrammatic concision and dreamlike narratives that meander with the poets thought as he struggles to understand and express some of the undercurrents of human life. The books layered texts echo and elaborate on one another, as well as on aspects of Bonnefoys own poetics and thought. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. An inspiring book of poetry and prose by the celebrated author Yves Bonnefoy. Heralded as one of Frances greatest poets, Yves Bonnefoy has been dazzling readers since the publication of his first book in 1953. He remains influential and relevant, continuing to compose groundbreaking new work. Though Bonnefoy recently celebrated his ninetieth birthday, many are calling these past two decades his most impressive yet. His latest book of poetry and prose, The Digamma, fits wonderfully into his impressive oeuvre, offering his signature style of simple but powerful language with fresh new grace. A key passage of the title piece of the book depicts the figures of Nicolas Poussins The Shepherds of Arcadia, which Bonnefoy has identified as crucial to the artists evolution. The sustained reference to Poussins iconography serves to ground the text in the lost civilizations of antiquity. Subtly, it brings out the underlying theme of the entire collectionin the ambivalent world we inhabit, being and non-being is fundamentally one. As a leading translator of Shakespeare in France, Bonnefoys fascination with the master playwright is displayed in God in Hamlet and For a Staging of Othello, two poems in prose that belong to an ongoing series of meditations on the plays. The collection also includes haunting reflections on children, nature, the origins of art, and vanished cultures. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Now in paperback, The Book of Sleep is a landmark in contemporary Arabic literature. What is sleep? How can this most unproductive of human statesmetaphorically called deaths shadow or considered the very pinnacle of indolencebe envisioned as action and agency? And what do we become in sleep? What happens to the waking selves we understand ourselves to be? Written in the spring of 2013, as the Egyptian government of President Mohammed Morsi was unraveling in the face of widespread protests, The Book of Sleep is a landmark in contemporary Arabic literature. Drawing on the devices and forms of poetry, philosophical reflection, political analysis, and storytelling, this genre-defying work presents us with an assemblage of fragments that combine and recombine, circling around their central theme but refusing to fall into its gravity. My concern was not to create a literary product in the conventional sense, but to try and use literature as a methodology for thinking, El Wardany explains. In this volume, sleep shapes sentences and distorts conventions. Its protean instability throws out memoir and memory, dreams and hallucinatory reverie, Sufi fables and capitalist parables, in the quest to shape a question. The Book of Sleep is a generous and generative attempt to reimagine possibility and hope in a world of stifling dualities and constrictions. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovatoroften as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to anotherhe first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at Frances preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthess published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume three, Masculine, Feminine, Neuter, consists of his writing on literature, covering his peers and influences, writers in French and other languages, contemporary and historical writers, and world literature. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovatoroften as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to anotherhe first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at Frances preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthess published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume four, Signs and Images, gathers pieces related to his central concernssemiotics, visual culture, art, cinema, and photographyand features essays on Marthe Arnould, Lucien Clergue, Daniel Boudinet, Richard Avedon, Bernard Faucon, and many more. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovatoroften as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to anotherhe first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at Frances preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthess published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume five, Simply a Particular Contemporary includes four interviews Barthes conducted between 1970 and 1979, varying widely in style and content. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovatoroften as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to anotherhe first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at Frances preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthess published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume two, The Scandal of Marxism, contains a wide range of his more overtly political writings, with an emphasis on his early work and the serious national turbulence in the French 1950s. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. In a tour-de-force reinterpretation of the Christian tradition, Agamben shows that the Garden of Eden has always served as a symbol for humanity's true nature. What happened to paradise after Adam and Eve were expelled? The question may sound like a theological quibble, or even a joke, but in The Kingdom and the Garden, Giorgio Agamben uses it as a starting point for an investigation of human nature and the prospects for political transformation. In a tour-de-force reinterpretation of the Christian tradition, Agamben shows that the Garden of Eden has always served as a symbol of humanity's true nature. Where earlier theologians viewed the expulsion as temporary, Augustine's doctrine of original sin makes it permanent, reimagining humanity as the paradoxical creature that has been completely alienated from its own nature. From this perspective, there can be no return to paradise, only the hope for the messianic kingdom. Yet there have always been thinkers who rebelled against this idea, and Agamben highlights two major examples. The first is the early medieval philosopher John Scotus Eriugena, who argued for a radical unity of humanity with all living things. The second is Dante, whose vision of the earthly paradise points towards the possibility of genuine human happiness in this world. In place of the messianic kingdom, which has provided the model for modern revolutionary movements, Agamben contends that we should place our hopes for political change in a return to our origins, by reclaiming the earthly paradise. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Paul Celan (192070) is one of the best-known German poets of the Holocaust; many of his poems, admired for their spare, precise diction, deal directly with its stark themes. Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (192673) is recognized as one of postWorld War II German literature's most important novelists, poets and playwrights. It seems only appropriate that these two contemporaries and masters of language were at one time lovers, and they shared a lengthy, artful and passionate correspondence.Collected here for the first time in English are their letters written between 1948 and 1961. Their correspondence forms a moving testimony of the discourse of love in the age after Auschwitz, with all the symptomatic disturbances and crises caused by their conflicting backgrounds and their hard-to-reconcile designs for living-as a woman, as a man, as writers. In addition to the almost 200 letters, the volume includes an important exchange between Bachmann and Gisle Celan-Lestrange, who married Celan in 1951, as well as the letters between Paul Celan and Swiss writer Max Frisch, who was Bachmann's lover for four years. 'Wieland Hoban has worked with accuracy and determination to capture the nuances of style and register, which include oblique awkwardness (Celan) and self-assuredness (Bachmann), alongside infinite courage and astounding strength (Celan-Lestrange). The translation reads well, with just a slight edge of the original diction remaining to remind readers that we are witnessing a different time and place, and way of perceiving the world. . . . This is an important addition tot he work in translation of two major post-war writers.'- Times Literary Supplement'This book is highly recommended. You cannot possibly be disappointed by it, especially if you are familiar with these writers' literary output, each of which left the world a completely original, masterful, and highly influential body of work. The letters move from youthful heartbreak and poetical exuberance to the destructive later exchanges between two people who cannot trust one another although they are, until the end, drawn to each other. It's not a book you read and shelve. It's a book to read and reread, a book to treasure.'- Shigekuni. Read the lengthy, detailed and enligtening review of the book here.'Correspondence, rendered perfectly in English by Wieland Hoban, traces [Celan and Bachmann's] letters, telegrams, and book inscriptions to one another, color-coded and augmented by hundreds of footnotes. Like other volumes from Seagull Books, it's physically gorgeous, with a pleasingly compact trim size. Reading Correspondence feels like an indulgence. It also feels disorienting. The world of the letters and the world of their authors' real lives are askew in a sometimes jarring way, so that the emotional content of the letters reads almost as fiction.'- Aaron Belz, Books & Culture Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Now in paperback, Benyamin's wry and tender telling transforms the strange and bitter comedy of Najeebs life in the desert into a universal tale of loneliness and alienation. In the southern Indian state of Kerala, Najeebs dearest wish is to work in a Persian Gulf country and earn enough money to send some back home. One day, he finally achieves this dream, only to be propelled by a series of incidentsgrim and absurdinto a slave-like existence, herding goats in the middle of the Saudi desert. Memories of his loving family and of the lush, verdant landscape of his village haunt Najeeb, whose only solace is the companionship of goats. In the end, the lonely young man is forced to contrive a hazardous scheme to escape his desert prison. An instant bestseller in India, Goat Days is available for the first time in English, translated by Joseph Koyippally. Benyamin is a brilliant new talent of Malayalam literature and his wry and tender telling transforms the strange and bitter comedy of Najeebs life in the desert into a universal tale of loneliness and alienation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback. Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovatoroften as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to anotherhe first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at Frances preeminent College de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980. The greater part of Barthess published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. In volume one, A Very Fine Gift, Barthes attempts to frame his lifelong curiosities in theoretical form, from his early musings on the sociology of literature through his high period of structuralism to his later reflections on Derrida. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Paperback. Condición: new. Paperback. Written by one of Indias best-known public intellectuals, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in Indias fascinating history as well as the direction in which the nation is headed. People have argued since time immemorial. Disagreement is a part of life, of human experience. But we now live in times when any form of protest in India is marked as anti-Indian and met with arguments that the very concept of dissent was imported into India from the West. As Romila Thapar explores in her timely historical essay, however, dissent has a long history in the subcontinent, even if its forms have evolved through the centuries. In Voices of Dissent: An Essay, Thapar looks at the articulation of nonviolent dissent and relates it to various pivotal moments throughout Indias history. Beginning with Vedic times, she takes us from the second to the first millennium BCE, to the emergence of groups that were jointly called the Shramanasthe Jainas, Buddhists, and Ajivikas. Going forward in time, she also explores the views of the Bhakti sants and others of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and brings us to a major moment of dissent that helped to establish a free and democratic India: Mahatma Gandhis satyagraha. Then Thapar places in context the recent peaceful protests against Indias new, controversial citizenship law, maintaining that dissent in our time must be opposed to injustice and supportive of democratic rights so that society may change for the better. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condición: new. Hardcover. An original analysis of religion versus the religionization of society in India. What is unique about Indian secularism? In this book, Rajeev Bhargava argues that secularism in India, as opposed to in the West, did not arise in a society that had already been religiously homogenized, where the need of the hour was to break the political nexus between church and state. In India, secularism does not demand that the state is against or indifferent to religion, but rather that it combat institutionalized religious domination, both between and within religions. Apathy or antipathy to religion, Bhargava points out, would foment inter-religious rivalries that intensify anti-reformist tendencies, fueling further division. As secularism receives daily ridicule in India, Bhargava provides an account of how this principled distance from religion has been a victim of misunderstandings by its proponents, abuse by its practitioners, and deliberate distortion by its opponents. Reimagining Indian Secularism offers a proposal of how we might one day be able to rehabilitate secularism. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Hardcover. Condición: new. Hardcover. This essay examines the history of the Indian subcontinent and the Partition of 1947 from a pedagogical perspective. How does education shape political rivalry and hostility? The Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947the violence that followed it, and its living legacy of rival nationalismshas made a deep and pervasive impact on education in both India and Pakistan. In Learning to Live with the Past, educationist Krishna Kumar dwells on the complex terrain every history teacher has to navigate: how to make the past come alive without running the risk of creating a desire to lose this pastness. Substantiating this question with a wealth of experiences gained from his extensive research on history textbooks, as well as his interactions with students and teachers in both countries, Kumar explores the integral function the discipline of history plays in the project of nation-building. To help children learn to live with the past, Kumar amplifies the need for spaces that create possibilities for inquiries into a longer common heritage shared by South Asia without necessarily denying a national narrative or encouraging an urge to undo the past. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.