A seemingly simple tale of schoolboys marooned on an island, Lord of the Flies has proven to be one of the most enigmatic and provocative pieces of literature ever published.
Howard Fast, one of the most prolific American writers of the 20th century, has enjoyed wide popularity for his writing and suffered from great notoriety for his politics, but has never been given full credit for his contribution to the essential tales of American culture, the American Revolution, and immigrant acculturation.
The influential, daring, and lacerating novels of Ann Quin were very much products of their time-but Quin herself had more than a little influence upon shaping the era in which she lived.
Legendary publisher and writer John Calder said of Barbara Wright that she was "e;the most brilliant, conscientious and original translator of 20th century French literature.
Warrenpoint is a memoir, and more than a memoir: with moments of novelistic narrative and lyricism wedded to musings on the aesthetic and theological themes of the author's coming of age-filial piety, original sin, a child's perceptions, and then the nature of terrorism, and of reading itself-it demonstrates the same insight and lucidity that have contributed to Denis Donoghue's fame as one of our most important critics.
"e;Anything and everything, depending on how one sees it, is a marvel or a hindrance, an all or a nothing, a path or a problem,"e; says Bernardo Soares, the putative author of Fernando Pessoa's classic The Book of Disquiet.
A memoir and meditation on the themes of separation and silence, The Summer of the Elder Tree was Marie Chaix's first book to appear in fourteen years, and deals with the reasons for her withdrawal from writing and the events in her life since the death of her mother (as detailed in Silences, or a Woman's Life).
Robert Coover and the Generosity of the Page is an unconventional study of Robert Coover's work from his early masterpiece The Origin of the Brunists (1966) to the recent Noir (2010).
Now recognized as one of the giants of postwar American fiction, William Gaddis (1922-98) shunned the spotlight during his life, which makes this collection of his letters a revelation.
Shklovsky: Witness to an Era is a blend of riotous anecdote, personal history, and literary reflection, collecting interviews with Viktor Shklovsky conducted by scholar Serena Vitale in the '70s, toward the end of the great critic's life, and in the face of interference and even veiled threats of violence from the Soviet government.
Begun in 1929 under the title "e;New Prose"e; and drastically revised after Vladimir Mayakovsky's sudden death, A Hunt for Optimism (1931) circles obsessively around a single scene of interrogation in which a writer is subjected to a show trial for his unorthodoxy.
Adopting artist-poet Joe Brainard as its principal focus, this project presents "e;Pop poetics"e; not as a minor, coterie movement meriting a sympathetic footnote in accounts of the postwar era's literary history, but as a missing link that confounds and potentially unites any number of supposedly rigid critical distinctions (authenticity versus formalism, the "e;personal"e; versus the mechanical).
Moving back and forth between detailed explanation and personal anecdotes, Gerard Gavarry's Making a Novel is partly a memoir of a writer's life and partly a memoir of his work, showing us how every story, no matter how well-planned, could always have been written countless other ways.
A Community Writing Itself features internationally respected writers Michael Palmer, Nathaniel Mackey, Leslie Scalapino, Brenda Hillman, Kathleen Fraser, Stephen Ratcliffe, Robert Gluck, and Barbara Guest, and important younger writers Truong Tran, Camille Roy, Juliana Spahr, and Elizabeth Robinson.
This new volume of interviews with contemporary playwrights attests to the fact the dramatic art is alive and well in America and celebrates the art and talent of fifteen of the theatre's most important artists.
Includes: Lee Breuer, Christopher Durang, Richard Foreman, Maria Irene Fornes, Charles Fuller, John Guare, Joan Holden, David Henry Hwang, David Mamet, Emily Mann, Richard Nelson, Marsha Norman, David Rabe, Wallace Shawn, Stephen Sondheim, Megan Terry, Luis Valdez, Michael Weller, August Wilson and Lanford Wilson.
This three-person troupe is unique not only for its imaginative explorations of contemporary Latin/Chicano culture but also for its vision of a society in transition.
Departing from a refreshing look at the ideas of Antonin Artaud, this book provides a thorough analysis of how both Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett are indebted to his legacy.
A Handful of Mischief: New Essays on Evelyn Waugh is a collection of essays based on presentations at the Evelyn Waugh Centenary Conference at Hertford College, Oxford, in 2003.
The Stronger Sex, a study of the women in the fiction of Lawrence Durrell, argues that Lawrence Durrell envisioned a new woman, self-confident, free of male domination, and able to serve, direct, and protect her dependent man.
Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a mode of activism and aesthetic engagement with the political challenges of the current moment.
In One-Way Tickets, Borinsky offers up a splendid tour across 20th-century literatures, providing a literary travelogue to writers and artists in exile.
Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was nominated for a National Book Award, yet in 1995 it topped the list of books most frequently challenged in schools and libraries.
The opening chapter of Poetry: Interpretations and Influence on the World tries to explain the correlation between history and poetry, as well as and the elements that currently aid in the recognizance of the presence of the poetic in the work of historians.
Sometimes called the American Shakespeare, William Faulkner is known for providing poignant and accurate renderings of the human condition, creating a world of colorful characters in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, and writing in a style that is both distinct and demanding.
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE****SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE**PICKED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, SPECTATOR, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, MAIL ON SUNDAY AND TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'Frances Wilson writes books that blow your hair back.
**WINNER OF A PALESTINE BOOK AWARD 2021**Drawing on extensive archival sources and hundreds of interviews, Timothy Brennan's Places of Mind is the first comprehensive biography of Said, one of the most controversial and celebrated intellectuals of the 20th century.
A definitive volume expanded and updated to do justice to the four decade career of one of the most important cultural and intellectual thinkers of the 21st centuryThe renowned literary and cultural critic and political thinker Edward Said was one of our era's most provocative and important thinkers.
A definitive volume expanded and updated to do justice to the four decade career of one of the most important cultural and intellectual thinkers of the 21st centuryThe renowned literary and cultural critic and political thinker Edward Said was one of our era's most provocative and important thinkers.
This book draws together for the very first time examples of the 'aesthetic pacifism' practised during the Great War by such celebrated individuals as Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon and Bertrand Russell.