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Zeno’s (established 1983) is an online used and out-of-print bookstore specializing in the categories of: literature in translation, modern first editions, and hard-to-find books. We started as a mail order business. In 1992 we moved into a storefront, and then to a bigger location a couple of years later. Eventually we closed the physical store to go online as zenosbooks.com. We have been selling our own hand-picked eclectic selection of used, hard-to-find, and even rare books via the internet ever since.

 

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Futbol! Why Soccer Matters in Latin America by Joshua H. Nadel. Gainesville. 2014. University Press of Florida. hardcover. Front cover: Pele celebrating Brazil’s World Cup victory, June 21, 1970. copyright Sven Simon/imago/ZUMApress.com. 288 pages. keywords: Sports Soccer Futbol Latin America History. 9780813049380.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   ‘Lively and fascinating. Nadel shows beautifully how soccer and politics have long been deeply intertwined, serving both to further state agendas and open up space for protest and contestation.’--Laurent Dubois, author of Soccer Empire. ‘In much of Latin America, soccer is more than a game. It is linked to each nation's identity in similar yet unique ways. Nadel offers a comprehensive look at this process.’--Joseph L. Arbena, coeditor of Sport in Latin America and the Caribbean. ‘Thoughtful and engaging. Examining the history of the game, its powerful myths, and its engrossing reality, Nadel helps scholars, students, and fans to understand Latin Americans' passion for the world's sport.’--Gregg Bocketti, Transylvania University. ‘Nadel knows Latin American soccer like a professor, but he loves it like a fan, and his enthusiasm is contagious. He uses sports history to teach larger insights about Latin America. Fútbol! will make you smarter about the sport and about the region, too. It's a book you want to read.’--John Charles Chasteen, author of Born in Blood and Fire. ‘Here are the football cultures of Latin America in all their macho glory, but here too is the story of women's football and its challenge to Latino masculinities. Above all, here is an account of football and nationalism, erudite and engaged, that remains rooted in the realities of play.’--David Goldblatt, author of The Ball Is Round. Discover the dreams, passions, and rivalries that are at stake in Latin America's most popular sport. Fútbol! explains why competitors and fans alike are so fiercely dedicated to soccer throughout the region. From its origins in British boarding schools in the late 1800s, soccer spread across the globe to become a part of everyday life in Latin America--and part of the region's most compelling national narratives. This book illustrates that soccer has the powerful ability to forge national unity by appealing to people across traditional social boundaries. In fact, author Joshua Nadel reveals that what started as a simple game played an important role in the development of Latin American countries in the twentieth century. Examining the impact of the sport in Argentina, Honduras, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, and Mexico, Nadel addresses how soccer affects politics, the media, race relations, and gender stereotypes. With inspiring personal stories and a sweeping historical backdrop, Fútbol! shows that soccer continues to be tied to regional identity throughout Central and South America today. People live for it--and sometimes kill for it. It is a source of hope and a reason for suicide. It is a way out of poverty for a select few and an intangible escape for millions more. As soccer gains greater worldwide attention today, this book serves as an indispensable guide for understanding soccer’s especially vital importance in Latin America.

Joshua H. Nadel is assistant professor of history and associate director of the Global Studies Program at North Carolina Central University.

 

 

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Two by Christopher Andrew about the KGB:

 

KGB: The Inside Story by Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky. New York. 1990. Harper Collins. hardcover. Jacket design: Neil Stuart. 776 pages. keywords: Espionage History KGB Russia. 0060166053.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   This history of the world's largest and most powerful intelligence service, the KGB, from its origin after the Russian revolution to the present day, analyzes its operations against subjects as diverse as the EEC, Margaret Thatcher, Solidarity and Libya. This study also provides an insight into Gorbachev's relations with the KGB and examines the disintegration of the Soviet bloc. Christopher Andrew has also written ‘Secret Service’. Gordievsky was a KGB colonel who worked for British intelligence as a penetration agent in the KGB from 1974. He escaped to the West in 1985. This is a never-before-told inside story of the KGB, chock full of stunning revelations from an ex-KGB double agent. The international bestseller critically acclaimed as 'undoubtedly the most important book ever written on Soviet espionage.' - San Francisco Chronicle.

 

The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin. New York. 1999. Basic Books. hardcover. Jacket design by Michael Accordino. 700 pages. keywords: KGB History Espionage. 0465003109.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   The Sword and the Shield is based on one of the most extraordinary intelligence coups of recent times: a secret archive of top-level KGB documents smuggled out of the Soviet Union which the FBI has described, after close examination, as the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source. Its presence in the West represents a catastrophic hemorrhage of the KGB’s secrets and reveals for the first time the full extent of its worldwide network. Vasili Mitrokhin, a secret dissident who worked in the KGB archive, smuggled out copies of its most highly classified files every day for twelve years. In 1992, a U.S. ally succeeded in exfiltrating the KGB officer and his entire archive out of Moscow. The archive covers the entire period from the Bolshevik Revolution to the 1980s and includes revelations concerning almost every country in the world. But the KGB's main target, of course, was the United States. Though there is top-secret material on almost every country in the world, the United States is at the top of the list. As well as containing many fascinating revelations, this is a major contribution to the secret history of the twentieth century. Among the topics and revelations explored are: The KGB’s covert operations in the United States and throughout the West, some of which remain dangerous today. KGB files on Oswald and the JFK assassination that Boris Yeltsin almost certainly has no intention of showing President Clinton. The KGB’s attempts to discredit civil rights leader in the 1960s, including its infiltration of the inner circle of a key leader. The KGB’s use of radio intercept posts in New York and Washington, D.C., in the 1970s to intercept high-level U.S. government communications. The KGB’s attempts to steal technological secrets from major U.S. aerospace and technology corporations. KGB covert operations against former President Ronald Reagan, which began five years before he became president. KGB spies who successfully posed as U.S. citizens under a series of ingenious disguises, including several who attained access to the upper echelons of New York society.

Christopher Andrew is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History and Chair of the Faculty of History at Cambridge University.

 

 

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Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy by Pascal Bruckner. Princeton. 2010. Princeton University Press. hardcover. 244 pages. keywords: Current Affairs. 9780691143736.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   HOW HAPPINESS Became A DUTY—AND WHY WE SHOULD REJECT THE DEMAND TO ‘BE HAPPY.’ Translated by Steven Rendall. Happiness today is not just a possibility or an option but a requirement and a duty. To fail to be happy is to fail utterly. Happiness has become a religion—one whose smiley-faced god looks down in rebuke upon everyone who hasn’t yet attained the blessed state of perpetual euphoria. How has a liberating principle of the Enlightenment—the right to pursue happiness— become the unavoidable and burdensome responsibility to be happy? How did we become unhappy about not being happy—and what might we do to escape this predicament? In Perpetual Euphoria, Pascal Bruckner takes up these questions with all his unconventional wit, force, and brilliance, arguing that we might be happier if we simply abandoned our mad pursuit of happiness. Gripped by the twin illusions that we are responsible for being happy or unhappy and that happiness can be produced by effort, many of us are now martyring ourselves—sacrificing our time, fortunes, health, and peace of mind—in the hope of entering an earthly paradise. Much better, Bruckner argues, would be to accept that happiness is an unbidden and fragile gift that arrives only by grace and luck. A stimulating and entertaining meditation on the unhappiness at the heart of the modern cult of happiness, Perpetual Euphoria is a book for everyone who has ever bristled at the command to ‘be happy.’

Pascal Bruckner is the award-winning author of many books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Bitter Moon, which was made into a film by Roman Polanski. Bruckner’s nonfiction books include The Tyranny of Guilt (Princeton), The Temptation of Innocence, and The Tears of the White Man (Free Press). ‘Pascal Bruckner, the anti-Pangloss of our time, engagingly reminds us that it is better to lead a rich life with tears than a happy one lacking meaning.’ - Alan Wolfe, author of The Future of Liberalism.

 

 

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The 826 Quarterly: Volume 19 - Spring 2014 by Molly Parent (editor). San Francisco. 2014. 826 Valencia. paperback. Poetry, Fiction, & Essays by Authors 6 to 18. 137 pages. keywords: Literature America Kids Anthology. 9781934750452.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   This edition of the 826 Quarterly contains fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written by authors ages 6-18. The pieces are selected from all the 826 programs (drop-in tutoring, workshops, in-schools, projects, field trips) and at-large submissions. Pieces are chosen in a traditional literary journal style by an editorial board comprised of students and volunteer tutors. This issue includes a hard-hitting investigation into what one 11 year old writer calls the hipster epidemic, poetry about real ships that are sunken under the streets of San Francisco, introspective personal essays on group identity, and short fiction about zoo animals who learn to embrace democracy. It's a wild ride with something to make readers of all ages smile and think. 1st trade appearance of work by Zora Rosenberg - ‘Siren’s Call’, excerpt of the unpublished short story by the same name.

 

 

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The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934–1960 by Lawrence P. Jackson. Princeton. 2010. Princeton University Press. hardcover. Jacket illustration - Harlem Quarterly cover 1950. Billops-Hatch Collection, courtesy of the Manuscript Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Jacket design by Leslie Flis. 65 halftones. 579 pages. keywords:. African American Studies Literature Literary Criticism Politics History America. 9780691141350.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF AN IMPORTANT—YET NEGLECTED—ERA IN AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE. ‘This is a landmark work in the history of African American Studies and American intellectual history. Writing with verve, Jackson brings to life a large cast of characters and traces an ongoing conversation among the writers and critics of this period. This book is likely to become a model for a new generation of scholars, both for the breadth of its engagement and the depth of its archival research.’ —Werner Sollors, Harvard University. The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this commanding study, Lawrence Jackson recalls the lost history of a crucial era. Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the ‘indignant’ quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American Communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington, DC, fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. As Jackson shows through contemporary documents, the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism—by both black and white critics. Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century..

Lawrence P. Jackson teaches English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of a Genius and a forthcoming biography of Chester Himes.

 

 

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The Death Of Mr. Baltisberger by Bohumil Hrabal. Garden City. 1975. Doubleday. hardcover. Jacket by Nicki Kalish. With an introduction by Daniel S. Miritz. Translated from the Czech by Michael Heim. 193 pages. keywords: Literature Translated Czech Eastern Europe. 0385006926.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Bohumil Hrabal is best known in America as the author of Closely Watched Trains, the novella on which the highly acclaimed motion picture by Jiri Menzel was based. Among Czechoslovakian artists he is recognized as one of the most outstanding contemporary writers. His style is brilliant, his plots slightly bizarre, and his work has had an enormous influence in particular on Czechoslovakian film - the work of Milos Forman, Menzel, and others. Now a collection of his extraordinary short stories is available in English for the first time. The fourteen stories presented here display the full range of Hrabal’s humor of the grotesque, his often surprising warmth, and his hard-edged, fast-paced style. Included among these fourteen masterful short stories: THE DEATH OF MR. BALTISBERGER - a crippled ex-motorcyclist and three people he meets at the track exchange wildly improbable reminiscences, while a fatal Grand Prix motorcycle race rages around them. A DULL AFTERNOON - a mysterious, self-absorbed stranger disrupts the psychic calm of a neighborhood tavern and becomes the silent catalyst for an unwanted truth. WORLD CAFETERIA - the romance between a young man whose girl friend has just committed suicide and a bride whose husband lands in jail on their wedding night.

 

Bohumil Hrabal was born on March 28,1914, in Czechoslovakia. He studied law in Prague, and completed his studies, but after 1939, during the German occupation, it was almost impossible for him to practice. Since then he has been employed as a clerk, railway lineman, train dispatcher, postman, laborer in a steel works, and scene-shifter in a theater. He has had a number of books published in Prague prior to 1968. Closely Watched Trains was his only work published in book form in America before this collection. Michael Helm is the translator, with Simon Karlinsky, of The Letters of Anton Chekhov.

 

 

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The Island Martinique by John Edgar Wideman. Washington DC. 2003. National Geographic Society. hardcover. Jacket design by Laura Shaw Design. Jacket photograph by Didier Goupy/Corbis Sygma. 169 pages. keywords: Travel Caribbean Martinique Black History Literature. 0792265335.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   In this compelling travel memoir, two-time PEN/Faulkner Award winner John Edgar Wideman explores Martinique's seductive natural beauty and culture, as well as its vexed history of colonial violence and racism. Attempting to decipher the strange, alluring mixture of African and European that is Creole, he and his French traveling companion develop a powerful attraction to one another which they find at once threatened and elevated by a third party--the island itself. A rich intersection of place, history, and the intricacies of human relations, Wideman's story gets deep into the Caribbean and close to the heart of the Creole experience.

John Edgar Wideman (born June 14, 1941, in Washington, D.C.) is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions. Wideman was born on June 14, 1941. He grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA and much of his writing is set there, especially in the Homewood neighborhood of the East End. He graduated from Pittsburgh's Peabody High School, then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he became an All-Ivy League forward on the basketball team. He was the second African-American to win a Rhodes Scholarship (New College, Oxford University, England), graduating in 1966. He also graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. A widely-celebrated writer and the winner of many literary awards, he is the first to win the International PEN/Faulkner Award twice: in 1984 for SENT FOR YOU YESTERDAY and in 1990 for PHILADELPHIA FIRE. In 2000, he won the O. Henry Award for his short story ‘Weight’, published in The Callaloo Journal. His nonfiction book BROTHERS AND KEEPERS received a National Book Critics Circle nomination, and his memoir FATHERALONG was a finalist for the National Book Award. He is also the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Wideman was chosen as winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story in 1998, for outstanding achievement in that genre. In 1997, his novel THE CATTLE KILLING won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction. He has taught at the University of Wyoming, University of Pennsylvania, where he founded and chaired the African American Studies Department, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers.

 

 

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The Tower Of Babel by Elias Canetti. New York. 1947. Knopf. hardcover. 427 pages. Jacket Drawing By George Salter. Translated from the German by C. V. Wedgewood Under The Personal Supervision Of The Author. keywords: Literature Translated Bulgaria Eastern Europe.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Difficult to describe and impossible to classify, THE TOWER OF BABEL is a realistic parable, original, deeply searching, timeless, and yet integral with the great underlying perplexities of our age. The story is that of a learned specia1ist in Chinese culture during three successive phases of his life, phases illuminated by the titles of the sections into which the book falls. In ‘A Head Without a World,’ Peter Kien lives in his highly specialized library, ignorantly despising the world outside his door. Finally its cruder realities drive an opening wedge into his life. In ‘Headless World,’ Kien is hounded out of his library and home into the metropolis that he knows so little. Here is his chance to know the life outside books; but now his mind is giving way, and what he experiences is a phantasmagoria. In ‘The World in the Head,’ Kien is visited by his brother, a gifted psychiatrist whose effort to rescue him actually pushes him toward the fatal crises of his madness. The fine rendering, made under the author’s supervision by C. V. Wedgwood, author of William The Silent, brings this great work to readers of English with a freedom from loss rarely found in translations.

 

 

 

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Crowds And Power by Elias Canetti. New York. 1962. Viking Press. hardcover. 295 pages. Jacket design by James and Ruth McCrea. keywords: Sociology Bulgaria.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A mounting groundswell of opinion from abroad indicates that this bold and startlingly original work will be a publishing event of the greatest importance. The book will doubtless prove to be as obligatory for the reader of today, concerned with the mainsprings of human affairs, as Spengler’s DECLINE OF THE WEST was for an earlier generation. Canetti’s book is, however, both shorter and far easier to read than Spengler’s. The increasing interplay between crowds and power is the most important social phenomenon of our century. Men hitherto unknown are suddenly thrown up by the crowd, and the power they then wield is more absolute than that of any established former ruler. These men have started wars involving the whole of mankind, and the destruction of life they have wrought is incalculable. Event single human being on earth is in some way or another affected by them, and the complete extinction of mankind is threatened by this mysterious interplay between crowds and power. A real understanding of this problem is urgent. CROWDS AND POWER is based on the author’s own firsthand observation of crowds in several countries, on his vast research for twenty-five years on historical crowds in various civilizations, and on the roots and motives of personal power. DR. C. VERONICA WEDGWOOD, the distinguished British writer and lecturer, says in her review of CROWDS AND POWER in The London Daily Telegraph: ‘This is a powerful and haunting book which fires the imagination and the intellect. of comprehensive significance, a kind of ‘Leviathan’ for the twentieth century. Some passages in this book recall in their unvarnished and telling directness the etchings of Goya. The whole provides an astonishing and disturbing new perspective of the human scene.’ IRIS MURDOCH in The Spectator writes: ‘To deal adequately with CROWDS AND POWER one would have to be, like its author, a mixture of historian, sociologist, psychologist, philosopher and poet. One is certainly confronted here with something large and important: an extremely imaginative, original and massively documented theory of the psychology of crowds. It is also a great original work on a vitally important subject, and provides us with an eminence from which we can take a new look at Marx and Freud. We need and we shall always need the visions of great imaginers and solitary men of genius.’

 

 

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The Memoirs of Elias Canetti by Elias Canetti. New York. 1999. Farrar Straus Giroux. hardcover. 834 pages. Jacket art by John Wong. Translated from the German Under the Personal Supervision of the Author by C. V. Wedgwood. keywords: Literature Translated Bulgaria Eastern Europe. 0374199507.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A compelling account of the development of a great artist, and a portrait of the tragic character of an entire era. The uncompromising achievement of Elias Canetti has been matched by few writers this century. Canetti worked brilliantly in many forms, but the three volumes that comprise his autobiography are where his genius is perhaps most evident. The first volume, The Tongue Set Free, presents the events, personalities, and intellectual forces that fed Canetti's early creative development. The Torch in My Ear explores his admiration for the first great mentor of his adulthood, Karl Krauss, and also describes his first marriage. The final volume, The Play of the Eyes, is set in Vienna between 1931 and 1937, with the European catastrophe imminent; here he vividly portrays relationships with Hermann Broch and Robert Musil, among others.

 

 

 

Elias Canetti (1905-1994), Bulgarian-born author of the novel Auto-da-Fé (The Tower Of Babel), the sociological study Crowds and Power, and three previously published memoir volumes (The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in my Ear, and The Play of the Eyes), won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981.

 

 

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Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty. Cambridge. 2014. Harrvard University Press. hardcover. 685 pages. keywords: Economics Inequality. 9780674430006.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality. Piketty shows that modern economic growth and the diffusion of knowledge have allowed us to avoid inequalities on the apocalyptic scale predicted by Karl Marx. But we have not modified the deep structures of capital and inequality as much as we thought in the optimistic decades following World War II. The main driver of inequality--the tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth--today threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, Piketty says, and may do so again. A work of extraordinary ambition, originality, and rigor, Capital in the Twenty-First Century reorients our understanding of economic history and confronts us with sobering lessons for today.

Thomas Piketty is Professor at the Paris School of Economics.

 

 

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Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories by Gil Brewer. Gainesville. 2012. University Press of Florida. paperback. 298 pages. Cover illustration by Larry Leshan. Edited by David Rachels. keywords: Mystery America Pulp Noir. 9780813044064.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Gil Brewer (1922-1983), a second-generation noir writer, followed in the footsteps of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain. He spent most of his life in the Tampa Bay area, where he also set most of his fiction. Like his characters, he was a victim of his own weaknesses, dying as a result of the alcoholism that plagued his whole adult life. Brewer published prolifically under various pseudonyms and in a variety of niche genres including mystery, romance, and pornography. Over the course of his career, he published more than 100 short stories and 50 novels, including A Taste for Sin, Satan Is a Woman, and The Girl from Hateville. He is known for his everyday characters--often underdogs, frequently downtrodden, and desperate to get ahead in life--who ultimately succumb to their own weaknesses and desires. Brewer revolutionized the availability of reading-as-entertainment for the American people by helping to exploit a new market: the paperback original. Many of his novels, including the bestselling 13 French Street, have recently been reissued for a new audience. However, Redheads Die Quickly and Other Stories is the first collection of his short fiction. Because his work was published in a large number of pulp magazines, and because he regularly didn't publish stories under his own name, Brewer's fans--and fans of hard-boiled noir fiction in general--have often been frustrated in their efforts to find the work of this mid-century American crime writer. David Rachels has sifted through the Brewer papers at the University of Wyoming, thumbed thousands of publications, and tracked down rare pulp magazines on eBay, to create the first-ever authoritative list of Brewer's short stories, with the best featured in a single volume.

 

 

 

 

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The Dark Side of Enlightenment: Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason by John V. Fleming. New York. 2013. Norton. hardcover. 414 pages. Jacket design by Keith Hayes. Jacket painting: ‘The Alchemists,’ c.1757 (oil on canvas), Pietro Longhi (c.1701-85). keywords: History Enlightenment Spiritualism. 9780393079463.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Why spiritual and supernatural yearnings, even investigations into the occult, flourished in the era of rationalist philosophy. In The Dark Side of the Enlightenment, John V. Fleming shows how the impulses of the European Enlightenment—generally associated with great strides in the liberation of human thought from superstition and traditional religion—were challenged by tenacious religious ideas or channeled into the ‘darker’ pursuits of the esoteric and the occult. His engaging topics include the stubborn survival of the miraculous, the Enlightenment roles of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and the widespread pursuit of magic and alchemy. Though we tend not to associate what was once called alchemy with what we now call chemistry, Fleming shows that the difference is merely one of linguistic modernization. Alchemy was once the chemistry, of Arabic derivation, and its practitioners were among the principal scientists and physicians of their ages. No point is more important for understanding the strange and fascinating figures in this book than the prestige of alchemy among the learned men of the age. Fleming follows some of these complexities and contradictions of the ‘Age of Lights’ into the biographies of two of its extraordinary offspring. The first is the controversial wizard known as Count Cagliostro, the ‘Egyptian’ freemason, unconventional healer, and alchemist known most infamously for his ambiguous association with the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which history has viewed as among the possible harbingers of the French Revolution and a major contributing factor in the growing unpopularity of Marie Antoinette. Fleming also reviews the career of Julie de Krüdener, the sentimental novelist, Pietist preacher, and political mystic who would later become notorious as a prophet. Impressively researched and wonderfully erudite, this rich narrative history sheds light on some lesser-known mental extravagances and beliefs of the Enlightenment era and brings to life some of the most extraordinary characters ever encountered either in history or fiction.

John V. Fleming, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, taught humanistic studies at Princeton University for forty years. He is the author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

 

 

 

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The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes - 2 Volumes by Arthur Conan Doyle . New York. 2004. Norton. hardcover. 1700 pages. November 2004. Edited with a preface and notes by Leslie S. Klinger. Introduction by John le Carre. keywords: Mystery England Sherlock Holmes. 0393059162.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   This monumental edition promises to be the most important new contribution to Sherlock Holmes literature since William Baring-Gould’s 1967 classic work. In this boxed set, Leslie Klinger, a leading world authority, reassembles Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 classic short stories in the order in which they appeared in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century book editions. Inside, readers will find a cornucopia of insights: beginners will benefit from Klinger’s insightful biographies of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle; history lovers will revel in the wealth of Victorian literary and cultural details; Sherlockian fanatics will puzzle over tantalizing new theories; art lovers will thrill to the 800-plus illustrations, which make this the most lavishly illustrated edition of the Holmes tales ever produced. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes illuminates the timeless genius of Arthur Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation of readers. 700+ illustrations.

 

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: Volume III by Arthur Conan Doyle. New York. 2006. Norton. hardcover. 907 pages. Jacket deisgn by Chin-Yee Lai. Jacket illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele, Collier’s 1903 (’The Empty House’). Edited With Notes by Leslie S. Klinger. keywords: Mystery England Sherlock Holmes. 9780393065947.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   The four classic novels of Sherlock Holmes, heavily illustrated and annotated with extensive scholarly commentary. The publication of Leslie S. Klinger's brilliant new annotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's four classic Holmes novels in 2005 created a Holmes sensation. Available again in an attractively-priced edition identical to the first, except this edition has no outer slipcase. Klinger reassembles Doyle's four seminal novels in their original order, with over 1,000 notes, 350 illustrations and period photographs, and tantalizing new Sherlockian theories. Inside, readers will find: A STUDY IN SCARLET (1887), a tale of murder and revenge that tells of Holmes and Dr. Watson's first meeting; THE SIGN OF FOUR (1889), a chilling tale of lost treasure...and of how Watson met his wife; THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1901), hailed as the greatest mystery novel of all time; and THE VALLEY OF FEAR (1914), a fresh murder scene that leads Holmes to solve a long-forgotten mystery. Whether as a stand-alone volume or as a companion to the short stories, this classic work illuminates the timeless genius of Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

Leslie S. Klinger is considered one of the foremost Holmes authorities in the world. The author of numerous books, including The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, he lives in Los Angeles, California.

 

 

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Coup D’Etat: The Technique of Revolution by Curzio Malaparte. New York. 1932. Dutton. hardcover. 251 pages. Translated from the Italian by Sylvia Saunders. keywords: History Revolution Coup D’Etat

FROM THE PUBLISHER - 

Here is the handbook for the modern revolutionist, from the pen of a man who has seen many of Europe’s post-war insurrections at first hand. The nineteenth-century Napoleonic model of the coup d’etat, which dramatically seized the emblems of government, is dead. It has been superseded by a cold, efficient Marxian technique, first and most brilliantly used by Trotsky in 1917. The October Revolution of the Bolsheviks has rendered useless all the traditional methods of safeguarding the modern state from overthrow: it has changed insurrection from a picturesque drama to a machine. Such is the thesis of Signor Malaparte’s book, which is at the same time a brilliant account of modern dictators - Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Pilsudski, Primo de Rivera - and the means by which they came to power. The book closes with a caustic analysis of Adolph Hitler, present aspirant to dictatorship in Germany, and restates the problems of internal security for a modern government. It is a volume which inevitably recalls Machiavelli’s PRINCE, as a realistic and ruthless account of modern statecraft.

 

   Curzio Malaparte (9 June 1898 – 19 July 1957), born Kurt Erich Suckert, was an Italian journalist, dramatist, short-story writer, novelist and diplomat. His chosen surname, which he used from 1925, means ‘evil/wrong side’ and is a play on Napoleon's family name ‘Bonaparte‘ which means, in Italian, ‘good side’. Born in Prato, Tuscany, to a Lombard mother and a German father, he was educated at Collegio Cicognini and at the La Sapienza University of Rome. In 1918 he started his career as a journalist. Malaparte fought in World War I, earning a captaincy in the Fifth Alpine Regiment and several decorations for valor, and in 1922 took part in Benito Mussolini's March on Rome. In 1924, he founded the Roman periodical La Conquista dello Stato (‘The Conquest of the State’, a title that would inspire Ramiro Ledesma Ramos' La Conquista del Estado). As a member of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, he founded several periodicals and contributed essays and articles to others, as well as writing numerous books, starting from the early 1920s, and directing two metropolitan newspapers. In 1926 he founded with Massimo Bontempelli (1878–1960) the literary quarterly ‘900’. Later he became a co-editor of Fiera Letteraria (1928–31), and an editor of La Stampa in Turin. His polemical war novel-essay, Viva Caporetto! (1921), criticized corrupt Rome and the Italian upper classes as the real enemy (the book was forbidden because it offended the Regio Esercito). In Tecnica del Colpo di Stato (1931) Malaparte attacked both Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. This led to Malaparte being stripped of his National Fascist Party membership and sent to internal exile from 1933 to 1938 on the island of Lipari. He was freed on the personal intervention of Mussolini's son-in-law and heir apparent Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini's regime arrested Malaparte again in 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943 and imprisoned him in Rome's infamous jail Regina Coeli. During that time (1938–41) he built a house, known as the Casa Malaparte, on Capo Massullo, on the Isle of Capri. Shortly after his time in jail he published books of magical realist autobiographical short stories, which culminated in the stylistic prose of Donna Come Me (WOMAN LIKE ME) (1940). His remarkable knowledge of Europe and its leaders is based upon his experience as a correspondent and in the Italian diplomatic service. In 1941 he was sent to cover the Eastern Front as a correspondent for Corriere della Sera. The articles he sent back from the Ukrainian Fronts, many of which were suppressed, were collected in 1943 and brought out under the title Il Volga nasce in Europa (‘The Volga Rises in Europe’). Also, this experience provided the basis for his two most famous books, KAPUTT (1944) and THE SKIN (1949). KAPUTT, his novelistic account of the war, surreptitiously written, presents the conflict from the point of view of those doomed to lose it. From November 1943 to March 1946 he was attached to the American High Command in Italy as an Italian Liaison Officer. Articles by Curzio Malaparte have appeared in many literary periodicals of note in France, the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States. After the war, Malaparte's political sympathies veered to the left, and he became member of the Italian Communist Party. In 1947 Malaparte settled in Paris and wrote dramas without much success. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Malaparte became interested in the Maoist version of Communism, but his journey to China was cut short by illness, and he was flown back to Rome. Io in Russia e in Cina, his journal of the events, was published posthumously in 1958. Malaparte's final book, Maledetti Toscani, his attack on bourgeois culture, appeared in 1956. Shortly after the publication of this book, he became a Catholic. He died from lung cancer on 19 July 1957.

 

 

 

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Three from Karl Kraus...

 

Half-Truths & One-And-A-Half Truths by Karl Kraus. Montreal. 1976. Engendra Press. hardcover. 128 pages. Design by Anthony Crouch. Edited and translated from the German by Harry Zohn. keywords: Poetry America Literature Letters. 0919830005.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   ‘This, and only this, is the substance of our civilization: the speed with which stupidity sucks us into its vortex.’ An intrepid guardian of the truth in an age drowning in lies, Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the great Viennese editor, moralist, polemicist and pacifist - and perhaps the foremost aphorist of modern times - unrelentingly assailed those powers whom he regarded as the mainspring of a Europe in an advanced state of putrefaction. Journalists, nationalists, warmongers, ‘psychoanais’ – all who corrupted the quality of life through their defilement of language found themselves on the receiving end of satiric barbs launched by the outraged humanitarian, who (true satirist that he was) measured everything he witnessed against unbending standards. ‘Hate must make a person productive; otherwise one might as well love.’ Karl Kraus was a passionate lover as well as a productive hater; HALF-TRUTHS & ONE-AND-A-HALF TRUTHS strikes a balance between aphoristic sayings born of contempt or indignation and those having their source in more positive – though no less intense – feelings and concerns. The process of artistic creation, the role of the satirist, the significance of language (‘the divining rod which finds sources of thought’) and the mysteries inherent in the relationship between the sexes are some of the themes on which Kraus expressed himself aphoristically; Professor Zohn’s selection and translation have resulted in one of the more quotable books to have appeared in the English language in recent years.

Harry Zohn is a native of Vienna and currently chairman of the department of Germanic and Slavic languages at Brandeis University, where he has taught since 1951. The many books which he has written or edited include a study of Karl Kraus (1971), and the Austrian reader Der farbenvolle Untergang. Among the works which Professor Zohn has translated may be mentioned The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Sigmund Freud’s Delusion and Dream, Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations, Marianne Weber’s Max Weber: A Biography, and selections from the German satirist Kurt Tucholsky. Professor Zohn holds the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit awarded by the Federal Republic of Germany, and is a member of the Austrian P.E.N. Club.

 

 

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No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus by Karl Kraus. New York. 1977. Ungar. hardcover. 260 pages. edited & With An Introduction by Frederick Ungar. keywords: Literature Austria Translated. 0804424853.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A collection of essays and letters written during or soon after World War I from Viennese writer Karl Kraus. FROM THE INTRODUCTION – Karl Kraus is no longer entirely unknown to American readers, as he was only a few years ago. His importance has been increasingly recognized, and there have been several worthwhile publications in English on his life and work. Other widely reviewed books treating of the Vienna of Kraus’s time have also helped to create new interest in this greatest satirist of the twentieth century. But Kraus was more than an outstanding satirist. He was one of the finest writers of all time in the German language – aphorist, essayist, poet, culture critic, dramatist. Above all, he was a fighter without peer against corruption of any kind, in particular the corruption of language and the trivialization of life. His work and personality exerted a profound influence on such diverse figures as Ludwig Wittgenstein and Arnold Schonberg and other great minds of his time.

 

 

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The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus. New York. 1974. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. paperback. 263 pages. Cover design by Tim Gaydos. Translated from the German by Alexander Gode and Sue Ellen Wright. Abridged and edited by Frederick Ungar. Introduction by the editor. Critical analysis by Franz H. Mautner. keywords: Drama Literature Austria Translated. 0804424845.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND is Kraus’s masterpiece, with half of Europe as its stage. It is presented here in English for the first time, in an abridged version that preserves the essence of the 800-page original. Its influence on Brecht, Ionesco, and other playwrights is acknowledged. Mingling actual quotations, news reports, and government orders with Kraus’s own satiric dialogue, this immense drama (never meaning to be performed) offers a vast fresco of events at the front and at home during, as it prophesied, the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Indeed, Kraus anticipated the development of atomic warfare and its threat to all mankind. Some of Kraus is untranslatable, but, as Stanley Kauffmann wrote in his New Republic review, ‘Ungar has done us a benefit at least by bringing us a bit closer to this sharp-eyed, angry, prickly, lover-hater of mankind.’

  

   KARL KRAUS (1874-1936) was a major influence on the intellectual life of Vienna, whose seminal thinkers and artists have profoundly changed twentieth-century thought. On some of them Kraus’s influence was fundamental. Indeed, as the critic George Steiner recently noted, ‘without Kraus, Wittgenstein’s philosophy might well have been nonexistent.’ Kraus is difficult to classify in any category; he stands unique in world literature. Many critics believe him to be the greatest satirist since Swift; he was also one of the most brilliant aphorists. As a critic of society, in violent opposition to the all-pervading corruption of the spirit in public life, he was without equal. Participants in this edition: Franz H. Mautner is professor emeritus of German, Swarthmore College. Alexander Gode was a noted teacher as well as translator. Sue Ellen Wright, has a Ph.D. in German and was a Fulbright scholar in Frankfurt. Frederick Ungar, who attended most of Kraus’s public readings in Vienna, was founder of the Phaidon Verlag there and has been a publisher in New York since 1940.

 

 

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Black Skies: An Inspector Erlendur Novel by Arnaldur Indridason. New York. 2014. Minotaur Books/St Martin's. hardcover. 330 pages. September 2013. Jacket design by Ervin Serrano. Jacket photograph by Tim Robinson./Arcangel Images. Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. keywords: Mystery Iceland Literature Translated. 9781250000392.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Arnaldur Indridason, whom The Sunday Times calls 'one of the most brilliant crime writers of his generation,' has thrilled readers around the world with his series set in Reykjavik. In Black Skies, Indridason further cements his position as one of today's top international crime writers. A man is making a crude leather mask with an iron spike fixed in the middle of the forehead. It is a 'death mask,' once used by Icelandic farmers to slaughter calves, and he has revenge in mind. Meanwhile, a school reunion has left Inspector Erlendur's colleague Sigurdur Óli unhappy with life in the police force. While Iceland is enjoying an economic boom, Óli's relationship is on the rocks and soon even his position in the department is compromised. When a favor to a friend goes wrong and a woman dies before his eyes, Oli has a murder investigation on his hands. From the villas of Reykjavík's banking elite to a sordid basement flat, Black Skies is a superb story of greed, pride, and murder from one of Europe's most successful crime writers.

   ARNALDUR INDRIDASON won the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Silence of the Grave and is the only author to win the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel two years in a row. The film of Jar City was Iceland’s entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and the film Silence of the Grave is in production with the same director. The film Contraband, starring Mark Wahlberg, was based on an Icelandic film written by Indridason, who lives in Reykjavik, Iceland.

 

 

 

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Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. Baton Rogue. 1970. Lousiana State Univeristy Press. hardcover. 273 pages. Edited by Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon. The Library of Southern Civilization series. The Library of Southern Civilization will include scholarly editions of some of the most valuable accounts of life in the South, both antebellum and postbellum. The series is edited by Lewis P. Simpson, Professor of English, Louisiana State University. keywords: African American Studies Slavery Autobiography America History. 080710633x.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Solomon Northup was a free man, the son of an emancipated Negro slave. Until the spring of 1841 he lived a simple, uneventful life with his wife and three children in Upstate New York. Then, suddenly, he fell victim to a series of bizarre events that make this one of the most amazing autobiographies ever written. Northup accepted an offer from two strangers in Saratoga, New York, to catch up with their traveling circus and play in its band. But when the chase ended, Northup had been drugged, beaten, and sold to a slave trader in Washington, D.C. Subsequently, he was shipped to New Orleans, where he was purchased by a planter in the Red River region of Louisiana. For the next twelve years Northup lived as a chattel slave under several masters. He might well have died a slave, except for another set of bizarre circumstances which enabled him to get word to his family and finally regain his freedom. These elements alone - the kidnapping, enslavement, and rescue - are sufficient for a sensational story. But Northup provides more. He was a shrewd observer of people and events. His memory was remarkable. He described cultivation of cotton and sugar in the Deep South. He detailed the daily routine and general life of the Negro slave. Indeed, he vividly portrayed the world of slavery - from the underside. Originally published in 1853, Northup’s autobiography is regarded as one of the best accounts of American Negro slavery ever written by a slave. It is reprinted in full here for the first time, as the initial volume in The Library of Southern Civilization. Northup’s account has been carefully checked by the editors and has been found to be remarkably accurate. To his own narrative of a long and tragic adventure, Professors Eakin and Logsdon have added significant new details about Northup and the plantation country where he spent most of his time as a slave. Heretofore unknown information about the capture and trial of Northup’s kidnappers has been included, adding still another fascinating episode to an already astounding story.

   SOLOMON NORTHUP (July 1808 – after 1857) was a free-born African American from Saratoga Springs, New York. He is noted for having been kidnapped in 1841 when enticed with a job offer. When he accompanied his supposed employers to Washington, DC, they drugged him and sold him into slavery. From Washington, DC, he was transported to New Orleans where he was sold to a plantation owner from Rapides Parish, Louisiana. After 12 years in bondage, he regained his freedom in January 1853; he was one of very few to do so in the cases of such kidnappings. Held in the Red River region of Louisiana by several different owners, he got news to his family, who contacted friends and enlisted the Governor of New York, Washington Hunt, to his cause. New York state had passed a law in 1840 to provide legal and financial assistance in order to recover any African-American residents who were kidnapped and sold into slavery.

SUE EAKIN is a member of the history faculty of Louisiana State University at Alexandria.

JOSEPH LOGSDON is Associate Professor of History at Lehigh University.

 

 

 

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Last of the Conquerors by William Gardner Smith. New York. 1948. Farrar Straus & Company. hardcover. 262 pages. August 1948. keywords: African American Literature World War II.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

    ‘William Gardner Smith has the two great qualities, simplicity and bitternes. One is a divine gift, and the other, a tragic acquisition.’ - Christopher Morley. Some people will read this novel with indignation, some with shame. Many will be shocked. It is the story of a young man who learned for the first time - in an enemy country - how it feels to be treated as a human being. It is the story of Hayes Dawkins, Negro soldier in the Army of Occupation, who found himself accepted as an equal by the Germans and looked upon as an inferior by his white comrades in arms. In Berlin Hayes discovered a new world in which he could go where he pleased, face any man, love any woman. When a change of station brought him to a post where he was again a Negro, a second-class human being, the shock and hurt were almost too great to bear. It was then he knew why Negroes would rather stay in Germany than go home, why some even deserted to the Russian zone. Caught in a current of injustice and hatred, Hayes was faced with an almost impossible decision - a choice between two worlds. In portraying Hayes Dawkins, William Gardner Smith has drawn a moving picture of a young man caught between two worlds unable to decide which he should make his own. LAST OF THE CONQUERORS is a first novel of promise and distinction.

   Born in 1927, William Gardner Smith was only twenty when he finished LAST OF THE CONQUERORS, his first novel. Born and brought up in Philadelphia, he has been a reporter for the Pittsburgh Courier in that city for five years. After spending a year in Germany in the Army of Occupation, he attended Temple University.

 

 

 

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Three relatively new translations of Dostoevsky from the foremost translator of Russian religious thought into English

 

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Grand Rapids. 2009. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. paperback. 118 pages. Cover photo by PhotoAlto. Cover design by Willem Mineur. Translated from the Russian by Boris Jakim. keywords: Literature Russia Translated 19th Century. 9780802845702.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A bold new translation of a literary classic. One of the most profound and most unsettling works of modern literature, Notes from Underground (first published in 1864) remains a cultural and literary watershed. In these pages Dostoevsky unflinchingly examines the dark, mysterious depths of the human heart. The Underground Man so chillingly depicted here has become an archetypal figure -- loathsome and prophetic -- in contemporary culture. This vivid new rendering by Boris Jakim is more faithful to Dostoevsky's original Russian than any previous translation; it maintains the coarse, vivid language underscoring the ‘visceral experimentalism’ that made both the book and its protagonist groundbreaking and iconic. ‘Notes from Underground has increasingly been recognized in recent years as a crucially significant work for understanding the whole of Dostoevsky's mature fiction. Boris Jakim's translation — the work of a seasoned translator with a keen scholarly appreciation of the Russian spiritual and theological world — is excellent: bold, fresh and clear, contemporary without sacrificing the distinctiveness of the setting. It will be a perfect introduction to this brief but profoundly charged work.’ - Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘The indefatigable Boris Jakim, who has put thousands of pages of Russian theology into English, now gives us a hundred pages of Russia's most theological novelist in a bold new translation. Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is a chilling parable for modern times — the story of a man who talks himself out of his own salvation. The tale has lost none of its relevance since it appeared a century and a half ago. As Robert Bird observes in his fine introduction, Notes challenges us to consider something our materialistic civilization discourages at every turn — the possibility of spiritual causation. As Dostoevsky knew, the real world includes a mystical element. That spark can be denied, derided, even blasphemed, but it cannot be eradicated. With some help from Jakim, Dostoevsky gives us a vigorous contemporary language for talking about such a thing.’ - Paul Valliere, Butler University.

 

The Insulted and The Injured by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Grand Rapids. 2011. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. paperback. 338 pages. Cover photo: Marinka van Holten. Cover design: Willem Mineur. Translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Boris Jakim. keywords: Literature Russia Translated 19th Century. 9780802825902.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A new translation of a literary classic. The Insulted and Injured, which came out in 1861, was Fyodor Dostoevsky's first major work of fiction after his Siberian exile and the first of the long novels that made him famous. Set in nineteenth-century Petersburg, this gripping novel features a vividly drawn set of characters -- including Vanya (Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical hero), Natasha (the woman he loves), and Alyosha (Natasha's aristocratic lover) -- all suffering from the cruelly selfish machinations of Alyosha's father, the dark and powerful Prince Valkovsky. Boris Jakim's fresh English-language rendering of this gem in the Dostoevsky canon is both more colorful and more accurate than any earlier translation. ‘Boris Jakim is one of the best translators from the Russian in our time. He has given us superb English versions of a series of major works from Russian philosophy, and more recently he has turned his hand to Dostoevsky. After Notes from Underground, he now offers us a fresh translation of an important and neglected novel, The Insulted and Injured, originally published in 1861, a fascinating prelude to the later 'novel tragedies' for which Dostoevsky is chiefly known. Jakim's ambition to 'get into the word-fabric' of the original is beautifully realized.’ - Richard Pevear.

 

Notes from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Grand Rapids. 2013. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. paperback. 316 pages. Cover photo: Angel Souto. Cover design: Willem Mineur. Translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Boris Jakim. keywords: Literature Russia Translated 19th Century. 9780802866479.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   A master translation of a neglected Russian classic into English. Long before Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago came Dostoevsky's Notes from the House of the Dead, a compelling account of the horrific conditions in Siberian labor camps. First published in 1861, this novel, based on Dostoevsky's own experience as a political prisoner, is a forerunner of his famous novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The characters and situations that Dostoevsky encountered in prison were so violent and extraordinary that they changed his psyche profoundly. Through that experience, he later said, he was resurrected into a new spiritual condition — one in which he would create some of the greatest novels ever written. Including an illuminating introduction by James Scanlan on Dostoevsky's prison years, this totally new translation by Boris Jakim captures Dostoevsky's semi-autobiographical narrative — at times coarse, at times intensely emotional, at times philosophical — in rich American English. ‘As usual, Boris Jakim offers a fluent and accessible translation, giving us a new opportunity to encounter one of Dostoevsky's most seminal works. So much of the vision and insight of the great novels has its roots here in his nightmare experience in the Siberian penal camps, and here we have a first-class new rendering of this unique chronicle.’ - Rowan Williams, author of Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction. ‘This startling book was a sensation in its day and became the source of all of Dostoevsky's mature fictions. Leo Tolstoy wrote that he did not know 'a better book in all modern literature.' One hundred and fifty years later, Notes from the House of the Dead still retains the quality of a literary experiment capable of shocking and moving its readers. Boris Jakim's new translation vividly and sensitively communicates the sense of discovery the work had for its first readers.’ - Robert Bird, author of Fyodor Dostoevsky. ‘Jakim captures Dostoevsky's voice with an immediacy and power that is perhaps a little uncanny. This should by all rights become the standard English edition of this book.’ - David Bentley Hart, author of The Beauty of the Infinite and Atheist Delusions.

   Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.

Boris Jakim is the foremost translator of Russian religious thought into English. His published translations include works by S.L. Frank, Pavel Florensky, Vladimir Solovyov, and Sergius Bulgakov.

 

 

 

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Two from Robert Creeley...

 

The Collected Poems Of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005 by Robert Creeley. Berkeley. 2006. University of California Press. hardcover. 662 pages. keywords: Literature Poetry America. 9780520241596.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   This definitive collection showcases thirty years of work by one of the most significant American poets of the twentieth century, bringing together verse that originally appeared in eight acclaimed books of poetry ranging from Hello: A Journal (1978) to Life & Death (1998) and If I were writing this (2003). Robert Creeley, who was involved with the publication of this volume before his death in 2005, helped define an emerging counter-tradition to the prevailing literary establishment-the new postwar poetry originating with Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Louis Zukofsky and expanding through the lives and works of Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, and others. The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2005, essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American poetry, will stand together with The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1975-2000, will be essential reading for anyone interested in twentieth-century American poetry.

 

The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley by Robert Creeley. Berkeley. 2013. University of California Press. hardcover. 467 pages. keywords: Poetry Literature America Letters. 9780520241602.

FROM THE PUBLISHER –

   Robert Creeley is one of the most celebrated and influential American poets. A stylist of the highest order, Creeley imbued his correspondence with the literary artistry he brought to his poetry. Through his engagements with mentors such as William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, peers such as Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac, and mentees such as Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Ed Dorn, Susan Howe, and Tom Raworth, Creeley helped forge a new poetry that re-imagined writing for his and subsequent generations. This first-ever volume of his letters, written between 1945 and 2005, document the life, work, and times of one of our greatest writers, and represent a critical archive of the development of contemporary American poetry, as well as the changing nature of letter-writing and communication in the digital era.

 

Robert Creeley (1926-2005) published more than sixty books of poetry, prose, essays, and interviews in the United States and abroad. His many honors included the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Frost Medal, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the Bollingen Prize for Poetry. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Distinguished Professor in the Graduate Program in Literary Arts at Brown University.

 

Rod Smith is the author of several collections of poetry, including Deed (2007), editor of the journal Aerial, publisher of Edge Books, and manager of Bridge Street Books in Washington, D.C.

 

Peter Baker is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at Towson University in Maryland. He is the author or editor of six previous volumes, including Detecting Detection: International Perspectives on the Uses of a Plot (2012).

 

Kaplan Harris is Associate Professor of English at St. Bonaventure University. He has published widely on twentieth-century poetry, including recent articles on Susan Howe, Ted Berrigan, Hannah Weiner, and Kevin Killian.

 

 

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Two very different versions of Horacio Quiroga’s Cuentos de la Selva:

 

   Jungle Tales by Horacio Quiroga. New York. 2012. Self-Published by Jeff Zorilla and Natalia Cortesi. 88 pages. Paperback. Cover illustration by Bert van Wijk. Translated from the Spanish by Jeff Zorrilla. Illustrations by Bert van Wijk. keywords: Literature Uruguay Latin America South America Translated Folktales. 9780615708072  

 

 

 

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   South American Jungle Tales by Horacio Quiroga. New York. 1922. Duffield & Company. 166 pages. Hardcover. Illustrated by A. L. Ripley. Translated from the Spanish by Arthur Livingston. keywords: Literature Translated Latin America.

 

 

JUNGLE TALES (Cuentos de la Selva - published originally in 1918) is a collection of eight short stories in which Quiroga captures the magic of the Misiones rainforest of Argentina, which is the scene of exciting adventures illuminated by nature in all it’s splendor. A place where snakes throw glamorous parties with flamingos, stingrays join forces to fight off man-eating jaguars, and a giant tortoise carries a wounded man on its shell for hundreds of kilometers to bring him to safety. Horacio Quiroga dedicated this book to his children, who accompanied him during that rough period of poverty in a damp basement 

   Journalist, teacher, carpenter, cotton farmer, justice of the peace, film critic and one of Latin America’s best short story writers, Horacio Quiroga (born on December 31, 1878 in Salto, Uruguay – died on February 19, 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina) was an Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer, and is one of the most fascinating characters in Latin American literature. He wrote stories which, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states. Some of his most famous works include Cuentos de la selva (1918; Jungle Tales), Cuentos de amor de locura y de muerte (1917; Stories of love madness and death) and Anaconda (1921). He’s written over 200 pieces of fiction and has often been compared to Rudyard Kipling, Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. Roberto Bolaño mentions Quiroga as one of the must-read authors in his famous ‘Consejos sobre el arte de escribir cuentos’ (‘Advice on the Art of Writing Short Stories’). His influence can be seen in the Latin American magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar.

 

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