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The Rest is Silence by Augusto Monterroso. New York. 2025. New York Review Books. 9781681378824. Translated from the Spanish by Aaron Kerner. Introduction by Dustin Illingworth. 153 pages. paperback. Cover design by Katy Homans. Cover image: Julio Larraz, 'Dinner at Negresco’s’, 1974.  

DESCRIPTION - The lone novel by a Latin American author of very short fiction (praised as “the most beautiful stories in the world” by Italo Calvino)—an antic, metafictional send-up of the Mexican literary scene told through the unreliable recollections of an aging critic’s friends, relatives, and attendants. The one and only novel by the renowned Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso—Latin America’s most expansive miniaturist, whose tiny, acid, and bracingly surreal narratives Italo Calvino dubbed “the most beautiful stories in the world”—The Rest Is Silence presents the reader with the kaleidoscopic portrait of a provincial Mexican literary critic, one Eduardo Torres, a sort of Don Quixote of the Sunday supplements, whose colossal misreadings are matched only by the scale of his vanity. Presented in the form of a festschrift for the aging writer, this rollicking metafiction offers up a bouquet of highly unreliable reminiscences by Torres’s friends, relations, and servants (their accounts skewed by envy, ignorance, and sheer malice), along with a generous selection of the savant’s own comically botched attempts at “criticism.” Monterroso’s narrative is a ludicrous dissection of literary self-conceit, a (Groucho) Marxian skewering of the Mexican literary landscape, and perhaps a wry self-portrait by an author who is profoundly sensible of just how high the stakes of the art of criticism really are—and, consequently, of just how far it has to fall. PRAISE FOR AUGUSTO MONTERROSO: “Monterroso was a very real Honduran-Guatemalan short-story writer, his 1978 novel here skilfully translated into English for the first time by Aaron Kerner. Torres was the product of his imagination, a chance to poke fun at the literary establishment and speculate on the legacy afforded to a provincial writer with an output unlikely to stand the test of time.” —Chris Alnutt, The Financial Times. “The reader is warned to approach Monterroso with hands raised—these are dangerous [fictions], whose ostensible lightness is founded upon a clandestine wisdom, a lethal beauty.” —Gabriel García Marquez. “Monterroso is the first truly original philosopher that Latin America has produced.” —José Emilio Pacheco. “Monterroso, who died in 2003, fashions his anti-novel into a sly parody of both the gentleman of letters archetype and a backwater literary scene during the Latin American Boom. Readers will relish this tragic farce.” — Publishers Weekly.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Augusto Monterroso Bonilla (December 21, 1921 - February 7, 2003) was a Honduran writer, known for the ironical and humorous style of his short stories. He is considered an important figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, and received several awards, including the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature (2000), Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (1997), and Juan Rulfo Award (1996). Monterroso was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras to a Honduran mother and Guatemalan father. In 1936 his family settled definitively in Guatemala City, where he would remain until early adulthood. Here he published his first short stories and began his clandestine work against the dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. To this end he founded the newspaper El Espectador with a group of other writers. He was detained and exiled to Mexico City in 1944 for his opposition to the dictatorial regime. Shortly after his arrival in Mexico, the revolutionary government of Jacobo Arbenz triumphed in Guatemala, and Monterroso was assigned to a minor post in the Guatemalan embassy in Mexico. In 1953 he moved briefly to Bolivia upon being named Guatemalan consul in La Paz. He relocated to Santiago de Chile in 1954, when Arbenz's government was toppled with help from an American intervention. In 1956 he returned definitively to Mexico City, where he would occupy various academic and editorial posts and continue his work as a writer for the rest of his life. In 1988, Augusto Monterroso received the highest honour the Mexican government can bestow on foreign dignitaries, the Águila Azteca. He was also awarded the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award, in 2000. In 1997, Monterroso was awarded the Guatemala National Prize in Literature for his body of work. He died due to heart failure at the age of 81, in Mexico City. Although Monterroso limited himself almost exclusively to the short story form, he is widely considered a central figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, which was best known for its novelists. As such he is recognized alongside such canonical authors as Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo and Gabriel García Márquez. Save for Lo demás es silencio ('The Rest is Silence'), his foray into the form of the novel, Monterroso only published short pieces. He worked throughout his career to perfect the short story form, often delving into analogous genres (most famously the fable) for stylistic and thematic inspiration. Even Lo demás es silencio, however, largely eschews the traditional novelistic form, opting instead for the loose aggregation of various apocryphal short texts (newspaper clippings, testimonials, diary entries, poems) to sketch the 'biography' of its fictional main character. Monterroso is often credited with writing one of the world's shortest stories, 'El Dinosaurio' ('The Dinosaur'), published in Obras completas (Y otros cuentos). The story reads, in its entirety: Cuando desperto, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí. ('Upon awakening, the dinosaur was still there.'). Carlos Fuentes wrote of Monterroso (referring specifically to The Black Sheep and Other Fables): 'Imagine Borges' fantastical bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Jonathan Swift and James Thurber exchanging notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who has seriously read Mark Twain. Meet Monterroso.

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The Black Sheep and Other Fables by Augusto Monterroso. Garden City. 1971. Doubleday. Translated from the Spanish by Walter I. Bradbury with the convivial cooperation of the author. 113 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Patricia Saville Voehl.

DESCRIPTION - Imagine Borges' fantastic bestiary having tea with Alice. Imagine Dean Swift and James Thurber trading notes. Imagine a frog from Calaveras County who had actually read Mark Twain. Meet Augusto Monterroso. The foregoing invitation by novelist Carlos Fuentes is both gracious and apt, for in this delightful volume Augusto Monterroso resumes in modem form a tradition older than Aesop-the fable. Here are presented wondrous creatures like the Monkey who wanted to be a satirical writer, the Fly who dreamed he was an Eagle, the Giraffe who learned the hard way about relativity; intriguing revelations like the true point of Penelope's weaving, the dilemma of the Lightning Bolt that did strike twice in the same place, or the case of Ulysses and the non-conformist Siren-and many other delectable and edifying tales. As Monterroso's admirers point out the antics of his fabulous Beasts and Beings are minors to the foibles of mankind (not me and thee, of course-others). On the other hand, it could be limply that your occasional Monkey does want to be a satirical writer, In any case, the author disclaims a strictly moral intention, Asked in an interview if he was against moralists, he responded that he was only against overly-explicit moralists. ‘To say that a grasshopper should work like an ant,' he continued, ‘is a piece of foolishness perpetuated through centuries. The grasshopper won't change. In any case it is the ant who should change.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Augusto Monterroso Bonilla (December 21, 1921 - February 7, 2003) was a Honduran writer, known for the ironical and humorous style of his short stories. He is considered an important figure in the Latin American 'Boom' generation, and received several awards, including the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature (2000), Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (1997), and Juan Rulfo Award (1996).

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My Green Hills of Jamaica and Five Jamaican Short Stories by Claude McKay. Kingston. 1979. Heinemann. Edited and with an introduction by Mervyn Morris. 162 pages. paperback. Front cover photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Jamaican Tourist Board.

DESCRIPTION - This book brings together Claude McKay's draft of 'My Hills of Jamaica' (an autobiography of his early years) and five short stories which draw directly on that area of experience. McKay had been working on the autobiography when he wrote to Max Eastman in August, 1946: 'My new book is about my childhood in Jamaica which is a source of inexhaustible material.' That inexhaustible material has been mined in Songs of Jamaica and Gonstab Ballads (two collections of dialect poetry, both published in 1912); in the nostalgic poems, many from about 1920, conveniently grouped as 'Songs for Jamaica’ in Selected Poems (1953); in the Jamaican stories reprinted here from Gingertown (1932); in his finest novel, Banana Bottom (1933); and in the 'new book', McKay's second autobiography, drafted only a year or two before he died. In 1953 there was published in Phylon an article called ‘Boyhood in Jamaica', 'by Claude McKay'. A useful sampling of extracts from the draft autobiography, it seems to have been intrusively edited; it introduces phrases, sentences, even whole paragraphs which do not appear in the typescript of ‘My Green Hills' and some of which it is hard to believe McKay (then five years dead) might have written or approved. - FROM THE INTRODUCTION.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Claude McKay was born in Jamaica on 15th September, 1890. He began writing poetry as a schoolboy. He worked as a policeman in Spanish Town and when he was twenty-two had his first volume of poems, SONGS OF JAMAICA (1912) published. In 1912 McKay moved to the United States where he attended Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Kansas State University. He continued to write poetry and in 1918 his work was praised by both Frank Harris and Max Eastman. The following year, his poem, ‘If We Must Die,' was published in Eastman's journal, The Liberator. Frank Harris encouraged McKay to obtain writing experience in England. In 1919 McKay travelled to England where he met George Bernard Shaw who introduced him to influential left-wing figures in journalism. This included Sylvia Pankhurst, who recruited him to write for her trade union journal, Workers' Dreadnought. While in London McKay read the works of Karl Marx and becomes a committed socialist. In 1921 McKay returned to New York and became associate editor of The Liberator. Over the next year the journal published articles by McKay such as ‘How Black Sees Green and Red' and ‘He Who Gets Slapped.' He also published his best known volume of verse, HARLEM SHADOWS (1922). In 1922 McKay went to Third International in Moscow where he represented the American Workers Party. He stayed in Europe where he wrote TRIAL BY LYNCHING: STORIES ABOUT NEGRO LIFE IN AMERICA (1925) and HOME TO HARLEM (1928), a novel about a disillusioned black soldier in the US Army who returns from the Western Front to live in a black ghetto. This was followed by other novels such as BANJO (1928), GINGERTOWN (1932) and BANANA BOTTOM (1933). McKay gradually lost faith in communism and returned to the United States in 1934. Employment was difficult to find and for a while he worked for the Federal Writers' Project. McKay's published work during this period included his autobiography, A LONG WAY FROM HOME (1937) and HARLEM: NEGRO METROPOLIS (1940). Unable to make a living from writing, McKay found work in a shipbuilding yard. In 1943 he suffers a stroke and the following year was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. In 1945 his essay, On Becoming a Roman Catholic, was published. Claude McKay died in Chicago on May 22, 1948.

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The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality by Cheikh Anta Diop. Chicago. [1974]. Lawrence Hill Books. . Edited and translated by Mercer Cook. 317 pages. paperback. Photo cover credit: British Museum.  

DESCRIPTION - Laymen and scholars alike will welcome the. publication of this one-volume translation of the major sections of C. A. Diop’s two books, Nations negres et culture and Anteriorite des civilizations negres, which have profoundly influenced thinking about Africa around the world. It was largely because of these works that, at the World Festival of the Arts held in Dakar in 1965, Dr. Diop shared with the late W. E. B. Du Bois as award as the writer who had exerted the greatest influence on Black thought in the 20th century. THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION: MYTH OR REALITY, edited and translated by Mercer Cook and prepared with the author’s cooperation, presents Dr. Diop’s main n thesis – that historical, archeological and anthropological evidence supports the theory that the civilization of ancient Egypt, the first that history records, was actually Negroid in origin. The present volume contains over fifty illustrations, many of them newly selected for this book, which further document Dr. Diop’s theories. The author has written a new preface and conclusion for this edition, which also includes a preface by Mercer Cook, an index, bibliography, biographical notes on the authors and authorities citied, and a glossary of archeological terms used in the book.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 – 7 February 1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. Diop's work is considered foundational to the theory of Afrocentricity, though he himself never described himself as an Afrocentrist. The questions he posed about cultural bias in scientific research contributed greatly to the postcolonial turn in the study of African civilizations. Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African people that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.[6] Some of his ideas have been criticized as based upon outdated sources and an outdated conception of race. Other scholars have defended his work from what they see as widespread misrepresentation.Cheikh Anta Diop University (formerly known as the University of Dakar), in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him.

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From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film by Siegfried Kracauer. Princeton. 1947. Princeton University Press. 361 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A landmark, now classic, study of the rich cinematic history of the Weimar Republic, From Caligari to Hitler was first published by Princeton University Press in 1947. Siegfried Kracauer - a prominent German film critic and member of Walter Benjamin's and Theodor Adorno's intellectual circle - broke new ground in exploring the connections between film aesthetics, the prevailing psychological state of Germans in the Weimar era, and the evolving social and political reality of the time. Kracauer's pioneering book, which examines German history from 1921 to 1933 in light of such movies as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, M, Metropolis, and The Blue Angel, has never gone out of print. This volume is a must-have for the film historian, film theorist, or cinema enthusiast. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Siegfried Kracauer (February 8, 1889 – November 26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema.

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Alexanderplatz Berlin, 2 Volumes by Alfred Döblin. New York. 1931. Viking Press. Translated from the German by Eugene Jolas. 290 pages (volume 1), 334 pages (volume 2). hardcover. 

DESCRIPTION - Alfred Döblin (August 10, 1878 - June 26, 1957) was a German expressionist novelist, best known for Berlin Alexanderplatz. He was born in Stettin, Pomerania, now Szczecin in Poland, the son of a Jewish merchant. The family moved to Berlin in 1898, where Döblin studied medicine, first at the University of Berlin, then at Freiburg University. During his student years, he became interested in German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. After graduating, he worked as a journalist in Regensburg and Berlin, before actually beginning a psychiatric practice in the working class neighborhood of Alexanderplatz. During this time, he wrote several novels, but none of them were published until 1915, when Die Drei Sprünge des Wang-Lung was published. It tells the story of political upheaval in 18th century China. He won the Fontane Prize for it. He was garnering popularity through several expressionist short stories in the magazine Der Sturm. Eventually he dropped out of the Expressionist Movement, but many of his Sturm stories were published in 1913 in a collection called Die Ermordung einer Butterblume. During World War I, Döblin served as a doctor with the German Army, but continued his writing. His historical novel, Wallenstein, set during the Thirty Years' War, was written during this period. In 1920 Döblin joined the Association of German Writers (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller), and in 1924 he became its president. He reviewed plays for the Prager Tageblatt for several years, and was a member of the Group 1925 with Bertolt Brecht. In 1924 he published Berge, Meere und Giganten, a dystopic view of a future in which technology confronts man and nature. In 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz was published. Partly written in colloquial German, with many viewpoint characters and a narrative style reminiscent of John Dos Passos and James Joyce, it tells the story of a criminal who is drawn deeper and deeper into an underworld he cannot rise out of. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Döblin fled to Switzerland and then the United States, working for MGM in Hollywood. His novel Das Land Ohne Tod (The Land without Death), set in South America, was published in 1937. In 1941, Döblin converted to Roman Catholicism, citing Søren Kierkegaard and Baruch Spinoza as influences. Döblin returned to Europe in 1945, working for the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He returned to Germany, settling in Baden-Baden, where he worked as an education officer and a magazine publisher, but, unhappy with the political environment in his native country, he settled in France (he had become a French citizen in 1936). His two outstanding contributions from this period are a historical novel, November 1918, and Hamlet, an expression of his hopes for the future of Europe. As he had Parkinson, in 1956 Döblin entered a sanitarium in Freiburg im Breisgau. He remained mostly paralyzed for the rest of his life, dying in Emmendingen the following year. .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alfred Döblin (August 10, 1878 - June 26, 1957) was a German expressionist novelist, best known for Berlin Alexanderplatz. He was born in Stettin, Pomerania, now Szczecin in Poland, the son of a Jewish merchant. The family moved to Berlin in 1898, where Döblin studied medicine, first at the University of Berlin, then at Freiburg University. During his student years, he became interested in German philosophy, especially that of Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. After graduating, he worked as a journalist in Regensburg and Berlin, before actually beginning a psychiatric practice in the working class neighborhood of Alexanderplatz. During this time, he wrote several novels, but none of them were published until 1915, when Die Drei Sprünge des Wang-Lung was published. It tells the story of political upheaval in 18th century China. He won the Fontane Prize for it. He was garnering popularity through several expressionist short stories in the magazine Der Sturm. Eventually he dropped out of the Expressionist Movement, but many of his Sturm stories were published in 1913 in a collection called Die Ermordung einer Butterblume. During World War I, Döblin served as a doctor with the German Army, but continued his writing. His historical novel, Wallenstein, set during the Thirty Years' War, was written during this period. In 1920 Döblin joined the Association of German Writers (Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller), and in 1924 he became its president. He reviewed plays for the Prager Tageblatt for several years, and was a member of the Group 1925 with Bertolt Brecht. In 1924 he published Berge, Meere und Giganten, a dystopic view of a future in which technology confronts man and nature. In 1929, Berlin Alexanderplatz was published. Partly written in colloquial German, with many viewpoint characters and a narrative style reminiscent of John Dos Passos and James Joyce, it tells the story of a criminal who is drawn deeper and deeper into an underworld he cannot rise out of. When the Nazis took power in Germany, Döblin fled to Switzerland and then the United States, working for MGM in Hollywood. His novel Das Land Ohne Tod (The Land without Death), set in South America, was published in 1937. In 1941, Döblin converted to Roman Catholicism, citing Søren Kierkegaard and Baruch Spinoza as influences. Döblin returned to Europe in 1945, working for the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He returned to Germany, settling in Baden-Baden, where he worked as an education officer and a magazine publisher, but, unhappy with the political environment in his native country, he settled in France (he had become a French citizen in 1936). His two outstanding contributions from this period are a historical novel, November 1918, and Hamlet, an expression of his hopes for the future of Europe. As he had Parkinson, in 1956 Döblin entered a sanitarium in Freiburg im Breisgau. He remained mostly paralyzed for the rest of his life, dying in Emmendingen the following year.

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The Babylon Berlin novels of Volker Kutscher

Babylon Berlin: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Highland. 2017. Sandstone Press. 9781910124970. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 544 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - This historical mystery set in Berlin, 1929, is the first of a popular series in Germany. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He was transferred to the Vice Squad in Berlin, a job he now detests, even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the Vice Squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations. The result is catastrophic with many dead and injured, and a state of emergency is declared in the Communist strongholds of the city.

The Silent Death: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Highland. 2017. Sandstone Press. 9781910985649. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 522 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - Berlin 1930. Sound film is conquering the big screen, leaving many by the wayside: producers, cinema owners and silent film stars. Investigating the violent on-set death of actress Betty Winter, Inspector Gereon Rath encounters the dark side of glamour and an industry in turmoil. When his father requests that he help his friend, the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, and his ex-girlfriend Charly makes a renewed attempt at rapprochement, things start to get out of hand. Trapped in the machinations of rival film producers, he roams Berlin's Chinese quarter and the city's underworld as he works ever closer to the edge of legality. Meanwhile the funeral of the murdered Horst Wessel leads to clashes between Nazis and Communists.

Goldstein: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Ross-Shire. 2018. Sandstone Press. 9781912240128. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 535 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin's underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath's on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath's from the other side. Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the world of the American gangster and the expanding world of Nazism.

The Fatherland Files: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Ross-Shire. 2019. Sandstone Press. 9781912240562. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 562 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - 1932: A drowned man is found in a freight elevator in the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz; far from any standing water. Inspector Gereon Rath’s hunt for a mysterious contract killer has stalled; but this new case will take him to a small town on the Polish border and confrontation with the rising Nazi party.

The Silent Death: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Iverness. 2020. Sandstone Press. 9781913207045. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 512 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - 1933: A homeless veteran is found dead under railway arches in Berlin; apparently killed by an army dagger. Gereon Rath is brought onto the case just as the Reichstag mysteriously burns down. Unsettled by the Nazis’ tightening grip; he and Charlotte Ritter must also contend with their political colleagues. The new Germany is frightening; but police work must go on even among book-burning and marching; rising paranoia and fear.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Volker Kutscher (born December 26, 1962) studied German language and literature studies, philosophy and history. He works as journalist and writer. His crime stories took place in the Berlin during the Weimar Republic and contain a lot of descriptions of this city and time.

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Babylon Berlin is also a German neo-noir television series. Created, written, and directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Hendrik Handloegten, it is loosely based on novels by Volker Kutscher.

A troubled cop and a working class typist uncover a political conspiracy amid the vice and glamour of 1920s Berlin. The series begins in 1929 during the latter years of the Weimar Republic and follows Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a police inspector on assignment from Cologne who is on a secret mission to dismantle an extortion ring, and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), police clerk by day, prostitute by night, who aspires to become a police inspector.

"Best of 2024" - The New York Times & The Wall Street Journal

Watch Babylon Berlin on MHz Choice...

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Assumption: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2011. Graywolf Press. 9781555975982.  228 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng. 

DESCRIPTION - A baffling triptych of murder mysteries by the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman's murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt leads him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. In Assumption, his follow-up to the wickedly funny I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett is in top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2021. Graywolf Press. 9781644450642. 310 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.

  
DESCRIPTION - An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone. Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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God's Country by Percival Everett. Winchester. 1994. Faber & Faber. 0571198325. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lorna Stovall. Jacket photograph by David Levinthal.

DESCRIPTION - In his stunning new novel GOD'S COUNTRY Percival Everett offers a wickedly funny rewrite of the Great American Western. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. He has lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba. This odd couple is soon joined by Jake, a wayward child determined to join the hunt. As Jake and Marder follow Bubba across desolate, unsettled land, they meet Indians, settlers, and soldiers. Aiming to keep a low profile, they nevertheless find themselves in all kinds of trouble, including run-ins with a scurrilous preacher, a flamboyant prostitute, and General Custer in a nightgown. A natural coward, Marder only survives these incidents because of Bubba's reluctant heroism. However, even after their final, chilling exchange, Marder fails to realize that Bubba's secrets extend beyond his ability to track footprints on the prairie. GOD'S COUNTRY is hilarious and haunting by turns, a slam-bang parable of the way things were in 1871.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956) is an  American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has described himself as "pathologically ironic" and has played around with numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction. His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. His 2024 novel James, also a finalist for the Booker Prize, won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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American Desert by Percival Everett. New York. 2004. Hyperion. 0786869178. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Allison J. Warner.  

DESCRIPTION - As AMERICAN DESERT opens, the novel's hero, Theodore Street, is driving toward the ocean, there he plans to walk into the waves and drown himself. But on his way, he is hit headlong by an oncoming van. He sails through the windshield, and although his face is unscratched and his bones unbroken, his head is sliced cleanly from his body. At his funeral three days later, he sits up in his coffin, the sloppy stitching that binds his head and body together clearly visible. The mourners are horrified by his resurrection, and the story makes instant headlines throughout the world. He becomes a source of fear and embarrassment to his daughter, an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press, a prized specimen for scientists, and Satan incarnate to an obscure religious cult. In this fascinating, satirical and wildly funny novel, critically acclaimed author Percival Everett wrestles with the assumptions of a culture whose priorities are out of whack, lampooning the press, religion, and academia, and offering, ultimately, a meditation on what it is to be alive. Written by a master storyteller and a keen social critic, AMERICAN DESERT is an enthralling novel that confirms Everett's place in the highest firmament of American letters.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - PERCIVAL EVERETT is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of fourteen previous novels, including ERASURE, GLYPH, FRENZY, THE BODY OF MARTIN AGUILERA, WATERSHED, AND WALK ME TO THE DISTANCE. He is a recent recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. He resides in California and British Columbia.

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The Aloneness of Mrs. Chatham by Edgar Mittelholzer. London. 1965. Tandem Books. 176 pages. paperback. T29. Cover design by James Nunn.  

DESCRIPTION - THE ALONENESS OF MRS CHATHAM (1965) was refused by fourteen publishers before finally finding a home with a British paperback publishing house, Tandem Books. Edgar Mittelholzer, author of the best-selling KAYWANA series, returns here to an English village, charged beneath its peaceful exterior with eccentricity, perversion, madness. This is the story of a woman fighting to be alone, the intrusions of those surrounding her, and the calculated attempts to destroy her by a bitter and frustrated psychopath obsessed by sex and driven by jealousy. Edgar Mittelholzer brings to this novel the maturity and experience of a writer whose insight into human tragedy is frank, ruthless, and unnerving.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edgar Mittelholzer (16 December 1909 - 5 May 1965) was a Guyanese novelist. He was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, nee Leblanc. Mittelholzer wrote virtually nothing but fiction and earned his living by it. He is thus the first professional novelist to come out of the English-speaking Caribbean. Some of Mittelholzer's novels include characters and situations from a variety of places within the Caribbean. They range in time from the earliest period of European settlement to the present day and deal with a cross section of ethnic groups and social classes, not to mention subjects of historical, political, psychological, and moral interest. CORENTYNE THUNDER signaled the birth of the novel in Guyana. Mittelholzer wrote CORENTYNE THUNDER in 1938 at the age of twenty nine. At the time he was living and working odd jobs in New Amsterdam. The manuscript was sent to England and had a perilous existence until finally it found a publisher in 1941. In December, 1941, Mittelholzer left Guyana for Trinidad as a recruit in the Trinidad Royal Volunteer Naval Reserve, and CORENTYNE THUNDER was published by Eyre and Spottiswoode. He served in the TRVNR, ‘one of the blackest and most unpleasant interludes' in his life, until he was discharged on medical grounds in August, 1942, and decided to make Trinidad his home, having married a Trinidadian, Roma Halfhide, in March, 1942. In 1947 Mittelholzer decided that he should go to England since he was convinced that only by so doing would he stand a chance of succeeding as a writer. He had been maintaining himself and his family with a variety of odd jobs such as receptionist at the Queen's Park Hotel and clerk at the Planning and Housing Board. He sailed for England with his wife and daughter in 1948, taking the manuscript of A MORNING AT THE OFFICE with him. In London, Mittelholzer went to work in the Books Department of the British Council as a copytypist. Through a fellow worker he met Leonard Woolf in June, 1949, and the result was the publication in 1950 by the Hogarth Press of A MORNING AT THE OFFICE. Peter Nevill published his third novel, SHADOWS MOVE AMONG THEM in April, 1951, and in 1952 brought out the first volume of Mittelholzer monumental historical epic, CHILDREN OF KAYWANA. After its appearance, and despite hostile reviews, Mittelholzer took the crucial decision to give up his job at the British Council and to live entirely by his writing. In May, 1952, Mittelholzer was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing. He decided to spend the year in Montreal and to use his time there finishing the second volume of the Kaywana trilogy. The long Canadian winter of 1952-53 made him decide to move to Barbados with his wife and four children, and he spent the next three years in the West Indies. In that time he completed THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SYLVIA (1953), the second volume of the trilogy, HUBERTUS (1954), and his terrifying ghost story, MY BONES AND MY FLUTE (1955). He was also to use this Barbadian setting for four other novels. In May, 1956, Mittelholzer returned to England. His marriage was deteriorating steadily, and he was granted a divorce in May, 1959, with his wife receiving custody of the two boys and two girls. In August, 1959, he met Jacqueline Pointer at a writers' workshop and married her in April, 1960. From 1950 to 1965 (with the exception of 1964) Mittelholzer had published at least one novel a year. He had stopped using an agent and handled all his books himself. At first it seemed a wise move, and in 1952 he began an association with Secker and Warburg that was to last over nine years and thirteen books, but in 1961 there was a falling-out over THE PILING OF THE CLOUDS, which they refused to publish because it was ‘pornographic.' The novel was to be rejected by five publishers before Putnam published it in 1961, to be followed by THE WOUNDED AND THE WORRIED (1962) and his autobiography in 1963. He had promised them a second volume which never materialized after he broke with them as well. Mittelholzer's problems were steadily growing, and critical reception of his work was increasingly hostile. He had acquired the reputation of being ‘a problem author,' and after 1961, he tells us, he lived ‘under an ever-darkening cloud-pall of opprobrium' (Jacqueline Mittelholzer, ‘The Idyll and the Warrior,' p. 86). He felt persecuted, convinced that the poor reviews of his books were damaging his literary reputation and interfering with the publication of his work. THE ALONENESS OF MRS CHATHAM (1965), for example, was refused by fourteen publishers. The difficulties he encountered in having his books published toward the end of his life affected Mittelholzer seriously. He was badly in need of money to support his first wife and children, as well as his second wife and son. Mittelholzer took his own life near Farnham, Surrey, England, on May 5, 1965. His works include - CREOLE CHIPS (1937); CORENTYNE THUNDER (1941); A MORNING AT THE OFFICE (1950); SHADOWS MOVE AMONG THEM (1951); CHILDREN OF KAYWANA (1952); THE WEATHER IN MIDDENSHOT (1952); THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SYLVIA (1953); KAYWANA STOCK: THE HARROWING OF HUBERTUS (1954); THE ADDING MACHINE (a short fable) (1954); MY BONES AND MY FLUTE (1955); OF TREES AND THE SEA (1956); A TALE OF THREE PLACES (1957); KAYWANA BLOOD (1958); THE WEATHER FAMILY (1958); A TINKLING IN THE TWILIGHT (1959); LATTICED ECHOES (1960); ELTONSBRODY (1960); THE MAD MACMULLOCHS (1961); THUNDER RETURNING (1961); THE PILING OF CLOUDS (1961); THE WOUNDED AND THE WORRIED (1962); UNCLE PAUL (1963); A SWARTHY BOY (autobiography) (1963); THE ALONENESS OF MRS. CHATHAM (1965); THE JILKINGTON DRAMA (1965); WITH A CARIB EYE (travel) (1965). 

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Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin by Alexandra Richie. New York. 1998. Carroll & Graf. 0786705108. 1139 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - In Berlin, history is almost tangible. The sense of the past—of Europe, of Germany, and most of all, of the twentieth century's myths, idealism, depravities, and horror— hangs in the air around the Hinterhofs and deserted railway stations. No other city has played such a part in twentieth-century Europe, nor has any been so mythologized, so glorified, so cast down. In this magisterial new work, Oxford historian Alexandra Richie recounts how Berlin forged itself into the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands—the City of German Destiny—and the enormous consequences. Faust's Metropolis is an exciting, radical history of this city, a breathtaking portrait of its people, and a thorough evaluation of its achievements and errors from the time of its founding in the twelfth century until the present day. From the revolutionary fervor of its teeming slums and the insufferable pomp of Imperial Berlin, to the frantic modernism of Weimar, the brutality of the Nazis, and the symbolic defeat of communism as the Wall came down, Berlin has played host to all the movements that have uplifted and afflicted German and European history. Richie writes superbly of its role as a crucible of change. She also traces its surprisingly heterogeneous social forces, which belie the Prussian and Nazi myths of a single German Volk, and the tensions between Berliners and other Germans from the early days of nationhood to their country's present crossroads. Unmatched in scope and scholarship, Faust's Metropolis is history at its most enthralling. It presents an encyclopedic history of this ever-changing city, a vivid social portrait of its citizens, and a thorough evaluation of its political and cultural legacy. Wresting Berlin's actual past from its myths, Richie arrives as a brilliant, authoritative new historian formidably in command of her fascinating subject.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexandra Richie is the author of the critically acclaimed Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Dr Richie received her DPhil at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and was later a Fellow of Wolfson College. She has lectured on international politics and history across the world, from Warsaw University to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She lives in Warsaw with her husband and two children.

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Glyph: A Novel by Percival Everett. Saint Paul. 1999. Graywolf Press. 1555972969. 211 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Scott Sorenson. Cover photograph by Michael Crouser. 

DESCRIPTION - With this wildly inventive new novel, Percival Everett has created his unlikeliest hero to date. Mute by choice, and able to read complex philosophical treatises and compose passable short stories while still in the crib, baby Ralph does not consider himself a genius - because he is unable to drive. Plenty of others, however, want a stake in this precocious child prodigy. Among the most fiendish are Dr. Steimmel, the psychiatrist to whom his bewildered parents first take him, and her assistant Boris; Dr. Davis and her illegal chimps; and not-so-sweet Nanna, the secret agent. All have plans for Ralph, and no one wants to share the poor infant who misses his mother and who does not take kindly to his new role as ‘Defense Stealth Operative.' Throughout the ensuing nation-wide chase of which he is the center, Ralph ponders on the theories of literary form - and comes to some surprising conclusions of his own that perhaps only a baby could dream up. A narrative to question narrative, a highly original analysis of analysis, Everett's tour de farce prompts one to acknowledge that his is the true genius.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has described himself as "pathologically ironic" and has played around with numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction. His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. His 2024 novel James, also a finalist for the Booker Prize, won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Petra Molnar. New York. 2024. New Press. With a foreword by E. Tendayi Achiume. 240 pages. hardcover.  Jacket design by Oliver Munday. 

DESCRIPTION - A chilling exposé of the inhumane and lucrative sharpening of borders around the globe through experimental surveillance technology. Finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was training “robot dogs” to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border against migrants. Four-legged machines equipped with cameras and sensors would join a network of drones and automated surveillance towers—nicknamed the “smart wall.” This is part of a worldwide trend: as more people are displaced by war, economic instability, and a warming planet, more countries are turning to AI-driven technology to “manage” the influx. Based on years of researching borderlands across the world, lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar’s The Walls Have Eyes is a truly global story—a dystopian vision turned reality, where your body is your passport and matters of life and death are determined by algorithm. Examining how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation, Molnar also shows us how borders are now big business, with defense contractors and tech start-ups alike scrambling to capture this highly profitable market. With a foreword by former UN Special Rapporteur E. Tendayi Achiume, The Walls Have Eyes reveals the profound human stakes of the sharpening of borders around the globe, foregrounding the stories of people on the move and the daring forms of resistance that have emerged against the hubris and cruelty of those seeking to use technology to turn human beings into problems to be solved.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Petra Molnar is a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in migration and human rights. She co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Petra has crossed many borders and worked all over the world including Jordan, Turkey, the Philippines, Kenya, Colombia, Canada, and various parts of Europe. Petra’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Al Jazeera, Wired, The Guardian, and many other outlets. The author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, she splits her time between Toronto, New York, and Athens.

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Resisting Work: The Corporatization of Life and Its Discontents by Peter Fleming. Philadelphia. 2014. Temple University Press. . 218 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION -  'Peter Fleming is one of the world's leading analysts of work. In Resisting Work, his stunning tour de force, he lifts the lid on neoliberalism's bullying use of biopower to control our lives and how we think of happiness, sadness, and everything in between. And he does so with lively prose, telling anecdotes, and a compelling blend of empirical and theoretical materials. ' - Toby Miller, author of Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. A job is no longer something we 'do,' but instead something we 'are. ' As the boundaries between work and non-work have dissolved, we restructure ourselves and our lives using social ingenuity to get things done and be resourceful outside the official workday. In his provocative book, Resisting Work Peter Fleming insists that many jobs in the West are now regulated by a new matrix of power - biopower - where “life itself” is put to work through our ability to self-organize around formal rules. This neoliberal system of employment tries to absorb our life attributes - from our consumer tastes, “downtime,” and sexuality - into employment so that questions of human capital and resources replace questions of employee, worker, and labor. Fleming suggests that the corporation then turns to communal life - what he calls “the common” - in order to reproduce itself and reinforce corporate culture. Yet a resistance against this new definition of work is in effect, and Fleming shows how it may already be taking shape. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Fleming is a Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School, City University London. He is the co-author of several books, including Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations (with Andre Spicer), Dead Man Working (with Carl Cederström), and The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crisis and Critique (with Marc T. Jones).

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The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad. New York. 2007. New Press. 1565847857. 12 b/w photographs. 364 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Ann Weinstock.

DESCRIPTION - A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of view of the world's poor. ‘Europe' is morally, spiritually indefensible. And today the indictment is brought against it.by tens and tens of thousands of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.' - Aime CEsaire, Discourse on Colonialism. . . Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement - the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world's impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II. Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad's fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, and Indonesia's Sukarno - as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, journalist, commentator and a Marxist intellectual. He is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2013–2014, he was the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut. Prashad is the author of seventeen books. In 2012, he published five books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) and Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today (The New Press).

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Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky. Boston. 1989. South End Press. 422 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - What role do the media play in a capitalist democracy? Based on the Massey Lectures, delivered in Canada in November 1 988, Necessary Illusions argues that, far from performing a watchdog role, the ‘free press' serves the needs of those in power. With this book, Chomsky rips away the mask of propaganda that portrays the media as advocates of free speech and democracy: In short, the major media are corporations ‘selling' privileged audiences to other businesses . . . Media concentration is high, and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media . . . belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values . . . Those who fail to conform will be weeded out... - from the Massey Lectures. This book applies the propaganda model Chomsky has developed with Edward Herman to media coverage of the diplomatic process in Central America and the Middle East, human rights issues, terrorism, and other topics, revealing the crucial function of the media and educated elites in limiting democracy in the United States. Rigorously documented, Necessary Illusions is an invaluable tool for understanding how democracy functions in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. Between 1980 and 1992, Chomsky was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar, and eighth overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the ‘world's top public intellectual' in a 2005 poll. Chomsky has also been described as the ‘father of modern linguistics' and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as ‘fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism,' and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

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Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber. New York. 2018. Simon & Schuster. 335 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by David Litman.  

DESCRIPTION - From bestselling writer David Graeber, a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After a million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are millions of people - HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers - whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society's most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Rolfe Graeber (February 12, 1961 - September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist, anarchist activist, and author known for his books Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), The Utopia of Rules (2015) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018). He was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. As an assistant and later associate professor of anthropology at Yale University from 1998 to 2007, Graeber specialized in theories of value and social theory. Yale's decision not to rehire him when he would otherwise have become eligible for tenure sparked an academic controversy. He went on to become, from 2007 to 2013, reader in social anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His activism included protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and at the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan "We are the 99%". He accepted credit for the description "the 99%" but said that others had expanded it into the slogan.

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Fulcrums of Change: Origins of Racism in the Americas and Other Essays by Jan Carew. Trenton. 1988. Africa World Press. . 240 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION -  "Jan first novel Black Midas was a landmark in Caribbean literature. His best works are vivid and powerful social documents informed with his pristine magic and vitality. It is not just in the novel that he has made his mark He is the author of several plays, short stories, poems and essays published throughout the world.... His political insights and wide range of expertise have made him a confidant and advisor to several Prime Ministers in the Third World. He was the moving force behind the organization of African and African American programs at both Rutgers and Princeton.... Jan Carew has provided the stimulus for new departures and directions for thousands of students. I owe him much." - Ivan Van Sertima, author, They Came Before Columbus. "In this brilliant and original collection of essays, Jan Carew combines the lyricism of the poet with the breadth of the scholar. He writes with a clarity of vision that not only makes the past present, but draws our present from that past"  - A. Sivanandan, editor, Race & Class. "Fulcrums of Change represents Jan Carew, the polyglot griot of Africa, oppressed minorities, and pain - at his very best - fusing a path from ruins in a universe where those pressed the farthest down have always forced themselves to freedom. It is a collection of essays on racism, exile, Third Worldism and visions of future promise. For griot-Carew the truth simply is: therefore these wonder prose efforts read like scenes from a novel with bits and pieces of proverbs, songs, and poems interspersed among them. It is a rare testimony from a man who has been a part of so many of the changes shaping this century."  - Sterling D. Plumpp, University of Illinois at Chicago. "This is an important and pioneering work in a neglected area of study." Dennis Brutus, University of Pittsburgh.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jan Rynveld Carew (24 September 1920 – 6 December 2012) was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, the UK, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States. Carew's works, diverse in form and multifaceted, make Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world. His poetry and first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast (both published in 1958 by Secker & Warburg in London), were significant landmarks of Caribbean literature then attempting to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy. Carew worked with the late Guyana President Cheddi Jagan in the fight for Guianese independence from Britain. He also played an important part in the Black power movement gaining strength in Britain and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programmes and plays for radio and television. His scholarly research drove him to question traditional historiographies and the prevailing historical models of the conquest of America. The way he reframed Christopher Columbus as a historical character outside his mythical hagiography became a necessary path in his mind to build anew the Caribbean world on sounder foundations.

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Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean. New York. 2017. Viking Press. 9781101980965. 334 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nancy MacLean is the award-winning author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry  (a New York Times "noteworthy" book of the year) and Freedom is Not Enough, which was called by the Chicago Tribune “contemporary history at its best.”The William Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, she lives in Durham, North Carolina.

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Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City by Alicia Yanez Cossio. Evanston. 1999. Northwestern University Press. 0810114089. Translated from the Spanish by Kenneth J. A. Wishnia. 228 pages. hardcover. Jacket image: Linda S. Wingerter, White Dog in the Piazza. Jacket design: Toni Ellis.

DESCRIPTION - BRUNA AND HER SISTERS IN THE SLEEPING CITY is the first novel by Ecuador's foremost woman writer, Alicia Yánez Cossio. Available in English for the first time, this magical novel chronicles the history of Bruna and her wealthy, eccentric family. A family with a centuries-long history in northern Ecuador, Bruna's ancestors lived in ‘the sleeping city,' a somnolent hamlet tucked into the place in the mountains where the winds change directions and create the sleep-inducing mountain ‘sickness' called soroche. Bruna's past is dominated by her deceased ancestors, by the ghosts and scandals that linger in the old family home. Her living relatives spend most of their waking hours reassembling the family tree, appropriating and casting off relatives at will, with impoverished Indian ancestors changed to royalty and back again in the space of a single conversation. As she pieces together her family history through a number of colorful characters, including her beautiful and wealthy Indian grandmother Maria Illacatu, the wild and flighty Aunt Camelia the Tearful, and Uncle Alvarito, the adult child-genius who devoted his life to weaving a carpet for the pope intended to stretch from the sleeping city to Rome, Bruna begins to create her own identity, emerging from the shadow of history and coming to grips with the struggles of her family and nation to achieve a balance between the best of the old and the new. At first glance a rollicking tale full of the outrageous adventures of Bruna's relatives, Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City is much more. Tracing the complete history of Ecuador from the Conquest through the 1970s, it is a seriocomic examination of the tensions and conflicts inherent in a world that wavers between tradition and change, between an oppressive colonial past and a modern society obsessed with material gain.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ALICIA YANEZ COSSIO was born December 10, 1928 and is considered to be one of Ecuador's principal novelists. Bruna and Her Sisters in the Sleeping City is the first of her novels to be translated into English. KENNETH J. A. WISHNIA is a novelist who has taught at SUNY at Stony Brook and Queens College CUNY.

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Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power by Maurice Latey. Middlesex. 1962. Pelican/Penguin Books. 0140214815. 381 pages. paperback. Cover design by Germano Facetti.

  
DESCRIPTION - We live in an age of tyrants. Modern technology concentrates unprecedented power in the hands of the absolute ruler, including possibly (with nuclear weapons) the power of life and death over the human race. Maurice Latey's purpose in this book is to describe tyranny as a special type of political phenomenon and to classify the stages and the manner by which tyrants gain, exercise and lose power. He does so by comparing the Hitlers and Stalins of our own age with the tyrants of the past, right back to those of ancient Greece. There emerges from his analysis recurrent patterns which have favoured the ambitions of tyrants: in the social, political and economic conditions of the times; in the personal psychology of the aspirants; in their methods of seizing and maintaining power. It is Maurice Latey's somber conclusion that, in this second half of the twentieth century, we require the utmost firmness in our exercise of democracy and our defence of individual values if we are to avoid a harsher tyranny than man has ever before experienced - the tyranny of technology, armaments and nationalism. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maurice Brinsmead Latey was born in 1915. He attended New College, Oxford, gaining second class honours in Classical Moderations in 1935, and a first in Lt Hum in 1937. He joined the BBC in 1939, and was Head of the East European Service 1959-1969, and later the BBC's chief commentator, External Affairs 1972-1975. He remained associated with the BBC until his death in 1991. Latey was the author of Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power, published in 1969.

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The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943, Volume 2 by George Orwell. New York. 1968. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Edited by Sonia Orwell & Ian Angus. 477 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by S. A. Summit, Inc.

  
DESCRIPTION - 2: MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR LEFT, 1940-1943. The second volume principally covers the two years when George Orwell worked as a Talks Assistant, and later Producer, in the Indian section of the B.B.C. At the same time he was writing for Horizon, Tribune, the New Statesman, and other periodicals. His war-time diaries are included here.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 - 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture.

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The Fortunes of Falstaff by J. Dover Wilson. Cambridge. 1944. Cambridge University Press. 143 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Bradley's portrait of Falstaff and Prince Hal, as shown to us in his 1902 lecture, The Rejection of Falstaff, in spite of the challenges of Professor Stoll, had continued to satisfy most Shakespearean scholars in the main. Professor Dover Wilson had accepted it until (as he writes) be ‘began checking it with yet another portrait - that which I found in the pages of Shakespeare himself. As a result of much recent work on the two parts of Henry IV, a new Falstaff stands before me, as fascinating as Bradley's, certainly quite as human, but different; and beside him stands a still more unexpected Prince Hal. The discovery throws all my previous ideas out of focus, and before I can get on with my editing it has to be worked out.' This book, an expansion of the Clark Lectures delivered in Cambridge in 1943, contains the working out of the new portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Dover Wilson (13 July 1881 - 15 January 1969) was a professor and scholar of Renaissance drama, focusing particularly on the work of William Shakespeare. Born at Mortlake (then in Surrey, now in Greater London), he attended Lancing College, Sussex, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and taught at King's College London before becoming Regius Professor of English literature at the University of Edinburgh. Wilson was primarily known for two lifelong projects. He was the chief editor, with the assistance of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, of the New Shakespeare, a series of editions of the complete plays published by Cambridge University Press. Of those editions, the one of Hamlet was his particular focus, and he published a number of other books on the play, supporting the textual scholarship of his edition as well as offering an interpretation. His What Happens in Hamlet, first published in 1935, is among the more influential books ever written on the play, being reprinted several times including a revised second edition in 1959. Wilson's textual work was characterised by considerable boldness and confidence in his own judgement. His work on the complicated matter of the transmission of Shakespeare's texts - none of Shakespeare's manuscripts survive and no published edition of any play was supervised directly by the playwright, so all of the texts are mediated by compositors and printers - was highly respected, though some of his theories have since been eclipsed by new scholarship. However, when the textual principles he painstakingly established did not support the reading that seemed right to him, he would depart widely from them, earning him a reputation for both brilliance and capriciousness; Stanley Edgar Hyman refers to the "valuable (sometime weird)" New Shakespeare. In his interpretations that juxtaposition was heightened without the support of his arduous textual work. These interpretations included a reading of the famous bedroom scene between Hamlet and his mother that remains influential (if frequently questioned) to this day, but also peculiar ideas about covert Lutheranism and almost completely unsourced speculation about Shakespeare's relationship with his son-in-law. The influential Shakespearean W. W. Greg, Wilson's nemesis, once referred to Wilson's ideas as "the careerings of a not too captive balloon in a high wind." In 1969 he completed a posthumously-published memoir, Milestones on the Dover Road.

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