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The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye. London. 1956. Collins. 319 pages. hardcover.

radiance of the king collins 1956 no dw DESCRIPTION - A black writer penetrates the heart of a white man in this brilliant tragicomic parable of two Africas - a literary and symbolic masterpiece exposes as never before the mind and spirit of a white pilgrim and his black counterparts. One glimpse of the magnificent black King of Kings, and the white man Clarence realizes that only in his service will he ever find peace. Down and out but arrogant, he assumes that his color will automatically gain him an audience. But his appeal is denied, and he becomes obsessed with the desire to confront the King at any cost. And so begins Clarence's odyssey. Fleeing from gambling debts, corrupt justice, and the contempt of his fellow whites, he begins a grueling trek to the savage South, accompanied by a roguish beggar and two boys. The overwhelming jungle and its many false trails finally give way to the South, ‘provocative and cruel, lascivious and unmentionable,' where Clarence comes to the end of a bizarre hallucinatory quest for ‘soul' and redemption in THE RADIANCE OF KING.

Laye Camara AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Camara Laye (January 1, 1928 - February 4, 1980) was an African writer from Guinea. He was the author of The African Child (L'Enfant noir), a novel based loosely on his own childhood, and The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du roi). Both novels are among the earliest major works in Francophone African literature. Camara Laye later worked for the government of newly independent Guinea, but went into voluntary exile over political issues. Camara Laye was born in Kouroussa, a town in what was then the colony of French Guinea. His family were Malinke (a MandE speaking ethnicity), and he was born into a caste that traditionally worked as blacksmiths and goldsmiths. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were not predominantly influenced by French culture. He attended both Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fifteen he went to Conakry, the colonial capital, to continue his education. He attended vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studying mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalaurEat. Camara Laye published his first novel in 1953, the autobiographical L'Enfant noir (The African Child, also published under the title The Dark Child). It follows his own journey from childhood in Kouroussa, his education in Conakry, and eventual departure for France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. L'Enfant noir was followed the next year by Le Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King). The Radiance of the King was described by Kwame Anthony Appiah as 'one of the greatest of the African novels of the colonial period.' In 1956 Camara Laye returned to Africa, first to Dahomey, then the Gold Coast, and finally to newly independent Guinea, where he held several government posts. He left Guinea for Senegal in 1965 because of political issues, never returning to his home country. In 1966 Camara Laye's third novel, Dramouss (A Dream of Africa), was published. In 1978 his fourth and final work, Le Maître de la parole - Kouma Lafôlô Kouma (The Guardian of the Word), was published. The novel was based on a Malian epic told by the griot Babou CondE about Sundiata Keita, the thirteenth-century founder of the Mali Empire. Camara Laye's authorship of Le Regard du roi was questioned by literary scholar Adele King in her book Rereading Camara Laye.She claimed that he had considerable help in writing L'Enfant noir and did not write any part of Le Regard du roi. Scholar F. Abiola Irele, in an article called In Search of Camara Laye asserts that the claims are not 'sufficiently grounded' to adequately justify that Laye did not author the mentioned work.

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Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane. New York. 1963. Walker & Company. Translated from the French by Katherine Woods. 178 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Kohn.

ambiguous adventure walker and company 1963 DESCRIPTION - Everywhere people have come suddenly to realize the urgent need for understanding Africa and the Africans. Because of this, the small body of contemporary African literature has assumed an interest disproportionate to its size. Ambiguous Adventure, a prize-winning novel by a Senegalese political leader, is one of the most recent and important additions to modern African letters. The story of Samba Diallo, son of a tribal chieftain, educated first in an Islamic school, then in a French colonial school, and finally in a French university, is a kind of bildungsroman of the modern African mind itself. In no other book has the African intellectual's search for creed and identity been more vividly or poignantly presented. Samba Diallo's dilemma is not that of the revolutionary whose simple objective is to win political freedom for his country by ridding it of a foreign despotism. Instead, it is the very attractiveness of alien culture which constitutes the threat to Samba's integrity. ‘They have tried to transform me in their image,' he says. And later, he adds, ‘It suddenly appears to us that all along our way we have been metamorphizing ourselves, and now, see, we have become something other than what we were. Sometimes the metamorphosis is not even completed when it makes a hybrid of us, and leaves us so. Then, filled with shame, we hide ourselves away.' Cheikh Hamidou Kane, at 85, has been Director of the Cabinet within the Senegalese Ministry of Development and Planning, Governor of the Region of the T hies, and Commissioner of Planning in the Dia Government. His novel won the 1962 Grand Prix for French-speaking Black Africa, was published by Julliard in Paris last year and has been extensively serialized. The translation for the U.S. edition is by Katherine Woods.

Kane Cheikh Hamidou

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Cheikh Hamidou Kane (born 3 April 1928 in Matam) is a Senegalese writer best known for his prize-winning novel L'Aventure ambiguë (Ambiguous Adventure), about the interactions of western and African cultures. Its hero is a Fulani boy who goes to study in France. There, he loses touch with his Islamic faith and his Senegalese roots.

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

no compromise no dw DESCRIPTION - 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.

Kraus Karl AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karl Kraus (1874-1936) was the editor of and chief contributor to the journal Die Fackel, the author of dramatic works including The Last Days of Mankind, and a translator of many foreign masterpieces into German. Jonathan McVity holds a bachelor's degree in English from Oxford University.

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In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader by Karl Kraus. Montreal. 1976. Engendra Press. 0919830021. Edited By Harry Zohn. With translations by Joseph Fabry, Max Knight, Karl F. Ross. and Harry Zohn. 263 pages.

0919830021 DESCRIPTION - ‘My readers think that I write for the day because my writings are based on the day. So I shall have to wait until my writings are obsolete. Then they may acquire timeliness.' The voice of Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Vienna's legendary satirist, polemicist, and pacifist, today speaks with a timeliness and a freshness that the passing of four decades has not diminished. Kraus assailed the sins of early 20th-century Europe in vitriolic fashion, often finding himself virtually alone in the unpopularity of his stance. In 1919 Kraus indicated the compass of his themes as follows: ‘Sex and untruth, stupidity, abuses, cadences and cliches, printer's ink, technology, death, war and society, usury, politics, the insolence of office . . . art and nature, love and dreams. . . ' The present Reader includes samples of Kraus's thoughts and feelings on all these subjects, in prose and in verse, culminating in a readable and performable condensation of modern literature's most trenchant anti-war drama, THE LAST DAYS OF MANKIND. The English-speaking public thus has available for the first time a representative selection from the writings of one of the modern era's most influential and original thinkers.

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The Last Days of Mankind by Karl Kraus. New Haven. 2015. Yale University Press. 9780300207675. Translated from the German by Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms. A Margellos World Republic of Letters Book. 649 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: Austrian General Staff planning military strategy (cartoon by Fritz Schonpflug, c.1912).

9780300207675 DESCRIPTION - One hundred years after Austrian satirist Karl Kraus began writing his dramatic masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind remains as powerfully relevant as the day it was first published. Kraus's play enacts the tragic trajectory of the First World War, when mankind raced toward self-destruction by methods of modern warfare while extolling the glory and ignoring the horror of an allegedly ‘defensive' war. This volume is the first to present a complete English translation of Kraus's towering work, filling a major gap in the availability of Viennese literature from the era of the War to End All Wars. Bertolt Brecht hailed The Last Days as the masterpiece of Viennese modernism. In the apocalyptic drama Kraus constructs a textual collage, blending actual quotations from the Austrian army's call to arms, people's responses, political speeches, newspaper editorials, and a range of other sources. Seasoning the drama with comic invention and satirical verse, Kraus reveals how bungled diplomacy, greedy profiteers, Big Business complicity, gullible newsreaders, and, above all, the sloganizing of the press brought down the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the dramatization of sensationalized news reports, inurement to atrocities, and openness to war as remedy, today's readers will hear the echo of the fateful voices Kraus recorded as his homeland descended into self-destruction.

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Dicta and Contradicta by Karl Kraus. Urbana and Chicago. 2001. University of Illinois Press. 9780252026485. Translated from the German by Jonathan McVity. 191 pages. hardcover. Cover photo from the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, courtesy of the City of Vienna. Cover design by Erin Kirk New.

9780252026485 DESCRIPTION - From the decadent turn of the century to the Third Reich, the acerbic satirist Karl Kraus was one of the most famous and feared intellectuals in Europe. Uniquely combining humor with profundity and venom with compassion, DICTA AND CONTRADICTA is a bonanza of scandalous wit from Vienna's answer to Oscar Wilde. Through the polemical and satirical magazine Die Fackel (The torch), which he founded in 1899, Kraus launched wicked but unrelentingly witty attacks on literary and media corruption, sexual repression, militarism, and the social hypocrisy of fin-de-siècle Vienna. His barbed aphorisms were an essential part of his running commentary on Viennese culture. For DICTA AND CONTRADICTA, originally published in 1909 and revised in 1923, Kraus selected nearly 1,000 of the scathing aphorisms that had appeared in Die Fackel. In this new translation, Jonathan McVity masterfully renders Kraus's multilayered meanings, preserving the clever wordplay of the German in readable colloquial English. He also provides an essay on Kraus's life and milieu and annotations that clarify many of Kraus's literary and socio-historical allusions.

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The Moon Pool by A. Merritt. Middletown. 2004. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819567079. Early Classics of Science Fiction. 352 pages. paperback.

9780819567079 DESCRIPTION - One of the most gripping fantasies ever written, The Moon Pool embodies all the romanticism and poetic nostalgia characteristic of A. Merritt's writings. Set on the island of Ponape, full of ruins from ancient civilizations, the novel chronicles the adventures of a party of explorers who discover a previously unknown underground world full of strange peoples and super-scientific wonders. From the depths of this world, the party unwittingly unleashes the Dweller, a monstrous terror that threatens the islands of the South Pacific. Although Merritt did not invent the lost world novel, following in the footsteps of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Burroughs and others, he greatly elaborated upon that tradition. This new edition includes a biography of the author, and an introduction detailing Merritt's many sources and influences, including the occult, mythological, and scientific discourses of his day.

Merritt A AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Author of 15 science fiction and fantasy novels, ABRAHAM MERRITT (1884-1943) was the most popular genre writer of his time. His talent for fantasy and science fiction writing was first recognized when the novelette version of this story appeared in a 1918 issue of All-Story Weekly. MICHAEL LEVY currently serves as Chair of the Department of English and Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.

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Memories of the Space Age by J. G. Ballard. Sauk City. 1988. Arkham House. 0870541579. Art Work by Jeffrey K. Potter. . 216 pages. hardcover. Cover art by MAX ERNST (1891-1976), one of the twentieth century's preeminent surrealists, is represented on the jacket by an apocalyptic landscape from his decalcomania period, Europe After the Rain (L'Europe apres la pluie II), 1940-42; oil on canvas, 5.

0870541579 DESCRIPTION - The Space Age has passed into history. In the shadow of the derelict gantries at Cape Canaveral repose the abandoned motels, the empty swimming pools, the desolate launching grounds, the crashed space capsules, all the rusting remnants of a vanished technological civilization. A crime had been committed here, a violation of the evolutionary order embodied in man's attempt to conquer the tideways of space, to breach the boundaries of his own humanity. Over the years, beginning with ‘The Cage of Sand' in 1962, J. G. Ballard has probed the psychological implications of man's exploration of outer space, and during this period the author has written a series of mesmerizing stories set within the forsaken Space Center at Cape Canaveral, involving moribund astronauts encircling the Earth, and depicting a world in retreat from the ravages of time, All of the Cape Canaveral and related fiction is preserved in the present volume, which includes several of the most haunting images in contemporary literature, as Ballard's obsessed men and women stumble through the archetypes of a declining technological landscape. The collected Cape Canaveral stories establish indisputably what partisans of this author have recognized for many years: J. G. Ballard is one of the supreme visionary prophets of our age, possibly the most significant writer of speculative fiction since H. G. Wells. In his melding of science and surrealism to create a phantasmagorical milieu worthy of Max Ernst, Ballard is exploring the uneasy interface between technology and humanity, dramatizing the neuroses and paranoias of our age, presenting with hallucinogenic intensity the existential plight of modern man.

Ballard J G AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - J. G. BALLARD was born in 1930 of British parents in Shanghai, China, but has lived in England since the age of fifteen. In 1956 Ballard's first imaginative stories began to appear in conventional genre periodicals, but with publication of a series of disaster novels in the early 1960s, he emerged as the most powerful and original talent in British science fiction. Later, as high priest of the New Wave movement Ballard wrote a series of experimental ‘condensed novels,' collected in THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION (1970); more recently, the semiautobiographical EMPIRE OF THE SUN (1984). filmed by Steven Spielberg, has brought J. G. Ballard to a vast new audience. JEFFREY K. POTTER was born in 1956 at March Air Force Base in southern California and is largely self-taught though the artist-photographer acknowledges Clarence John Laughlin, Jerry N. Uelsmann, John Heartfield, and Man Ray as major creative influences, Potter has illustrated numerous hardcover and paperbound books as well as magazine covers for such disparate publications as Night Cry, American Politics, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Like some mighty Dadaist demiurge, Potter is able to juxtapose images in quest of his own imaginative counterpart to reality, enabling us to perceive the world through his unique artistic vision.

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Solitude: A Novel of Catalonia by Victor Catala (pseudonym of Caterina Albert I Paradis). Columbia. 1992. Readers International. 0930523911. Included Is The Author's Foreword To The Fifth Edition. Translated from the Catalan by David H. Rosenthal. 224 pages. hardcover.

0930523911 DESCRIPTION - Beautiful, industrious, and intelligent Camilla is taken to an isolated hermitage in the Pyrenees by her lazy and insensitive husband, Matias. There she contends not only with her rapidly failing marriage but with her attraction to her young neighbor Arnau; her growing admiration and respect for the older shepherd named Gaieta; and the violent intentions of the bestial Anima. Through Gaieta's guidance, Camilla finds strength and a sense of self in the mountains.DESCRIPTION - Beautiful, industrious, and intelligent Camilla is taken to an isolated hermitage in the Pyrenees by her lazy and insensitive husband, Matias. There she contends not only with her rapidly failing marriage but with her attraction to her young neighbor Arnau; her growing admiration and respect for the older shepherd named Gaieta; and the violent intentions of the bestial Anima. Through Gaieta's guidance, Camilla finds strength and a sense of self in the mountains.

Catala Victor AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Caterina Albert i Paradís (L'Escala, Spain, 11 September 1869 - 27 January 1966), better known by her penname Víctor Català, was a Spanish writer in Catalan and Spanish who participated in the Modernisme movement and was the author of one of the signature works of the genre, Solitud (Solitude) (1905). Her literary skill was first recognized in 1898, when she received the Jocs Florals (floral games) prize; soon thereafter, she began using the pseudonym Victor Català, taking it from the protagonist of a novel she never finished. Despite her success as a dramatist and her forays into poetry, she is best known for her work in narrative literature, with the force of her style and the richness of her diction being especially noted. She died in her hometown of l'Escala, Catalonia, in 1966 and is interred in the Cementiri Vell de l'Escala.

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The Purple Cloud by M. P. Shiel. New York. 2012. Penguin Books. 9780141196428. Introduction by John Sutherland. 352 pages. paperback.

9780141196428 DESCRIPTION - The first great science fiction novel of the twentieth century-now available from Penguin Classics Strange, macabre, and, fantastical, M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud is a landmark work that heralded the genre of apocalyptic fiction. It tells the grandly bleak story of Adam Jeffson-the first man to reach the North Pole and the last man left alive on earth. A sweet-smelling cloud of poisonous gas has devastated the world, and as Jeffson travels the stricken globe in search of human life, he slowly succumbs to madness, unleashing fire and destruction on his planet. A new introduction by literary scholar John Sutherland explores The Purple Cloud's apocalyptic themes and Shiel's colorful private life.

Shiel M P AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Matthew Phipps Shiell (21 July 1865 – 17 February 1947), known as M. P. Shiel, was a British writer, remembered mainly for supernatural horror and scientific romances. His work was published as serials, novels, and as short stories. The Purple Cloud (1901, revised 1929) remains his most often reprinted novel. John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and wrote the introduction to Chekhov's The Shooting Party for Penguin Classics.

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Typescript of the Second Origin by Manuel de Pedrolo. Middletown. 2018. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819577429. Translated by Sara Martín. Foreword by Kim Stanley Robinson. 184 pages. paperback.

9780819577429 DESCRIPTION - Manuel de Pedrolo's widely acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel, which includes a foreword by Kim Stanley Robinson, tells the story of two children who survive the brutal destruction of Earth by alien explorers. The protagonists, Alba and Dídac, retreat to the forest, then journey to the rubble of Barcelona to rescue and preserve the remnants of human civilization in the city's bombed libraries and cultural institutions. in the absence of the rule of law and social norms, the children create a utopian world of two that honors knowledge and interracial love, to become a new Adam and Eve and try to bring about the world's second origin. A bestseller and required reading for secondary school students in Catalonia, Typescript of the Second Origin is indispensable to understand how a region of Spain whose language, culture, and institutions were targeted and punished by Francisco Franco. At the same time, Pedrolo's tale of survival reaches beyond national and cultural borders to offer contemporary international readers a timely warning about the threat of global ecological destruction.

Pedrolo Manuel de AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MANUEL DE PEDROLO was born in L'Aranyo (Lleida), Eastern Catalonia, in 1918 and died in Barcelona in 1990. A prolific writer in all genres, Pedrolo experimented with new forms and content. He fought on the side of the Republican during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), and was a critic of the repressive policies of Franco's regime (1939–1975), which included censorship of the Catalan language. Within the field of science fiction, Pedrolo's greatest contribution was without a doubt Typescript of the Second Origin. SARA MARTÍN is a senior lecturer in English literature and cultural studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. As a researcher she specializes in popular fiction, particularly gothic and science fiction, and in gender studies. This is her first literary translation into English. KIM STANLEY ROBinSON is an American writer of science fiction. He has published nineteen novels and numerous short stories but is best known for his Mars trilogy. Robinson has won many awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the World Fantasy Award.

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Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore. New York. 1947. William Sloan. 358 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Ward Moore's classic novel "Greener Than You Think" posits a world with Bermuda grass running out of control -- choking out every other plant and destroying the food supply of animals and humanity alike. Originally published in 1947.

Moore Ward AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ward Moore (August 10, 1903 - January 28, 1978) was the working name of American writer Joseph Ward Moore. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, ‘he contributed only infrequently to the field, [but] each of his books became something of a classic.' Moore began publishing with the novel Breathe the Air Again (1942), about the onset of the Great Depression. The story is told from multiple viewpoints, and Ward Moore himself appears briefly as a character in the novel. His most famous work is the alternate history novel Bring the Jubilee (1953). This novel, narrated by Hodge Backmaker, tells of a world in which the South won the American Civil War, leaving the North in ruins. Moore's other novels include Cloud By Day, in which a brush fire threatens a town in Topanga Canyon; Greener Than You Think, a novel about unstoppable Bermuda Grass; Joyleg (co-authored with Avram Davidson), which assumes the survival of the State of Franklin; and Caduceus Wild (co-authored with Robert Bradford), about a medarchy, a nation governed by physicians. Moore is also known for the two short stories (since collected) ‘Lot' (1953) and ‘Lot's Daughter' (1954) which arepostapocalyptic tales with parallels to the Bible. The film Panic in Year Zero! (1962) was (without giving credit) based on Lot andLot's Daughter. His short story ‘Adjustment', in which an ordinary man adjusts to a never-never land in which his wishes are fulfilled, and makes the environment adjust to him as well, has been reprinted several times.Moore was born in Madison, New Jersey, a western suburb of New York City. His parents were Jewish and had married in 1902, the previous year. His grandfather Joseph Solomon Moore (1821–1892) had been a successful German-born commission merchant and the statistician of the New York custom house, the author of several books on the tariff question and a friend of Carl Schurz. Five months after Ward Moore's birth, he moved with his parents to Montreal, where his mother's family lived. In 1913 they returned to New York. Moore's parents divorced and remarried around this time, and his father died in 1916. His mother's second husband and Moore's stepfather was the noted German jazz band leader Julian Fuhs. Moore attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York, where according to one widely repeated story he was expelled for antiwar activity during World War I; elsewhere he claimed that he dropped out of school in order to write. He later attended Columbia College. Moore claimed to have spent several years tramping around the United States as a hobo during the early 1920s. In the mid-1920s he managed a bookshop in Chicago, where he befriended one of the store's patrons, the young poet Kenneth Rexroth. Moore appears in Rexroth's memoir An Autobiographical Novel as the mad bohemian poet/bookseller/science fiction writer ‘Bard Major'. Rexroth claimed that ‘Major' had been on the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Milwaukee and was expelled for Trotskyist deviationism, but the factual basis for this tale, if any, is obscure. In 1929 Moore relocated to California, where he was to live for the rest of his life. Starting in 1937 he participated in the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, where his friend Rexroth was an administrator in the San Francisco office. His picaresque first novel Breathe the Air Again, was about the labor struggle in California during the 1920s. It had autobiographical elements and was widely and favorably reviewed. It was intended to be the first of a trilogy but the remaining volumes were never published. During the 1940s Moore wrote book reviews, articles and short stories for a number of magazines and newspapers, including Harper's Bazaar, the San Francisco Chronicle, Jewish Horizons, and The Nation. By 1942 Moore was married to his first wife, Lorna Lenzi. He had seven children. Starting in 1950 he was book review editor of Frontier, a West Coast political monthly similar in outlook to The Nation. In the early 1950s he began writing regularly for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He was a friend of the magazine's California-based editors, Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, and soon became a popular favorite with the magazine's readers. Though he was never terribly prolific, his science fiction stories penned during the 1950s were entertaining and well crafted and were well received. In the 1960s his literary output diminished, and his last two novels were completed with the help of collaborators. His 1953 speculative if-the-South-had-won-the-Civil-War novel Bring the Jubilee was brought back into print at the time of the Civil War centennial and found an appreciative new audience among Civil War buffs. In 1965 he remarried; his second wife was the science fiction writer Raylyn Moore (nee Crabbe; 1928–2005). The couple moved to Pacific Grove, California where he died in 1978.

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Prodigies: A Novel by Angelica Gorodischer. Easthampton. 2015. Small Beer Press. 9781618730992. Translated from the Spanish by Sue Burke. 166 pages. paperback. Cover art by Elisabeth Alba.

9781618730992 DESCRIPTION - Prodigies explores the story of the poet Novalis's birthplace in the German town of Weissenfels after it is converted into a boarding house. Moving, subtle, and full of wit, irony, and dreams, this novel fills the house with the women who lived there throughout the nineteenth century, and across the flow of history constructs the secret drama of their destinies.

Gorodischer Angelica AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Angélica Gorodischer (1928-2022) was born in Buenos Aires and lived in Rosario from 1936 on. She published many novels and short story collections including Kalpa Imperial, Mango Juice, and Trafalgar, as well as a memoir, History of My Mother. Her work has been translated into many languages and her translators include Ursula K. Le Guin and Alberto Manguel. With certain self-satisfaction she claimed to never have written plays or poems, not even at 16 when everybody writes poems, especially on unrequited love. She received two Fulbright awards as well as many literary awards around the world, including the Life Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Awards and a 2014 Konex Special Mention Award.

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Jaguars’ Tomb by Angelica Gorodischer. Nashville. 2021. Vanderbilt University Press. 9780826501400. Translated from the Spanish by Amalia Gladhart. 246 pages. paperback.

9780826501400 DESCRIPTION - Jaguars' Tomb is a novel in three parts, written by three interconnected characters. Part one, "Hidden Variables" by María Celina Igarzábal, is narrated by Bruno Seguer. Seguer in turn is the author of the second part, "Recounting from Zero" ("Contar desde zero"), in which Evelynne Harrington, author of the third, is a central character. Harrington, finally, is the author of "Uncertainty" ("La incertidumbre"), whose protagonist is the dying Igarzábal. Each of the three parts revolves around the octagonal room that is alternately the jaguars' tomb, the central space of the torture center, and the heart of an abandoned house that hides an adulterous affair. The novel, by Argentine author Angélica Gorodischer, is both an intriguing puzzle and a meditation on how to write about, or through, violence, injustice, and loss. Among Gorodischer's many novels, Jaguars' Tomb most directly addresses the abductions and disappearances that occurred under the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976–83. This is the fourth of Gorodischer's books translated into English. The first, Kalpa Imperial—translated by Ursula Le Guin—was selected for the New York Times summer reading list in 2003.

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Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angelica Gorodischer. Northampton. 2003. Small Beer Press. 1931520054. Translated from the Spanish by Ursula K. Le Guin. 248 pages. paperback Cover painting by Rafal Olbinski.

1931520054 DESCRIPTION - Ursula K. Le Guin chose to translate this novel which was on the New York Times Summer Reading list and winner of the Prix Imaginales, Más Allá, Poblet and Sigfrido Radaelli awards. This is the first of Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer's award-winning books to be translated into English. In eleven chapters, Kalpa Imperial's multiple storytellers relate the story of a fabled nameless empire which has risen and fallen innumerable times. Fairy tales, oral histories and political commentaries are all woven tapestry-style into Kalpa Imperial: beggars become emperors, democracies become dictatorships, and history becomes legends and stories. But this is much more than a simple political allegory or fable. It is also a celebration of the power of storytelling. Gorodischer and translator Ursula K. Le Guin are a well-matched, sly and delightful team of magician-storytellers. Rarely have author and translator been such an effortless pairing. Kalpa Imperial is a powerful introduction to the writing of Angélica Gorodischer, a novel which will enthrall readers already familiar with the worlds of Le Guin.

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The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey by Enrique Gaspar. Middletown. 2012. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819572936. Translated and introduced by Yolanda Molina-Gavilán and Andrea L. Bell. Early Classics of Science Fiction. 52 illus. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2". 240 pages . paperback.

9780819572936 DESCRIPTION - “…[The Time Ship] inaugurates one of science fiction’s most potent subgenres, and for this alone, it deserves to be remembered and honored. Moreover, the period illustrations by Francesc Soler are exceptionally charming. ”—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post. Globe-trotting scientists pursue immortality and love in the world’s first time machine. H. G. Wells wasn’t the only nineteenth-century writer to dream of a time machine. The Spanish playwright Enrique Gaspar published El anacronópete—“He who flies against time”—eight years before Wells’s influential work appeared. The novel begins at the 1878 Paris Exposition, where Dr. Don Sindulfo unveils his new invention—which looks like a giant sailing vessel. Soon the doctor embarks on a voyage back in time, accompanied by a motley crew of French prostitutes and Spanish soldiers. The purpose of his expedition is to track down the imprisoned wife of a third-century Chinese emperor, believed to possess the secret to immortality. A classic tale of obsession, high adventure, and star-crossed love, The Time Ship includes intricately drawn illustrations from the original 1887 edition, and a critical introduction that argues persuasively for The Time Ship’s historical importance to science fiction and world literature. Reviews: “…a jolly romp with considerable humour and sly digs at both Spanish and French pretensions. ” —Nick Caistor, Times Literary Supplement. “As the first English Translation of this humorous and important work, this book belongs on the shelf along with more famous works of science fiction from the late 19th century, as a reminder of the contributions of less-known but still important Spanish writers to this genre. Recommended”—P. J. Kurtz, Choice. “This is a lovely little slice of genre history. …The Time Ship makes for an entertaining—and in places gleefully subversive—read. Thanks are due to Wesleyan University Press for supporting its publication, and to all involved for bringing it back to light for modern SF fans. ”—Nic Clarke, Strange Horizons. Endorsements: “What an amazing discovery! A time machine before H. G. Wells, and lively and witty romps through history before Doctor Who. Add Enrique Gaspar to the list of inventors of science fiction, and place him high. ”—Andy Sawyer, Science Fiction Foundation Collection, University of Liverpool Library. “Gaspar’s novel takes us back to science fiction’s infancy, when emotion and intelligence were enough to evoke a sense of wonder, creating pure adventure without needing to resort to rivers of blood or extreme violence. Reading it is a surprising experience as well because, though almost 125 years old, The Time Ship proves that many of the themes we think of as current were already a concern to our great-grandparents. ”—Daína Chaviano, author of The Island of Eternal Love.

Gaspar Enrique AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Enrique Lucio Eugenio Gaspar y Rimbau (2 March 1842 in Madrid – 7 September 1902 in Oloron) was a Spanish diplomat and writer, who wrote many plays (zarzuelas), and one of the first novels involving time travel with a time machine, El anacronópete. Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau was born to parents who were well known actors. Upon the death of his father, Juan, he moved to Valencia with his mother and two siblings. He studied humanities and philosophy, though he never finished his studies, leaving to work in the commercial bank of the marqués of San Juan. He had already written his first zarzuela by the age of 13, and at 14 he was writer at the La Ilustración Valenciana. When he was 15 his mother put on a performance of his first comedy. He moved to Madrid when he was 21 to dedicate himself to writing. His peak years as a writer were 1868 to 1875, when he wrote operas for the consumption of the bourgeoisie rather than the aristocracy. During this time, he also wrote historical dramas, and he became a pioneer of social theatre in Spain. He had huge success for his comedies, but his real passion was social commentary, promoting the education of women and meaningful marriage. These plays were less successful because they were before their time. When he was 23, Gaspar y Rimbau married Enriqueta Batllés y Bertán de Lis, a beautiful aristocrat, to the displeasure of her parents. After the birth of their second child, he entered the diplomatic corps, at the age of 27. He spent time in Greece and France, then Madrid, and eventually served as consul in China, first in Macau, and then in Hong Kong. During this time, he continued to write and mount operas, in addition to writing for El Diario de Manila. Upon his return to Europe, he moved to Oloron, in the South of France, though his family lived in Barcelona, where he put on an opera in Catalan. Later, he lived in various locations in the south of France. His wife died in Marseille, where he was consul. In poor health himself, he retired to Oloron with his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. He died there in 1902 at the age of 60. YOLANDA MOLINA-GAVILÁN is a professor of Spanish at Eckerd College. ANDREA L. BELL is a professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at Hamline University. Molina-Gavilán and Bell are the coeditors of Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain.

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Kindred by Octavia Butler. New York. 1979. Doubleday. 0385150598. 264 pages. hardcover.

kindred doubleday 1979 DESCRIPTION - Kindred (1979) is a novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler that incorporates time travel and is modeled on slave narratives. Widely popular, it has frequently been chosen as a text by community-wide reading programs and book organizations, and for high school and college courses. The book is the first-person account of a young African-American writer, Dana, who is repeatedly transported in time between her Los Angeles, California home in 1976 with her white husband and an early 19th-century Maryland plantation just outside Easton. There she meets some of her ancestors: a proud, free Black woman and a white planter who forces her into slavery and concubinage. As Dana stays for longer periods in the past, she becomes intimately entangled with the plantation community. Dana makes hard choices to survive slavery and to ensure her return to her own time. Kindred explores the dynamics and dilemmas of antebellum slavery from the sensibility of a late 20th-century Black woman, who is aware of its legacy in contemporary American society. Through the two interracial couples who form the emotional core of the story, the novel also explores the intersection of power, gender, and race issues, and speculates on the prospects of future egalitarianism. While most of Butler's work is classified as science fiction, Kindred crosses genre boundaries and is also classified as African-American literature. Butler categorized the work as "a kind of grim fantasy."

Butler Octavia AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 - February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer. A recipient of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Butler was one of the best-known African-American women in the field. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to receive the MacArthur Fellowship nicknamed the Genius Grant. Butler was born and raised in Pasadena, California. Since her father Laurice, a shoeshiner, died when she was a baby, Butler was raised by her grandmother and her mother (Octavia M. Butler), who worked as a maid in order to support the family. Butler grew up in a struggling, racially mixed neighborhood. According to the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, Butler was ‘an introspective, only child in a strict Baptist household' and ‘was drawn early to [science fiction] magazines such as Amazing, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Galaxy and soon began reading all the science fiction classics.' Octavia Jr., nicknamed Junie, was paralytically shy and a daydreamer, and was later diagnosed as being dyslexic. She began writing at the age of 10 ‘to escape loneliness and boredom'; she was 12 when she began a lifelong interest in science fiction. ‘I was writing my own little stories and when I was 12, I was watching a bad science fiction movie called Devil Girl from Mars,' she told the journal Black Scholar, ‘and decided that I could write a better story than that. And I turned off the TV and proceeded to try, and I've been writing science fiction ever since.'

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The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. New York. 2001. Penguin Books. 9780141185415. Introduction by Barry Langford. PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS. 256 pages. paperback.

9780141185415 DESCRIPTION - When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization in chaos, the triffids - huge, venomous, large-rooted plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh - can have their day. The Day of the Triffids, published in 1951, expresses many of the political concerns of its time: the Cold War, the fear of biological experimentation and the man-made apocalypse. However, with its terrifyingly believable insights into the genetic modification of plants, the book is more relevant today than ever before. John Wyndham was born in 1903. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he was at Bedales from 1918 to 1921. Careers which he tried included farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and he first started writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925. During the war he was in the Civil Service and afterwards in the Army. In 1946 he began writing his major science fiction novels including "The Kraken Wakes", "The Chrysalids" and "The Midwich Cuckoos".

Wyndham John AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Wyndham was born in 1903 in the Midlands. After leaving school, he tried his hand at several careers, including farming, law and advertising, before starting to write stories in 1925. During the war he worked as a censor in the Ministry of Information and afterwards served in the Army. The Day of The Triffids was published in 1951, and was followed by many other famous works of science fiction, including The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. Wyndham died in 1969.

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Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson. New York. 1998. Warner Books/Aspect. 0446674338. Paperback Original. 250 pages. paperback. Cover Illustration by Linda Messier.

0446674338 DESCRIPTION - The rich and the privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways - farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends. Nalo Hopkinson is a novelist whose life ranges over a hemisphere, and whose experience encompasses enduring traditions of word and story, whose voice authentically reaches to those who are aliens in their own lands, and whose vision touches the essence of history, society, science fiction, and myth.

Hopkinson Nalo AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - NALO HOPKINSON was born on December 20, 1960 in Jamaica and grew up in Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada. The daughter of a poet/playwright and a library technician, she has won the Ontario Arts Council Foundation Award for Emerging Writers, and her most recent book, the award-winning short fiction collection SKIN FOLK, was selected in 2002 for the New York Times Summer Reading List and was one of the New York Times Best Books of the Year. She is also the author of BROWN GIRL IN THE RING and MIDNIGHT ROBBER and editor of MOJO: CONJURE STORIES. Hopkinson lives in Toronto.

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Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor. New York. 2021. Tordotcom. 9781250772800. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Greg Ruth. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

9781250772800 DESCRIPTION - An alien artifact turns a young girl into Death's adopted daughter in Remote Control, a thrilling sci-fi tale of community and female empowerment from Nebula and Hugo Award-winner Nnedi Okorafor. “She’s the adopted daughter of the Angel of Death. Beware of her. Mind her. Death guards her like one of its own.” The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From hereon in she would be known as Sankofa - a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall. And she walks - alone, except for her fox companion - searching for the object that came from the sky and gave itself to her when the meteors fell and when she was yet unchanged; searching for answers. But is there a greater purpose for Sankofa, now that Death is her constant companion?

Okorafor Nnedi Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and was a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University. She has been the winner of many awards for her short stories and young adult books, and won a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death. Nnedi's books are inspired by her Nigerian heritage and her many trips to Africa.

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Strange Things Happen Here: 26 Short Stories and a Novel by Luisa Valenzuela. New York. 1979. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151857822. Translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane. 220 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bascove. Type design by Paul Gamarello.

0151857822 DESCRIPTION - In this second book of fiction Luisa Valenzuela propels the reader on a shattering journey from the cafes of Buenos Aires to a house of prostitution in Barcelona, from the sinister corridors of the Ministry of the Interior to a lonely table of torture. Here is modern Argentina - the site of strange happenings - absurd violence, political repression, bizarre personal relationships. In Valenzuela's world the extraordinary marks the normal course of events. Children are murderers and psychiatrists are transvestites and celery munchers are criminals. Bombs are hidden in briefcases but they never explode, the bodies of lovers serve as maps of the city, neighborly offerings of food disguise the smell of burning flesh, mirrors reflect masked images. Innocence and evil are exquisitely united. Political repression assumes the form of sexual curiosity delirium inspires myth, victims are more powerful than their tormentors. Like the aborted child in ‘He Who Searches' Valenzuela's products, her creatures, have neither name nor sex nor line of conduct. There is comedy in Liliana's shotgun wedding to the cross-eyed Nicolás, there is tragedy in the murder of a harmless old man, and finally there is hope in a single thistle springing from acres of rock, in a writer who slowly and painfully types at night to record the history of her people. ‘There is true brilliance, there is true love, there is true freedom and liberty in each one of her pages' - Julio Cortázar . . . ‘Valenzuela's are the best stories to come out of Latin America in some time. Her style is original, her dialogue superb' - Gregory Rabassa.

Valenzuela Luisa

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Luisa Valenzuela (born November 26, 1938, in Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a post-'Boom' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental, avant-garde style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective. She is best known for her work written in response to the dictatorship of the 1970s in Argentina. Works such as Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982) and Cola de lagartija (1983) combine a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination of patriarchal forms of social organization and the power structures which inhere in human sexuality and gender relationships.

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Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany. New York. 1966. Ace Books. Ace Double Edition - Packaged With THE TREE LORD OF IMETEN by Tom Purdom. 102 pages. paperback. M-139. Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

empire star m 139 DESCRIPTION - EMPIRE STAR - On the infinity route . . . Comet Jo had a body that was brown and slim and looked like a cat's, and on his left hand were sharp brass claws with which he had already killed three wild kepards and a boy his own age. He also had a propensity for wandering, and this was to lead him on an adventure spanning uncounted light-years of space and incalculable spans of time, to free a race of beings upon whom the civilization of the stars depended. Along the way he would meet: the strange multiplex consciousness called Jewell; the beautiful, soul-burdened space traveler San Severina; a creature known as the Lump, who was half-alien, half-machine; Ni Ty Lee, the suicidal ppoet of the stars, who lived everyone's life but his own; a young princess of the Galactic Empire, fresh from Miss Perrypicker's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies. . . And finally he would meet - himself. A thousand times, or perhaps more. . . THE TREE LORD OF IMETEN - Delta Pavonis II . . . far from the sphere of Earth-colonized worlds where a tiny human colony kept a miserable toehold alone on a high plateau of that unexplored planet. Delta Pavonis II . . . where two people, Harold and Joanne, were driven from the colony, unarmed, into the terrors of the unknown jungle. Delta Pavonis II . . . where two intelligent races fought a bitter no-holds-barred battle in which the human intruders proved to be the decisive factor that would throw the world to one species or the other! Tom Purdom's THE TREE LORD OF IMETEN is a saga of high adventure and scientific ingenuity.

Delany Samuel R Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as ‘Chip’, is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. His science fiction novels include BABEL-17, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), NOVA, DHALGREN, and the RETURN TO NEVÈRŸON series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Between 1988 and 1999 he was a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Between 1999 and 2000 he was a professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.

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Triton by Samuel R. Delany. New York. 1976. Bantam Books. 370 pages. paperback. Y2567.

bantam triton y2567 DESCRIPTION - Interplanetary war. Capture and escape. Diplomatic intrigues that topple worlds. All the color, invention and romance of classic science fiction in a futuristic novel for today. TROUBLE ON TRITON. The human race has colonized the outer satellites. One of them is Triton, moon of Neptune, where the ideals of universal prosperity are possible, Yet Earth threatens war. Within this strange climate of complete utopia and certain doom, BRON HELSTROM seeks passion and purpose in a gypsy woman whose wisdom and power will forever reverse his life. THE SPIKE: The woman he loves - a wandering playwright ganymede. SAM: The man he admires - the handsome, astute chief foreign officer crippled by the responsibility of vast power. LAWRENCE: His confessor - the master of strategic games. CHARO and WINDY: The players - cosmic minstrels of the far future.

Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as ‘Chip’, is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. His science fiction novels include BABEL-17, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), NOVA, DHALGREN, and the RETURN TO NEVÈRŸON series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Between 1988 and 1999 he was a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Between 1999 and 2000 he was a professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.

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Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. New York. 1975. Bantam Books. Paperback Original. 880 pages. paperback. Y8554.

bantam dhalgren y8554 DESCRIPTION - THE SUN HAS GROWN DEADLY. . . The world has gone mad, society has perished, savagery rules over all. All that was known is over, all that was familiar is strange and terrible. Today and yesterday collide with tomorrow. In these dying days of earth, a young drifter enters the city. When this richly written novel first appeared in 1975, Samuel R. Delany began to sweep up what would eventually exceed a million readers with his tale of Bellona, a city at the center of the United States, shaken by a catastrophe that has unhinged the very structure of reality. Skies darkened by smoke from burning buildings, population reduced to youth gangs, drifters, prophets, and perverts, Bellona is a city where a young man known only as the Kid - poet, lover, and finally a leader of the volatile "scorpions" - tries to create a life for himself and those around him in a landscape where two moons can suddenly shine through the night clouds or a sun thousands of times larger than any ever seen before may rise - and set - in a day. Dhalgren is a novel that interrogates a range of inchoately American oppositions: black and white, male and female, gay and straight, sane and mad.

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The Lizard's Smile by Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. New York. 1994. Atheneum. 0689121253. Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. Landers. 357 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Marc Burckhardt. Jacket design by Mary Schuck.

0689121253 DESCRIPTION - THE LIZARD'S SMILE is the first novel in five years from the internationally acclaimed Brazilian novelist João Ubaldo Ribeiro. A best-seller in his native land, it is a suspenseful, spirited, and very funny novel about a truly serious subject-the hazards of genetic engineering-that confirms Ribeiro's reputation as one of the masters of the Latin American novel. Set on an island off the coast of Bahia in northeast Brazil, THE LIZARD'S SMILE centers on one João Pedroso, a disenchanted biologist who has given up his profession to become a fishmonger. Kindly if a bit enigmatic, given to drink and rumination, João has recently been disturbed by a vague but pervasive sense 0f evil, manifesting itself chiefly among the island's animal family. Arrayed around him are such figures as the Secretary of Health for Bahia, Dr. Angelo Marcos Barreto, a fastidious, compulsive, and corrupt millionaire who has been diagnosed as having cancer, his much younger wife, Ana Clara, who has developed an appetite for her husband's medicinal stash 0f marijuana, for the seemingly irresistible João, and for a pseudonymous journal in which she records her adventures in high style . Father Monteirinho, the local priest, who finds it increasingly hard to be confidant and drinking partner to his parishioners while exercising his churchly duties, and Dr. Lücio NemEsio, surgeon and director 0f the island's new, state-of-the-art hospital, an older man, easily worried by the behavioral tics he is beginning to witness around him.

Ribeiro Joao Ubaldo AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JOAO UBALDO RIBEIRO was born on the island of Itaparica (in the middle of All Saints Bay and is part of the state of Bahia, Brazil), and spent much of his childhood in the neighboring state of Sergipe. He went to law school at the Federal University of Bahia ‘because it was the thing to do for intellectuals such as I fancied myself to be.' Ubaldo Ribeiro then went to the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, graduating as a Master of Public Administration with a minor in Political Science. In 1972-1973 was a guest of the University of Iowa International Writing Program. His first novel, SETEMBRO NAO TEM SENTIDO (September Has No Meaning), brought him early critical acclaim. He worked as a journalist and a teacher in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, but decided he wanted to be a full-time writer and ‘fish occasionally.' Ubaldo Ribeiro has been married three times and has four children. After living in Salvador, Portugal, and Rio de Janeiro, he returned to live in Itaparica. Of AN INVINCIBLE MEMORY he says: ‘I kept making up the story as I went along. The rest is Brazilian history as was taught to me in school, and I didn't believe a word of it. My grandfather was a historian of sorts and used to talk to me about our island all the time. It took me longer to translate it into English (about two years) than to write (about a year and a half).' He is also the author of SERGEANT GETULIO (1978), which was hailed as ‘an astounding success' (The Atlantic). In 1971 SERGEANT GETULIO was published and won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Prize for best novel of the year. It has been in published in Portugal and (in translation) in France. Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro currently lives in Salvador, Brazil, where he is editor in chief of the Tribuna da Bahia. In the English speaking world his An Invincible Memory has been highly praised. Several of his books and short tails have been turned into movies and TV series in Brazil.

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The Island of Dr. Moreau by H. G. Wells. New York. 1988. Signet/New American Library. 0451521919. Afterword by Brian Aldiss. 145 pages. paperback. CE2191. Signet Classic original.

0451521919 DESCRIPTION - A lonely island in the Pacific . . . The sinister scientist who rules it . . . And the strange beings who dwell there . . . This is the scenario for H.G. Well's haunting classic, one of his most intriguing and visionary fictions. Living in the late nineteenth century and facing the impact of Darwin's theory of evolution, Wells wrote this chilling masterpiece about the blurring characteristics of beasts as they turn into men. Dr. Moreau, a scientist expelled from his homeland for his cruel vivisection experiments, finds an isolated island that gives him the freedom to continue tortuous transplantations and create hideous creatures with manlike intelligence. But as the cruelly enforced order on Moreau's island dissolves, the true consequences of his meddling emerge. His new creations revert to beasts more shocking than any nature could devise. Today, when gene splicing and bio-engineering are already accepted scientific procedures, Wells's dark visionary fables serves as a compelling reminder of the horrors reckless experiments with nature can produce.

Wells H G AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Herbert George ‘H. G.' Wells (21 September 1866 - 13 August 1946) was an English writer, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing textbooks and rules for war games. Wells is sometimes called ‘The Father of Science Fiction', as are Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Moreau. Wells's earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context. He was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often (but not always, as at the beginning of the First World War) sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he sometimes indicated on official documents that his profession was that of ‘Journalist.' Most of his later novels were not science fiction. Some described lower-middle class life (Kipps; The History of Mr Polly), leading him to be touted as a worthy successor to Charles Dickens, but Wells described a range of social strata and even attempted, in Tono-Bungay (1909), a diagnosis of English society as a whole.

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