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The History of Western Philosophy of Western Philosophy in One Hundred Haiku by Haris Vlavianos. New York. 2026. Eris. 9781967751808. Translated by Peter Mackridge. 116 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - A whirlwind tour of two and a half millennia―told in 100 razor-sharp haiku. In this audacious pocket history, celebrated Greek poet Haris Vlavianos compresses Western philosophy from Thales to Nussbaum into crystalline 5-7-5 bursts: funny, heretical, and unexpectedly illuminating. Plato gets a cave with “all mod cons.” Kant boots up a “laptop mind.” Wittgenstein tries to coax a fly from its bottle. It’s Russell meets Bashō, Socrates with a punchline―and beneath the wit, real argument and insight. Rendered into live, witty English by Peter Mackridge, The History of Western Philosophy in 100 Haiku is a perfect gift for the philosophically curious, the poetry-obsessed, and anyone who likes their big ideas distilled to their brightest essence. Read it straight through, keep it by the bedside, or press it into a skeptic’s hand: you’ll laugh, you’ll learn, and you’ll never look at the canon the same way again.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Haris Vlavianos is a Greek poet, translator, and scholar. Educated at the University of Bristol and at Oxford, he is Professor of History, Political Theory, and History of Ideas at the American College of Greece, and editor of the literary journal Poetics. He is the author of more than a dozen collections of poetry and essays, and has translated T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Anne Carson, and William Blake into Greek. Peter Mackridge is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor at King’s College London. A leading authority on Greek language and literature, he is the author of The Modern Greek Language and Language and National Identity in Greece, 1766–1976 (both OUP). He has introduced and translated C. P. Cavafy for Oxford World’s Classics and rendered into English major works by Vizyenos, Papadiamandis, Tachtsis, and others―bringing scholarly precision and lyrical ease to every translation.

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The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli. New York. 2018. Riverhead Books. 9780735216105. 240 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Jason Booher.

DESCRIPTION - From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to “flow”? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CARLO ROVELLI received his PhD in physics at the University of Padua. He has conducted research at Imperial College, Yale University, the University of Rome, and the University of Pittsburgh, and currently directs the quantum gravity group of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Aix-Marseille University. He is author of Quantum Gravity and What Is Time? What Is Space?, as well as many scholarly articles. His most recent book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, translated into thirty-four languages, is an international bestseller.

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Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity by Carlo Rovelli. New York. 2017. Riverhead Books. 9781101948606. Translated from the Italian by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre. 280 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Coralie Bickford-Smith. 

DESCRIPTION - From the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed over the last few dozen centuries. In elegant and accessible prose, Rovelli takes us on a wondrous journey from Aristotle to Albert Einstein, from Michael Faraday to the Higgs boson, and from classical physics to his own work in quantum gravity. As he shows us how the idea of reality evolved over time, Rovelli offers readers a deeper understanding of the theories he introduced so concisely in Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. His evocative explanations invite us to imagine, beyond our ever-changing idea of reality, a whole new world that has yet to be discovered.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CARLO ROVELLI received his PhD in physics at the University of Padua. He has conducted research at Imperial College, Yale University, the University of Rome, and the University of Pittsburgh, and currently directs the quantum gravity group of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Aix-Marseille University. He is author of Quantum Gravity and What Is Time? What Is Space?, as well as many scholarly articles. His most recent book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, translated into thirty-four languages, is an international bestseller.

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The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy by Carlo Rovelli. Yardley. 2011. Westholme Publishing. 9781594161315. 20 halftones, 6 x 9 . 211 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Carlo Rovelli, a leading theoretical physicist, uses the figure of Anaximander as the starting point for an examination of scientific thinking itself: its limits, its strengths, its benefits to humankind, and its controversial relationship with religion. Anaximander, the sixth-century BCE Greek philosopher, is often called the ‘first scientist' because he was the first to suggest that order in the world was due to natural forces, not supernatural ones. He is the first person known to understand that the Earth floats in space; to believe that the sun, the moon, and the stars rotate around it - seven centuries before Ptolemy; to argue that all animals came from the sea and evolved; and to posit that universal laws control all change in the world. Anaximander taught Pythagoras, who would build on Anaximander's scientific theories by applying mathematical laws to natural phenomena. In Anaximander, Rovelli restores the Greek philosopher to his place in the history of science by carefully reconstructing his theories from what is known to us and examining them in their historical and philosophical contexts. Rovelli demonstrates that Anaximander's discoveries and theories were decisive influences, putting Western culture on its path toward a scientific revolution. Developing this connection, Rovelli redefines science as a continuous redrawing of our conceptual image of the world. He concludes that scientific thinking - the legacy of Anaximander - is only reliable when it constantly tests the limits of our current knowledge. ‘An interesting, informative, and insightful book . . . highly recommended.' - Choice.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CARLO ROVELLI received his PhD in physics at the University of Padua. He has conducted research at Imperial College, Yale University, the University of Rome, and the University of Pittsburgh, and currently directs the quantum gravity group of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Aix-Marseille University. He is author of Quantum Gravity and What Is Time? What Is Space?, as well as many scholarly articles. His most recent book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, translated into thirty-four languages, is an international bestseller.

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The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. New York. 2014. Tor. 9780765377067. Translated by Ken Liu. 399 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Stephan Martiniere. Original title - 三体. 

DESCRIPTION - The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CIXIN LIU is the most prolific and popular science fiction writer in the People’s Republic of China. Liu is a winner of the Hugo Award, an eight-time winner of the Galaxy Award (the Chinese Hugo) and a winner of the Chinese Nebula Award. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as an engineer in a power plant. His novels include The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death's End. Ken Liu is an award-winning author of speculative fiction. His books include the Dandelion Dynasty series (The Grace of Kings), The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and the Star Wars tie-in novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on topics like futurism, machine-augmented creativity, the mathematics of origami, and more. He lives near Boston with his family.

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I Give You My Silence: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2026. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374616250. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 246 pages. hardcover.  Jacket design by Alex Merto. Jacket art: ‘The Musicians, 1979, by Fernando Botero. Translation of Le dedico mi silencio. 

DESCRIPTION - In his final novel, the Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa returns to his native Peru. Toño Azpilcueta, writer of sundry articles, aspirant to the now defunct professorship of Peruvian studies, is an expert in the vals, a genre of music descended from the European waltz but rooted in New World Creole culture. When he hears a performance by the solitary and elusive guitarist Lalo Molfino, he is convinced not only that he is in the presence of the country’s finest musician, but that his own love for Peruvian music, as he has long suspected, has a profound social function. If he could just write the biography of the man before him and tell the story of both the vals and its attendant inspiring ethos, huachafería (Peru’s most important contribution to world culture, according to Toño), he might capture his country’s soul and inspire his fellow citizens remember the ties that bind them. Through music, the populace might unite and lay down their arms and embrace a harmonious and unified Peruvian culture. Both a send-up of parochial idealism and a love song to the culture of his homeland, Mario Vargas Llosa’s I Give You My Silence is the final novel of the Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, whose enduring works captured a changing Latin America. His tragic hero Toño, a man whose love for a democratic, proletarian music is at odds with the culture and politics of a modern Peru scarred by violence, is the writer’s last statement on the revelatory, maddening, and irrepressible belief in the transformative power of art.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 2021. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374601232. Translated from the Spanish by Adrian Nathan West. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alex Merto. Premio Francisco Umbral al Libro del Año (2019). Translation of Tiempos recios. 

DESCRIPTION - The true story of Guatemala's political turmoil of the 1950s as only a master of fiction can tell it. Guatemala, 1954. The military coup perpetrated by Carlos Castillo Armas and supported by the CIA topples the government of Jacobo Árbenz. Behind this violent act is a lie passed off as truth, which forever changes the development of Latin America: the accusation by the Eisenhower administration that Árbenz encouraged the spread of Soviet Communism in the Americas. Harsh Times is a story of international conspiracies and conflicting interests in the time of the Cold War, the echoes of which are still felt today. In this thrilling novel, Mario Vargas Llosa fuses reality with two fictions: that of the narrator, who freely re-creates characters and situations, and the one designed by those who would control the politics and the economy of a continent by manipulating its history. Harsh Times is a gripping, revealing novel that directly confronts recent history. No one is better suited to tell this riveting story than Vargas Llosa, and there is no form better for it than his deeply textured fiction. Not since The Feast of the Goat, his classic novel of the downfall of Trujillo's regime in the Dominican Republic, has Vargas Llosa combined politics, characters, and suspense so unforgettably.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025), more commonly known as Mario Vargas Llosa, was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. Like many Latin American writers, Vargas Llosa was politically active. While he initially supported the Cuban revolutionary government of Fidel Castro, Vargas Llosa later became disenchanted with its policies, particularly after the imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971, and later identified as a liberal and held anti–left-wing ideas. He ran for the presidency of Peru with the centre-right Democratic Front coalition in the 1990 election, advocating for liberal reforms, but lost the election to Alberto Fujimori in a landslide. Vargas Llosa continued his literary career while advocating for right-wing activists and candidates internationally following his exit from direct participation in Peruvian politics. He was awarded the 1994 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1995 Jerusalem Prize, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 2012 Carlos Fuentes Prize, and the 2018 Pablo Neruda Order of Artistic and Cultural Merit. In 2011, Vargas Llosa was made Marquess of Vargas Llosa by the Spanish king Juan Carlos I. In 2021, he was elected to the Académie Française.

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Queen of the Sea: A History of Lisbon by Barry Hatton. New York. 2018. Hurst. 9781849049979.  328 pages. paperback. Cover: Lisbon: view of the city before the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1 November 1755 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images).

DESCRIPTION - Lisbon was almost somewhere else. Portuguese officials considered moving the city after it was devastated by what is believed to be the strongest earthquake ever to strike modern Europe, in 1755, followed by a tidal wave as high as a double-decker bus and a six-day inferno that turned sand into glass. Lisbon's charm is legendary, but its rich, 2,000-year history is not widely known. This single-volume history provides an unrivalled and intimate portrait of the city and an entertaining account of its colorful past. It reveals that in Roman times the city was more important than initially thought, possessing a large theatre and hippodrome. The 1147 Siege of Lisbon was a dramatic medieval battle that was a key part of the Iberian reconquista. As Portugal built an empire spanning four continents, its capital became a wealthy international bazaar. The Portuguese king's cortège was led by a rhinoceros which was followed by five elephants in gold brocade, an Arabian horse and a jaguar. The Portuguese were the world's biggest slavers, and by the mid-16th century around 10 percent of the Lisbon's population was black, imbuing the city with an African flavor it has retained. Invasion by Napoleon's armies, and the assassination of a king and the establishment of a republic, also left their marks. The city's two bridges over the River Tagus illustrate the legacy of a 20th-century dictator and Portugal's new era in Europe. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Barry Hatton has been a British foreign correspondent in Lisbon for three decades. His previous book is The Portuguese: A Modern History.

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My Christina & Other Stories by Merce Rodoreda. Port Townsend. 1984. Graywolf Press. 0915308649. Translated and with an introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 128 pages. hardcover. Translated from: La meve Christina i altres contes; with 1 additional story from Semblava de seda i altres contes.

DESCRIPTION - My Christina and Other Stories Years after her death, Mercè Rodoreda's work is enjoying a well-deserved renaissance. The seventeen stories that comprise this volume vary tremendously in tone and style, from the hallucinatory to the bleakly realistic, from tales of tenderness and love to stories that might best be called folktales, reality merged with dream.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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The Time of the Doves by Merce Rodoreda. New York. 1980. Taplinger. 0800877314. Translated from the Catalan & With An Introduction by David H. Rosenthal. 201 pages. hardcover. Cover: Ivy Strick. Translation of La plaça del diamant. 

DESCRIPTION - The Time of the Doves, the powerfully written story of a naive shop-tender during the Spanish Civil War and beyond, is a rare and moving portrait of a simple soul confronting and surviving a convulsive period in history. The book has been widely translated, and was made into a film.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (October 10, 1908 - April 13, 1983) was a Catalan novelist in Catalan language. She is considered by many to be the most important Catalan novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as 'The Time of the Doves', 1962) has become the most acclaimed Catalan novel of all time and since the year it was published for the first time, it has been translated into over 30 languages. It is also considered by many to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War. She was born at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona, in 1908. Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. In 1928, just 20 years old, she married her uncle Joan Gurguí, 14 years her senior, and in 1929 she had her only child, Jordi. She began her writing career with short stories in magazines, as an escape from her unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma which won the Crexells Prize, but even with the success this novel enjoyed, Rodoreda decided to remake and republish it some years later since she was not fully satisfied with this period of her life and her works at that time. At the start of the Spanish Civil War, she worked for the autonomous Government of Catalonia. She was exiled in France and later Switzerland, where in 1957 she broke her silence with the publication of her book Twenty-Two short stories, which earned her the Víctor Català Prize. With Camelia Street (El Carrer de les Camèlies) (1966) she won several prizes. In the 1970s, she returned to Romanyà de la Selva in Catalonia and finished the novel Mirall trencat (Broken Mirror) in 1974. Amongst other works came Viatges i flors (Travels and flowers) and Quanta, quanta guerra (How much War) in 1980, which was also the year in which she won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. During the last period of her lifetime, her works developed from her usual psychologic style to become more akin to symbolism in its more cryptic form. In 1998 a literature prize was instituted in her name: the Mercè Rodoreda prize for short stories and narratives. She was made a Member of Honour of the Association of Writers in Catalan Language (Associacio d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana). The library in Platja d'Aro is named in her honor. She died in Girona of liver cancer, and was interred in the cemetery of Romanyà.

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Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. Minneapolis. 2020. Graywolf Press. 9781644450215. 346 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: John Lucas. Jacket art: Nona Faustine.

DESCRIPTION - In Just Us, Claudia Rankine invites us into a necessary conversation about Whiteness in America. What would it take for us to breach the silence, guilt, and violence that arise from addressing Whiteness for what it is? What are the consequences if we keep avoiding this conversation? What might it look like if we step into it? “I learned early that being right pales next to staying in the room,” she writes. This brilliant assembly of essays, poems, documents, and images disrupts the false comfort of our culture's liminal and private spaces―the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth―where neutrality and politeness deflect true engagement in our shared problems. Rankine makes unprecedented art out of the actual voices and rebuttals of others: White men responding to, and with, their White male privilege; a friend clarifying her unexpected behavior at a play; and women on the street expressing the political currency of dyeing their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complement Rankine's own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Funny, vulnerable, and prescient, Just Us is Rankine's most intimate and urgent book, a crucial call to challenge our vexed reality.

Claudia Rankine is a Jamaican poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G. Lee Professor of Poetry at Pomona College.

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Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations by Monica Maristain. Brooklyn. 2014. Melville House. 9781612193472. Translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude. 274 pages. hardcover. Translation of El hijo de Míster Playa. Una semblanza de Roberto Bolaño.

DESCRIPTION - The first biography of Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, the author of the international bestsellers The Savage Detectives and 2666. How to know the man behind works of fiction so prone to extravagance? In the first biography of Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolaño, journalist Mónica Maristain tracks Bolaño from his childhood in Chile to his youth in Mexico and his early infatuation with literature, to years of tremendous literary productivity in Spain, and to his untimely death and the posthumous and unprecedented stardom that came with the international publication of his novels The Savage Detectives and 2666. Bolaño: A Biography in Conversations is assembled from a series of rich interviews with the people who knew Bolaño best: we meet Bolaño's first publisher, who printed 225 copies of his first book of poetry; are introduced to his parents and an array of childhood friends, who watched a precocious young man turn into an obsessive writer who barely left the house; and witness the birth of Bolaño's famed Infrarealist literary movement. The book also sheds new light on aspects of Bolaño's life taht have long been shrouded in mystery: for the first time, we learn the details of his final illness and the drama of his final days. Throughout the book, Maristain present an image far removed from the stereotypes that have been created over the years, with the aim of reintroducing the man whose works grabbed readers worldwide. Maristain writes as a journalist and admirer, impressed with the power of Bolaño’s prose and the cool irony with which he faced the literary world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MÓNICA MARISTAIN is an editor, journalist, and poet. Born in Argentina, she has lived in Mexico since 2000. She has written for various national and international media, including the Argentine newspapers Clarín, Página/12, and La Nación, and in 1992 she was named Argentina's Journalist of the Year for her coverage of the Barcelona Olympics. She is currently the culture editor of SinEmbargo. Her much-cited interview with Roberto Bolaño, his last interview, was published by Melville House in Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview and Other Conversations. KIT MAUDE translated Jorge Luis Borges: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2021. Penguin Press. 9780735222885. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 195 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Na Kim. Jacket photograph: In the end the book will save itself, 2018 - Bas van Wieringen. Translation of Sepulcros de vaqueros.

DESCRIPTION - One more journey to the universe of Roberto Bolaño, an essential voice of contemporary Latin American literature. Cowboy Graves is an unexpected treasure from the vault of a revolutionary talent. Roberto Bolaño's boundless imagination and seemingly inexhaustible gift for shaping the chaos of his reality into fiction is unmistakable in these three novellas. In "Cowboy Graves," Arturo Belano--Bolaño's alter ego--returns to Chile after the coup to fight with his comrades for socialism. "French Comedy of Horrors" takes the reader to French Guiana on the night after an eclipse where a seventeen-year-old answers a pay phone and finds himself recruited into the Clandestine Surrealist Group, a secret society of artists based in the sewers of Paris. And in "Fatherland," a young poet reckons with the fascist overthrow of his country, as the woman he is obsessed with disappears in the ensuing violence and a Third Reich fighter plane mysteriously writes her poetry in the sky overhead. These three fiercely original tales bear the signatures of Bolaño's extraordinary body of work, echoing the strange characters and uncanny scenes of his triumphs, while deepening our reverence for his gifts.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Unknown University by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2013. New Directions. 9780811219280. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy. 835 pages. hardcover. Translation of La universidad desconocida.

DESCRIPTION - Perhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form, able to approach an infinity in which you become infinitely small without disappearing. When asked, “What makes you believe you’re a better poet than a novelist?” Bolaño replied, “The poetry makes me blush less.” The sum of his life s work in his preferred medium, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolaño’s gift for freely crossing genres, with poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. Poetry, he believed, is braver than anyone.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Tres by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2011. New Directions. 9780811219273. Translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy. 174 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral. Translation of Tres.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Poetry is braver than anyone,' Roberto Bolaño believed, and the proof is here in Tres, his most inventive and bracing poetry collection. Roberto Bolaño0's Tres is a showcase of the author's willingness to freely cross genres, with poems in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized. As the title implies, the collection is composed of three sections. ‘Prose from Autumn in Gerona,' a cinematic series of prose poems, slowly reveals a subtle and emotional tale of unrequited love by presenting each scene, shattering it, and piecing it all back together, over and over again. The second part, ‘The Neochileans,' is a sort of On the Road in verse, which narrates the travels of a young Chilean band on tour in the far reaches of their country. Finally, the collection ends with a series of short poems that take us on ‘A Stroll Through Literature' and remind us of Bolaño's masterful ability to walk the line between the comically serious and the seriously comical.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Insufferable Gacho by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2010. New Directions. 9780811217163. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 164 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Allen Frame. Jacket design by Semadar Megged. Translation of El gaucho insufrible.

DESCRIPTION - A trove of strange, arresting, short masterworks - five stories and two essays - by Roberto Bolaño, a writer who pulls bloodthirsty rabbits out of his hat. As Pankaj Mishra remarked in The Nation, one of the remarkable qualities of Bolaño's short stories is that they can do the ‘work of a novel.' THE INSUFFERABLE GAUCHO contains tales bent on returning to haunt you. Unpredictable and daring, highly controlled yet somehow haywire, a Bolaño story might concern an elusive plagiarist or an elderly lawyer giving up city life for an improbable return to the family estate, now gone to wrack and ruin. Bolaño's stories have been applauded as ‘bleakly luminous and perfectly calibrated' (Publishers Weekly) and ‘complex and provocative' (International Herald Tribune), and as Francine Prose said in The New York Times Book Review, ‘something extraordinarily beautiful and (at least to me) entirely new.' Two fascinating essays are also included.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Woes of the True Policeman by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2012. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374266745. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 250 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Charlotte Strick. Jacket art based on an illustration of an Agave americana plant by Jacopo Ligozzi. Translation of Los sinsabores del verdadero policía.

DESCRIPTION - Begun in the 1980s and worked on until the author's death in 2003, Woes of the True Policeman is Roberto Bolaño's last, unfinished novel. The novel follows Oscar Amalfitano - an exiled Chilean university professor and widower - through the maze of his revolutionary past, his relationship with his teenage daughter, Rosa, his passion for a former student, and his retreat from scandal in Barcelona. Forced to leave Barcelona for Santa Teresa, a Mexican city close to the U.S. border where women are being killed in unprecedented numbers, Amalfitano soon begins an affair with Castillo, a young forger of Larry Rivers paintings. Meanwhile, Rosa, Amalfitano's daughter, engages in her own epistolary romance with a basketball player from Barcelona, while still trying to cope with her mother's early death and her father's secrets. After finding Castillo in bed with her father, Rosa is forced to confront her own crisis. What follows is an intimate police investigation of Amalfitano that involves a series of dark twists, culminating in a finale full of euphoria and heartbreak. Featuring characters and stories from his other books, Woes of the True Policeman invites the reader more than ever into the world of Roberto Bolaño. It is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense, yet darkly humorous. Exploring the roots of memory and the limits of art, Woes of the True Policeman marks the culmination of one of the great careers of world literature.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2011. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374275624. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 277 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Rodrigo Corral and Charlotte Strick. Jacket photographs: Wall and light switch by Frederick Schmitt; beach by Massimo Vitali/Gallery Stock.

DESCRIPTION - On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals - the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado - and to the darker side of life in a resort town. Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo's well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo's favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game's consequences may be all too real. Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño's papers after his death, THE THIRD REICH is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own - and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES and 2666.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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The Secret of Evil by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2012. New Directions. 9780811218153. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer. 144 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Rodrigo Corral. Translation of El Secreto del Mal.

DESCRIPTION - THE SECRET OF EVIL opens the computer file of all the texts Bolaño was working on at his death: a glimpse of what was coming from ‘one of those rare writers who write for a future time - we have only begun to appreciate his strange, oblique genius.' - John Banville. A North American journalist in Paris is woken at 4 a.m. by a mysterious caller urgently needing to pass on information. For V. S. Naipaul the prevalence of sodomy in Argentina is a symptom of the nation's political ills. The members of the Tel Quel group abscond from a photo to pursue intellectual and erotic adventures. Daniela de Montecristo (familiar to readers of NAZI LITERATURE IN THE AMERICAS and 2666) recounts the loss of her virginity. Arturo Belano returns to Mexico City and meets the last disciples of Ulises Lima, who play in a band called The Asshole of Morelos. Belano's son Geronimo disappears in Berlin during the Days of Chaos in 2005. Memories of a return to the native land. Argentine writers as gangsters. Zombie pandemonium as allegory. The various pieces in THE SECRET OF EVIL extend the intricate, single web that is the work of Roberto Bolaño. CONTENTS: Preliminary note -- Colonia Lindavista -- The secret of evil -- The old man of the mountain -- The colonel's son -- Scholars of sodom -- The room next door -- Labyrinth -- Vagaries of the literature of doom -- Crimes -- I can't read -- Beach -- Muscles -- The tour -- Daniela -- Suntan -- Death of Ulises -- The trouble-maker -- Sevilla kills me -- The days of chaos.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Roberto Bolaño: The Last Interview & Other Conversations by Roberto Bolaño. Brooklyn. 2009. Melville House Publishers. 9781933633831. Translated from the Spanish by Sybil Perez. Introduction by Marcela Valdes. 126 pages. paperback. Cover photo by Basso Cannarsa.

DESCRIPTION - With the release of Roberto Bolaño's THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES in 1998, journalist Monica Maristain discovered a writer ‘capable of befriending his readers.' After exchanging several letters with Bolaño, Maristain formed a friendship of her own, culminating in an extensive interview with the novelist about truth and consequences, an interview that turned out to be Bolaño's last. Appearing for the first time in English, Bolaño's final interview is accompanied by a collection of conversations with reporters stationed throughout Latin America, providing a rich context for the work of the writer who, according to essayist Marcela Valdes, is ‘a T.S. Eliot or Virginia Woolf of Latin American letters.' As in all of Bolaño's work, there is also wide-ranging discussion of the author's many literary influences. (Explanatory notes on authors and titles that may be unfamiliar to English-language readers are included here.) The interviews, all of which were completed during the writing of the gigantic 2666, also address Bolaño's deepest personal concerns, from his domestic life and two young children to the realities of a fatal disease.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2010. New Directions. 9780811217149. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 134 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - detail of a photograph by Allen Frame, Jacket design Semadar Megged. Translation of Monsieur Pain.

DESCRIPTION - Paris, 1938. The Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo is in the hospital, unable to stop hiccupping. His wife calls on an acquaintance of her friend Madame Reynaud: the mesmerist Monsieur Pain. A timid bachelor, Pain is in love with the widow Reynaud, and agrees to try to use his powers to help save the poet's life. But then two mysterious Spanish agents intervene, determined to keep him from treating the patient. Terrible anxiety enters the story - along with another practitioner of the occult sciences, tarot cards, nightmares, Mme Curie, WWII, hopeless love, and an assassination. Poor Monsieur Pain, haunted and guilty, wanders the crepuscular, rainy streets of Paris. . . One of Roberto Bolano's most moving and tender novels, Monsieur Pain creates a galaxy of historical figures (Cesar Vallejo and his wife Georgette, the mesmerist Pierre Pain, and Mme Curie and her daughter Irene all actually existed) only to explode it gleefully in a final ‘Epilogue for Voices,' scattering the docudrama and opening the book onto vast, untold hinterlands.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2006. New Directions. 0811216349. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - detail of 'Mariachis, Mexico City, 2000' by Allen Frame.

DESCRIPTION - ‘The melancholy folklore of exile,' as Roberto Bolaño once put it, pervades these fourteen haunting stories. Bolaño's narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and generally unlucky) quests, who typically speak in the first person, as if giving a deposition, like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and to narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living in the margins, often coming to pieces, and sometimes, as in a nightmare, in constant flight from something horrid. In the short story ‘Silva the Eye,' Bolaño writes in the opening sentence: ‘It's strange how things happen, Mauricio Silva, known as The Eye, always tried to escape violence, even at the risk of being considered a coward, but the violence, the real violence, can't be escaped, at least not by us, born in Latin America in the 1950s, those of us who were around 20 years old when Salvador Allende died.' Set in the Chilean exile diaspora of Latin America and Europe, and peopled by Bolaño's beloved ‘failed generation,' the stories of LAST EVENINGS ON EARTH have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street.

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2004. New Directions. 0811215865. Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. Paperback Original. 149 pages. paperback. NDP993. Cover design by Semadar Megged. Translation of Estrella distante.

DESCRIPTION - The star of Roberto Bolaño's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multi-media enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this ‘star' in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolaño's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolaño's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel BY NIGHT IN CHILE as ‘a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.') Many Chilean authors have written about the ‘bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders,' Richard Eder commented in The New York Times: ‘None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolaño.'

Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

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Anti-Education: On the Future of Our Educational Institutions by Friedrich Nietzsche. New York. 2016. New York Review Books. 9781590178942. Edited and with an introduction and notes by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon. Translated from the German by Damion Searls. An NYRB Classics Original. 124 pages. paperback. Translation of Über die Zukunft unserer Bildungsanstalten.. 

DESCRIPTION - In 1869, at the age of twenty-four, the precociously brilliant Friedrich Nietzsche was appointed to a professorship of classical philology at the University of Basel. He seemed marked for a successful and conventional academic career. Then the philosophy of Schopenhauer and the music of Wagner transformed his ambitions. The genius of such thinkers and makers—the kind of genius that had emerged in ancient Greece—this alone was the touchstone for true understanding. But how was education to serve genius, especially in a modern society marked more and more by an unholy alliance between academic specialization, mass-market journalism, and the militarized state? Something more than sturdy scholarship was called for. A new way of teaching and questioning, a new philosophy. What that new way might be was the question Nietzsche broached in five vivid, popular public lectures in Basel in 1872. Anti-Education presents a provocative and timely reckoning with what remains one of the central challenges of the modern world. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philologist, philosopher, cultural critic, poet and composer. He wrote several critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and aphorism. Nietzsche's key ideas include perspectivism, the Will to Power, the 'death of God', the Übermensch and eternal recurrence. One of the key tenets of his philosophy is the concept of 'life-affirmation,' which embraces the realities of the world in which we live over the idea of a world beyond. It further champions the creative powers of the individual to strive beyond social, cultural, and moral contexts. Nietzsche's attitude towards religion and morality was marked with atheism, psychologism and historism; he considered them to be human creations loaded with the error of confusing cause and effect. His radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth has been the focus of extensive commentary, and his influence remains substantial, particularly in the continental philosophical schools of existentialism, postmodernism, and post-structuralism. His ideas of individual overcoming and transcendence beyond structure and context have had a profound impact on late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century thinkers, who have used these concepts as points of departure in the development of their philosophies. Most recently, Nietzsche's reflections have been received in various philosophical approaches that move beyond humanism, e.g., transhumanism. Nietzsche began his career as a classical philologist—a scholar of Greek and Roman textual criticism—before turning to philosophy. In 1869, at age twenty-four, he was appointed to the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel, the youngest individual to have held this position. He resigned in the summer of 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life. In 1889, at age forty-four, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. The breakdown was later ascribed to atypical general paresis due to tertiary syphilis, but this diagnosis has come into question. Re-examination of Nietzsche's medical evaluation papers show that he almost certainly died of brain cancer. Nietzsche lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, after which he fell under the care of his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche until his death in 1900. As his caretaker, his sister assumed the roles of curator and editor of Nietzsche's manuscripts. Förster-Nietzsche was married to a prominent German nationalist and antisemite, Bernhard Förster, and reworked Nietzsche's unpublished writings to fit her own ideology, often in ways contrary to Nietzsche's stated opinions, which were strongly and explicitly opposed to antisemitism and nationalism (see Nietzsche's criticism of antisemitism and nationalism). Through Förster-Nietzsche's editions, Nietzsche's name became associated with German militarism and Nazism, although later twentieth-century scholars have counteracted this conception of his ideas.

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R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life by Karel Capek. Cambridge. 2023. MIT Press. 9780262544504. Translated from the Czech by Stephan S. Simek. Edited by Jitka Cejkova. 292 pages. paperback. Translations of R.U.R. and Ze života hmyzu. 

DESCRIPTION - A new translation of Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.—which famously coined the term “robot”—and a collection of essays reflecting on the play’s legacy from scientists and scholars who work in artificial life and robotics. Karel Čapek's “R.U.R.” and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Štěpán Šimek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term “robot” (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka Čejková, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play. Čapek’s robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collection—scientists and other scholars—explore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Čapek’s prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today. Contributors: Jitka Čejková, Miguel Aguilera, Iñigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana Horáková, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie Nováková, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek was a Czech journalist and playwright, as was his brother Josef who also had a considerable reputation as a painter of the Cubist School. Karel also wrote a sequel to R.U.R. with Josef, called Adam the Creator (1927), which showed man endeavouring to rebuild the world destroyed by robots. Karel's other publications include The Brigand (1920) The Makropulos Affair (1923) - which argued the case for longevity and decided against it; The White Scourge (1937) and The Mother (1938) - two anti-Fascist plays dealing with the rise of dictatorship and the devastating effects of war; and How A Play is Produced (an amusing short monograph).

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