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What do we mean by small town? How has this innocuous term – one up from ‘village’, a couple down from ‘city’ – come to function as a pejorative? Pressed to describe what the phrase ‘small town’ conjures up, we’d be hard pushed to say anything positive: closed-minded; petty; provincial; parochial. On a broad European canvas, however, the rich traditions of short story writing challenge these preconceptions. The stories collected here are neither narrow-minded nor petty, nor do the minds of their protagonists contract to fit their environment. In Germany, a house-husband is slowly sent over the edge by his over-achieving neighbours. In the town of Odda in Norway, a middle-aged Morrissey fan has a matter of hours to find a girlfriend so his ailing mother can die in peace. It’s the small gestures – a white lie, the turning of a blind eye, a small kindness or a secret kept – that allow the characters of these communities to survive, to breathe easily within the seemingly tight strictures life there can impose. It’s how we do things round here...
* An atmospheric and suspensefulmystery, which is being likened to SNOW FALLING ONCEDARS
A Book of European Writers A-Z By Country Published on June 12, 2014 in USA.
Since the late 1960s, the novels of Sjowall and Wahloo's Martin Beck detective series, along with the works of Henning Mankell, Hakan Nesser and Stieg Larsson, have sparked an explosion of Nordic crime fiction--grim police procedurals treating urgent sociopolitical issues affecting the contemporary world. Steeped in noir techniques and viewpoints, many of these novels are reaching international audiences through film and television adaptations. This reference guide introduces the world of Nordic crime fiction to English-speaking readers. Caught between the demands of conscience and societal strictures, the detectives in these stories--like the heroes of Norse mythology--know that they and their world must perish, but fight on regardless of cost. At a time of bleak eventualities, Nordic crime fiction interprets the bitter end as a celebration of the indomitable human spirit.
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The best fiction from across the Nordic region, selected and introduced by Sjón - Iceland's internationally renowned writer The North: home of epic storytelling, birthplace of the saga, where stories of human survival have long been sculpted by the region's natural elements, from sheltering forests to islands lashed by unforgiving seas. This exquisite anthology, selected by Sjón and Ted Hodgkinson, collects fiction from across the Nordic region in all its thrilling diversity; storytelling that is often rooted in the world of folklore and fairytale, or sometimes stark realism, and typically served up with a dark and dry wit. Born in Reykjavik in 1962, Sjón is a celebrated Icelandic novelis...
What should children and students read? This volume explores challenging picturebooks as learning materials in early childhood education, primary and secondary school, and even universities. It addresses a wide range of thematic, cognitive, and aesthetic challenges and educational affordances of picturebooks in various languages and from different countries. Written by leading and emerging scholars in the field of picturebook studies and literacy research, the book discusses the impact of challenging picturebooks in a comprehensive manner and combines theoretical considerations, picturebook analyses, and empirical studies with children and students. It introduces stimulating picturebooks fro...
How does contemporary literature respond to the digitalized media culture in which it takes part? And how do we study literature in order to shed light on these responses? Under the subsections Technology, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics, Literature in Contemporary Media Culture sets out to answer these questions. The book shows how literature over the last decade has charted the impact of new technologies on human conduct. It explores how changes in literary production, distribution, and consumption can be correlated to changes in social practices more generally. And it examines how (and if) contemporary media culture affects our understanding of literary aesthetics. Addressing Scandinavian an...
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