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As powerful now as when first published in 1983, Lynne Sharon Schwartz's third novel established her as one of her generation's most assured writers. In this long–awaited reissue, readers can again warm to this acutely absorbing story.According to Lydia Rowe's friend George, a philosophizing psychotherapist, a "disturbance in the field" is anything that keeps us from realizing our needs. In the field of daily experiences, anything can stand in the way of our fulfillment, he explains—an interrupting phone call, an unanswered cry. But over time we adjust and new needs arise. But what if there's a disturbance you can't get past? In this look at a girl's, then a wife and mother's, coming of age, Schwartz explores the questions faced by all whose visions of a harmonious existence are jolted into disarray. The result is a novel of captivating realism and lasting grace.
An injury at birth left Audrey with a wandering eye. Though flawed, the bad eye functions well enough to permit her an idiosyncratic view of the world, one she welcomes in the stifling postwar Brooklyn of the 1950s. During a journey to Manhattan to see a doctor about her sight, she begins to explore the sexual rites of adulthood. But can her romance last? In this beautifully observed novel, Lynne Sharon Schwartz raises themes of innocence and escape while illuminating the rich inner life of a singular girl.
A 2019 Batchelder Honor Book 2021 Global Literature in Libraries Translated YA Book Prize Shortlist From one of Italy's favorite authors of young adult literature comes a gripping, true-to-life thriller of a Sicilian boy's fight to survive after his family is torn apart by the Mafia. A talented young runner, Santino lives in Palermo, Sicily--a beautiful region of Italy that's dominated by the Mafia. With Santino's first communion approaching, his father and grandfather carry out a theft to pay for the party--but they steal from the wrong people. A young, cocky Mafioso summons them to a meeting, and they bring the boy. As Santino wanders off into the old abandoned neighborhood, he hears shots...
In Joyce Carol Oates’s story “The Translation,” a traveler to an Eastern European country falls in love with a woman he gets to know through an interpreter. In Lydia Davis’s “French Lesson I: Le Meurtre,” what begins as a lesson in beginner’s French takes a sinister turn. In the essay “On Translating and Being Translated,” Primo Levi addresses the joys and difficulties awaiting the translator. Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays About Translation gathers together thirteen stories and five essays that explore the compromises, misunderstandings, traumas, and reconciliations we act out and embody through the art of translation. Guiding her selection is Schwartz’s marvelous eye for finding hidden gems, bringing together Levi, Davis, and Oates with the likes of Michael Scammell, Harry Mathews, Chana Bloch, and so many other fine and intriguing voices.
DIVThe emotionally realistic and elegant portrait of mourning in the days and months following 9/11/divDIV As Renata, a linguist for the New York City Public Library, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge on her way to work one morning, she looks up to see a flash of orange and blue. Two planes have hit the World Trade Center, and with that, her world changes entirely./divDIV /divDIVRenata’s connection to the tragedy grows deeper as her boyfriend, an overzealous social worker, begins to take care of a baby orphaned by the attacks. And then she meets a mute teenage girl in the rubble of the Twin Towers who may or may not be her long lost niece—a family connection as tenuous as it is painful. The winner of New York magazine’s Best Literary Fiction award in 2005, this novel evocatively represents the forms of grief in the wake of major trauma./div
A Los Angeles Times Book Review Best Book of 1996 'Without books how could I have become myself?' In this wonderfully written meditation, Lynne Sharon Schwartz offers deeply felt insight into why we read and how what we read shapes our lives. An enchanting celebration of the printed word.
When German author W. G. Sebald died in a car accident at the age of fifty-seven, the literary world mourned the loss of a writer whose oeuvre it was just beginning to appreciate. Through published interviews with and essays on Sebald, award-winning translator and author Lynne Sharon Schwartz offers a profound portrait of the writer, who has been praised posthumously for his unflinching explorations of historical cruelty, memory, and dislocation. With contributions from poet, essayist, and translator Charles Simic, New Republic editor Ruth Franklin, Bookworm radio host Michael Silverblatt, and more, The Emergence of Memory offers Sebald’s own voice in interviews between 1997 up to a month before his death in 2001. Also included are cogent accounts of almost all of Sebald’s books, thematically linked to events in the contributors’ own lives. Contributors include Carole Angier, Joseph Cuomo, Ruth Franklin, Michael Hofmann, Arthur Lubow, Tim Parks, Michael Silverblatt, Charles Simic, and Eleanor Wachtel.
SELECTED BY KIRKUS AS ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021. With her new, dazzling collection of short fiction, Schwartz has propelled herself to the front rank of inventive short story writers such as George Saunders and David Means. Her characters are indefatigable New Yorkers whose daily lives are thwarted by a swerve of fate or a mishap or a time warp. A man lends his car to his ex-wife and is bewildered when she makes implausible excuses not to return it. A sophisticated high-end clothing store owner is taken in and manipulated by an ailing elderly neighbor who then leaves her all earthly possessions. A woman visits her ex-husband and his younger wife and realizes with a mixture of fascination...
DIVThe arithmetic of marriage is never easy to understand—as time passes, the variables constantly change/divDIV Caroline is set adrift in 1950s Rome when she meets Ivan. Though things start slowly, Ivan wins her over after a strong pursuit, and the two marry, agreeing never to inflict any “irreparable wounds.” But though Ivan proves to be a fine father, he is a distant husband, and Caroline finds herself daydreaming of other men. So as the years pass, the couple finds ways to bend but not break their cardinal rule./divDIV /divDIVRough Strife, the first novel from Lynne Sharon Schwartz, was nominated for the National Book Foundation Award. In this sensational debut, Schwartz depicts a marriage that grows painfully into the modern era, despite the changes—both political and personal—that challenge it. /div
Why is this night different from all other nights? Every year when families gather for the Passover holiday, the youngest child poses that question as part of the poetic Four Questions near the start of the Seder. The answers are no less than the story of a people bound in slavery, their suffering in a foreign land, and their ultimate liberation – the story of Passover. Here the Four Questions are presented in breathtakingly luminous paintings by Ori Sherman. Whimsical animals parade through a unique format that can be read straight through in English or turned upside down to focus on the delicate Hebrew calligraphy and ingenious split-frame pictures. Each side of the Seder table can see its own variation of the richly colored scenes as elephants eat matzoh, monkeys dip herbs into water, and lions recline in newfound freedom. Author Lynne Sharon Schwartz answers the questions with refreshing clarity, providing insight into the symbols and rituals of the holiday. Experience a glorious art book, a beautiful book for the kids who find the afikomen, and a wonderful way to experience Passover and its unique celebration of freedom.