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Water / Music embraces and celebrates life's mystery and the soul's repose amid "talismans at twilight, the whir of birds."
The Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti all his life declared himself a “mortal enemy” of death—and here, in English at last, is his landmark book on the subject The Book Against Death is the work of a lifetime: a collection of Elias Canetti’s powerful, disarming, and often bleakly comic observations, diatribes, musings, and commentaries on and against death. Evoking despair, melancholy, and fury, Canetti examines the inevitable demise of all beings—from the ant, the fish, and the worm to an executioner, a court painter, and a Greek god—while fiercely protesting the mass deaths incurred during war and the willingness of the despot to wield death as power. Interspersed with material from philosophers and writers such as Goethe, Walter Benjamin, and Robert Walser, The Book Against Death is ultimately a moving affirmation of the value of life itself. Canetti famously refused to die before he’d read all his obituaries and corrected them. “I accept no death.”—Elias Canetti (1905–1994)
These two fragments of novels, Ingeborg Bachmann's only untranslated works of fiction, were intended to follow the widely acclaimed Malina in a cycle to be entitled Todesarten, or Ways of Dying. Although Bachmann died before completing them, The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann stand on their own, continuing Bachmann's tradition of using language to confront the disease plaguing human relationships. Through the tales of two women in postwar Austria, Bachmann explores the ways of dying inflicted upon the living from outside and from within, through history, politics, religion, family, gender relations, and the self.Bachmann's allegiance to the twin muses of memory and history, as...
Gustav Oppermann, who runs a chain of furniture stores, and the other members of his Jewish family face the terrifying rise of Nazism in Germany.
Greatly expanded bilingual edition of the 1994 Marsilio edition, Songs in Flight.
These poems consider large events, such as 9/11 and the Holocaust, as well as everyday concerns like quilting, ice skating, or the beauty of a stand of sugar maples in winter. Co-Winner of the Sheila Motton Book Award of the New England Poetry Club In the pivotal poem “Marking Time,” which appears almost exactly halfway through Peter Filkins’s fourth collection of poetry, the speaker reflects on the death of a sibling and how time is marked by our memories. These memories, these moments—whether spent contemplating a painting by Vermeer or the simple toss of a bean bag—ultimately shape who we are. “Yet you are with me here, with me here again, / where neither that moon nor you exist, but live / tethered to this memory composed of words.” These are poems unafraid to be graceful and engaging. They attain an assurance and stability rare in contemporary poetry, while their careful balance of sadness and joy reminds the reader of the difficult negotiations we make in life.
By turns discursive, dramatic, and lyrical, AUGUSTINE'S VISION presents a startlingly good poet who courageously interrogates ideas of evil, sin, and death while celebrating the goodness of creation, including both nature and the creations of humankind. Indeed, many of the poems are inspired responses to other artists: Vermeer, Monet, Wilfred Owen, Polanski's Chinatown. The poet's own work bids fair to inspire others, as beautiful phrases such as "flowers / afloat on the air" or "a stillness loud with geese" float to the surface of the page. In particular, his poem "Waterlilies," consisting of a single sentence that runs for twenty-one lines, is a marvelous summation of the contrary elements that art makes cohere. You won't want to miss this ambitious collection that possesses poise, grace, and intellectual fearlessness. - KELLY CHERRY
Poet, short story write, novelist, essayist, Ingeborg Bachmann is regarded as one of the half-dozen most important German-language writers of the second half of the twentieth century. English language readers still don't have enough Bachmann to read, but htis volume of eloquent translations is the best of all possible beginnings. --Susan Sontag. This collection brings to an English-speaking audience virtually the entire poetic output of one of the most important post-war European poets, offering the original German and sensitive translations by poet Filkins. --Publishers Weekly.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The definitive account of America's conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs—an instant classic of war reporting from the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th, and the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins is the only American journalist to have reported on all these events, and his experiences are conveyed in a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters and astonishing scenes. Brilliant and fearless, The Forever War is not just about America's wars after 9/11, but about the nature of war itself.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Compared by critics to Kafka, Joyce, and Musil, H. G. Adler is becoming recognized as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century fiction. Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti wrote that “Adler has restored hope to modern literature,” and the first two novels rediscovered after his death, Panorama and The Journey, were acclaimed as “modernist masterpieces” by The New Yorker. Now his magnum opus, The Wall, the final installment of Adler’s Shoah trilogy and his crowning achievement as a novelist, is available for the first time in English. Drawing upon Adler’s own experiences in the Holocaust and his postwar life, The Wa...