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The Long Journey to the Fair is a book about the consequences of wars, oppressive totalitarian regimes, intolerance, and prejudice. The stories told are of people whose lives had been impacted by these historical events and attitudes, and their search for a place of safety, peace, and security. It describes the meandering journey of generations of Armenian and Jewish families, the travails of Eastern Europeans and the Italian family after WWII, and the bonds created by their common destinies.
In Café "The Blue Danube", Radka Yakimov, a native of Bulgaria, recalls tales that are heartfelt, reflective and insightful. The communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the fight for women's rights and trying to adapt to a new life in Canada while suspended between two worlds are towering themes in this hard-hitting book. Yakimov takes her readers to faraway places. You'll meet Mrs. Bailey, who finds herself in a strange place-right in her own country; you'll learn how so many are struggling with life in the post-communists democracies while battling the consequences of totalitarianism; and you'll feel how agonizing it can be for a mother to yearn for a child in a faraway place. And of course, you'll walk through the doors of Café "The Blue Danube," where immigrants united by a common love of dancing and music can congregate and come to terms with their own circumstances, their own problems and their own regrets all while looking to the future. The memoirs in Café "The Blue Danube" deftly point out that being a newcomer can be a difficult experience, but they also celebrate what makes us all different-as well as the same.
Of Literary Circles and Nightingales is a story about the interwoven lives of four people who lived in the fifties in Sofia, Bulgaria, but spread all over the world in later years. At one time or another, some resided in the house on the corner or participated in the Literary Circle while attending high school. These were the only personal circumstances that connected the threads of their lives, and, not to be underestimated, the world they shared.
It is 1890 when three young women head toward a meadow hidden in the woods outside the village of Shipkovtsi, Bulgaria. As Trina, Vella, and Dobrinka meet in front of an old monastery, a family treasure held secret for generations is revealed. In the end, there are three piles of gold--one in front of each sister--but one pile is bigger than the others. An inheritance has been unfairly divided, leaving two sisters feeling cheated. In ASHES of WARS, Radka Yakimov narrates the story of the descendents of two of those Bulgarian sisters. Reconstructed historically on the basis of recorded facts, stories handed down from generation to generation, and her own personal recollections, Yakimov chroni...
This book brings together papers presented at an international conference held in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 2013, and organised by the Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature and the Georgian Comparative Literature Association (GCLA). It represents the first in-depth analysis of the different angles of the problem of emigration and emigrant writing, so painful for the cultural history of Soviet countries, as well as many other European countries with different political regimes. It brings together scholars from Post-Soviet countries, as well as various other countries, to discuss a range of issues surrounding emigration and emigrant writing, highlighting the historical and cultural experience of each particular country. The book deals with such significant problems as the fate of writers revolting against different political regimes, conceptual, stylistic and generic issues, the matter of the emigrant author and the language of his fiction, and the place of emigrant writers’ fiction within their national literatures and the world literary process.
Dreams and Shadows is a story about the lives of people trapped in the oppressive reality of a totalitarian regime. This is Bulgaria, a Balkan country, which was overrun by the Red Army on September 9, 1944 and became one of the "satellites" to the former USSR. It remained in the Soviet orbit of influence until November 10, 1989. This is a story of lost futures, struggles, survival, and quest for freedom; a journey along a road paved with broken dreams and dashed hopes. The story begins with a child's recollections: from the carpet bombings the capital city of Sofia was subjected to during 1943 and 1944, to the dramatic changes after September 9, 1944 and how they affected the everyday lives of the people of Bulgaria. It also describes the hopes and disappointments of the people affected by "the changes" after 1989: the attempt to reconnect, after a long separation, with one's country of birth, only to come to the realization that one does not belong there anymore, yet is never really emotionally free from it.
In the 21st century, hybrids (such as hybrid war, hybrid regimes, hybrid cars, and hybrid identities, among others) have become all-pervasive, and the computer term “mashup” has turned into a symbol of hybridity. This book highlights the phenomenon of hybridity and hybridization from a variety of angles and perspectives – in social and cultural practices, education and fiction – and notes the connecting patterns between hybridization in different fields of human endeavour. Perhaps the most important hallmark of our age is the crossover into the virtual. The spread of hybrids in “post-reality” has snowballed due to the Internet and the ease of the web-based dissemination of information and disinformation. New entities, such as fake news, have been put together using collage techniques with the result that make-believe events produce real-life effects. Without the special analysis provided in this book, this non/reality generated to manipulate people is unlikely to be differentiated from authentic stories.
Communism Unwrapped reveals the complex world of consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, exploring the ways people shopped, ate, drank, smoked, cooked, acquired, assessed and exchanged goods. These everyday experiences, the editors and contributors argue, were central to the way that communism was lived in its widely varied contexts in the region. From design, to production, to retail sales and black market exchange, Communism Unwrapped follows communist goods from producer to consumer, tracing their circuitous routes. In the communist world this journey was rife with its own meanings, shaped by the special political and social circumstances of these societies. In examining consumption behind the Iron Curtain, this volume brings dimension and nuance to understandings of the communist period and the history of consumerism.
Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.