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Jules Verne's reputation undergoes a much-needed rehabilitation in the hands of Timothy Unwin, who reexamines the author's work, from his earliest writings to his later and only recently discovered manuscripts. Verne was, Unwin argues, a master of the self-conscious novel, his work a pastiche of science discourse, fictional and non-fictional writings, and flamboyant, theatrical narrative. Unwin makes a compelling case for Verne as a master of the nineteenth-century experimental novel, in the company of Gustave Flaubert and other canonical French writers. The text will be a wonderful addition to the shelves of those interested in science fiction, experimental writing, and critical theory.
Provides an introduction to the historical geography of viticulture and the wine trade from prehistory to the present, considering wine as a symbol, rich in meaning and a commercial product of great economic importance to specific regions.
Frequently paradoxical developments of themes and situations from the opening chapters are traced in detail in a analysis that emphasizes the novel's intricate writing as well as its historical and intellectual significance.
This volume brings together a series of essays by acknowledged experts on Flaubert. It offers a coherent overview of the writer's work and critical legacy, and provides insights into the very latest scholarly thinking. While a central place is given to Flaubert s most widely read texts, attention is also paid to key areas of the corpus that have tended to be overlooked. Close textual analyses are accompanied by discussion of broader theoretical issues, and by a consideration of Flaubert s place in the wider traditions that he both inherited and influenced. These essays provide not only a robust critical framework for readers of Flaubert, but also a fuller understanding of why he continues to exert such a powerful influence on literature and literary studies today. A concluding essay by the prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa examines Flaubert s legacy from the point of view of the modern novelist.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name 'Romeo'. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin. In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then confronting those who had informed against him. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of Britain's own security service to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.
This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.
The Magic Lantern is one of those rare books that capture history in the making, written by an author who was witness to some of the most remarkable moments that marked the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Timothy Garton Ash was there in Warsaw, on 4 June, when the communist government was humiliated by Solidarity in the first semi-free elections since the Second World War. He was there in Budapest, twelve days later, when Imre Nagy - thirty-one years after his execution - was finally given his proper funeral. He was there in Berlin, as the Wall opened. And most remarkable of all, he was there in Prague, in the back rooms of the Magic Lantern theatre, with Václav Havel and the members of Civic Forum, as they made their 'Velvet Revolution'.
Four years after it happened, police have finally arrested a man over the baffling murder of Janelle Patton on Norfolk Island. The murder may or may not yet be solved, but Norfolk Island still has plenty of secrets. I always thought the biggest coup for Norfolk Island would be to get on the big blue weather map, to be broadcast to millions of viewers who would say 'So that's where Norfolk Island is.' Instead Norfolk Island got on a different map and it had nothing to do with sunshine or rain. On the afternoon of Easter Sunday 2002, somebody killed a woman. A vicious, nasty prolonged attack which pitted a feisty, pretty brunette against a person of great strength, anger and hatred. Her name was Janelle Patton. She fought for her life. And died. In the tradition of true-crime reportage Norfolk scratches the facade of this secretive and protective community, probing murder, myth, history, politics and gossip. Despite being an Australian territory Norfolk is wonderfully and strangely different - a culture where deception, tension and age-old animosities lie just beneath the surface of life in 'paradise'.
WINNER OF THE 2017 AL-RODHAN PRIZE Never in human history was there such a chance for freedom of expression. If we have Internet access, any one of us can publish almost anything we like and potentially reach an audience of millions. Never was there a time when the evils of unlimited speech flowed so easily across frontiers: violent intimidation, gross violations of privacy, tidal waves of abuse. A pastor burns a Koran in Florida and UN officials die in Afghanistan. Drawing on a lifetime of writing about dictatorships and dissidents, Timothy Garton Ash argues that in this connected world that he calls cosmopolis, the way to combine freedom and diversity is to have more but also better free s...
'Timothy Garton Ash holds a mirror that magnifies... He writes masterfully and with compassion' - Neal Ascherson, Observer For more than thirty years, Timothy Garton Ash has traveled among truth tellers and political charlatans to record, with scalpel-sharp precision, what he has found. Facts are Subversive, which collects his writings since the millennium, addresses some of the crucial questions of our time: what happens to people who have endured long dictatorships when they try to found a democratic state? How can freedom from tyranny be won? How are free expression, equality before the law and equal rights for men and women sustained in a society of different faiths and ethnicities? This is history of the present on a scale by turns panoramic and human: urgent, exhilarating and necessary.