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The Babylon Berlin novels of Volker Kutscher

Babylon Berlin: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Highland. 2017. Sandstone Press. 9781910124970. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 544 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - This historical mystery set in Berlin, 1929, is the first of a popular series in Germany. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He was transferred to the Vice Squad in Berlin, a job he now detests, even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the Vice Squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations. The result is catastrophic with many dead and injured, and a state of emergency is declared in the Communist strongholds of the city.

The Silent Death: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Highland. 2017. Sandstone Press. 9781910985649. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 522 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - Berlin 1930. Sound film is conquering the big screen, leaving many by the wayside: producers, cinema owners and silent film stars. Investigating the violent on-set death of actress Betty Winter, Inspector Gereon Rath encounters the dark side of glamour and an industry in turmoil. When his father requests that he help his friend, the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, and his ex-girlfriend Charly makes a renewed attempt at rapprochement, things start to get out of hand. Trapped in the machinations of rival film producers, he roams Berlin's Chinese quarter and the city's underworld as he works ever closer to the edge of legality. Meanwhile the funeral of the murdered Horst Wessel leads to clashes between Nazis and Communists.

Goldstein: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Ross-Shire. 2018. Sandstone Press. 9781912240128. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 535 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com.  

DESCRIPTION - Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin's underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath's on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath's from the other side. Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the world of the American gangster and the expanding world of Nazism.

The Fatherland Files: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Ross-Shire. 2019. Sandstone Press. 9781912240562. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 562 pages. Paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - 1932: A drowned man is found in a freight elevator in the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz; far from any standing water. Inspector Gereon Rath’s hunt for a mysterious contract killer has stalled; but this new case will take him to a small town on the Polish border and confrontation with the rising Nazi party.

The Silent Death: A Gereon Rath Mystery by Volker Kutscher. Iverness. 2020. Sandstone Press. 9781913207045. Translated from the German by Niall Sellar. 512 pages. paperback. Cover design by kid-ethic.com. 

DESCRIPTION - 1933: A homeless veteran is found dead under railway arches in Berlin; apparently killed by an army dagger. Gereon Rath is brought onto the case just as the Reichstag mysteriously burns down. Unsettled by the Nazis’ tightening grip; he and Charlotte Ritter must also contend with their political colleagues. The new Germany is frightening; but police work must go on even among book-burning and marching; rising paranoia and fear.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Volker Kutscher (born December 26, 1962) studied German language and literature studies, philosophy and history. He works as journalist and writer. His crime stories took place in the Berlin during the Weimar Republic and contain a lot of descriptions of this city and time.

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Babylon Berlin is also a German neo-noir television series. Created, written, and directed by Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries, and Hendrik Handloegten, it is loosely based on novels by Volker Kutscher.

A troubled cop and a working class typist uncover a political conspiracy amid the vice and glamour of 1920s Berlin. The series begins in 1929 during the latter years of the Weimar Republic and follows Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), a police inspector on assignment from Cologne who is on a secret mission to dismantle an extortion ring, and Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries), police clerk by day, prostitute by night, who aspires to become a police inspector.

"Best of 2024" - The New York Times & The Wall Street Journal

Watch Babylon Berlin on MHz Choice...

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The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World by Vijay Prashad. New York. 2007. New Press. 1565847857. 12 b/w photographs. 364 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Ann Weinstock.

DESCRIPTION - A landmark study that offers an alternative history of the Cold War from the point of view of the world's poor. ‘Europe' is morally, spiritually indefensible. And today the indictment is brought against it.by tens and tens of thousands of millions of men who, from the depths of slavery, set themselves up as judges.' - Aime CEsaire, Discourse on Colonialism. . . Here, from a brilliant young writer, is a paradigm-shifting history of both a utopian concept and global movement - the idea of the Third World. The Darker Nations traces the intellectual origins and the political history of the twentieth century attempt to knit together the world's impoverished countries in opposition to the United States and Soviet spheres of influence in the decades following World War II. Spanning every continent of the global South, Vijay Prashad's fascinating narrative takes us from the birth of postcolonial nations after World War II to the downfall and corruption of nationalist regimes. A breakthrough book of cutting-edge scholarship, it includes vivid portraits of Third World giants like India's Nehru, Egypt's Nasser, and Indonesia's Sukarno - as well as scores of extraordinary but now-forgotten intellectuals, artists, and freedom fighters. The Darker Nations restores to memory the vibrant though flawed idea of the Third World, whose demise, Prashad ultimately argues, has produced a much impoverished international political arena.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, journalist, commentator and a Marxist intellectual. He is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 2013–2014, he was the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut. Prashad is the author of seventeen books. In 2012, he published five books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) and Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today (The New Press).

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Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin by Alexandra Richie. New York. 1998. Carroll & Graf. 0786705108. 1139 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - In Berlin, history is almost tangible. The sense of the past—of Europe, of Germany, and most of all, of the twentieth century's myths, idealism, depravities, and horror— hangs in the air around the Hinterhofs and deserted railway stations. No other city has played such a part in twentieth-century Europe, nor has any been so mythologized, so glorified, so cast down. In this magisterial new work, Oxford historian Alexandra Richie recounts how Berlin forged itself into the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands—the City of German Destiny—and the enormous consequences. Faust's Metropolis is an exciting, radical history of this city, a breathtaking portrait of its people, and a thorough evaluation of its achievements and errors from the time of its founding in the twelfth century until the present day. From the revolutionary fervor of its teeming slums and the insufferable pomp of Imperial Berlin, to the frantic modernism of Weimar, the brutality of the Nazis, and the symbolic defeat of communism as the Wall came down, Berlin has played host to all the movements that have uplifted and afflicted German and European history. Richie writes superbly of its role as a crucible of change. She also traces its surprisingly heterogeneous social forces, which belie the Prussian and Nazi myths of a single German Volk, and the tensions between Berliners and other Germans from the early days of nationhood to their country's present crossroads. Unmatched in scope and scholarship, Faust's Metropolis is history at its most enthralling. It presents an encyclopedic history of this ever-changing city, a vivid social portrait of its citizens, and a thorough evaluation of its political and cultural legacy. Wresting Berlin's actual past from its myths, Richie arrives as a brilliant, authoritative new historian formidably in command of her fascinating subject.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexandra Richie is the author of the critically acclaimed Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Dr Richie received her DPhil at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and was later a Fellow of Wolfson College. She has lectured on international politics and history across the world, from Warsaw University to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. She lives in Warsaw with her husband and two children.

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The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2021. Graywolf Press. 9781644450642. 310 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.

  
DESCRIPTION - An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone. Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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Resisting Work: The Corporatization of Life and Its Discontents by Peter Fleming. Philadelphia. 2014. Temple University Press. . 218 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION -  'Peter Fleming is one of the world's leading analysts of work. In Resisting Work, his stunning tour de force, he lifts the lid on neoliberalism's bullying use of biopower to control our lives and how we think of happiness, sadness, and everything in between. And he does so with lively prose, telling anecdotes, and a compelling blend of empirical and theoretical materials. ' - Toby Miller, author of Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. A job is no longer something we 'do,' but instead something we 'are. ' As the boundaries between work and non-work have dissolved, we restructure ourselves and our lives using social ingenuity to get things done and be resourceful outside the official workday. In his provocative book, Resisting Work Peter Fleming insists that many jobs in the West are now regulated by a new matrix of power - biopower - where “life itself” is put to work through our ability to self-organize around formal rules. This neoliberal system of employment tries to absorb our life attributes - from our consumer tastes, “downtime,” and sexuality - into employment so that questions of human capital and resources replace questions of employee, worker, and labor. Fleming suggests that the corporation then turns to communal life - what he calls “the common” - in order to reproduce itself and reinforce corporate culture. Yet a resistance against this new definition of work is in effect, and Fleming shows how it may already be taking shape. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Fleming is a Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School, City University London. He is the co-author of several books, including Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations (with Andre Spicer), Dead Man Working (with Carl Cederström), and The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crisis and Critique (with Marc T. Jones).

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Caucasia by Danzy Senna. New York. 1998. Riverhead Books. 1573220914. 1st Novel. 355 pages. hardcover. Cover: Lawrence Ratzkin.  

DESCRIPTION - Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the civil rights movement in Boston in the 1970s. The sisters are so close that they have created a private language, yet to the outside world they can't be sisters: while Cole looks like her father's daughter, Birdie appears to be white. For Birdie, Cole is the mirror in which she can see her own blackness. Then their parents' marriage falls apart.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Danzy Senna, (b. 1970) is an American novelist. Danzy Senna was born in Boston, Massachusetts and is the daughter of the author Carl Senna (THE BLACK PRESS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS,) a black poet of Mexican heritage who came from a struggling single-parent household, and Fanny Howe, an Irish-American poet and novelist born into privilege. They met and married while both were activists during the American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968). Senna received her B.A. from Stanford University and MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine, where she received several creative writing awards. Her first novel, CAUCASIA (1998), received the Book-of-the-Month Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction. It also received the Alex Award , American Library Association. Her second novel SYMPTOMATIC (2003), is a psychological thriller narrated by a biracial young woman who is often mistaken for white. Senna's latest work is a memoir entitled WHERE DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT?: A PERSONAL HISTORY (2009).

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The Aloneness of Mrs. Chatham by Edgar Mittelholzer. London. 1965. Tandem Books. 176 pages. paperback. T29. Cover design by James Nunn.  

DESCRIPTION - THE ALONENESS OF MRS CHATHAM (1965) was refused by fourteen publishers before finally finding a home with a British paperback publishing house, Tandem Books. Edgar Mittelholzer, author of the best-selling KAYWANA series, returns here to an English village, charged beneath its peaceful exterior with eccentricity, perversion, madness. This is the story of a woman fighting to be alone, the intrusions of those surrounding her, and the calculated attempts to destroy her by a bitter and frustrated psychopath obsessed by sex and driven by jealousy. Edgar Mittelholzer brings to this novel the maturity and experience of a writer whose insight into human tragedy is frank, ruthless, and unnerving.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edgar Mittelholzer (16 December 1909 - 5 May 1965) was a Guyanese novelist. He was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, nee Leblanc. Mittelholzer wrote virtually nothing but fiction and earned his living by it. He is thus the first professional novelist to come out of the English-speaking Caribbean. Some of Mittelholzer's novels include characters and situations from a variety of places within the Caribbean. They range in time from the earliest period of European settlement to the present day and deal with a cross section of ethnic groups and social classes, not to mention subjects of historical, political, psychological, and moral interest. CORENTYNE THUNDER signaled the birth of the novel in Guyana. Mittelholzer wrote CORENTYNE THUNDER in 1938 at the age of twenty nine. At the time he was living and working odd jobs in New Amsterdam. The manuscript was sent to England and had a perilous existence until finally it found a publisher in 1941. In December, 1941, Mittelholzer left Guyana for Trinidad as a recruit in the Trinidad Royal Volunteer Naval Reserve, and CORENTYNE THUNDER was published by Eyre and Spottiswoode. He served in the TRVNR, ‘one of the blackest and most unpleasant interludes' in his life, until he was discharged on medical grounds in August, 1942, and decided to make Trinidad his home, having married a Trinidadian, Roma Halfhide, in March, 1942. In 1947 Mittelholzer decided that he should go to England since he was convinced that only by so doing would he stand a chance of succeeding as a writer. He had been maintaining himself and his family with a variety of odd jobs such as receptionist at the Queen's Park Hotel and clerk at the Planning and Housing Board. He sailed for England with his wife and daughter in 1948, taking the manuscript of A MORNING AT THE OFFICE with him. In London, Mittelholzer went to work in the Books Department of the British Council as a copytypist. Through a fellow worker he met Leonard Woolf in June, 1949, and the result was the publication in 1950 by the Hogarth Press of A MORNING AT THE OFFICE. Peter Nevill published his third novel, SHADOWS MOVE AMONG THEM in April, 1951, and in 1952 brought out the first volume of Mittelholzer monumental historical epic, CHILDREN OF KAYWANA. After its appearance, and despite hostile reviews, Mittelholzer took the crucial decision to give up his job at the British Council and to live entirely by his writing. In May, 1952, Mittelholzer was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing. He decided to spend the year in Montreal and to use his time there finishing the second volume of the Kaywana trilogy. The long Canadian winter of 1952-53 made him decide to move to Barbados with his wife and four children, and he spent the next three years in the West Indies. In that time he completed THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SYLVIA (1953), the second volume of the trilogy, HUBERTUS (1954), and his terrifying ghost story, MY BONES AND MY FLUTE (1955). He was also to use this Barbadian setting for four other novels. In May, 1956, Mittelholzer returned to England. His marriage was deteriorating steadily, and he was granted a divorce in May, 1959, with his wife receiving custody of the two boys and two girls. In August, 1959, he met Jacqueline Pointer at a writers' workshop and married her in April, 1960. From 1950 to 1965 (with the exception of 1964) Mittelholzer had published at least one novel a year. He had stopped using an agent and handled all his books himself. At first it seemed a wise move, and in 1952 he began an association with Secker and Warburg that was to last over nine years and thirteen books, but in 1961 there was a falling-out over THE PILING OF THE CLOUDS, which they refused to publish because it was ‘pornographic.' The novel was to be rejected by five publishers before Putnam published it in 1961, to be followed by THE WOUNDED AND THE WORRIED (1962) and his autobiography in 1963. He had promised them a second volume which never materialized after he broke with them as well. Mittelholzer's problems were steadily growing, and critical reception of his work was increasingly hostile. He had acquired the reputation of being ‘a problem author,' and after 1961, he tells us, he lived ‘under an ever-darkening cloud-pall of opprobrium' (Jacqueline Mittelholzer, ‘The Idyll and the Warrior,' p. 86). He felt persecuted, convinced that the poor reviews of his books were damaging his literary reputation and interfering with the publication of his work. THE ALONENESS OF MRS CHATHAM (1965), for example, was refused by fourteen publishers. The difficulties he encountered in having his books published toward the end of his life affected Mittelholzer seriously. He was badly in need of money to support his first wife and children, as well as his second wife and son. Mittelholzer took his own life near Farnham, Surrey, England, on May 5, 1965. His works include - CREOLE CHIPS (1937); CORENTYNE THUNDER (1941); A MORNING AT THE OFFICE (1950); SHADOWS MOVE AMONG THEM (1951); CHILDREN OF KAYWANA (1952); THE WEATHER IN MIDDENSHOT (1952); THE LIFE AND DEATH OF SYLVIA (1953); KAYWANA STOCK: THE HARROWING OF HUBERTUS (1954); THE ADDING MACHINE (a short fable) (1954); MY BONES AND MY FLUTE (1955); OF TREES AND THE SEA (1956); A TALE OF THREE PLACES (1957); KAYWANA BLOOD (1958); THE WEATHER FAMILY (1958); A TINKLING IN THE TWILIGHT (1959); LATTICED ECHOES (1960); ELTONSBRODY (1960); THE MAD MACMULLOCHS (1961); THUNDER RETURNING (1961); THE PILING OF CLOUDS (1961); THE WOUNDED AND THE WORRIED (1962); UNCLE PAUL (1963); A SWARTHY BOY (autobiography) (1963); THE ALONENESS OF MRS. CHATHAM (1965); THE JILKINGTON DRAMA (1965); WITH A CARIB EYE (travel) (1965). 

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Ubik by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1970. Dell Books. 208 pages. paperback. 9200. Cover illustration: Jones. 

  
DESCRIPTION -

Who is Ubik? What is Ubik? Where is Ubik? You'll never guess, You'll have to find out, as the extraordinary Philip K. Dick opens up new dimensions in science fiction adventure. Ubik is a 1969 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The story is set in a future 1992 where psychic powers are utilized in corporate espionage, while cryonic technology allows recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation. It follows Joe Chip, a technician at a psychic agency who begins to experience strange alterations in reality that can be temporarily reversed by a mysterious store-bought substance called Ubik. This work expands upon characters and concepts previously introduced in the vignette "What the Dead Men Say". Ubik is one of Dick's most acclaimed novels. In 2009, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest novels since 1923. In his review for Time, critic Lev Grossman described it as "a deeply unsettling existential horror story, a nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from".

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,’ Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.’ In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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Capital: Volume 1, A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx. Princeton. 2024. Princeton University Press. 9780691190075. Translated from the German by Paul Reitter. Edited by Paul North and Paul Reitter. Foreword by Wendy Brown. Afterword by William Clare Roberts. 857 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Chris Ferrante.

DESCRIPTION - Marx for the twenty-first century. The first new English translation in fifty years—and the only one based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself. Featuring extensive original commentary, including a foreword by acclaimed political theorist Wendy Brown. “An astounding achievement.”—China Miéville, author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. Karl Marx (1818–1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only the first volume saw publication in Marx’s lifetime, it would become one of the most consequential books in history. This magnificent new edition of Capital is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century. It is the first translation into English to be based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself, the only version that can be called authoritative, and it features extensive commentary and annotations by Paul North and Paul Reitter that draw on the latest scholarship and provide invaluable perspective on the book and its complicated legacy. At once precise and boldly readable, this translation captures the momentous scale and sweep of Marx’s thought while recovering the elegance and humor of the original source. For Marx, our global economic system is relentlessly driven by “value”—to produce it, capture it, trade it, and, most of all, to increase it. Lifespans are shortened under the demand for ever-greater value. Days are lengthened, work is intensified, and the division of labor deepens until it leaves two classes, owners and workers, in constant struggle for life and livelihood. In Capital, Marx reveals how value came to tyrannize our world, and how the history of capital is a chronicle of bloodshed, colonization, and enslavement. With a foreword by Wendy Brown and an afterword by William Clare Roberts, this is a critical edition of Capital for our time, one that faithfully preserves the vitality and directness of Marx’s German prose and renders his ideas newly relevant to modern readers. DAS KAPITAL, originally intended as an unbelievably ambitious (and never completed) six-volume work, represents one of the key landmarks in the scientific understanding of capitalist development, bourgeois society and the economics of class conflict. ‘What I have to examine in this work,' wrote Marx in the Preface, ‘is the capitalist mode of production,' its natural laws and tendencies ‘winning their way through and working themselves out with iron necessity'. In Volume 1 (1867) years of research resulted in a marvellously lucid exposition that builds up from the basic unit of the commodity to a detailed consideration of the labour theory of value, the role of money, the modern factory system and the ways in which capital extorts surplus-value from wage-labour. Throughout, Marx draws on a profound knowledge of nineteenth-century England to support his analysis and generate countless fresh insights. Yet despite the failure of some of his prophecies, there is nothing dated about Marx's main contentions and conclusions. In the words of Ernest Mandel in his introduction to the Penguin Classic edition of the book,  ‘Today's Western world is much nearer to the ‘pure' model of CAPITAL than was the world in which it was composed.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karl Marx (5 May 1818 - 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, and revolutionary socialist. Marx's work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. He is one of the founders of sociology and social science. He published numerous books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1867–1894).

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The Book of Disappearance: A Novel by Ibtisam Azem. Syracuse. 2019. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611110. Translated by Sinan Antoon. Middle East Literature In Translation. 240 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - What if all the Arabs in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are poised in Ibtisam Azem's powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv 48 hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished. The story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian boy who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind after his disappearance, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling the understand the traumatic event. Through these alternating perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel's project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being evicted from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Arial's search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians, revealing a great deal about the fissures at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Sinan Antoon's translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist and journalist. She has published two novels in Arabic: Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief, 2011) and Sifr al-Ikhtifaa (The Book of Disappearance, 2014), both by Dar al-Jamal (Beirut/Baghdad). The Book of Disappearance is currently being translated into English, French, and Hebrew. She was born and raised in Taybeh, northern Jaffa, and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later at Freiburg University in Germany, where she completed an MA in German and English Literature, and Islamic Studies. She works as senior correspondent in New York for the Arabic daily al-Araby al-Jadeed. She is also co-editor at Jadaliyya e-zine and editor of the Arabic page. She is currently working on an MA at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He is associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 National Translation Award.

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