Zenosbooks

Favorites

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 1

Recoil by Jim Thompson. New York. 1953. Lion. 128 pages. paperback. 120.

lion recoil 120 1953 DESCRIPTION - A PAROLEE BREAKS LOOSE IN A CITY BEFOULED WITH DIRTY POLITICS AND DIRTIER LIVING... WHY? Pat Cosgrove was a man nobody remembered - friendless, unwanted - left to rot in prison. Then suddenly he found himself breathing free air, paroled to a stranger named Doc. Doc, power-fat middleman for boondogglers, wanted him. Lil, who brought bigshots with her flashing white body, wanted him. Hardesty, oil-slick lawyer with a killer’s brain, wanted him. Madeline, virginal secretary to an influence peddler, wanted him. Cosgrove had to know what they wanted. So he went looking for the answer, and he got it fast. They wanted him - dead.Pat Cosgrove was a convict in the state's vilest prison, and Doc Luther gave him his freedom. Cosgrove had never been loved, and Luther gave him two mistresses - one of them the beautiful Mrs. Luther. Cosgrove owed Luther his life . . . and now Luther was going to collect.

Thompson Jim AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Myers Thompson (September 27, 1906 - April 7, 1977) was an American author and screenwriter, known for his pulp crime fiction. Thompson wrote more than thirty novels, the majority of which were original paperback publications by pulp fiction houses, from the late-1940s through mid-1950s. Despite some positive critical notice, notably by Anthony Boucher in The New York Times, he was little-recognized in his lifetime. Only after death did Thompson's literary stature grow, when in the late 1980s, several novels were re-published in the Black Lizard series of re-discovered crime fiction. Thompson's writing culminated in a few of his best-regarded works: The Killer Inside Me, Savage Night, A Hell of a Woman and Pop. 1280. A number of Thompson's books became popular films, including The Getaway and The Grifters. The writer R.V. Cassill has suggested that of all pulp fiction, Thompson's was the rawest and most harrowing; that neither Dashiell Hammett nor Raymond Chandler nor even Horace McCoy, author of the bleak They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, ever ‘wrote a book within miles of Thompson'. Similarly, in the introduction to Now and on Earth, Stephen King says he most admires Thompson's work because ‘The guy was over the top. The guy was absolutely over the top. Big Jim didn't know the meaning of the word stop. There are three brave lets inherent in the forgoing: he let himself see everything, he let himself write it down, then he let himself publish it.' Thompson admired Fyodor Dostoyevsky and was nicknamed ‘Dimestore Dostoevsky' by writer Geoffrey O'Brien. Film director Stephen Frears, who directed an adaptation of Thompson's The Grifters as 1990's The Grifters, also identified elements of Greek tragedy in his themes.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 7

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - A Critical Edition: Volume 3, 1944–1945 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. 2017. Kent State University Press. 9781606353028. Edited by Jonathan R. Eller. 6. x 9¼. illustration, appendixes, annotations, textual record. 493 pages. hardcover.

9781606353028 DESCRIPTION - Though it highlights just one year of writing, this third volume of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury represents a crucial moment at the midpoint of his first full decade as a professional writer. The original versions of the 1940s stories recovered for The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, presented in the order in which they were written and first sent off to find life in the magazine market, suggest that Bradbury's masks didn't always appeal to his editors. The Volume 3 stories were all written between March 1944 and March 1945, and the surviving letters of this period reveal the private conflict raging between Bradbury's efforts to define a distinct style and creative vision at home in Los Angeles and the tyranny of genre requirements imposed by the distant pulp publishing world in New York. Most of the twenty-two stories composed during this pivotal year in his development reflect the impact of these creative pressures. This period also produced important markers in his maturing creativity with “The Miracles of Jamie,” “Invisible Boy,” and “Ylla,” which were among the first wave of Bradbury tales to reach the mainstream markets. The early versions of Bradbury's stories recovered for Volume 3, some emerging from his surviving typescripts and several that restore lost text preserved only in the rare Canadian serial versions, provide an unprecedented snapshot of his writing and his inspirations. Underlying this year of creativity was the expanding world of readings in modern and contemporary literature that would prove to be a crucial factor in his development as a master storyteller. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited in compliance with the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions. Each volume includes a general introduction, biographical timeline, summary of unpublished stories, historical commentaries for each story, textual apparatus, and a chronological catalog.

Bradbury Ray AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films.

Jonathan R. Eller is Chancellor’s Professor of English, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis. He coedited Volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury with founding editor emeritus William F. Touponce, with whom he also coauthored Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (The Kent State University Press, 2004). Eller is author of Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound (forthcoming), extensive studies of Bradbury’s early and middle career.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - A Critical Edition: Volume 2, 1943–1944 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. Kent State University Press. 9781606351956. Edited by Jonathan R. Eller. 6 x 9¼. illustrations, notes, biblio., index. 576 pages. hardcover.

9781606351956 DESCRIPTION - The original versions of an American master's best-known tales. Ray Bradbury spent decades refashioning many of his early pulp and mainstream magazine stories to form the intricate story-cycle tapestries of The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine; other tales were revised or rewritten for such timeless collections as Dark Carnival, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, and The October Country. These volumes represent wonderful and enduring fictional masks for the author, but they are not his original masks. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury series returns to the earliest surviving forms of his oldest published tales, presenting many of them in versions not seen since the 1940s and early 1950s, when the Golden Age of the American magazine began to pass into history. The restoration of these texts is a scholarly enterprise, including searches through long-lost typescripts, hundreds of elusive magazine issues, and thousands of textual variants, seeking to restore the author's earliest intentions for his first published stories. Jonathan R. Eller's textual commentaries document the history of the composition and publication of the stories - and Bradbury's emerging understanding of genre fiction - from their original forms to the versions best known today. The second volume of the series includes twenty-five stories written between April 1943 and March 1944, and it contains eight stories that Bradbury never placed in his own story collections. These tales document an incredibly productive year that saw the twenty-three-year-old writer move ever closer to becoming a masterful teller of timeless stories. For many of them, the original serial forms recovered in this volume differ significantly from the versions Bradbury popularized in his subsequent collections. For three of these stories, the original typescripts survive, making it possible to establish the critical text directly from the author's unstyled spellings and punctuation. By documenting the way the stories evolved over time, Eller reveals crucial new information about Bradbury's maturing creativity and poetic prose style. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited in compliance with the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions. Each volume includes a general introduction, biographical timeline, summary of unpublished stories, historical commentaries for each story, textual apparatus, and a chronological catalog.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 3

The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - A Critical Edition: Volume 1, 1938–1943 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. 2011. Kent State University Press. 9781606350713. Edited by William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller. 6. x 9¼. illustration, appendixes, annotations, textual record. 498 pages. hardcover.

9781606350713 DESCRIPTION - In the past, collections of Bradbury's works have juxtaposed stories with no indication as to the different time periods in which they were written. Even the mid- and late-career collections that Bradbury himself compiled contained stories that were written much earlier--a situation that has given rise to misconceptions about the origins of the stories themselves. In this new edition, editors William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller present for the first time the stories of Ray Bradbury in the order in which they were written. Moreover, they use texts that reflect Bradbury's earliest settled intention for each tale. By examining his relationships with his agent, editor, and publisher, Touponce and Eller's textual commentaries document the transformation of the stories--and Bradbury's creative understanding of genre fiction--from their original forms to the versions known and loved today. Volume 1 covers the years 1938 to 1943 and contains thirteen stories that have never appeared in a Bradbury collection. For those that were previously published, the original serial forms recovered in this volume differ in significant ways from the versions that Bradbury popularized over the ensuing years. By documenting the ways the stories evolved over time, Touponce and Eller unveil significant new information about Bradbury's development as a master of short fiction. Each volume in the proposed eight-volume edition includes a general introduction, chronology, summary of unpublished stories, textual commentary for each story, textual apparatus, and chronological catalog. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited to the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions.

General editor William F. Touponce is professor of English and adjunct professor of American studies at the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. He is the coauthor, with Jonathan R. Eller, of Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (The Kent State University Press, 2004) and editor of The New Ray Bradbury Review, an annual review of the life and works of Ray Bradbury published by The Kent State University Press. Jonathan R. Eller is professor of English and senior textual editor for the Institute for American Thought. He is the cofounder of the Institute's Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and is textual editor for the Writings of Charles S. Peirce and the Works of Life George Santayana. He is also the coauthor, with William F. Touponce, of Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction. Since 2000, he has edited several archival volumes of Bradbury's fiction. Becoming Ray Bradbury, his extensive study of Bradbury's early career, is forthcoming.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 5

Young Poetry of the Americas, Volume 1 by General Secretariat of the Organization of American States Washington. Washington, D.C. 1967. Pan American Union. 116 pages.

young poetry of the americas volume 1 pan american union 1967 DESCRIPTION - A bilingual collection of selections reprinted from issues of Americas. Various translators. Poems, with brief introductions, are arranged by country in short anthologies. They are: 'Seven Argentine poets' (edited Manuel Grinberg and Juan Carlos Martelli):Alberto Couste, Alejandro Vignati, Leopoldo Jose Bartolome, Alejandra Pizarnik, Ignacio Beola, Marcelo Pichon Riviere, Juan Gelman; 'Five Chilean poets' (edited Jose Donoso): Nicanor Parra, Efrain Barquero, Alberto Rubio, Enrique Lihn, Miguel Arteche; 'Eight Costa Rican poets': Jorg Debravo, Jorge Ibãñez, Laurean Albán, Julieta Doblez Yzaguirte Marco Aguilar, Rodrigo Quiros Alfonso Chase, Arabella Salaverry; 'Six Ecuadorian poets' (edited Gal Rene Perez and Ulises Estrella): An Maria Ixa, Francisco Araujo Sánchez, Manuel Zabala Ruiz, Carl Manuel Arizaga, Euler Grand Simon Corral; 'Four Salvadorian poets' (edited Eunice Odio): Dora Guerra, Claud Lars, Hugo Lindo, Pedro Geoffr Rivas; 'Five Mexican poets' (edited Ser Mondragon): Octavio Paz, Joaq Sanchez MacGregor, Homero Arjis, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Jai Augusto Shelley; 'Avant-garde poetry in Panama' (edited Aristides Martinez Ortega): Carlos Francisco Chan-Marin, Tristan Solarte, Homero Icaza Sanchez, Jose de Jesus Martinez, Guillerma Ross Zanet, Jose Franco, Demetrio Fábrega; 'Six Uruguayan poets' (edited Saul Ibargoxen Islas): Mario Benedetti, Carlos Brandy, Juan Cunha, Milton Schinca, Jorge Medina Vidal, Idea Vilariño.

Organization of American States Washington AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - The General Secretariat is the permanent and central organ of the OAS, executing programs and policies decided upon by the General Assembly and the two councils. Directed by the Secretary General, it occupies a key position within the inter-American system and serves the entire organization and all member states. The Secretary General and the Assistant Secretary General are elected by the General Assembly for 5-year terms. They can be reelected once and cannot be succeeded by a person of the same nationality.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America by Khalil Gibran Muhammad. Cambridge. 2010. Harvard University Press. 9780674035973. 380 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo: ‘A downtown Morgue’ appeared in Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives to draw attention to the evil of New York’s saloons that fueled crime and death rates. Photo by Richard Hoe Lawrence, c. 1890, Museum of the City of New York. The Jacob Riis Collection. Jacket design: Jill Breitbarth.

9780674035973 DESCRIPTION - Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Following the 1890 census, the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery, crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land of opportunity were woven into a cautionary tale about the exceptional threat black people posed to modern urban society. Excessive arrest rates and overrepresentation in northern prisons were seen by many whites - liberals and conservatives, northerners and southerners - as indisputable proof of blacks' inferiority. In the heyday of “separate but equal,” what else but pathology could explain black failure in the “land of opportunity”? The idea of black criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban America, as were African Americans' own ideas about race and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.

Muhammad Khalil Gibran AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Khalil Gibran Muhammad is Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library and Associate Professor of History, Indiana University.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 5

Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales from the Time of the Cult by Bohumil Hrabal. New York. 2015. New Directions. 9780811224802. Translated by Paul Wilson. 142 pages. paperback. Cover design by Dan Stiles. Translation of Inzerát na dům, ve kterém už nechci bydlet.

9780811224802 DESCRIPTION - Wonderful stories of Communist Prague by “the masterly Bohumil Hrabal” (The New Yorker). Never before published in English, the stories in Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult were written mostly in the 1950s and present the Czech master Bohumil Hrabal at the height of his powers. The stories capture a time when Czech Stalinists were turning society upside down, inflicting their social and political experiments on mostly unwilling subjects. These stories are set variously in the gas-lit streets of post-war Prague; on the raucous and dangerous factory floor of the famous Poldi steelworks where Hrabal himself once worked; in a cacophonous open-air dance hall where classical and popular music come to blows; at the basement studio where a crazed artist attempts to fashion a national icon; on the scaffolding around a decommissioned church. Hrabal captures men and women trapped in an eerily beautiful nightmare, longing for a world where “humor and metaphysical escape can reign supreme.”

Hrabal Bohumil AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) is viewed by many as the quintessential Czech novelist of the post-war period. Best known in the English-speaking world through the film adaptations of his novels Closely Watched Trains (Northwestern, 1995), Too Loud a Solitude (Harvest, 1992), and I Served the King of England (Vintage, 1990), Hrabal is the author of many works of fiction. He fell to his death in 1997 while feeding pigeons from a hospital window.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

Map Drawn by a Spy by Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Brooklyn. 2017. Archipelago Books. 9780914671787. Translated by Mark Fried. 240 pages. paperback. Translation of Mapa dibujado por un espía.

9780914671787 DESCRIPTION - Found in an envelope in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's house after his death in 2005, Map Drawn by a Spy is the world-renowned writer's autobiographical account of the last four months he spent in his country. In 1965, following his mother's death, Infante returns to Cuba from Brussels, where he is employed as a cultural attache at the Cuban embassy. When a few days later his permission to return to Europe is revoked, Infante begins a period of suspicion, uncertainty, and disillusion. Unable to leave the country, denied access to party officials, yet still receiving checks for his work in Belgium, Infante discovers the reality of Cuba under Fidel Castro: imprisonment of homosexuals, silencing of writers, the closing of libraries and newspapers, and the consolidation of power. Both lucid and sincere, Map Drawn by a Spy is a moving portrayal of a fractured society and a writer's struggles to come to terms with his national identity."

Cabrera Infante G AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro. He divorced and remarried in 1961 to his second wife, Miriam, an actress. Having fallen somewhat out of favor with the Castro regime (the government's ban on a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother led to him being forbidden to publish in Cuba), he served from 1962 to 1965 in Brussels, Belgium as a cultural attache. During this time, his sentiments turned against the Castro regime; after returning to Cuba for his mother's funeral in 1965, he went into exile, first to Madrid and then to London. In 1966 he published Tres Tristes Tigres, a highly experimental, Joycean novel, playful and rich in literary allusions, which also intended to do for Cuban Spanish what Mark Twain had done for American English, recording the great variety of its colloquial variations. It is little known that he was the Guillermo Caín who co-wrote the script for the 1971 cult film Vanishing Point. Although he is considered a part of the famed Latin American ‘Boom' generation of writers that includes his contemporary Gabriel García Márquez, he disdained the label. Always the iconoclast, he even rejected the label ‘novel' for his masterpieces, such as Tres Tristes Tigres and La Habana para un infante difunto. In 1997 he received the Premio Cervantes, presented to him by Spain's King Juan Carlos. He died February 21, 2005 in London, of septicemia. He had two daughters by his first marriage.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 5

Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 - 1972 by Alejandra Pizarnik. New York. 2016. New Directions. 9780811223966. Translated by Yvette Siegert. 384 pages. paperback. Translation of Extraccion de La Piedra de Locura (Colección Visor de poesía).

9780811223966 DESCRIPTION - The first full-length collection in English by one of Latin America’s most significant twentieth-century poets. Revered by the likes of Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño, Alejandra Pizarnik is still a hidden treasure in the U.S. Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972 comprises all of her middle to late work, as well as a selection of posthumously published verse. Obsessed with themes of solitude, childhood, madness and death, Pizarnik explored the shifting valences of the self and the border between speech and silence. In her own words, she was drawn to "the suffering of Baudelaire, the suicide of Nerval, the premature silence of Rimbaud, the mysterious and fleeting presence of Lautréamont,” as well as to the “unparalleled intensity” of Artaud’s “physical and moral suffering.”.

Pizarnik Alejandra AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Flora Alejandra Pizarnik (29 April 1936 – 25 September 1972) was an Argentine poet. Her idiosyncratic and thematically introspective poetry has been considered "one of the most unusual bodies of work in Latin American literature", and has been recognized and celebrated for its fixation on "the limitation of language, silence, the body, night, the nature of intimacy, madness, [and] death". Pizarnik studied philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires and worked as a writer and a literary critic for several publishers and magazines. She lived in Paris between 1960 and 1964, where she translated authors such as Antonin Artaud, Henri Michaux, Aimé Césaire and Yves Bonnefoy. She also studied history of religion and French literature at the Sorbonne. Back in Buenos Aires, Pizarnik published three of her major works: Works and Nights, Extracting the Stone of Madness, and The Musical Hell as well as a prose work titled The Bloody Countess. In 1969 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and later, in 1971, a Fulbright Fellowship. On 25 September 1972, she died by suicide after ingesting an overdose of secobarbital. Her work has influenced generations of authors in Latin America.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón. Brooklyn. 2024. Archipelago Books. 9781953861863. Translated by Robin Myers. 72 pages. paperback.

9781953861863 DESCRIPTION - A wise, visionary debut on ecological and human resistance, perfect for readers of Joy Harjo and Tracy K. Smith, and fans of the earth-body artwork of Ana Mendieta The Brush is an incantatory, fearless exploration of collective trauma - and its horrific relevance in today's Colombia, where mass killings continue. Told from the voices Pablo, Ester, and the Brush itself, Hernández-Pachón's poem is an astounding response to a traumatic event in recent Colombian history: the massacre in the village of El Salado between February 16 and 21, 2000. Paramilitary forces tortured and killed sixty people, interspersing their devastating violence with music in the town square. Pablo Rodríguez steps thirteen paces out into the night and buries a wooden box. Its contents: a chain, a medallion, a few overexposed photographs, and finally, a deed. He burrows into the ground without knowing quite why, but with the certainty of a heavy change pressing through the air, of fear settling "like a cat in his throat." Meanwhile, his wife Ester - a sharpshooter and keeper of all village secrets - slips into her fifth dream of the night. As Ester tosses and Pablo pats his fresh mound of earth, another character emerges in Eliana Hernández-Pachón's vivid and prophetic triptych. The Brush is a tangled grove, a thicket of vines, an orchid pummeled with rain. It is also an extraordinary depiction of ecological resistance, of the natural world that both endures human cruelty and lives on in spite of it.

Hernandez Pachon Eliana AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eliana Hernández-Pachón researches contemporary Latin American literature and visual art, gender studies, and environmental humanities. She received a BA in Anthropology from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. The Brush received the Colombia National Poetry Prize in 2020.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 5

The Labyrinth by Jens Baggesen. New York. 2025. Oxford University Press. 9780192898517. Oxford World's Classics. 1 black-and-white map. Translated by Jesper Gulddal. Edited by Henrik Blicher. 512 pages. paperback.

9780192898517 DESCRIPTION - Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth (1792-93) is a genre-bending and highly personal travel book that follows the young Danish author's journey, made in 1789, from Copenhagen through Germany to the Swiss border at Basel. In its outer form, it follows the conventions of travel writing: describing the cities, landscapes, and notable people encountered on the route, while also offering critical commentary on art, architecture, theatre, and literature, mixed with reactions to the unfolding French Revolution. However, Baggesen finds contemporary travel writing to be pedantic and dry and is determined to make his own account as engaging and personal as possible. Based on the principle that 'nothing is more necessary in a volume of travels than a traveller', the narrative eschews a focus on prescribed sights and instead foregrounds his individual responses to the places and people he encounters. Baggesen's account of his journey is not simply sentimental, but rather moves through an array of different, often conflicting affective and intellectual register: from dejection to wit, whimsy, and ebullient joy, including enchanted observations of nature as well as cosmopolitan reveries about the brotherhood of nations. Similarly, the prose style of the book---always acknowledged as a key feature--is determinedly eclectic. A richly varied compendium of literary styles, attitudes, and philosophical ideas, brought to life in a new English translation by Jesper Gulddal, The Labyrinth offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an endlessly thinking, feeling, and imagining traveller at a pivotal moment in European history.

Baggesen Jens AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jens Immanuel Baggesen (15 February 1764 – 3 October 1826) was a major Danish poet, librettist, critic, and comic writer. "Baggesen's Oak" (Baggesens Eg) at Christianssæde manor on Lolland in Denmark, which inspired the poet's Landforvandlingen. Baggesen was born at Korsør on the Danish island of Zealand on February 15, 1764. His parents were very poor, and he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of Hornsherred District before he was twelve. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and he attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education; in 1782, he entered the University of Copenhagen. His first work—a verse Comical Tales broadly similar to the later Broad Grins of Colman the Younger—took the capital by storm and the struggling poet found himself a popular favorite at age 21. He left Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in Germany, France, and Switzerland. In 1790, he married at Bern and began to write in German. He published his next poem Alpenlied ("Alpine Song") in that language, but brought the Danish Labyrinten ("Labyrinth") as a peace offering upon his return to Denmark in the winter. It was received with unbounded homage. Over the next twenty years, he published volumes alternately in Danish and German and wandered across northern Europe before settling principally in Paris. His most important German work during this period was the 1803 idyllic hexameter epic called Parthenais. Upon his 1806 visit to Copenhagen, he found the young Oehlenschläger hailed as the great poet of the day and his own popularity on the wane. He then stayed, engaging in one abusive literary feud after another, most with the underlying issue that Baggesen was determined not to allow Oehlenschläger to be considered a greater poet than himself. He finally left for Paris in 1820, where he lost his second wife and youngest child in 1822. Suffering a period of imprisonment for his debts, he fell at last into a hopeless melancholy madness. Having slightly recovered, he determined to see Denmark once more, but died en route at the Freemasons' hospital in Hamburg on October 3, 1826. He was buried at Kiel.

Jesper Gulddal is Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Holding a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen, he has published books, edited collections, and journal articles on European literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing particularly on intercultural perceptions and questions of mobility and movement control. Most recently, he has helped develop a new global approach to crime fiction. He is also an experienced translator between Danish, German, and English. Henrik Blicher is Associate Professor in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. A literary historian specialising in Danish literature 1600-1900, his work focuses particularly on textual scholarship and editing. In addition to edited books and numerous journal articles, his publications include an acclaimed Danish edition of Jens Baggesen's The Labyrinth. He is also the editor of the complete works of Danish Romantic poet A.W. Schack von Staffeldt.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles, and Speeches, 1998-2003 by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2011. New Directuons. 9780811218146. Edited by Ignacio Echevarria. Translated by Natasha Wimmer. 390 pages. hardcover. Cover by Rodrigo Corral Design. Originally published in Spanish as Entre parentesis.

9780811218146 DESCRIPTION - Between Parentheses collects most of the newspaper columns and articles Bolaño wrote during the last five years of his life, as well as the texts of some of his speeches and talks and a few scattered prologues. “Taken together,” as the editor Ignacio Echevarría remarks in his introduction, they provide “a personal cartography of the writer: the closest thing, among all his writings, to a kind of fragmented ‘autobiography.’” Bolaño’s career as a nonfiction writer began in 1998, the year he became famous overnight for The Savage Detectives; he was suddenly in demand for articles and speeches, and he took to this new vocation like a duck to water. Cantankerous, irreverent, and insufferably opinionated, Bolaño also could be tender (about his family and favorite places) as well as a fierce advocate for his heroes (Borges, Cortázar, Parra) and his favorite contemporaries, whose books he read assiduously and promoted generously. A demanding critic, he declares that in his “ideal literary kitchen there lives a warrior”: he argues for courage, and especially for bravery in the face of failure. Between Parentheses fully lives up to his own demands: “I ask for creativity from literary criticism, creativity at all levels.”

Bolaño Roberto Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile. At fifteen, he moved with his family to Mexico and there became a Trotskyite and a journalist. In 1973, he returned to Chile and enlisted in Allende’s party but was imprisoned for a week after the military coup. He then went to El Salvador, where he knew the poet Roque Dalton, then to Mexico, and finally Spain where he worked as a dishwasher, waiter, night watchman, garbageman, longshoreman, and salesman until the 80’s when he could make enough money to support himself by writing, and publishing. In 1999 he won the extremely prestigious Herralde & el Rómulo Gallego Award, considered the Latin American Nobel Prize (García Márquez and Vargas Llosa have been other winners.) He died of liver failure in Barcelona, and is survived by his wife and two children.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 3

The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite by Chinweizu. New York. 1975. Vintage Books. 0394715225. 521 pages. paperback. V-522.

0394715225 DESCRIPTION - The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite is a 1975 non-fiction work by Nigerian critic Chinweizu. It originated as his doctoral dissertation at State University of New York in Buffalo (SUNY) and was self-published following academic disputes; he later received his PhD after publication. The book provides a sweeping critique of five centuries of Western imperialism and the complicity of African elites in perpetuating neo-colonial structures. Chinweizu earned a PhD in philosophy in 1976, after walking away from his SUNY dissertation and publishing it independently as The West and the Rest of Us in 1975. The work was later republished by NOK Publishers in Nigeria (1978) and Pero Press (1987), expanding the original text. The book critiques Western imperialism, tracing its impact on Africa and other colonised regions over five centuries. Chinweizu identifies how African political elites enabled domination by mimicking Western institutions and ideologies. He calls for epistemological decolonisation and autonomous development by learning from non-Western models such as Japan, China and Russia. 's key arguments are that Western powers are “predators” enslaving and economically exploiting Africa, and that African elites served as “black slavers” by sustaining neocolonial dependency. While under-recognised in mainstream Western academia, the 2023 African Studies Review described it as a “testament to his profound engagement with global geopolitics and cultural dynamics” and praised its critique of African elites. It remains influential in post-colonial and Afrocentric studies across the Global South.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Chinweizu Ibekwe (born 26 March 1943), known mononymously as Chinweizu, and also by the pen-name Maazi Chinweizu, is a Nigerian critic, essayist, poet, and journalist. While studying in the United States during the Black Power movement, Chinweizu became influenced by the philosophy of the Black Arts Movement. He is commonly associated with Black orientalism and emerged as one of the leading figures in contemporary Nigerian journalism, writing a highly influential column in The Guardian of Lagos. Chinweizu was born in 1943 in the town of Eluoma, in Isuikwuato, in the part of Eastern Region of Nigeria that is known today as Abia State, located in the southeastern region of Nigeria. He was educated at Government Secondary School, Afikpo in Ebonyi State, and later attended college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studied philosophy and mathematics, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in 1967, the year of the outbreak of civil war in Nigeria, which lasted two and a half years. At the time living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Chinweizu founded and edited the Biafra Review (1969–70). He enrolled for a Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Buffalo, under the supervision of political scientist Claude E. Welch Jr. Chinweizu apparently had a disagreement with his dissertation committee and walked away with his manuscript, which he got published as The West and the Rest of Us: White Predators, Black Slavers, and the African Elite by Random House in 1975. He took the book to SUNY, Buffalo, where he demanded, and was promptly awarded, his Ph.D. in 1976, one year after he had published the dissertation. Thus, the publication settled his disagreement with his advisers in his favour. Chinweizu started teaching overseas, at MIT and San Jose State University. He had returned to Nigeria by the early 1980s, working over the years as a columnist for various newspapers in the country and also working to promote Black orientalism in Pan-Africanism. In Nigeria, he became a literary critic, attacking what he saw as the elitism of some Nigerian authors, particularly Wole Soyinka, and he was editor of the Nigerian literary magazine, Okike. Chinweizu's notable intervention on this theme came in the essay "The Decolonization of African Literature" (later expanded into the 1983 book Toward the Decolonization of African Literature), to which Soyinka responded in an essay entitled "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition". Among Chinweizu's other works is Anatomy of Female Power, in which he discusses gender roles, masculinity and feminism. Chinweizu has argued that the Arab colonization and Islamization of Africa is no different from European imperialism. The violent conquests, forced conversions and slavery perpetrated by European Christians were also perpetrated by Arab Muslims. In fact, the colonization and enslavement of Africa by Arabs began before the Europeans and continues to this day in Sudan, Mauritania and other countries in the Sahel region. Recently he published a comparative digest that shows the parallel history of European and Arab atrocities against indigenous Africans. He has been critical of the popular illusion that Islam is free of slavery and racism. Islam and Arabian culture are just as much foreign invasive forces as Christianity and European culture.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 6

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. New York. 1969. Ace. 286 pages. paperback. 47800. Cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

ace left hand of darkness 47800 DESCRIPTION - The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Published in 1969, it became immensely popular and established Le Guin's status as a major author of science fiction. The novel is set in the fictional universe of the Hainish Cycle, a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin, which she introduced in the 1964 short story "The Dowry of Angyar". It was fourth in writing sequence among the Hainish novels, preceded by City of Illusions and followed by The Word for World Is Forest. The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai's mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a limited understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed sex; this situation has a strong influence on the planet's culture, and it creates a barrier of understanding for Ai. The Left Hand of Darkness was among the first books in the genre now known as feminist science fiction, and it is described as the most famous examination of androgyny in science fiction.[8] A major theme of the novel is the effect of sex and gender on culture and society, explored particularly through the relationship between Ai and Estraven, a Gethenian politician who trusts and helps Ai. When the book was first published, the gender theme touched off a feminist debate over the depiction of the ambisexual Gethenians. The novel also explores the interaction between the unfolding loyalties of its two main characters; the loneliness and rootlessness of Ai; and the contrast between the religions of Gethen's two major nations. The Left Hand of Darkness has been reprinted more than 30 times, and it has received high praise from reviewers. In 1970, it was awarded the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel by fans and writers, respectively. Of the novel's impact, the literary critic Harold Bloom wrote, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". The scholar Donna White wrote that the book was a seminal work of science fiction, comparing it to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.

Le Guin Ursula K Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) was an American novelist. She worked mainly in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. She also authored children's books, short stories, poetry, and essays. Her writing was first published in the 1960s and often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography. In 2016, The New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer", although she said that she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist". She influenced Booker Prize winners and other writers, such as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell, and science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2003, she was made a Grandmaster of Science Fiction, one of a few women writers to take the top honor in the genre.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 3

The Life of Herod the Great by Zora Neale Hurston. New York. 2025. Amistad. 9780063161009. 339 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: Akindele John. Jacket design: Stephen Brayda.

9780063161009 DESCRIPTION - A never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great—not the villain the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision. In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod “appears to have been singled out and especially endowed to attract the lightning of fate,” Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new. Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston shared her findings about Herod’s rise, his reign, and his waning days in letters to friends and associates. Text from three of these letters concludes the manuscript in an intimate way. Scholar-Editor Deborah Plant’s "Commentary: A Story Finally Told" assesses Hurston’s pioneering work and underscores Hurston’s perspective that the first century BCE has much to teach us and that the lens through which to view this dramatic and stirring era is the life and times of Herod the Great.

Hurston Zora Neale

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage remain unparalleled. Her many books include DUST TRACKS ON A ROAD; THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD; JONAH'S GOURD VINE; MOSES, MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN; MULES AND MEN; and EVERY TONGUE GOT TO CONFESS.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

A Hell of a Woman by Jim Thompson. Berkeley. 1984. Black Lizard Books. 0916870774. 183 pages. paperback. Cover art by Nancy MacGregor. Originally published by Lion in 1954.

0916870774 DESCRIPTION - Young, beautiful, and fearfully abused, Mona was the kind of girl even a hard man like Dillon couldn't bring himself to use. But when Mona told him about the vicious aunt who had turned her into something little better than a prostitute - and about the money the old lady has stashed away - Dillon found it surprisingly easy to kill for her.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

The Kill-Off by Jim Thompson. New York. 1957. Lion Library. Paperback Original. 192 pages. paperback. 142. Cover by William Rose.

kill off lion 142 DESCRIPTION - Like a shroud the evil wound itself about the tiny New England town that year - unleashing long-buried secrets and distorted passions - laying bare the violence at its decadent core . . . And here with merciless realism Jim Thompson unravels the web of murder which that evil spun - and strips to nakedness the deadly potential of the human spirit.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 4

Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson. Greenwich. 1964. Fawcett/Gold Medal. 143 pages. paperback. k1438.

pop 1280 gold medal k1438 DESCRIPTION - 1277 of the citizens were just plain folk - thieves, simpletons, cheats. It was the other 3 - Myra, Amy, and Rose - who made Pottsville the hottest town this side of the Equator. As high sheriff of Potts County, Nick Corey spends most of his time eating, sleeping and avoiding trouble. If only people - especially some troublesome pimps, his foul-tempered wife, and his half-witted brother-in-law - would stop pushing him around. Because when Nick is pushed, he begins to kill . . . or to make others do his killing for him!

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 195

Broken by Jon Atli Jonasson. Stubbington. 2025. Corylus Books. 9781739298999. Translated by Quentin Bates. by Bruce Sterling. 252 pages. hardcover. Cover photograph: Shutterstock Cover design: kid-ethic.

9781739298999 DESCRIPTION - Two broken cops. One irretrievably damaged and the other an outcast. Dóra struggles to cope with life after taking a bullet to the head. Rado is the child of refugees, his career shunted off the tracks due to his family connections to an organised crime gang. But they’re the only ones available when a troubled teenager vanishes from a school trip, and the trail gets darker the further they pursue it. Broken takes place in a side of Reykjavík no visitor would ever want to see, as the mismatched pair tread on all the wrong toes in the search for the missing youngster. This takes place against the backdrop of a vicious vendetta and price on Dóra’s head. A brutal turf war embroils Rado’s family as he and Dóra follow the threads of corruption higher and higher, to the top of the exclusive apartment block on the outskirts of the city. The first novel by award-winning screenwriter Jón Atli Jónasson to appear in English, Broken is the first of a razor-edged crime trilogy shot through with black humour and characters who leap off the page.

Jonasson Jon Atli AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jón Atli Jónasson (born 1972 in Reykjavík) is an Icelandic playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been performed in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Athens. He has written several scripts for film, most notably The Deep, produced by 101 Studios Iceland, based on his own play. It was shortlisted for The 85th Academy Awards for best foreign feature 2015. Jón Atli has been nominated for The Nordic film price on three occasions. He was chosen the Nordic Radio Dramatist in 2011. Jón Atli has also written three novels, a short story compilation and a novella. His serialized radio drama based on the Guðmundur and Geirfinnur case (Iceland's most notorious criminal case) won third price at Prix Europa in 2017. His latest work is the crime novel, Breathless, published by Storyte Iceland. Jón Atli co-wrote the first season of the crime TV. series Arctic Circle (Ivalo) in 2017 which was produced by Yellow film in Finland, Bavaria Films in Germany. Jón Atli has various projects in different stages of development for example with Warner Brothers TV in Germany and Turbine Studios in the U.K.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 244

Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. Boston. 1984. David Godine. 0879235209. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 201 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Teresa Fasolino. Jacket calligraphy by Richard Lipton. Author photograph by Jerry Bauer.

0879235209 DESCRIPTION - ‘The story I am going to tell begins on a night the police violated the Constitution . . . ‘ From this opening sentence, it is clear we are in Ibarguengoitia country, a world of seduction, repression, deception, and, surprisingly, humor. Marcos, a Mexico City radical, is on the run, escaping the anti-terrorist net. He heads for the provincial town of Muerdago and the home of his rich invalid uncle, Ramon Tarragona. To the intense suspicion of his cousins, all of whom are counting on the riches the old man's death will bring, Marcos is welcomed with open arms by Ramon. And there are other arms in the household even more welcoming. So begins a game of bluff and counter-bluff in which nothing is ever what it seems, a dangerous game in which the two crimes the title leads us to expect become more inevitable with each move. TWO CRIMES is a thriller, and an exciting one, but it is more than that as well: a novel of greed and passion, told with the dark, laconic irony that marks this most original of writers. ‘A writer of genuine, exciting originality. - SALMAN RUSHDIE, author of SHAME and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN.

In paperback:

Two Crimes by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. New York. 1985. Avon/Bard. 0380896168. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 197 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - ‘LIFE HAS HANDED ME A SCREWING' - So young radical Marcos Gonzalez, alias El Negro, often lamented. Plus he was fast learning that one thing could get him in deeper trouble than his politics. Women. Politics had made him a fugitive, running for his life from the Mexico City police to the home of a rich uncle in a provincial town. But three women-each with irresistible charms - would trap him in a dangerous game of greed and passion, bluff and counterbluff, where nothing was as it seemed. except murder. ‘A clever, fast-clipped, extraordinarily subtle novel of intrigue and murder. . . and an unsettling account of political repression and revolution, whose mirror image is reflected in the deadly love and power struggles of a single doomed family.' - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY. . . ‘As in DEAD GIRLS, Ibarguengoitia has once again managed to transmit the particular flavor of provincial Mexico's brand of sanity.' - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE.

Ibarguengoitia Jorge AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Ibargüengoitia Antillon (Guanajuato, Mexico, January 22, 1928 - Madrid, November 27, 1983), was a Mexican novelist and playwright who achieved great popular (though not always critical) success with his satires, three of which have appeared in English: Las Muertas (The Dead Girls), Dos Crimenes (Two Crimes), and Los Relámpagos de Agosto (The Lightning of August). His plays include Susana y los Jovenes and Ante varias esfinges, both dating from the 1950s. In 1955, Ibarguengoitia received a Rockefeller grant to study in New York City; five years later he received the Mexico City literary award. Often, in his fiction, he took real-life scandals and subjected them to whimsical, sardonic treatment. Thus, Los Relámpagos de Agosto (1964) uses cartoonish mayhem to debunk the Mexican Revolution's heroic myths; improbably it won for its author the Premio Casa de las AmEricas, despite or because of the consternation which its flippancy caused. For Las Muertas (1977) he turned to the most outrageous criminals of his native state: the brothel-keepers Delfina & María de Jesús González, whose decade-long careers as serial killers emerged in 1964. Ibarguengoitia himself met a tragic end, on what became one of the blackest days in Latin American artistic history: having visited Paris, he perished (along with Peruvian poet Manuel Scorza, Uruguayan critic Angel Rama, Argentinian academic Martha Traba, and 176 others) in the Madrid air disaster of November 1983. La ley de Herodes (1967) is a collection of short stories, most of which are clearly based on details from his own life. He describes, among many other events, the misadventures of getting a mortgage in Mexico and his experiences at Columbia University's International House. Like his novels, these stories combine farce, sexual peccadilloes, and humor. ‘Las Ruinas que Ves' is a farce based on realistic details of academic life that are still visible in early 21st century Guanajuato: the clanging of church bells disconcerting a speaker, cutting the ribbon at museum openings, the set of cultural movers and shakers who have known each other since kindergarten. ‘Maten al Leon' although set on an imaginary island is another novel mirroring Guanajuato (or perhaps Mexican) society; its details are comic but the end is dark. Ibarguengoitia was also known for his weekly columns in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior which have been collected in a half dozen paperback volumes. His novels are also available in paperback. The writer has been quoted as saying he never meant to make anyone laugh, that he thought laughter was useless and a pointless waste of time. He is buried in Antillon Park in Guanajuato where a talavera plaque marks his remains. In translation, it says simply, ‘Here lies Jorge Ibarguengoitia in the park of his great-grandfather who fought against the French.'

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 262

The Lightning of August by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. New York. 1986. Avon/Bard. 0380896176. Paperback Original. Translated from the Spanish by Irene Del Corral. 117 pages. paperback.

0380896176 DESCRIPTION - THE UNEXPURGATED MEMOIRS OF A TRUTHFUL MAN . . . Major General Lupe Arroyo prided himself on being a man of integrity. Not above stealing or killing or extortion or betrayal. But truthful about it, because all he did was for the glory of the revolution (or, when necessary, to save his own neck). The year is 1928; the country is Mexico; and the revolution about to take place becomes, in the general's account, an uproarious farce of allegiances changing paces as fast as musical chairs, of battles won by bumbling, of power grabbed at any cost. But as his tale begins to reflect an unmistakable reality, our laughter at Jorge Ibarguengoitia's masterful mock epic suddenly catches in the throat-for this is political truth that penetrates our heart with the sureness of a stiletto. TRANSLATED BY IRENE DEL CORRAL.

The Lightning of August by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. London. 1986. Chatto & Windus. 0701139501. Translated from the Spanish by Irene Del Corral. 117 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by John Clementson.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 195

The Dead Girls by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. New York. 1983. Avon/Bard. 0380816121. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. Paperback Original. 156 pages. paperback.

0380816121 DESCRIPTION - ‘THE INCIDENTS ARE REAL, THE CHARACTERS ARE IMAGINARY' - Jorge Ibarguengoitia. In January, 1963, the bodies of six young prostitutes were found buried in the backyard of a brothel owned and operated by a middle-aged woman and her sister. These two women were convicted of murder and sent to prison. THE DEAD GIRLS reconstructs the dark comedy of errors that led these sisters to commit murder and to involve nearly everyone in the small Mexican village in which they lived. Set against a rich backdrop of zany local characters and folklore, the story of these two women and the human degradation they practiced with impunity for years is also the story of what can happen to people who come into a world riddled with injustice and have no alternative but to survive the best way they can.

The Dead Girls by Jorge Ibarguengoitia. London. 1983. Chatto & Windus. 0701126876. Translated from the Spanish by Asa Zatz. 156 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Frida Kahlo - 'Thinking of Death'.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 196

The Emperor of the Amazon by Marcio Souza. New York. 1980. Avon/Bard. 0380762404. Translated from the Portuguese by Thomas Colchie. 190 pages. paperback.

0380762404 DESCRIPTION - THE LAST EXOTIC ADVENTURER - Dom Luiz Galvez, turn of the century Brazilian journalist, escapes from a married woman's bedroom window one evening and inadvertently saves the life of the Bolivian ambassador. With one fortuitous leap info the political arena, his life is changed forever. In an exotic jungle landscape, under the shadow of a diamond-studded opera house and the watchful imperialist eye of the U.S. government, Galvez becomes a revolutionary. With his three mistresses - a beautiful Latin blue blood, an amorous Catholic nun, and a temperamental French opera singer - Galvez voyages into the heart of an uncharted rubber kingdom to become mighty Emperor of the Amazon. Marcio Souza's bawdy epic tale about the briefest and most orgiastic reign in the history of revolution, marks the American debut of one of the most brilliant, controversial young writers in Latin America today.

Souza Marcio AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MARCIO SOUZA was born in 1946 in Manaus, the Amazon region of Brazil. He began writing film criticism for newspapers when he was fourteen years old. He studied social sciences at the University of Sao Paulo. THE EMPEROR OF THE AMAZON, his first novel, was an extraordinary bestseller in Brazil and was serialized in a major Paris newspaper. Its pointed critique of Amazonian society cost him job with the Ministry of Culture. In 1967 he published a collection of film writings under the title Mostrador de Sombras (Show of Shadows). Souza is also a filmmaker and a dramatist. As a playwright, he works with Teatro Experimental do Sesc Amazonas, an important group fighting for the preservation and defense of the Amazon. His second novel, MAD MARIA, is also available from Avon/Bard Books in a translation by Thomas Colchie.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 237

The Murderbot Novels by Martha Wells:

murderbot novels

________________________________________________

9780765397539 All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2017. Tor Publishing Group. 9780765397539. 153 pages. paperback. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence. “As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.” In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid―a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is. But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

________________________________________________

Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250186928. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - It has a dark past―one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue. What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

________________________________________________

Rogue Protocol: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250191786. 159 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - Starring a human-like android who keeps getting sucked back into adventure after adventure, though it just wants to be left alone, away from humanity and small talk. Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas? Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission. The case against the too-big-to-fail GrayCris Corporation is floundering, and more importantly, authorities are beginning to ask more questions about where Dr. Mensah's SecUnit is. And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good. "I love Murderbot!"--New York Times bestselling author Ann Leckie.

________________________________________________

Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2018. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250191854. 172 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah―its former owner (protector? friend?)―submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?

________________________________________________

Network Effect: A Murderbot Novel. New York. 2020. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250229861. 351 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century. ‘I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.’ When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.

________________________________________________

Fugitive Telemetry: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2021. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250765376. 168 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - The security droid with a heart (though it wouldn't admit it!) is back in Fugitive Telemetry! Having captured the hearts of readers across the globe (Annalee Newitz says it's "one of the most humane portraits of a nonhuman I've ever read") Murderbot has also established Martha Wells as one of the great SF writers of today. No, I didn't kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn't dump the body in the station mall. When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people―who knew?) Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans! Again!

________________________________________________

System Collapse: The Murderbot Diaries. New York. 2023. Tor Publishing Group. 9781250826978. 245 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Jaime Jones. Jacket design by Christine Foltzer.

DESCRIPTION - Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

________________________________________________

If you have not seen it, Murderbot on Apple TV is definitely worth watching!

Wells Martha Martha Wells (born September 1, 1964) is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of science fiction and fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on SF/F subjects; her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology. She has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. Wells is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 284

Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams. New York. 2025. Amistad. 9780063011977. 355 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Jack Mitchell. Jacket design by Sarah Kellogg.

9780063011977 DESCRIPTION - An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature. A multifaceted genius, Toni Morrison transcended her role as an author, helping to shape an important period in American publishing and literature as an editor at one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses. While Toni Morrison's literary achievements are widely celebrated, her editorial work is little known. Drawing on extensive research and firsthand accounts, this comprehensive study discusses Morrison's remarkable journey from her early days at Random House to her emergence as one of its most important editors. During her tenure in editorial, Morrison refashioned the literary landscape, working with important authors, including Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and empowering cultural icons such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali to tell their stories on their own terms. Toni Morrison herself had great enthusiasm about Dana Williams's work on this story, generously sharing memories and thoughts with the author over the years, even giving her the book's title. From the manuscripts she molded, the authors she nurtured, and the readers she inspired, Toni at Random demonstrates how Toni Morrison has influenced American culture beyond the individual titles or authors she published. Morrison’s contribution as an editor transformed the broader literary landscape and deepened the cultural conversation. With unparalleled insight and sensitivity, Toni at Random charts this editorial odyssey.

Williams Dana A AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dana A. Williams is Professor of African American literature and Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. She is former president of the College Language Association and the Modern Languages Association, and is the author of In the Light of Likeness—Transformed: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest. She is also the editor of several books. Her work has been published in prestigious journals, including PMLA, CLA Journal, African American Review, Early American Literature, American Literary History, and the Langston Hughes Review. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She co-directs the Center for Medical Humanities and Health Justice, a Mellon Foundation-funded collaboration between Howard and Georgetown universities. Williams lives in Maryland.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Details: Category: Favorites; Hits: 216

The Suicides by Antonio Di Benedetto. New York. 2025. New York Review Books. 9781681378862. Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen. 165 pages. paperback. Cover image: Vivian Maier, ‘Untitled’, August 1975. Cover design: Katy Homens.

9781681378862 DESCRIPTION - A reporter embarks on an investigation of a string of unconnected suicides—which then leads into an exploration of the phenomenon of suicide itself—in this elegant existential novel, the third and final volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation. A stymied reporter in his early thirties embarks on an investigation of three unconnected suicides. All he has to go on are photos of the faces of the dead. Other suicides begin to proliferate, while a colleague in the archives sends him historical justifications of self-murder by thinkers of all sorts: Diogenes, David Hume, Emile Durkheim, Margaret Mead. His investigation becomes an obsession, and he finds himself ever more attracted to its subject as it proceeds. The Suicides is the third volume of Antonio Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation, a touchstone for Roberto Bolaño and deemed “one of the culminating moments of twentieth-century fiction” by Juan José Saer. Following Zama (set during the eighteenth century) and The Silentiary (set during the 1950s), this final work takes place in a provincial city in the late 1960s, as Argentina plummets toward the “Dirty War.”

Benedetto Antonio di AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato. In 1976, during the military dictatorship of General Videla, di Benedetto was imprisoned and tortured. Released a year later, he went into exile in Spain, then returned home in 1984. He travelled widely and won numerous awards, but never acquired the worldwide fame of other Latin American writers, perhaps because his work was not translated to many languages. Esther Allen has translated Javier Marías, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernández, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Martí. She currently teaches at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant and two National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, and in 2006 was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

See if zenosbooks.com has any books for sale by this author

clipboard

Page 1 of 90

Start
Prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Next
End

zeno's picks

Favorites

Search