General book blog.
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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Glyph: A Novel by Percival Everett. Saint Paul. 1999. Graywolf Press. 1555972969. 211 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Scott Sorenson. Cover photograph by Michael Crouser.
DESCRIPTION - With this wildly inventive new novel, Percival Everett has created his unlikeliest hero to date. Mute by choice, and able to read complex philosophical treatises and compose passable short stories while still in the crib, baby Ralph does not consider himself a genius - because he is unable to drive. Plenty of others, however, want a stake in this precocious child prodigy. Among the most fiendish are Dr. Steimmel, the psychiatrist to whom his bewildered parents first take him, and her assistant Boris; Dr. Davis and her illegal chimps; and not-so-sweet Nanna, the secret agent. All have plans for Ralph, and no one wants to share the poor infant who misses his mother and who does not take kindly to his new role as ‘Defense Stealth Operative.' Throughout the ensuing nation-wide chase of which he is the center, Ralph ponders on the theories of literary form - and comes to some surprising conclusions of his own that perhaps only a baby could dream up. A narrative to question narrative, a highly original analysis of analysis, Everett's tour de farce prompts one to acknowledge that his is the true genius.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has described himself as "pathologically ironic" and has played around with numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction. His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States. 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. His 2024 novel James, also a finalist for the Booker Prize, won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. 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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Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky. Boston. 1989. South End Press. 422 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - What role do the media play in a capitalist democracy? Based on the Massey Lectures, delivered in Canada in November 1 988, Necessary Illusions argues that, far from performing a watchdog role, the ‘free press' serves the needs of those in power. With this book, Chomsky rips away the mask of propaganda that portrays the media as advocates of free speech and democracy: In short, the major media are corporations ‘selling' privileged audiences to other businesses . . . Media concentration is high, and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media . . . belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values . . . Those who fail to conform will be weeded out... - from the Massey Lectures. This book applies the propaganda model Chomsky has developed with Edward Herman to media coverage of the diplomatic process in Central America and the Middle East, human rights issues, terrorism, and other topics, revealing the crucial function of the media and educated elites in limiting democracy in the United States. Rigorously documented, Necessary Illusions is an invaluable tool for understanding how democracy functions in the United States.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. Between 1980 and 1992, Chomsky was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar, and eighth overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the ‘world's top public intellectual' in a 2005 poll. Chomsky has also been described as the ‘father of modern linguistics' and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as ‘fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism,' and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
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Assumption: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2011. Graywolf Press. 9781555975982. 228 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.
DESCRIPTION - A baffling triptych of murder mysteries by the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman's murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt leads him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. In Assumption, his follow-up to the wickedly funny I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett is in top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other.
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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Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power by Maurice Latey. Middlesex. 1962. Pelican/Penguin Books. 0140214815. 381 pages. paperback. Cover design by Germano Facetti.
DESCRIPTION - We live in an age of tyrants. Modern technology concentrates unprecedented power in the hands of the absolute ruler, including possibly (with nuclear weapons) the power of life and death over the human race. Maurice Latey's purpose in this book is to describe tyranny as a special type of political phenomenon and to classify the stages and the manner by which tyrants gain, exercise and lose power. He does so by comparing the Hitlers and Stalins of our own age with the tyrants of the past, right back to those of ancient Greece. There emerges from his analysis recurrent patterns which have favoured the ambitions of tyrants: in the social, political and economic conditions of the times; in the personal psychology of the aspirants; in their methods of seizing and maintaining power. It is Maurice Latey's somber conclusion that, in this second half of the twentieth century, we require the utmost firmness in our exercise of democracy and our defence of individual values if we are to avoid a harsher tyranny than man has ever before experienced - the tyranny of technology, armaments and nationalism.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maurice Brinsmead Latey was born in 1915. He attended New College, Oxford, gaining second class honours in Classical Moderations in 1935, and a first in Lt Hum in 1937. He joined the BBC in 1939, and was Head of the East European Service 1959-1969, and later the BBC's chief commentator, External Affairs 1972-1975. He remained associated with the BBC until his death in 1991. Latey was the author of Tyranny: A Study in the Abuse of Power, published in 1969.
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God's Country by Percival Everett. Winchester. 1994. Faber & Faber. 0571198325. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lorna Stovall. Jacket photograph by David Levinthal.
DESCRIPTION - In his stunning new novel GOD'S COUNTRY Percival Everett offers a wickedly funny rewrite of the Great American Western. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. He has lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba. This odd couple is soon joined by Jake, a wayward child determined to join the hunt. As Jake and Marder follow Bubba across desolate, unsettled land, they meet Indians, settlers, and soldiers. Aiming to keep a low profile, they nevertheless find themselves in all kinds of trouble, including run-ins with a scurrilous preacher, a flamboyant prostitute, and General Custer in a nightgown. A natural coward, Marder only survives these incidents because of Bubba's reluctant heroism. However, even after their final, chilling exchange, Marder fails to realize that Bubba's secrets extend beyond his ability to track footprints on the prairie. GOD'S COUNTRY is hilarious and haunting by turns, a slam-bang parable of the way things were in 1871.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Leonard Everett II (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He has described himself as "pathologically ironic" and has played around with numerous genres such as western fiction, mysteries, thrillers, satire and philosophical fiction. His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States. 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. His 2024 novel James, also a finalist for the Booker Prize, won the Kirkus Prize and the National Book Award for Fiction. 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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American Desert by Percival Everett. New York. 2004. Hyperion. 0786869178. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Allison J. Warner.
DESCRIPTION - As AMERICAN DESERT opens, the novel's hero, Theodore Street, is driving toward the ocean, there he plans to walk into the waves and drown himself. But on his way, he is hit headlong by an oncoming van. He sails through the windshield, and although his face is unscratched and his bones unbroken, his head is sliced cleanly from his body. At his funeral three days later, he sits up in his coffin, the sloppy stitching that binds his head and body together clearly visible. The mourners are horrified by his resurrection, and the story makes instant headlines throughout the world. He becomes a source of fear and embarrassment to his daughter, an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press, a prized specimen for scientists, and Satan incarnate to an obscure religious cult. In this fascinating, satirical and wildly funny novel, critically acclaimed author Percival Everett wrestles with the assumptions of a culture whose priorities are out of whack, lampooning the press, religion, and academia, and offering, ultimately, a meditation on what it is to be alive. Written by a master storyteller and a keen social critic, AMERICAN DESERT is an enthralling novel that confirms Everett's place in the highest firmament of American letters.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - PERCIVAL EVERETT is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of fourteen previous novels, including ERASURE, GLYPH, FRENZY, THE BODY OF MARTIN AGUILERA, WATERSHED, AND WALK ME TO THE DISTANCE. He is a recent recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. He resides in California and British Columbia.
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Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric D. Weitz. Princeton. 2007. Princeton University Press. 9780691016955. 425 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - WEIMAR GERMANY still fascinates us, and now this complex and remarkably creative period and place has the history it deserves. Eric Weitz's new book reveals the Weimar era as a time of strikingly progressive achievements - and even greater promise. With a rich thematic narrative and detailed portraits of some of Weimar's greatest figures, this comprehensive history recaptures the excitement and drama as it unfolded, viewing Weimar in its own right - and not as a mere prelude to the Nazi era. WEIMAR GERMANY tells how Germans rose from the defeat of World War I and the turbulence of revolution to forge democratic institutions and make Berlin a world capital of avant-garde art. Setting the stage for this story, Weitz takes the reader on a walking tour of Berlin to see and feel what life was like there in the 1920s, when modernity and the modern city - with its bright lights, cinemas, ‘new women,' cabarets, and sleek department stores - were new. We learn how Germans enjoyed better working conditions and new social benefits and listened to the utopian prophets of everything from radical socialism to communal housing to nudism. WEIMAR GERMANY also explores the period's revolutionary cultural creativity, from the new architecture of Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut, and Walter Gropius to Hannah Höch's photomontages and Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's theater. Other chapters assess the period's turbulent politics and economy, and the recipes for fulfilling sex lives propounded by new ‘sexologists.' Yet WEIMAR GERMANY also shows how entrenched elites continually challenged Weimar's achievements and ultimately joined with a new
radical Right led by the Nazis to form a coalition that destroyed the republic. Thoroughly up-to-date, skillfully written, and strikingly illustrated, WEIMAR GERMANY brings to life as never before an era of creativity unmatched in the twentieth century-one whose influence and inspiration we still feel today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eric D. Weitz is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of A CENTURY OF GENOCIDE and CREATING GERMAN COMMUNISM, 1890-1990.
Weimar On the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism by Ehrhard Bahr. Berkeley. 2007. University of California Press. 9780520251281. 358 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals - including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg - who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, provided served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions. Weimar on the Pacific is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. Ehrhard Bahr studies selected works of Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Lang, Neutra, Schindler, Döblin, Mann, and Schoenberg, weighing Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Bahr shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Professor Ehrhard Bahr received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and has been a member of the UCLA faculty since 1966. He is an internationally distinguished expert on Goethe, and specializes not only in 18th- century German Literature, but also in 20th-century literature and Critical Theory. Professor Bahr has published over 200 scholarly articles and reviews, as well as books on Goethe, the Marxist theoretician Georg Lukács, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, and the poet Nelly Sachs. He has also produced editions of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister novels (1982) and a three-volume history of German literature (1987-88). His co-edited volume on the French Revolution, The Internalized Revolution, appeared in 1992. He is a past President of the interdisciplinary German Studies Association and of the Goethe Society of North America. An additional special interest of Ted Bahr's is German exile culture in Los Angeles between 1933 and 1955. Besides authoring scholarly studies in this area, he recently served as a consultant to the exhibition 'Degenerate Art': The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and at the Altes Museum in Berlin. Professor Bahr was also a consultant for the exhibition Exiles and Emigres at LACMA in 1997.
The Dilemma of a Ghost by Christina Ama Ata Aidoo. New York. 1971. Collier/Macmillan. Introduction by Karen C. Chapman. 93 pages. paperback. 01202.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
Ato Yawson, a young Ghanaian educated in the United States, returns home with his strong-willed Harlem-born wife, Eulalie, whom he married without telling his tradition-conscious family. Ato, in his ambivalence between twentieth-century black America and his African heritage, attempts to bridge the two worlds. Eulalie, bringing with her dreams of "belonging" to a heroic, hallowed land, painfully discovers that Africa is not all colorful birds and peaceful rhythms of deep, mysterious rivers. In these immediate clashes between the tribe and the individual, the “primitive” and the modern, Ato and Eulalie confront barriers and obstacles which time, custom, and culture have made nearly insurmountable. The Dilemma of a Ghost is a play classic in its dramatic construction, heeding all the principles of tragedy while going beyond the rise and fall of a single tragic hero to include the tragedy of community and culture unable to change or to understand.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, nee Christina Ama Aidoo (born 23 March 1940, Saltpond) is a Ghanaian author, playwright and academic.