This up-to-date account of the novel's composition, structure, and achievement provides readers with the literary and historical knowledge needed to make sense of the text. Professor Bellos explains how Balzac challenged prevailing nineteenth-century expectations of what novels should be like.
This up-to-date account of the novel's composition, structure, and achievement provides readers with the literary and historical knowledge needed to m...
Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness.
Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a...
Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstandi...
The popular Parisian mystery by the international bestselling mystery writer, Fred Vargas, whom the French have hailed as the next Henning Mankell. In a small Parisian square, the ancient tradition of the town crier continues into modern times. The self-appointed crier, Joss Le Guern, reads out the daily news, snippets of gossip, and lately, ominous messages--placed in his handmade wooden message box by an anonymous source--that warn of an imminent onset of the bubonic plague. Concerned, Le Guern brings the puzzling notes to the bumbling but brilliant Chief Inspector Jean-Baptiste...
The popular Parisian mystery by the international bestselling mystery writer, Fred Vargas, whom the French have hailed as the next Henning Mankell.
A Frenchman of Russian origins, Jacques Tati worked as a picture-framer and a music-hall mime before being drawn into the world of the French cinema and making the films that rank him with the most popular comedy actor/directors in any country. He brought to his films"Jour de Fete, Monsieur Hulot's Holidays, Mon Oncle, Playtime" and othersa healthy openness to new technology in movie-making and a rigorous precision, the hallmark of many great clowns, in the execution of each scene. In this, the first complete, authoritative biography of the French icon, David Bellos has had the complete...
A Frenchman of Russian origins, Jacques Tati worked as a picture-framer and a music-hall mime before being drawn into the world of the French cinema a...
Ismail Kadare s The Siege dramatizes a relentless fictional assault on a Christian fortress in the Albanian mountains by the Ottoman Army in the fifteenth century. As the bloody and psychologically crushing struggle for control over the citadel unfolds, Kadare s newest work opens a window onto the eternal clash between religions and empires as well as the exhilaration, despair, and immediacy of the battlefield. Kadare is a hugely respected novelist and a hero to his people, as well as an outspoken critic of all forms of totalitarianism. The Siege is a powerfully atmospheric ....
Ismail Kadare s The Siege dramatizes a relentless fictional assault on a Christian fortress in the Albanian mountains by the Ottoman Army in th...
An NBCC Award and Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year
People speak different languages, and always have. The Ancient Greeks took no notice of anything unless it was said in Greek; the Romans made everyone speak Latin; and in India, people learned their neighbors' languages--as did many ordinary Europeans in times past (Christopher Columbus knew Italian, Portuguese, and Castilian Spanish as well as the classical languages). But today, we all use translation to cope with the...
An NBCC Award and Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 One of The Economist's 2011 Boo...
A long-lost French novel in which three soldiers return home from an unpopular, unspeakable war
When On Leave was published in Paris in 1957, as France's engagement in Algeria became ever more bloody, it told people things they did not want to hear. It vividly described what it was like for soldiers to return home from an unpopular war in a faraway place. The book received a handful of reviews, it was never reprinted, it disappeared from view. With no outcome to the war in sight, its power to disturb was too much to bear. Through David Bellos's translation,...
A long-lost French novel in which three soldiers return home from an unpopular, unspeakable war
30-year-old Albert returns to Paris after six years away, during which time his mother has passed away, to find himself entangled in a complicated case centred around a woman he met at a restaurant whose husband's body appears in her lounge, but then disappears almost inexplicably.
30-year-old Albert returns to Paris after six years away, during which time his mother has passed away, to find himself entangled in a complicated cas...