This brilliant debut collection of stories by O. Henry Award winner John Biguenet is as notable for the rigor of its intellect as for the sweep of its imagination. Whether recounting the predicament of an atheistic stigmatic in "The Vulgar Soul" or a medieval torturer who must employ his terrible skills upon his own apprentice in the title tale, these stories decline to settle for ready sentiments or easy assurances.
Rather than add to the massive canon of the victimized, for example, "My Slave" takes the perspective of the victimizer. In "The Open Curtain," a man achieves intimacy...
This brilliant debut collection of stories by O. Henry Award winner John Biguenet is as notable for the rigor of its intellect as for the sweep of ...
With comparisons to Flaubert, Chekhov, and Faulkner, O. Henry Award-winner John Biguenet earned wide acclaim for his debut short-story collection, The Torturer's Apprentice. In his astonishing first novel, Oyster, he demonstrates the same mastery of craft and rigor of vision that led critics across the country to join Robert Olen Butler in praising this "important new writer."
Set on the Louisiana coast in 1957, Oyster recounts the engrossing tale of a deadly rivalry between two families. To avoid ruin after years of declining oyster crops, Felix and Mathilde Petitjean offer...
With comparisons to Flaubert, Chekhov, and Faulkner, O. Henry Award-winner John Biguenet earned wide acclaim for his debut short-story collection, ...
Written by some of the most distinguished literary translators working in English today, these essays offer new and uncommon insights into the understanding and craft of translation. The contributors not only describe the complexity of translating literature but also suggest the implications of the act of translation for critics, scholars, teachers, and students. The demands of translation, according to these writers, require both comprehensive scholarship in preparing to translate a text and broad creativity in recreating the text in a new language. Translation, thus, becomes a model for the...
Written by some of the most distinguished literary translators working in English today, these essays offer new and uncommon insights into the underst...
Spanning the centuries, from the seventeenth to the twentieth, and ranging across cultures, from England to Mexico, this collection gathers together important statements on the function and feasibility of literary translation. The essays provide an overview of the historical evolution in thinking about translation and offer strong individual opinions by prominent contemporary theorists. Most of the twenty-one pieces appear in translation, some here in English for the first time and many difficult to find elsewhere. Selections include writings by Scheiermacher, Nietzsche, Ortega, Benjamin,...
Spanning the centuries, from the seventeenth to the twentieth, and ranging across cultures, from England to Mexico, this collection gathers together i...
Widely praised by critics and hailed by audiences, the award-winning plays in John Biguenet's The Rising Water Trilogy examine the emotional toll of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Approaching the storm, the levee collapse, and subsequent socioeconomic catastrophe through the lives of three couples and their families, Biguenet conveys insights into the universal nature of trauma and feelings of loss with heart-wrenching intimacy and palliative humor.
Each play -- Rising Water, Shotgun, and Mold -- incorporates the structure of a house as it examines the anatomy of love, moving from...
Widely praised by critics and hailed by audiences, the award-winning plays in John Biguenet's The Rising Water Trilogy examine the emotional toll o...
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
What is silence? In a series of short meditations, novelist and playwright John Biguenet considers silence as a servant of power, as a lie, as a punishment, as the voice of God, as a terrorist's final weapon, as a luxury good, as the reason for torture-in short, as an object we both do and do not recognize. Concluding with the prospects for its future in a world burgeoning with noise, Biguenet asks whether we should desire or fear silence-or if it is even ours to...
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
