In this classic novel by the best-selling author of The Lover, erotic intrigue masks a chillingly deceptive form of madness. Elisabeth Alione is convalescing in a hotel in rural France when she meets two men and another woman. The sophisticated dalliance among the four serves to obscure an underlying violence, which, when the curtain of civilization is drawn aside, reveals in her fellow guests a very contemporary, perhaps even new, form of insanity. Like many of Duras's novels, Destroy, She Said owes much to cinema, displaying a skillful interplay of dialogue and description. There are...
In this classic novel by the best-selling author of The Lover, erotic intrigue masks a chillingly deceptive form of madness. Elisabeth Alione is conva...
Written in 1944 and first published in 1985, Duras s riveting account of life in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberation depicts the harrowing realities of World War II era France with a rich conviction enhanced by a] spare, almost arid, technique (Julian Barnes, The Washington Post Book World ). Duras, by then married and part of a French resistance network headed by Francois Mitterand, tells of nursing her starving husband back to health after his return from Bergen-Belsen, interrogating a suspected collaborator, and playing a game of cat and mouse...
Written in 1944 and first published in 1985, Duras s riveting account of life in Paris during the Nazi occupation and the first months of liberatio...
Starting in 1970, Jean Genet--petty thief, prostitute, modernist master--spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring. Prisoner of Love, written some ten years later, when many of the men Genet had known had been killed, and he himself was dying, is a beautifully observed description of that time and those men as well as a reaffirmation of the author's commitment not only to the Palestinian revolution but to rebellion itself. For...
Starting in 1970, Jean Genet--petty thief, prostitute, modernist master--spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast...
The true and fascinating origin story of Saudia Arabia. Ibn Saud grew to manhood living the harsh traditional life of the desert nomad, a life that had changed little since the days of Abraham. Equipped with immense physical courage, he fought and won--often with weapons and tactics not unlike those employed by the ancient Assyrians--a series of astonishing military victories over a succession of enemies much more powerful than himself. Over the same period, he transformed himself from a minor sheikh into a revered king and elder statesman, courted by world leaders such as...
The true and fascinating origin story of Saudia Arabia. Ibn Saud grew to manhood living the harsh traditional life of the desert nomad, a l...
The Glory of the Empire is the rich and absorbing history of an extraordinary empire, at one point a rival to Rome. Rulers such as Basil the Great of Onessa, who founded the Empire but whose treacherous ways made him a byword for infamy, and the romantic Alexis the bastard, who dallied in the fleshpots of Egypt, studied Taoism and Buddhism, returned to save the Empire from civil war, and then retired "to learn to die," come alive in The Glory of the Empire, along with generals, politicians, prophets, scoundrels, and others. Jean d'Ormesson also goes into the daily life of the...
The Glory of the Empire is the rich and absorbing history of an extraordinary empire, at one point a rival to Rome. Rulers such as Basil the Gr...
