LITMIR.BIZ

Under the current cartographies of globalism, where frontiers mutate, vacillate, and mark the contiguity of discourse, questioning the Spanish border seems a particularly urgent task. The volume engages a wide spectrum of ambivalent regions—subjects that currently are, or have been seen in the past, as spaces of negotiation and contestation. However, they converge in their perception of the “Spanish” nation-space as a historical and ideological construct that is perpetually going through transformations and reformations. This volume advocates the position that intellectual responsibility must lead us to engage openly in the issues underlying current social and political tensions.

Подробнее

55th anniversary edition of great Canadian writer Hugh Hood’s first short story collection Hood was celebrated at the 2015 IFOA with a reading by the Montreal Story Tellers group he helped found Hood’s writings present a view of modern Canadian life that elevates everyday lives Stories deal with characters and situations where ordinary life embodies religious, philosophical, and allegorical themes Based on the original 1962 Ryerson Press edition Author co-founded the legendary Montreal Story Tellers group and was awarded the Order of Canada in 1988

Подробнее

Wind on the Waves is a collection of fifty-two stories that embody the beauty, mystery, and allure of Oregon’s magnificent coast. Written by award-winning author and poet Kim Stafford, these wonderfully written vignettes celebrate the people, towns, wildlife, culture, and natural beauty of one of America’s most rugged, beautiful, and enchanting coast lines. Wind on the Waves evokes the feelings of wonder and joy, the miracle of existence, the significance of humanity—and its insignificance compared to the power of the sea. Being open to the world is a gift—one which Kim Stafford has shared so well. These words from one of Oregon’s most influential writers are the song of life sung on the stage of the shore, and the wind, and the waves.

Подробнее

An anonymous writer stays up late into the night penning personal and inappropriate letters to a local public official. A new father and cook at a Montreal café chronicles the tyrannical rise of a new manager. An eccentric young student, in trying to carve out a space for herself, deals an existential blow to her roommate.  Dead Flowers  is a collection of stories featuring characters who have become estranged from the trajectory of their lives, yet must grapple with youth, love, isolation, drugs, friendship and the changing of seasons. These are stories of peripheral tragedies, moral ambivalence and compromise, chance and how we are shaped by what finds us.

Подробнее

The arrival in 2015 and 2016 of over one million asylum seekers and refugees in Germany had major social consequences and gave rise to extensive debates about the nature of cultural diversity and collective life. This volume examines the responses and implications of what was widely seen as the most significant and contested social change since German reunification in 1990. It combines in-depth studies based on anthropological fieldwork with analyses of the longer trajectories of migration and social change. Its original conclusions have significance not only for Germany but also for the understanding of diversity and difference more widely.

Подробнее

This comprehensive collection of Twain’s short stories showcases his immense talent, humor, and wit. Considered to be the greatest American humorist of all time, Mark Twain was born in 1835 and was raised in Hannibal, Missouri, where many of his most well-known stories take place. Twain led an adventurous life: working as a type setter for his brother’s newspaper as a young man, then as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi river, followed by a stint as a miner in Nevada and California, and then finally as a journalist and writer, where he found success and fame. These experiences would form the basis of many of his most famous tales, such as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog from Calaveras County,” the first story to bring him national attention and fame and was based on a tale he heard while mining in California. While Twain may be best known for his accomplishments as a novelist, this collection of short stories spanning his lengthy and prolific career showcases his brilliant ability to create fascinating characters, his expert plotting, and his unrivaled wit and humor. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

Подробнее

Distinguished by black comedy and an international perspective, Ken Kalfus' stories frequently fold into each other and are most often about the abrupt dislocation of people bumping into different cultures, be they real, hallucinated, dreamed, or desired. His characters — which include an endless line of refugees fleeing Sarajevo with no particular destination, an Irish au pair plagued by her own psychosexual fears in a Paris science museum, and an entirely fictitious baseball league — are constantly thumping their heads against a shifting reality. Kalfus' sympathetic portraits of human beings caught in the tectonic cultural shifts that disrupt our lives are frequently hilarious, consistently touching, and powerfully creative.

Подробнее

Kalfus plucks individual lives from the stew of a century of Russian history and serves them up in tales that range from hair-raising to comic to fabulous. The astonishing title story follows a doomed nuclear power plant worker as he hawks a most unusual package on the black market—a canister of weapons-grade plutonium. In “Orbit,” the first cosmonaut navigates several items not on the preflight checklist as he prepares to blaze the trail for the new communist society, “floating free of terrestrial compromise.” In “Budyonnovsk,” a young man hopes desperately that the takeover of his town by Chechen rebels will somehow save his marriage. Set in the 1920s, “Birobidzhan” is the bittersweet story of a Jewish couple journeying to the Soviet Far East, where they intend to establish the modern world’s first Jewish state. The novella, “Peredelkino,” which closes the book, traces the fortunes of a 1960s literary apparatchik whose romantic intrigues inadvertently become political.Together, these works of fiction capture the famously enigmatic Russian psyche. They display Kalfus’s ability to imagine a variety of believable yet wholly singular characters whose lives percolate against a backdrop of momentous events.

Подробнее

Подробнее

Today the Left faces new challenges from political forces amassing on the radical right. The 52nd volume of the Socialist Register presents a serious calibration and a careful political mapping of these forces. It addresses pivotal questions on the reordering of the new right. These essays – very broad in terms of themes and places – speak to the global challenges the new right poses for the left at this historical moment. * What is the nature of the right's populism, nationalism and militarism? * What is the social base and organizational strength and range of far right political forces? * To what extent are they influencing mainstream parties and opinion? * How have they penetrated state institutions?* What role do state security services and police forces play?* Does our political situation today require comparison with 1930s Fascism? * How should the left respond to defend democratic and human rights?

Подробнее