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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works
Etty Hillesum (1914-43) lived in Amsterdam, like Anne Frank, and like her she kept a diary. 'All the writings she left behind,' writes Eva Hoffman in her Preface to this edition of her diaries and letters, 'were composed in the shadow of the Holocaust, but they resist being read primarily in its dark light. Rather, their abiding interest lies in the light-filled mind that pervades them and in the astonishing internal journey they chart. Etty's pilgrimage grew out of the intimate experience of an intellectual young woman - it was idiosyncratic, individual, and recognisably modern...The private person who revealed herself in her diary was impassioned, erotically volatile, restless...Yet she had the kind of genius for introspection that converts symptoms into significance and joins self-examination to philosophical investigation...In the last stages of her amazing and moving journey, Etty seemed to attain that peace which passeth understanding...Finally, however, the violence and brutality she saw all around her overwhelmed even her capacity to understand...But by knowing and feeling so deeply and fully, an unknown young woman became one of the most exceptional and truest witnesses of the devastation through which she lived. '
First published in 1989. Mas'udi was born in Baghdad about 896 AD, during the Caliphate of Mu'tadid and died in Egypt sometime around the year 956, eleven years after the Buwaihids, a Shi'a dynasty of Iranian origin, had occupied Baghdad and taken control of the Caliphate. His full name was Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husain ibn Ali ibn Abd Allah al-Mas'udi and he was notable as a Muslim historian. His two major works wereMeadows of Gold (Muruj al-Dhahab) and the Book of Notification (Kitab al-Tanbih).
In October 1928 Virginia Woolf was asked to deliver speeches at Newnham and Girton Colleges on the subject of 'Women and Fiction'; she spoke about her conviction that 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. The following year, the two speeches were published as A Room of One's Own, and became one of the foremost feminist texts. Knitted into a polished argument are several threads of great importance - women and learning, writing and poverty - which helped to establish much of feminist thought on the importance of education and money for women's independence. In the same breath, Woolf brushes aside critics and sends out a call for solidarity and independence - a call which sent ripples well into the next century.
'Twenty-five years a teacher. I could have committed a double murder and been out by now.' Ever wondered what life is really like for today's teachers? Reasoning that it's either laugh or cry, this author does both while intoning a mantra of 'July, July, July' and praying for a minor heart attack in return for a foot in the door to early retirement. From fending off inspectors to dealing with the alarming rise in mental health issues and increasing alienation of young people, it's fair to say the job has never been more difficult. Written by an anonymous author working in a state secondary school, this uproariously funny, desperately necessary book takes us inside the classroom to see morale at rock-bottom and a system on its knees. Hilarious, heartbreaking and impassioned, Class War is about the importance of good schools and talented teachers at a time when they have never been more essential. Painting a heartfelt portrait of the profession and an education system where no one should be left behind but too many are, this book reveals there is laughter to be found even as a river of effluent is sluicing down the pipe.
The extraordinary life story of the celebrated artist and writer, as told through four decades of intimate letters to her beloved mother Barbara Chase-Riboud has led a remarkable life. After graduating from Yale's School of Design and Architecture, she moved to Europe and spent decades traveling the world and living at the center of artistic, literary, and political circles. She became a renowned artist whose work is now in museum collections around the world. Later, she also became an award-winning poet and bestselling novelist. And along the way, she met many luminaries-from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dali, Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, and Mao Zedong to Toni Morrison, Pierre Cardin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Josephine Baker. I Always Knew is an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud's life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. In candid detail, Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia. By turns brilliant and naive, passionate and tender, poignant and funny, these letters show Chase-Riboud in the process of becoming who she is and who she might become. But what emerges most of all is the powerful story of a unique and remarkable relationship between a talented, ambitious, and courageous daughter and her adored mother.
A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year 'Magnificent'The Times 'Dazzling' New Statesman 'It filled me with hope' Zadie Smith What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to 'always be optimising'? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation? Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist - a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF 2022 'Sparklingly sardonic ... There really is no one like Bennett' Independent 'Filled with elegiac memories and literary gossip ... a major National Treasure' Lynn Barber 4 March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. 20 March. With Rupert now working from home my life is much easier, as I get regular cups of tea and a lovely hot lunch. A year in and out of lockdown as experienced by Alan Bennett. The diary takes us from the filming of Talking Heads to thoughts on Boris Johnson, from his father's short-lived craze for family fishing trips, to stair lifts, junk shops of old, having a haircut, and encounters on the local park bench. A lyrical afterword describes the journey home to Yorkshire from King's Cross station via fish and chips on Quebec Street, past childhood landmarks of Leeds, through Coniston Cold, over the infant River Aire, and on.
From the author of dozens of #1 New York Times bestsellers and the
creator of many unforgettable movies comes a vivid, intelligent,
and nostalgic journey through three decades of horror as
experienced through the eyes of the most popular writer in the
genre. In 1981, years before he sat down to tackle On Writing,
Stephen King decided to address the topic of what makes horror
horrifying and what makes terror terrifying. Here, in ten
brilliantly written chapters, King delivers one colorful
observation after another about the great stories, books, and films
that comprise the horror genre--from Frankenstein and Dracula to
The Exorcist, The Twilight Zone, and Earth vs. The Flying Saucers.
Brief Encounters expands the vibrant field of shorts-as these sharply focused pieces have come to be known-with nearly eighty new selections: representing an impressive range of voices, perspectives, sensibilities and forms. From the rant to the rave, the meditation to the polemic, the confession to the valediction, this collection will enlarge your world.
When it comes to how societies commemorate their own distant dreams and catastrophes, we often think of books, archives, or memorials carved from stone. But in Time's Echo, Jeremy Eichler makes a revelatory case for the power of music as culture's memory, an art form uniquely capable of carrying forward meaning from the past. Eichler shows how four towering composers - Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich - lived through the era of the Second World War and the Holocaust and later transformed their experiences into deeply moving works of music, scores that carry forward the echoes of lost time. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the profound possibilities of art in our lives today.
Now available for the first time in Ireland and the UK - more than half a century after it was written - is the memoir of Michael Dillon/Lobzang Jivaka (1915-62), the Anglo-Irish doctor and Buddhist monastic novice chiefly known to scholars of sex, gender, and sexuality for his pioneering transition from female to male between 1939 and 1949, and for his groundbreaking 1946 book Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology. Here at last is Dillon/Jivaka's extraordinary life story told in his own words. Out of the Ordinary captures Dillon/Jivaka's various journeys - to Oxford, into medicine, across the world by ship - within the major narratives of his gender and religious journeys. Moving chronologically, Dillon/Jivaka was from Lismullin House, County Meath, but spent his childhood in Folkestone, England, where he was raised by spinster aunts, telling of his days at Oxford immersed in theology, classics, and rowing. He recounts his hormonal transition while working as an auto mechanic and fire watcher in Bristol during World War II and describes his surgical transition under Sir Harold Gillies while Dillon himself attended medical school at Trinity College, Dublin (1945-51). He details his travels as a ship's surgeon in the British Merchant Navy with extensive commentary on his engagement with colonial and postcolonial subjects in Asia, followed by his 'outing' by the British press while he served aboard The City of Bath. Out of the Ordinary is not only a unique record of early gender affirmation but also a compelling account of religious conversion in the mid-twentieth century. Dillon/Jivaka chronicles his gradual shift from Anglican Christianity to the esoteric spiritual systems of George Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky, to Theravada and finally Mahayana Buddhism. He concludes his memoir with the contested circumstances of his Buddhist monastic ordination in India and Tibet. Ultimately, while Dillon/Jivaka died before becoming a monk, his novice ordination was significant: it made him the first white European man to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. This first-person narrative, written in the early 1960s and first published more than a generation later in the US by Fordham University Press, is both ahead of its time and distinctly of its time and class, with Dillon's views being sometimes enlightened, sometimes colonial. A Foreword by Susan Stryker from the Fordham University Press edition describes Dillon as 'a seeker after truth, who traveled wherever his queries led him'. An Afterword, 'A Mapless Journey', by London-based literary agent Andrew Hewson - unique to the Lilliput Press edition - traces the typescript memoir's provenance and preservation prior to its eventual publication. An introductory biographical essay by consultant psychologist Aidan Collins gives an overview of the timeline of this remarkable individual's history. Out of the Ordinary is a landmark publication that sets free a singular voice from within the history of the transgender movement.
Essays and poems exploring the diverse range of the Arab American experience. This collection begins with stories of immigration and exile by following newcomers' attempts to assimilate into American society. Editors Ghassan Zeineddine, Nabeel Abraham, and Sally Howell have assembled emerging and established writers who examine notions of home, belonging, and citizenship from a wide array of communities, including cultural heritages originating from Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen. The strong pattern in Arab Detroit today is to oppose marginalization through avid participation in almost every form of American identity-making. This engaged stance is not a by-product of culture, but a new way of thinking about the US in relation to one's homeland. Hadha Baladuna ("this is our country") is the first work of creative nonfiction in the field of Arab American literature that focuses entirely on the Arab diaspora in Metro Detroit, an area with the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the US. Narratives move from a young Lebanese man in the early 1920s peddling his wares along country roads to an aspiring Iraqi-Lebanese poet who turns to the music of Tupac Shakur for inspiration. The anthology then pivots to experiences growing up Arab American in Detroit and Dearborn, capturing the cultural vibrancy of urban neighborhoods and dramatizing the complexity of what it means to be Arab, particularly from the vantage point of biracial writers. Included in these works is a fearless account of domestic and sexual abuse and a story of a woman who comes to terms with her queer identity in a community that is not entirely accepting. The volume also includes photographs from award-winning artist Rania Matar that present heterogenous images of Arab American women set against the arresting backdrop of Detroit. The anthology concludes with explorations of political activism dating back to the 1960s and Dearborn's shifting demographic landscape. Hadha Baladuna will shed light on the shifting position of Arab Americans in an era of escalating tension between the United States and the Arab region.
'Most books on persuasion teach the few how to sway the many. With wit and vim, Guy has given us something else: an X-ray into the tactics of those trying to change our minds and behaviour.' - Stephen Krupin, former speechwriter for Barack Obama When Winston Churchill spoke in Parliament, he convinced an empire to go to war. When Martin Luther King spoke in Washington, he convinced millions to open their hearts to change. When Oprah Winfrey said: 'Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do,' she also used rhetoric. As we have here, by deploying the rule of three to stress a point. Rhetoric - the art of persuasive speaking and writing - often gets a bad rap. In this dazzling, fast-paced guide, speechwriter Guy Doza rescues rhetoric from the shadows and showcases its immense power to change lives, for good and bad. Highlighting punchy sayings from Ancient Rome to modern marketing, he shows how leaders, businesses and even our own friends use rhetorical techniques every day to make convincing arguments. What's more, this guide to rhetoric will show you how to learn to use this persuasive language in your own life: How to convince an investor to back your venture What to say to a potential lover in a bar And, the six rules of apology you should use if you ever accidentally run over the next-door neighbour's cat... How to Apologise for Killing a Cat is a quick read, humorous and highly practicable. It decodes the tricks and techniques of rhetoric for everyday readers. It's the only book you need to make a convincing marketing pitch. It's the only book you need to give a rousing speech. It's the only book you need to write persuasively. It's the best book to explain the technique we've just used here. After reading this book, you will start to see the trick of rhetoric used everywhere. After reading this book, you will never see the world the same way again! Extract Have you ever had that unpleasant anxiety of taking your car to the mechanic and feeling like you're being swindled? Most of you will probably know exactly what I am talking about. We don't know how cars work, we don't know what the parts are called and we don't know how to fix them ourselves. This lack of knowledge makes us vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation, and we know it. So does the mechanic. Now, most mechanics are honest individuals, not rogues, but can we say the same of people who run countries and big companies? When it comes to ordinary life away from the car engine or central heating boiler, most of us don't even realise just how vulnerable we are. People can use persuasive language to swindle us, cheat us, and exploit us to the hilt. And the worst part is that we are not even aware that it is happening. Welcome to rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Rhetoric is a superpower. It can alter the way we think, the way we behave and sometimes even the way we live our lives. And its most explosive charge lies in its subtlety. We need to be aware of how such persuasive language is used, not only so that we can be more persuasive ourselves, but defend ourselves against the rhetorical advances of those who would seek to exploit us. For too long, rhetoric has been a dark and ancient art confined to the secretive circles of politics and academia. This mystery and misunderstanding has often led to the public to consider it to be the tool of crooks, spin doctors and villains. But no more! The time has come to bring rhetoric out of the darkness and show it for what it is: a mighty linguistic tool. Whether it is a conversation between friends in a cafe, a pathetic attempt to flirt at a bar, or a meaningful conversation with a world renowned philosopher, rhetoric is everywhere.
This book offers a lively and fascinating account--from the perspective of a young lieutenant--of the trials and tribulations of a soldier in the Third Turkish Brigade in Korea in 1952-53. Turkey was one of the first countries to support United Nations action against Communist aggression in Korea. Reaching Korea before the Chinese entered the conflict, the Turkish Brigades were soon situated at the front in a series of critical battles. Danisman recounts the details of these events in a fast-paced, uncompromising style.
Meet mythology's fifty fiercest females in this modern retelling of the world's greatest legends. From feminist fairies to bloodsucking temptresses, half-human harpies and protective Vodou goddesses, these are women who go beyond long-haired, smiling stereotypes. Their stories are so powerful, so entrancing, that they have survived for millennia. Lovingly retold and updated, Kate Hodges places each heroine, rebel and provocateur fimly at the centre of their own narrative. Players include: Bewitching, banished Circe, an introvert famed and feared for her transfigurative powers. The righteous Furies, defiantly unrepentant about their dedication to justice. Fun-loving Ame-no-Uzume who makes quarrelling friends laugh and terrifies monsters by flashing at them. The fateful Morai sisters who spin a complex web of birth, life and death. Find your tribe, fire your imagination and be empowered by this essential anthology of notorious, demonised and overlooked women.
Dead as Doornails, first published in 1976, brings back into print a true classic of Irish memoir. Anthony Cronin's account of life in post-war literary Dublin is as funny and colourful as one would expect from an intimate of Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and Myles na Gopaleen; but it is also a clear-eyed and bracing antidote to the kitsch that passes for literary history and memory in the Dublin of today. Cronin writes with remarkable subtlety of the frustrations and pathologies of this generation: the excess of drink, the shortage of sex, the insecurity and begrudgery, the painful limitations of cultural life, and the bittersweet pull of exile. We read of a comical sojourn in France with Behan, and of Cronin's years in London as a literary editor and a friend of the writer Julian Maclaren-Ross and the painters Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun. The generation chronicled by Cronin was one of wasted promise. That waste is redressed through the shimmering prose of Dead as Doornails, earning its place in Irish literary history alongside the best works of Behan, Kavanagh and Myles.
A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime of World War II comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank. Today, The Diary of a Young Girl has sold over 25 million copies world-wide; this is the definitive edition released to mark the 70th anniversary of the day the diary begins. '12 June 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support' The Diary of a Young Girl is one of the most celebrated and enduring books of the last century. Tens of millions have read it since it was first published in 1947 and it remains a deeply admired testament to the indestructible nature of the human spirit. This definitive edition restores thirty per cent if the original manuscript, which was deleted from the original edition. It reveals Anne as a teenage girl who fretted about and tried to cope with her own emerging sexuality and who also veered between being a carefree child and an aware adult. Anne Frank and her family fled the horrors of Nazi occupation by hiding in the back of a warehouse in Amsterdam for two years with another family and a German dentist. Aged thirteen when she went into the secret annexe, Anne kept a diary. She movingly revealed how the eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with hunger, the daily threat of discovery and death and being cut off from the outside world, as well as petty misunderstandings and the unbearable strain of living like prisoners. The Diary of a Young Girl is a timeless true story to be rediscovered by each new generation. For young readers and adults it continues to bring to life Anne's extraordinary courage and struggle throughout her ordeal. This is the definitive edition of the diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank was born on the 12 June 1929. She died while imprisoned at Bergen-Belsen, three months short of her sixteenth birthday. This seventieth anniversary, definitive edition of The Diary of a Young Girl is poignant, heartbreaking and a book that everyone should read.
Pairing epic sports photography with articles from The Times archive, this volume brings together 100 of the most iconic moments from World Cup history. With striking, full-colour photography, rarely seen archival images and sensational reporting on the action, The Times Rugby World Cup Moments tells the story of one of the world's largest single sporting events as it unfolded on - and off - the pitch. Featuring the most memorable tries, historic drop goals, legendary players and unforgettable controversies, these split-second moments have changed the course of Rugby World Cup history and generated a global sensation along the way. |
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