Met Adam Small se oorlye op 25 Junie 2016 het daar ’n einde gekom aan die lewe van ’n unieke mens en ’n unieke oeuvre: ’n digter, dramaturg en denker met besonderse insig in die aktualiteite van sy tyd. Hoewel die toekenning van die Hertzogprys aan Small in 2012 en die gepaardgaande publisiteit daarrondom die idee vir ’n huldigingsbundel by die SA Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns laat ontstaan het, was dit Small se dood wat die deurslag gegee het om die publikasie te verwesenlik: Wanneer ’n kunstenaar sterf en sy stem vir ewig verstom het, bied dit immers die geleentheid om oorkoepelend oor die geheel van sy kunstenaarskap te besin. Die bydraes in hierdie bundel dra die ondertoon van ’n afsluiting, ’n terugblik op die mens en kunstenaar Adam Small, met temas soos die toekoms van Afrikaans en die Afrikaanse letterkunde, die uitbreidende rol van Kaaps, en sosiale vraagstukke soos bendegeweld en armoede. Mense wat Small van naby geken het is hier aan die woord saam met literatore en kollegas uit die maatskaplikewerk-omgewing waarby Small lewenslank betrokke was. Adam Small: Denker, digter, dramaturg – ’n Huldiging hoef nie as afsluiting van die gesprek oor Small se lewe en werk beskou te word nie – inteendeel: Dit bied juis ook geleentheid om die oorkoepelende blik oor Small se kunstenaarskap as inleiding tot verdere ondersoek te benut.

The question of who wrote Shakespeare's plays has been the subject of furious debate among scholars for over 150 years. Everything known about the facts of William Shakespeare's life seems incompatible with the extraordinary genius of his writing. How could a man who left school at the age of 13, and apparently never travelled abroad have authored the incomparable Sonnets or so intricately described Renaissance Venice? Shakespeare 'candidates' abound, among them Sir Francis Bacon, The Earl of Oxford, even Queen Elizabeth I herself, but none have stood up to serious scrutiny. Until now.... This remarkable, intriguing, and provocative book offers a completely plausible new candidate; Sir Henry Neville.

Paul Leautaud was both one of the oddest characters in French literature and, as a staff member of the review Mercure de France, at the centre of Parisian literary life for over half a century. First published in 1974, this book represents the first full length biography of Leautaud in any language. The author recreates the world of a man who, once regarded as a mere eccentric, is now recognised as a significant figure in contemporary literature. It traces Leautaud's intimate friendships with many famous writers of the time and gives a lively panorama of the French literary scene and its vivid characters.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name of Mark Twain, is one of the most famous writers in American (and world) literature. Twain had a fascinating life that began in hardship in 1835 (only three of his seven siblings survived childhood) and ended shortly before the First World War. Best known for his writing, Twain was also a gifted raconteur, entrepreneur, publisher, freemason, and lecturer across a very busy life that saw him patent inventions, go bankrupt and receive a PhD from Oxford University, all the while putting out an enormous volume of superbly written literary work. Twain also recorded some of the most biting commentary and criticism of politics and culture and is famous for his brilliant words, aphorisms, one-liners and sayings. He was never a man stuck for words, and he lived through one of the most amazing eras of politics, social and scientific change and evolution. Many of his words are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago and plenty of his classic phrases grace the pages of The Little Book of Mark Twain, alongside numerous extracts from his writings, as well as comment and criticism from his contemporaries, fans and followers. It adds up to a superb overview of the man, his character, his writing and his incredible talent. SAMPLE QUOTE: 'It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.' - Mark Twain SAMPLE FACT: Twain was very close friends with Nikola Tesla and they worked together in Tesla's laboratory.

Bringing together Islamic studies, a postcolonial literary perspective, and a focus on the interaction between aesthetics and politics, this book analyses Iqbal's Islamism through his poetry. It argues that his notion of an Islamist selfhood was expressed in his verse through the interplay between poetic tradition and creative innovation. It also considers how Iqbal expressed an Islamist geopolitical imagination in his work, and examines his exploration of the relationship between the modern West and a reconstructed Islam. For the first time, Iqbal's personal letters have been drawn upon to provide an insight into his inner conflicts as articulated in his poetry. Concentrating on the complexity of his work in its own right, the book eschews the standard appropriation of Iqbal into any one political agenda - be it Indian nationalism, Muslim separatism or Iranian Islamic republicanism. With its analytical and in-depth reading of Iqbal's verse and prose, this book opens a fresh perspective on Islam and postcolonialism. It will be a fascinating study for general readers and readers with interests in the intellectual and political history of modern South Asia, colonialism and postcolonialism, Islamic studies, and modern South Asian literature (especially Urdu and Persian poetry).

This book, first published in 1944, provides a comprehensive overview of the work and life of the writer and philosopher Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time, this title examines some of Tolstoy's most seminal works, including War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This book will be of interest to students of literature and philosophy.

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato, Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and searingly heartfelt, If I Die in a Combat Zone is a masterwork of its genre.

'SIMPLY EXTRAORDINARY' New York Times 'It's such a savage thing to lose your memory, but the crazy thing is, it doesn't hurt one bit. A blackout doesn't sting, or stab, or leave a scar when it robs you. Close your eyes and open them again. That's what a blackout feels like.' For Sarah Hepola, alcohol was 'the gasoline of all adventure'. She spent her evenings at cocktail parties and dark bars where she proudly stayed till last call. Drinking felt like freedom, part of her birthright as an enlightened twenty-first-century woman. But there was a price. She often blacked out, waking up with a blank space where four hours should be. Mornings became detective work on her own life. What did I say last night? How did I meet that guy? Publicly, she covered her shame with self-deprecating jokes, and her career flourished, but as the blackouts accumulated, she could no longer avoid a sinking truth. The fuel she thought she needed was draining her spirit instead. A memoir of unblinking honesty and poignant, laugh-out-loud humor, BLACKOUT is the story of a woman stumbling into a new adventure-the sober life she never wanted. Shining a light into her blackouts, she discovers the person she buried, as well as the confidence, intimacy, and creativity she once believed came only from a bottle. Her tale will resonate with anyone who has been forced to reinvent themselves or struggled in the face of necessary change. It's about giving up the thing you cherish most-but getting yourself back in return. A raw, vivid and ultimately uplifting memoir of addiction and recovery for anyone who is looking to find their way.

Now a major motion picture starring Melissa McCarthy-Lee Israel's hilarious and shocking memoir of the astonishing caper she carried on for almost two years when she forged and sold more than three hundred letters by such literary notables as Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, Noel Coward, and many others. Before turning to her life of crime-running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI-Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. Her first book on Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the late journalist and reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines. But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she'd received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats. Between 1990 and 1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among others, Dorothy Parker, Louise Brooks, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and Noel Coward-and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph dealers. "Lee Israel is deft, funny, and eminently entertaining...[in her] gentle parable about the modern culture of fame, about those who worship it, those who strive for it, and those who trade in its relics" (The Associated Press). Exquisitely written, with reproductions of her marvelous forgeries, Can You Ever Forgive Me? is "a slender, sordid, and pretty damned fabulous book about her misadventures" (The New York Times Book Review).

"Tell Me A Story is breathtakingly tender, heartbreakingly true...The best memoir I've read." -- Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of The Beach House Reunion Bestselling author Cassandra King Conroy considers her life and the man she shared it with, paying tribute to her husband, Pat Conroy, the legendary figure of modern Southern literature. Cassandra King was leading a quiet life as a professor, divorced "Sunday wife" of a preacher, and debut novelist when she met Pat Conroy. Their friendship bloomed into a tentative, long-distance relationship. Pat and Cassandra ultimately married, ending Pat's long commutes from coastal South Carolina to her native Alabama. It was a union that would last eighteen years, until the beloved literary icon's death from pancreatic cancer in 2016. In this poignant, intimate memoir, the woman he called King Ray looks back at her love affair with a natural-born storyteller whose lust for life was fueled by a passion for literature, food, and the Carolina Lowcountry that was his home. As she reflects on their relationship and the eighteen years they spent together, cut short by Pat's passing at seventy, Cassandra reveals how the marshlands of the South Carolina Lowcountry ultimately cast their spell on her, too, and how she came to understand the convivial, generous, funny, and wounded flesh-and-blood man beneath the legend--her husband, the original Prince of Tides.

First published in 1957, this book explores what remained of Joyce's background, not only in Ireland but in those cities abroad where his books were written. With the co-operation of those who knew the author, including his brother, much new material was brought together to shed new light on Joyce's life, character and methods of writing. The author traces Joyce, and his writings, from his beginnings in Ireland, through Zurich, London and Paris, to his difficult final year at Vichy in 1940. Previously unpublished letters illustrate his relationships with important figures of the period like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and H.G. Wells. This title will be of interest to student of literature.

'We feasted on love, every mode of it - solemn and merry, romantic and realistic, sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm, sometimes as comfortable and unemphatic as putting on your soft slippers.' C. S. Lewis The celebrated scholar and writer C. S. Lewis achieved great success in his life - yet to many he remained an engima. Although he had many friends, few if any ever saw the real, private Lewis and for six decades of his life he remained a confirmed bachelor. Then, at the age of sixty, Lewis met Joy Davidman. Davidman, an unconventional American divorcee, turned his world upside down. It was with her that Lewis truly found love and was drawn out of his shell. This is the story of their brief but incandescent love, its tragic end and a faith that endures beyond even the deepest grief. This updated edition contains a new Introduction by author Brian Sibley and a Preface by the UK's leading Lewis scholar, Alister McGrath.

A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography The most definitive biography to date of the poet Pablo Neruda, a moving portrait of one of the most intriguing and influential figures in Latin American history Few poets have captured the global imagination like Pablo Neruda. In his native Chile, across Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, his name and legacy have become almost synonymous with liberation movements, and with the language of erotic love. Neruda: The Poet's Calling is the product of fifteen years of research by Mark Eisner, writer, translator, and documentary filmmaker. The book vividly depicts Neruda's monumental life, potent verse, and ardent belief in the "poet's obligation" to use poetry for social good. It braids together three major strands of Neruda's life-his world-revered poetry; his political engagement; and his tumultuous, even controversial, personal life-forming a single cohesive narrative of intimacy and breadth. The fascinating events of Neruda's life are interspersed with Eisner's thoughtful examinations of the poems, both as works of art in their own right and as mirrors of Neruda's life and times. The result is a book that animates Neruda's riveting story in a new way-one that offers a compelling narrative version of Neruda's life and work, undergirded by exhaustive research, yet designed to bring this colossal literary figure to a broader audience.

A formally audacious and deeply moving memoir in three timeframes that confronts the defining trauma of the twentieth century, and its effects on a father and son. In 1939, Jonathan Lichtenstein's father Hans escaped Nazi-occupied Berlin as a child refugee on the Kindertransport. Almost every member of his family died after Kristallnacht, and, arriving in England to make his way in the world alone, Hans turned his back on his German Jewish culture. Growing up in post-war rural Wales where the conflict was never spoken of, Jonathan and his siblings were at a loss to understand their father's relentless drive and sometimes eccentric behaviour. As Hans enters old age, he and Jonathan set out to retrace his journey back to Berlin. Published to coincide with the eightieth anniversary, this is a highly compelling account of a father and son's attempt to emerge from the shadows of history. For readers who enjoyed East West Street, The Berlin Shadow is a beautiful memoir about time, trauma and family. Praise for Jonathan Lichtenstein's work: 'The writing is keenly observed and emotionally resonant. . . an impressive achievement given the breadth of its reach, from Berlin in the 1930s to Bethlehem today' New York Times on Memory

First published in 1968. Richard Hengist Horne, virtually unknown today, was one of the more extraordinary figures of the nineteenth century literary scene. The author of an epic poem Orion was acclaimed a work of genius by almost every English critic. His voluminous literary output is for the most part forgotten, but his life and character, his widely romantic aspirations to be a Man of Genius, provide a fascinating tragi-comic study. As a background study to the literature and society of the time, Ann Blainey's book is packed with interest and anecdote, and as a study of a remarkable man it is consistently entertaining.

'Wise, witty and empathetic . . . outstanding' JIM CRACE 'A fascinating treatment of the age-old problem of writers and drink which displays the same subtle qualities as William Palmer's own undervalued novels' D. J. TAYLOR 'A vastly absorbing and entertaining study of this ever-interesting subject' ANDREW DAVIES, screenwriter and novelist 'In Love with Hell is a fascinating and beautifully written account of the lives of eleven British and American authors whose addiction to alcohol may have been a necessary adjunct to their writing but ruined their lives. Palmer's succinct biographies contain fine descriptions of the writers, their work and the times they lived in; and there are convincing insights into what led so many authors to take to drink.' PIERS PAUL READ Why do some writers destroy themselves by drinking alcohol? Before our health-conscious age it would be true to say that many writers drank what we now regard as excessive amounts. Graham Greene, for instance, drank on a daily basis quantities of spirits and wine and beer most doctors would consider as being dangerous to his health. But he was rarely out of control and lived with his considerable wits intact to the age of eighty-six. W. H. Auden drank the most of a bottle of spirits a day, but also worked hard and steadily every day until his death. Even T. S. Eliot, for all his pontifical demeanour, was extremely fond of gin and was once observed completely drunk on a London Tube station by a startled friend. These were not writers who are generally regarded as alcoholics. 'Alcoholic' is, in any case, a slippery word, as exemplified by Dylan Thomas's definition of an alcoholic as 'someone you dislike who drinks as much as you.' The word is still controversial and often misunderstood and misapplied. What acclaimed novelist and poet William Palmer's book is interested in is the effect that heavy drinking had on writers, how they lived with it and were sometimes destroyed by it, and how they described the whole private and social world of the drinker in their work. He looks at Patrick Hamilton ('the feverish magic that alcohol can work'); Jean Rhys ('As soon as I sober up I start again'); Charles Jackson ('Delirium is a disease of the night'); Malcolm Lowry ('I love hell. I can't wait to go back there'); Dylan Thomas ('A womb with a view'); John Cheever ('The singing of the bottles in the pantry'); Flann O'Brien ('A pint of plain is your only man'); Anthony Burgess ('Writing is an agony mitigated by drink'); Kingsley Amis ('Beer makes you drunk'); Richard Yates ('The road to Revolutionary Road'); and Elizabeth Bishop ('The writer's writer's writer').

Dylan Thomas's letters bring the fascinating and tempestuous poet and his times to life in a way that no biography can. The letters begin in the poet's schooldays and end just before his death in New York at the age of 39. In between, he loved, wrote, drank, begged and borrowed his way through a flamboyant life. He was an enthusiastic critic of other writers' work and the letters are full of his thoughts on the work of his contemporaries, from T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden to Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis. A lifetime of letters tell a remarkable story, each taking the reader a little further along the path of the poet's self-destruction, but written with such verve and lyricism that somehow the reader's sympathies never quite abandon him.

Joseph Frank's award-winning, five-volume "Dostoevsky" is widely recognized as the best biography of the writer in any language--and one of the greatest literary biographies of the past half-century. Now Frank's monumental, 2500-page work has been skillfully abridged and condensed in this single, highly readable volume with a new preface by the author. Carefully preserving the original work's acclaimed narrative style and combination of biography, intellectual history, and literary criticism, "Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time" illuminates the writer's works--from his first novel "Poor Folk" to "Crime and Punishment" and "The Brothers Karamazov"--by setting them in their personal, historical, and above all ideological context. More than a biography in the usual sense, this is a cultural history of nineteenth-century Russia, providing both a rich picture of the world in which Dostoevsky lived and a major reinterpretation of his life and work.

Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as Count Dracula, has remained an enigma. David J. Skal, in a psychological and cultural portrait, exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralysed as a boy and his story unfolds against a backdrop of Victorian medical mysteries and horrors: fever, opium abuse, bloodletting, quack cures and the obsession with "bad blood" that inform every page of Dracula. Stoker's ambiguous sexuality is explored through his acquaintance with Oscar Wilde, who emerges as Stoker's repressed shadow self-a doppelganger worthy of a Gothic novel. The psychosexual dimensions of Stoker's correspondence with Walt Whitman, his punishing work ethic and his adoration of the actor Henry Irving are examined in scholarly detail.

Rimbaud was the original enfant terrible. A poetic genius, he destroyed all those who attempted to befriend him, most notoriously wrecking the marriage and sanity of the poet Verlaine. Having conquered the literary world of Paris, he abandoned France and in the dogdays of August 1880 he disembarked in Aden, on the coast of Yemen, a lean twenty-five-year-old Frenchman carrying only a brown suitcase fastened with four leather straps and a touch of fever. The subsequent period, the lost years , is the subject of this biographical quest.

Janet Morgan's definitive and authorised biography of Agatha Christie, with a new retrospective foreword by the author. Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the world's bestselling author, is a public institution. Her creations, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, have become fiction's most legendary sleuths and her ingenuity has captured the imagination of generations of readers. But although she lived to a great age and was prolific, she remained elusively shy and determinedly private. Given sole access to family papers and other protected material, Janet Morgan's definitive biography unravels Agatha Christie's life, work and relationships, creating a revealing and faithfully honest portrait. The book has delighted readers of Christie's detective stories for more than 30 years with its clear view of her career and personality, and this edition includes a new foreword by the author reflecting on the longevity of Agatha Christie's extraordinary success and popularity.

Greil Marcus once said to an interviewer, "There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate." For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, sounds, and events in culture, relating unrelated points of departure, mapping alternate histories and surprising correspondences. He is a unique and influential voice in American letters.Marcus was born in 1945 in San Francisco. In 1968 he published his first piece, a review of "Magic Bus: The Who on Tour," in "Rolling Stone," where he became the magazine's first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing "Real Life Top Ten" column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites, and is the author and editor of over fifteen books. His critique is egalitarian: no figure, object, or event is too high, low, celebrated, or obscure for an inquiry into the ways in which our lives can open outward, often unexpectedly."In Conversations with Greil Marcus," Marcus discuses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards.

First published in 1909, with a second edition in 1923, this concise and easily accessible overview of Shelley's life and work presents the poet not as popular legend would have it, but in a more objective light. A.Clutton-Brock notes his forthright and imperious attitude to life - a life in which Shelley found himself increasingly unhappy - and critically examines many facets of his artistic career which are often overlooked or misrepresented.

In 1968 Egyptian novelist and political exile Waguih Ghali committed suicide in the London flat of his editor, friend, and sometime lover, Diana Athill. Ghali left behind six notebooks of diaries that for decades were largely inaccessible to the public. An Egyptian in the Swinging Sixties is the first publication of its kind of the journals, casting fascinating light on a likeable and highly enigmatic literary personality.Waguih Ghali (1930?-69), author of the acclaimed novel Beer in the Snooker Club, was a libertine, sponger, and manic depressive, but also an extraordinary writer, a pacifist, and a savvy political commentator. Covering the last four years of his life, Ghali's Diaries offer an exciting glimpse into London's swinging sixties.Moving from West Germany to London and Israel, and back in memory to Egypt and Paris, the entries boast of endless drinking, countless love affairs, and of mingling with the dazzling intellectuals of London, but the Diaries also critique the sinister political circles of Jerusalem and Cairo, describe Ghali's trepidation at being the first Egyptian allowed into Israel after the 1967 War, and confess in detail the pain and difficulties of writing and exile. Including two interviews conducted by Deborah Starr, with celebrated literary editor Diana Athill, OBE, and with Ghali's cousin, former director of UNICEF-Geneva, Samir Basta, the Diaries bring together those most familiar with Ghali's life and work, and offer a fresh take on a distinctive author and a vibrant decade.