NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"San Francisco Chronicle - "Newsweek/The Daily Beast - "The Seattle Times - The Economist - Kansas City Star - BookPage"
On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word "fatwa." His crime? To have written a novel called "The Satanic Verses, " which was accused of being "against Islam, the Prophet and the Quran."
So begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. He was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov--"Joseph Anton."
How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech. He talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom.
It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance. Because what happened to Salman Rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day.
Praise for "Joseph Anton"
"A harrowing, deeply felt and revealing document: an autobiographical mirror of the big, philosophical preoccupations that have animated Mr. Rushdie's work throughout his career."--Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"
"A splendid book, the finest . . . memoir to cross my desk in many a year."--Jonathan Yardley, "The Washington Post"
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"Thoughtful and astute . . . an important book.""--USA Today"
"Compelling, affecting . . . demonstrates Mr. Rushdie's ability as a stylist and storytelle. . . . He] reacted with great bravery and even heroism.""--The Wall Street Journal"
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"Gripping, moving and entertaining . . . nothing like it has ever been written.""--The Independent" (UK)
"A thriller, an epic, a political essay, a love story, an ode to liberty.""--Le Point "(France)
"Action-packed . . . in a literary class by itself . . . Like Isherwood, Rushdie's eye is a camera lens --firmly placed in one perspective and never out of focus."--Los Angeles Review of Books
"Unflinchingly honest . . . an engrossing, exciting, revealing and often shocking book."--"de Volkskrant "(The Netherlands)
"One of the best memoirs you may ever read."--"DNA "(India)
"Extraordinary . . . "Joseph Anton" beautifully modulates between . . . moments of accidental hilarity, and the higher purpose Rushdie saw in opposing--at all costs--any curtailment on a writer's freedom."--"The Boston Globe"

Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant literary form over the last 35 years. What has not yet been scholarly acknowledged or documented is that the Irish played a crucial role in the origins, evolution, rise, and now dominance of biofiction. Michael Lackey first examines the groundbreaking biofictions that Oscar Wilde and George Moore authored in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the best biographical novels about Wilde (by Peter Ackroyd and Colm Toibin). He then focuses on contemporary authors of biofiction (Sabina Murray, Graham Shelby, Anne Enright, and Mario Vargas Llosa, who Lackey has interviewed for this work) who use the lives of prominent Irish figures (Roger Casement and Eliza Lynch) to explore the challenges of seizing and securing a life-promoting form of agency within a colonial and patriarchal context. In conclusion, Lackey briefly analyzes biographical novels by Peter Carey and Mary Morrissy to illustrate why agency is of central importance for the Irish, and why that focus mandated the rise of the biographical novel, a literary form that mirrors the constructed Irish interior.

In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.

In “The Enumerated Woman,” Bolin investigates how digital diet tracking apps have increasingly transformed our relationships to our bodies. Animal Crossing’s soothing retail therapy is analyzed in “Real Time”—a surprisingly powerful portrait of late capitalism. And in the showstopping “Foundering,” Bolin dissects our buy-in and complicity with mythmaking around iconic founders, from the hubristic fall of Silicon Valley titans, to Enron, Hamilton, and the USA.

For readers of Trick Mirror and How to Do Nothing, Culture Creep is a swirl of nostalgia and visions of the future, questioning why, in the face of seismic cultural, political, and technological shifts as disruptive as the internet, we cling to the icons and ideals of the past. Written with her signature blend of the personal and sharply analytical, each of these keen-eyed essays ask us to reckon with our own participation in all manner of popular cults of being, and cults of believing.

Tony Narducci fell in love with Tennessee Williams's poetry when he was fourteen years old. For Narducci, Williams was the genius who redefined theater in America, most accomplished modern playwright, and perhaps one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. So when thirty-three-year-old Narducci met Williams at a Key West bar in February 1982, the encounter was more than coincidence. It was destiny.

In In the Frightened Heart of Me, Narducci narrates the story of how, after that first meeting, he was drawn deep into Williams's life and work-a journey that would change Narducci's life in every way. Companions until Williams's death in February 1983, this biography shares how their time together was an odyssey of adventure, emotional entanglement, and insight.

While providing a glimpse into the Key West of the early 1980s, In the Frightened Heart of Me blends the events and sorrows of Williams's last year on earth with Narducci's life-changing story and the effects of their relationship. It tells how 1983 was the year Narducci evolved from a floundering, young aspiring artist to a focused business entrepreneur. It was the year he watched his literary hero, a titan of literature, become a frightened, dying old man-and the year AIDS took the lives of many of his loved ones. It was the year that defined his life.

This fascinating book is a must-Read for any Twain enthusiast" - Andy Borowitz In fall 1891, Mark Twain headed for Berlin, the "newest city I have ever seen," as America's foremost humorist wrote; accompanied by his wife, Olivia, and their three daughters. Twain, a "Yankee from head to toe," according to the Berlin press, conspired with diplomats, frequented the famed salons, had breakfast with duchesses, and dined with the emperor. He also suffered an "organized dog-choir club," at his first address, which he deemed a "rag-picker's paradise," picked a fight with the police, who made him look under his maid's petticoats, was abused by a porter, got lost on streetcars, was nearly struck down by pneumonia, and witnessed a proletarian uprising right in front of his hotel on Unter den Linden. Twain penned articles about his everyday life and also began a novel about lonely Prussian princess Wilhelmina von Preussen-unpublished until now, like many of his Berlin stories. These are assembled for the first time in this book, along with a riveting account of Twain's foray in the German capital, by Andreas Austilat. Berlinica offers English-language books from Berlin, German; fiction, non-fiction, travel guides, history about the Wall and the Third Reich, Jewish life, art, architecture and photography, as well as books about nightlife, cookbooks, and maps. It also offers documentaries and feature films on DVD, as well as music CDs. Berlinica caters to history buffs, Americans of German heritage, travelers, and artists and young people who love the cutting-edge city in the heart of Europe. Berlinica's current and upcoming titles include "Berlin Berlin Dispatches from the Weimar Republic," by Kurt Tucholsky, "Jews in Berlin, by Andreas Nachama, Julius H. Schoeps, and Hermann Simon, a comprehensive book on Jewish history and present in the German capital, "Wings of Desire-Angels of Berlin," by Lother Heinke," "The Berlin Wall Today," a full-color guide to the remnants of the Wall, "Wallflower," a novel by New-York-born writer Holly-Jane Rahlens; "Berlin For Free," a guide to everything free in Berlin for the frugal traveler by Monika Maertens; "Berlin in the Cold War," about post-World War II history and the Wall, "The Berlin Cookbook," a full-color collection of traditional German recipes by Rose Marie Donhauser, the music CD "Berlin-mon amour," by chanteuse Adrienne Haan, and two documentaries on DVD, "The Red Orchestra," by Berlin-born artist Stefan Roloff and "The Path to Nuclear Fission," by New York filmmaker Rosemarie Reed.

A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early nineteenth-century master of American popular fiction "It will be the definitive biography and foremost study of Cooper's fiction and nonfiction for the foreseeable future."- Allan Axelrad, California State University, Fullerton American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War romance. America's first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be intimately engaged with the world. In this second volume of his definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter half of Cooper's life, detailing a period of personal and political controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific literary creation. We hear of Cooper's progressive views on race and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way for later novelists to make a living through their writing. Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of this underappreciated American literary icon.