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Few works of political and cultural theory have been as
enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the
Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the
1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have
decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity,
capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now
finally available in a superb English translation approved by the
author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding
the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly
inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing
image/information culture.
The manifesto that launched the Situationist International (SI)
into the public eye and sparked an uprising is back-with the story
of its creation and the histories of its publication told like
never before. When the Situationist International was a little
known revolutionary art group, before Guy Debord's philosophical
masterpiece Society of the Spectacle was published, and before
Paris' universities were occupied in May '68, a pamphlet titled On
the Poverty of Student Life spurred a scandal that would turn into
a global revolt. On the Poverty of Student Life was a match that
recognized and described student and youth alienation, and the way
it was printed and distributed spread that fire. For the first
edition, supporters of the SI (mis)appropriated school funds to
create and distribute 10,000 copies of the pamphlet. From there,
dozens of editions were produced by worker- and student-run
printing presses around the world, from Paris to East London, from
Tokyo to Detroit. This new edition highlights this global
underground circulation and brings attention to the common
conditions of students, workers, and anti-imperialist resistance in
the world of the sixties-bringing that historic reckoning to the
present. Featuring the original English adaptation by former SI
member and celebrated translator Donald Nicholson-Smith, an
interview with primary author Mustapha Khayati where he traces his
map from colonial Algeria to imperial France to the university and
the streets, and essays about the political relevance of the
manifesto (then and now)-an edition like this has never before
existed. With beautiful photographs of nearly one hundred different
editions this book provides a cartography of a world uprisings.
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Mygale (Paperback)
Thierry Jonquet; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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R404
R328
Discovery Miles 3 280
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"Mygale" MIG-uh-lee] n.: a genus of large tropical spiders. . .
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Richard Lafargue, a well-known plastic surgeon, pursues and
captures Vincent Moreau, who raped Lafargue's daughter and left her
hopelessly mad in an asylum. Lafargue is determined to exact an
atrocious vengeance, and an ambiguous, even sadomasochistic
relationship develops between self-appointed executioner and
victim.
"Great art in nightmarish darkness."--Michel Lebrun
Thierry Jonquet (b. 1954, Paris) is an exponent of the
hardboiled style of French noir that is inflected by post-May 1968
politics and social critique. His crime novels and children's books
have garnered many literary prizes.
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Fag Hag
Lola Miesseroff; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith; Afterword by Helene Hazera
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R466
R382
Discovery Miles 3 820
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When Guillaume Apollinaire was sent to the trenches during World
War I, he had already published his groundbreaking book of poems,
Alcools, inspiring artists of the budding Surrealist movement and
making a foundational mark on twentieth-century literature. The
letters he sent to his fiancee Madeleine Pages while fighting on
the front in Champagne offer an unprecedented look into the life
and mind of this literary great. Ranging from memories of his
childhood in Rome with his mother (a Polish noblewoman) to his
reflections on literary giants like Racine and Tolstoy, the letters
also chronicle his daily life as a soldier in the brutal Great War.
Letters to Madeleine is a moving portrait of a poet facing one of
humanity's starkest realities, and it will be of interest not only
to fans of Apollinaire but to those interested in personal accounts
of the First World War as well.
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The N'Gustro Affair (Paperback)
Jean-Patrick Manchette; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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R428
R405
Discovery Miles 4 050
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Guy Debord (Paperback)
Anselm Jappe; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith; Foreword by T.J. Clark
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R607
R516
Discovery Miles 5 160
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The Mad and the Bad (Paperback)
Jean-Patrick Manchette; Introduction by James Sallis; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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R441
R362
Discovery Miles 3 620
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Michel Hartog, a sometime architect, is a powerful businessman and
famous philanthropist whose immense fortune has just grown that
much greater following the death of his brother in an accident.
Peter is his orphaned nephew--a spoiled brat. Julie is in an insane
asylum. Thompson is a hired gunman with a serious ulcer. Michel
hires Julie to look after Peter. And he hires Thompson to kill
them. Julie and Peter escape. Thompson pursues. Bullets fly. Bodies
accumulate.
The craziness is just getting started.
Like Jean-Patrick Manchette's celebrated "Fatale," "The Mad and the
Bad" is a clear-eyed, cold-blooded, pitch-perfect work of creative
destruction.
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Nada (Paperback)
Jean-Patrick Manchette; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith; Introduction by Lucy Sante
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R423
R350
Discovery Miles 3 500
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Three To Kill (Paperback)
Jean-Patrick Manchette; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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R383
R313
Discovery Miles 3 130
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"His books are all action, unfolding with a laconic efficiency that
would make his killers proud."-The Economist Businessman Georges
Gerfaut witnesses a murder-and is pursued by the killers. His
conventional life knocked off the rails, Gerfaut turns the tables
and sets out to track down his pursuers. Along the way, he learns a
thing or two about himself. . . . Manchette-masterful stylist,
ironist, and social critic-limns the cramped lives of professionals
in a neoconservative world. "Manchette has appropriated and
subverted the classic thriller [with] descriptions of undiluted
action, violence and suspense [and] a perspective on evil, a
disenchanted world of manipulation and fury. . . ."-Times Literary
Supplement "The petty exigencies of the classic thriller find
themselves summarily reduced to cremains by the fiery blue jets of
Jean-Patrick Manchette's concision, intelligence, tension, and
style."-Jim Nisbet, author of Lethal Injection and Prelude to a
Scream "Manchette is a must for the reading lists of all noir fans.
. . . Manchette deserves a higher profile among noir
fans."-Publishers Weekly "Manchette . . . performs miracles within
this simple story. His style is very matter of fact, stark and
almost cool like the jazz his hero or anti-hero Gerfaut devours at
every opportunity. Yet in this short novel there is no lack of
atmosphere, excitement, characters or descriptive writing, it is
just the total lack of unnecessary material that makes the story
seem so lean and mean."-Norman Price, EuroCrime "A social satire
cum suspense equally interested in dissecting everyday banalities
and manufacturing thrills. Writing with economy, deadpan irony, and
an eye for the devastating detail, Manchette spins pulp fiction
into literature."-Kirkus Reviews "While there isn't much that's
obviously moral-in the good-versus-evil sense-[this novel]
demonstrate[s] why Manchette is hailed as the man who kicked the
French crime novel or 'polar' out of the apolitical torpor into
which it had fallen by the time he started publishing his
'neo-polars' in the 1970s. . . . Grim and cerebral as they feel,
it's remarkable how comic-in an absurdist, laugh-or-you'll-cry
way-these books are, as if Manchette had decided that poking fun at
the products of the capitalist system were the fittest way to
attack the system itself."-Jennifer Howard, Boston Review "The pace
is fast, the action sequences are superb, and the effect is just as
striking as it must have been when the book was first published in
1976."-Laura Wilson, The Guardian "[T]he novel is brilliantly
written, replete with allusions to art, literature, and music,
papered with the very texture and furniture of our lives. Manchette
is Camus on overdrive, at one and the same time white-hot,
ice-cold. He deserves much the same attention."-James Sallis,
Review of Contemporary Fiction Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995)
rescued the French crime novel from the grip of stodgy police
procedurals-restoring the noir edge by virtue of his post-1968
leftism. Today, Manchette is a totem to the generation of French
mystery writers who came in his wake. Jazz saxophonist, political
activist, and screen writer, Manchette was influenced as much by
Guy Debord as by Gustave Flaubert. City Lights has published more
of his work, including The Gunman.
In sixteen ferocious short stories French author Luc Lang
encapsulates the brutality of everyday life. Each tale is an
admixture of tragedy, comedy, ridicule, and pain. Compassion lurks
somewhere, perhaps, but pity is conspicuous by its absence. Lang's
curt, agitated prose disassembles daily life with a swift,
unflinching hand and examines it with a sharp, analytic eye.
Skinning quotidian moments to bare, raw impulses, confusions, and
the agonies underneath, the stories in Cruel Tales from the
Thirteenth Floor show the mundane grind of the everyday forces that
are fueled by cruel calculation and amoral happenstance and shot
through with bizarre surprise. The results are at once coldly comic
and powerfully tragic. Interpreting human interactions as a series
of precise jabs and desperate flailings, Cruel Tales from the
Thirteenth Floor tells truths about the darker sides of our
potential and our well-meaning urges dimmed by chance.
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Seraphin (Hardcover)
Philippe Fix; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith
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R476
R391
Discovery Miles 3 910
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Seraphin, dreaming of gardens full of birdsongs, sunny avenues, and
flowers, works as a ticket seller in a metro station underground.
One day, after being scolded by the stationmaster for trying to
save a butterfly that had flown into the station by accident, he
learns that he has inherited an old, dilapidated house. Overjoyed
by the possibilities, he and his friend Plume set about building
the house of their dreams, and much more besides! In a fresh
translation, Seraphin now allows a new generation to experience the
wonder and inventive spectacle of the original.
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Cousin K (Paperback, 0th edition)
Yasmina Khadra; Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Alyson Waters; Afterword by Robert Polito
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R406
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
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"Such was the battle that raged between Cousin K and me: good done
badly; evil done well." And such is the twisted logic of good and
bad, right and wrong, knitted into this novella by one of the most
powerful voices to emerge from North Africa in our time. With his
father brutally killed as a traitor during a national liberation
war and his older brother an army officer far away, the young
narrator lives reclusively with his mother, who scorns him. He
turns to his young cousin for affection, only to be mocked and
humiliated so deeply that his love becomes hopelessly entangled
with hatred. Fate places a young woman in the narrator's path when
he rescues her from a violent attack, and the reawakening of his
confused passions proceeds toward terrible vengeance. In this
nameless narrator's tormented reflections, played out against the
backdrop of an indifferent world, Yasmina Khadra plumbs the
mysteries of the crippled heart's desires.
A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director,
Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within
and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his
thought and his appeal, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic is rooted in
the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with
schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed.
Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948,
these pieces trace Artaud's struggle to escape a personal hell that
extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he
believed ran them. The first eleven notebooks are filled with
fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures,
pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of
a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful
pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before
Artaud's death in 1948, changes course: it's an extraordinary text
on the loss of magic to the demonic--the piece that gives the book
its title. "Artaud matters," wrote John Simon in the Saturday
Review years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that
remains true--perhaps more than ever.
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