Stories of the end of civilized life have always fascinated us, from the mythological world endings, Armageddon to Ragnorok, to the flood stories of across the Ancient world. They make us wonder what we would do if all around us came to an end: no transport, no fuel, no communications: a retreat into the desperation, the onslaught of disease, how would we survive? This is the source of zombie literature and provides the inspiration for this fabulous mix of horror and adventure, of classic and brand new writing in the successful series of Gothic Fantasy titles from Flame Tree. These new authors will appear alongside the following classic and essential writers: Stephen Vincent Benet, J.D. Beresford, Lord Byron, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Allan England, William Hope Hodgson, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, M.P. Shiel, Snorri Sturluson, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells; along with a retelling of the Ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Myth of Apocalypse.

This book challenges widespread and largely negative assumptions about Italian postmodernism and postmodernism in general. It considers contemporary Italian culture as a particularly interesting testing-ground for pluriform struggles of an ethical or political kind, struggles which build upon, whilst rejecting the essentialist assumptions behind, conventional notions of artistic commitment, or impegno. Drawing on a variety of cultural fields and artistic media - from cinema to the literary genres of autobiography, romance and the giallo; from feminism to pensiero debole; from theatrical performance to shared practices of cultural memory - the volume charts instances of ethical commitment and emancipatory social and political intervention in Italian culture within a post-ideological and post-hegemonic framework, siding with a more constructive and less 'apocalyptic' analysis of the cultural climate of the past two decades in Italy. This balancing act is described by the contributors as 'postmodern impegno'. The authors, artists and thinkers discussed in the essays include, among others, Eraldo Affinati, Adriana Cavarero, Marco Tullio Giordana, Carlo Lucarelli, Nanni Moretti, Marco Paolini, Roberto Saviano, Gianni Vattimo and Antonio Tabucchi. Questo libro mette in discussione la diffusa posizione critica che tende a svalutare l'esperienza culturale della postmodernita e del postmodernismo in Italia. Il contesto italiano contemporaneo e di fatto un esempio quanto mai interessante e sintomatico per il definirsi di forme plurali e non monologiche di impegno politico-culturale, che pur rifiutando forme di assolutismo o essenzialismo epistemico o ideologico, mantengono fede a una consolidata tradizione di engagement artistico. Partendo dall'analisi di vari generi e strategie discorsive - cinema, teatro, filosofia, letteratura di genere (romance, giallo, autobiografia) o di denuncia - e di vari autori - Eraldo Affinati, Adriana Cavarero, Marco Tullio Giordana, Carlo Lucarelli, Nanni Moretti, Marco Paolini, Roberto Saviano, Antonio Tabucchi, Gianni Vattimo, e altri - questo volume raccoglie e analizza esempi di impegno etico e di intervento socio-politico all'interno di una prospettiva post-ideologica e post-egemonica, proponendo una visione piu costruttiva e meno "apocalittica" del clima culturale generale degli ultimi vent'anni in Italia.

"Thinking Through Relation brings together an outstanding collection of essays that explore the diverse ways in which works of art and aesthetic experience generate a richness of relation which escapes the straightjackets of rigid disciplinary and institutional boundaries. Clearly demonstrating the creative potential of critical writing, these essays are a fitting tribute to the creativity, originality and subtlety of Timothy Mathews's scholarly accomplishment and his contribution to our understanding of art and of the aesthetic relation." (Dr Ian James, University of Cambridge) "This book in honour of Timothy Mathews is much more than a Festschrift. It is a collection of thought-provoking, daring insights into the crucial place of literature and the arts in our world and in our being human. It is an exhilarating multifarious demonstration of how creativity can undo, without for a moment losing intellectual rigour, the disciplinary and academic structures that constrain our thinking. Driven by curiosity and by care - love, even - the many contributions to the volume show, in their different ways, how criticism can be at its most effective by being at its most imaginative and its least predictable." (Professor Lucia Boldrini, Goldsmiths, University of London) This book is an offering. It contains eighteen essays in honour of Timothy Mathews, written by leading scholars in the fields of French, Comparative Literature, Visual Culture and Creative Critical Writing. These essays examine the power of serendipitous encounter between artists, thinkers and artistic media as well as the importance of creative interjection in the arts and humanities. They advance fresh interpretations of some important figures in twentieth-century European culture - Apollinaire, Beckett, Benjamin, Calvino, Dali, Genet, Nooteboom, Roubaud - using modes of reading that are both intellectually brave and open to fragility, intimate as well as critical, at once playful and earnest. They bring texts and artworks into relation in order to amply demonstrate that relation itself is a form of thinking.