When Rilke died in 1926, his reputation as a great poet seemed secure. But as the tide of the critical avant-garde turned, he was increasingly dismissed as apolitical, too inward. In Rilke: The Last Inward Man, acclaimed critic Lesley Chamberlain uses this charge as the starting point from which to explore the expansiveness of the inner world Rilke created in his poetry. Weaving together searching insights on Rilke's life, work and reception, Chamberlain casts Rilke's inwardness as a profound response to a world that seemed ever more lacking in spirituality. In works of dazzling imagination and rich imagery, Rilke sought to restore spirit to Western materialism, encouraging not narrow introversion but a heightened awareness of how to live with the world as it is, of how to retain a sense of transcendence within a world of collapsed spiritual certainty.

In 1888, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche moved to Turin. This would be the year in which he wrote three of his greatest works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Ecce Homo; it would also be his last year of writing. He suffered a debilitating nervous breakdown in the first days of the following year. In this probing, elegant biography of that pivotal year, Lesley Chamberlain undoes popular cliches and misconceptions about Nietzsche by offering a deeply complex approach to his character and work. Focusing as much on Nietzsche's daily habits, anxieties and insecurities as on the development of his philosophy, Nietzsche in Turin offers a uniquely lively portrait of the great thinker, and of the furiously productive days that preceded his decline.

This title tells the story of a young woman, a Russian refugee who makes an impulsive marriage to aid her escape. Life in a Scottish fishing village in the shadow of the Great War makes her feel packed in 'like a herring in a box' and she reverses her tracks back to Moscow.

Grief is a universal human response to death and loss. Mourning is an equally universally observable practice that enables the bereaved to express their grief and come to terms with the reality of loss. Yet, despite their prevalence, there is no unified understanding of the nature and meaning of grief and mourning. The Meaning of Mourning: Perspectives on Death, Loss, and Grief brings together fifteen essays from diverse disciplines addressing the topics of death, grief, and mourning. The collection moves from general questions concerning the putative badness of death and the meaning of loss through the phenomenology and psychology of grief, to personal and cultural aspects of mourning. Contributors examine topics such as theodicy and grief, reproductive loss, mourning as a form of recognition of value, the roots of grief in early childhood, grief in COVID-times, hope, phenomenology of loss, public commemoration and mourning rituals, mourning for a devastated culture, the Necropolis of Glasgow, and the "art of outliving." Edited by Mikolaj Slawkowski-Rode, the volume provides a survey of the rich topography of methodologies, problems, approaches, and disciplines that are involved in the study of issues surrounding loss and our responses to it and guides the reader through a spectrum of perspectives, highlighting the connections and discontinuities between them.

When Rilke died in 1926, his reputation as a great poet seemed secure. But as the tide of the critical avant-garde turned, he was increasingly dismissed as apolitical, too inward. In Rilke: The Last Inward Man, acclaimed critic Lesley Chamberlain uses this charge as the starting point from which to explore the expansiveness of the inner world Rilke created in his poetry. Weaving together searching insights on Rilke's life, work and reception, Chamberlain casts Rilke's inwardness as a profound response to a world that seemed ever more lacking in spirituality. In works of dazzling imagination and rich imagery, Rilke sought to restore spirit to Western materialism, encouraging not narrow introversion but a heightened awareness of how to live with the world as it is, of how to retain a sense of transcendence within a world of collapsed spiritual certainty.

"Hlasko's story comes off the page at you like a pit bull."--The Washington Post "His writing is taut and psychologically nuanced like that of the great dime-store novelist Georges Simenon, his novelistic world as profane as Isaac Babel's."--Wall Street Journal "Spokesman for those who were angry and beat ...turbulent, temperamental, and tortured."--The New York Times "A must-read ...piercing and compelling."--Kirkus Reviews "A self-taught writer with an uncanny gift for narrative and dialogue."--Roman Polanski "Marek Hlasko ...lived through what he wrote and died of an overdose of solitude and not enough love."-- Jerzy Kosinski, author of The Painted Bird and Being There "A glittering black comedy ...that is equally entertaining and wrenching." -- Publishers Weekly "The idol of Poland's young generation in 1956." -- Czeslaw Milosz, 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature Robert and Jacob are down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1960s. They're planning to run a scam on an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, adrift in the nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the woman, whose heart is open; the men are hoping her wallet is too. What follows is a story of love, deception, cruelty, and shame, as Jacob pretends to fall in love with her. It's not just Jacob who's performing a role; nearly all the characters are actors in an ugly story, complete with parts for murder and suicide. Marek Hlasko's writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act. Marek Hlasko, known as the James Dean of Eastern Europe, was exiled from Communist Poland and spent his life wandering the globe. He died in 1969 of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Part manifesto, part artistic joke, Fillippo Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook is a provocative work about art disguised as an easy-to-read cookbook. Here are recipes for ice cream on the moon; candied atmospheric electricities; nocturnal love feasts; sculpted meats. Marinetti also sets out his argument for abolishing pasta as ill-suited to modernity, and advocates a style of cuisine that will increase creativity. Although at times betraying its author's nationalistic sympathies, The Futurist Cookbook is funny, provocative, whimsical, disdainful of sluggish traditions and delighted by the velocity and promise of modernity. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was born in 1876 to Italian parents and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied in Paris and obtained a law degree in Italy before turning to literature. In 1909 he wrote the infamous Futurist Manifesto, which championed violence, speed and war, and proclaimed the unity of art and life. Marinetti's life was fraught with controversy: he fought a duel with a hostile critic, was subject to an obscenity trial, and was a staunch supporter of Italian Fascism. Alongside his literary activities, he was a war correspondent during the Italo-Turkish War and served on the Eastern Front in World War II, despite being in his sixties. He died in 1944. Lesley Chamberlain is a novelist and historian of ideas. Her thirteen books include Nietzsche in Turin, The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud and The Food and Cooking of Russia. Suzanne Brill is an art historian and writer. She has translated several books for Italian art historians including Caro Pedretti's Leonardo: Architect, which was nominated for the John Florio prize. 'A paean to sensual freedom, optimism and childlike, amoral innocence ... it has only once been answered, by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World' Lesley Chamberlain

With resonance for today, this book explores a significant crisis of German philosophy and national identity in the decades around World War II.   German philosophy, famed for its high-minded Idealism, was plunged into crisis when Germany became an urban and industrial society in the late nineteenth century. The key figure of this shift was Immanuel Kant: seen for a century as the philosophical father of the nation, Kant seemed to lack crucial answers for violent and impersonal modern times. This book shows that the social and intellectual crisis that overturned Germany’s traditions—a sense of profound spiritual confusion over where modern society was headed—was the same crisis that allowed Hitler to come to power. It also describes how German philosophers actively struggled to create a new kind of philosophy in an effort to understand social incoherence and technology’s diminishing of the individual.

In 1922, Vladimir Lenin personally drew up a list of some 160 "undesirable" intellectuals--mostly philosophers, academics, scientists, and journalists--to be deported from the new Soviet State. "We're going to cleanse Russia once and for all" he wrote to Stalin, whose job it was to oversee the deportation. Two ships sailed from Petrograd that autumn, taking Old Russia's eminent men and their families away to what would become permanent exile in Berlin, Prague, and Paris. Through journals, letters, memoirs, and personal accounts, Lesley Chamberlain creates a rich portrait of these banished thinkers and their families. She describes the world they left behind, the émigré communities they were forced to join, and the enduring power of the works they produced in exile.

"The Food and Cooking of Eastern Europe," first published in 1989 and a companion volume to Lesley Chamberlain's acclaimed "The Food and Cooking of Russia," surveys the rich and diverse food cultures that were known to few people in the West during the half century when Europe was divided. It contains more than two hundred recipes interwoven with historical background and notes from the author's extensive experiences traveling through Central and Eastern Europe. When originally published this practical cookbook revealed how the world's most delicious sausages, goulash and sauerkraut, fruit dumplings, cheesecake, and many other dishes tasted in their homelands. Now, in a quite different political world, this book is a vital resource for remembering life before the Iron Curtain was lifted.This Bison Books edition contains period illustrations and a new introduction by the author that describes how dramatically this region and its food have changed since the end of Central and Eastern Europe's isolation in 1989.

Lesley Chamberlain lived in Soviet Russia in 1978–79 and recorded her experiences in the form of two hundred recipes interwoven with details of Russian culture and history and her own practical advice. From blini to cabbage soup, and caviar eggs to “Russian salad,� she reveals the continuity of Russian life, despite political repression, in which the bourgeois cooking of the nineteenth century coexisted with old dishes dictated by the church calendar and new inventions to “make do� with the frequent shortages of vital ingredients under the Soviets. First published in 1982, this fine collection of recipes and entertaining literary quotations has become a classic introduction to the rich culinary history of the region. This new Bison Books edition contains period illustrations and a new introduction by the author.

There is nothing new about the Russian conservatism Putin stands for, acclaimed writer Lesley Chamberlain argues. Rather, as Ministry of Darkness reveals, the roots of Russian conservatism can be traced back to the 19th century when Count Uvarov's notorious cry of 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality!' rang through the streets of Russia. Sergei Uvarov was no straightforward conservative; indeed, this man was at once both the pioneering educational reformer who founded the Arzamas Writers' Club to which Pushkin belonged, and the Minister who tyrannised and censored Russia's literary scene. How, then, do we reconcile such extreme contradictions in one person? Through Chamberlain's intimate examination of Uvarov's life and skilled analysis of Russian conservatism, readers learn how the many paradoxes that dominated Uvarov's personal and political life are those which, writ large, have forged the identity of conservative modern Russia and its relationship with the West. This fascinating book sheds new light on an often overlooked historical actor and offers a timely assessment of the 19th-century 'Russian predicament'. In doing so, Chamberlain teases out the reasons why the country continues to baffle Western observers and policymakers, making this essential reading both students of Russian history and those who want to further understand Russia as it is today.

There is nothing new about the Russian conservatism Putin stands for, acclaimed writer Lesley Chamberlain argues. Rather, as Ministry of Darkness reveals, the roots of Russian conservatism can be traced back to the 19th century when Count Uvarov's notorious cry of 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality!' rang through the streets of Russia. Sergei Uvarov was no straightforward conservative; indeed, this man was at once both the pioneering educational reformer who founded the Arzamas Writers' Club to which Pushkin belonged, and the Minister who tyrannised and censored Russia's literary scene. How, then, do we reconcile such extreme contradictions in one person? Through Chamberlain's intimate examination of Uvarov's life and skilled analysis of Russian conservatism, readers learn how the many paradoxes that dominated Uvarov's personal and political life are those which, writ large, have forged the identity of conservative modern Russia and its relationship with the West. This fascinating book sheds new light on an often overlooked historical actor and offers a timely assessment of the 19th-century 'Russian predicament'. In doing so, Chamberlain teases out the reasons why the country continues to baffle Western observers and policymakers, making this essential reading both students of Russian history and those who want to further understand Russia as it is today.