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Turkish Delight (Paperback)
Jan Wolkers; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R404
R375
Discovery Miles 3 750
Save R29 (7%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The Evenings (Paperback)
Gerard Reve; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A modern masterpiece, voted the greatest Dutch novel of all time
_______________ 'I work in an office. I take cards out of a file.
Once I have taken them out, I put them back in again. That is it.'
Twenty-three-year-old Frits - office worker, daydreamer, teller of
inappropriate jokes - finds life absurd and inexplicable. He lives
with his parents, who drive him mad. He has terrible, disturbing
dreams of death and destruction. Sometimes he talks to a toy
rabbit. This is the story of ten evenings in Frits's life at the
end of December, as he drinks, smokes, sees friends, aimlessly
wanders the gloomy city streets and tries to make sense of the
minutes, hours and days that stretch before him. Darkly funny and
mesmerising, The Evenings takes the tiny, quotidian triumphs and
heartbreaks of our everyday lives and turns them into a work of
brilliant wit and profound beauty.
This book is the result of a comparative investigation that
contrasts micro-systems of innovation in several regions of China
and Australia - two vastly different countries in terms of
traditions, industry structures, political systems and economic
organisation. Six regional studies comprehensively document the
experiences of firms engaged in product or process innovation. The
book also examines the institutions that support research and
development and the impact of government policies on innovation in
each of the regions studied. The case-studies present original and
informative insights into the different ways in which local,
national and transnational interests interact and influence
regional development. These findings support the view that local
innovation systems are emerging with quite different structural
characteristics. The authors conclude that local, national and
transnational dimensions are continually redefining and aligning
themselves in novel and interesting ways. They highlight the
importance of identifying these structural relationships in order
to encourage dynamic innovation to occur. This, they argue, has
important implications for policymakers concerned with the
promotion of innovation in regional areas. Innovation, Technology
Policy and Regional Development will be of great interest to those
involved in research and policy in the fields of economic growth
and employment, industrial economics and innovation.
Longlisted for the International Man Booker Prize. Two venturesome
women on a journey through the land of their fathers and mothers. A
wrong turn. A bad decision. They had no idea, when they arrived in
Morocco, that their usual freedoms as young European women would
not be available. So, when the spry Saleh presents himself as their
guide and saviour, they embrace his offer. He extracts them from a
tight space, only to lead them inexorably into an even tighter one:
and from this far darker space there is no exit. Their tale of
confinement and escape is as old as the landscapes and cultures so
vividly depicted in this story of where Europe and Africa come
closest to meeting, even if they never quite touch.
The Dutch bestseller Nominated for Le Prix Nicolas Bouvier 'A
masterclass in storytelling, exploring who we are and where we came
from' Danielle Clode 'Gripping and brilliantly told, We Hominids
deftly blends personal experience with a journalist's eye for a
remarkable story' Mark McKenna WHO ARE WE? WHY ARE WE DIFFERENT
FROM ANIMALS? WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? In this charming,
thought-provoking book, one of Holland's greatest non-fiction
writers hunts down answers to humanity's most fundamental
questions: Who are we? What makes us different from animals? With
an ancient skull as his starting point, he travels the globe,
tracing the search for the first human being: the missing link
between humans and apes. Westerman introduces us to the world of
skull hunters – leading experts in our fossil ancestry – whose
lives are just as fascinating as those of their primeval
discoveries. He astutely reconsiders the work of illustrious
paleoanthropologists in the light of new DNA technology,
postcolonialism, and the rise of women in this male-dominated
field. Westerman discovers a plethora of origin hypotheses and
shows how any theory of who we are and where we come from is
coloured by the zeitgeist. We, Hominids is a compelling mixture of
reportage, travelogue and essay – reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin or
Ryszard Kapuscinski – written by a brilliant storyteller and
thinker.
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The Ditch (Hardcover)
Herman Koch; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R478
R399
Discovery Miles 3 990
Save R79 (17%)
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Out of stock
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Author of the world-wide bestseller The Dinner, Herman Koch turns
his brilliantly acid and forensic eye to the green-eyed monster:
the all-too human emotion of jealousy. Robert Walter, the popular
mayor of Amsterdam, begins to suspect that his wife is cheating on
him with one of his aldermen. Though he is happily married, he has
always wondered why his wife, born and raised in a distant country,
chose him above his brilliant and good-looking physicist friend
Bernhard. When, to add to his concerns, he becomes the subject of
accusations relating to his past, at the same time his parents
force him to address issues of their mortality. This apparently
stable and successful man begins to become consumed by fantasies of
jealousy and paranoia. Or does he? Is Robert finally beginning to
see the world - and his life - as they are, for the first time? As
page-turning and gripping as The Dinner, Koch's new novel confronts
us with questions that haunt us all. Who can we trust? Do we
deserve our lives or owe them only to luck? And is it when we are
depressed that we see the world most clearly?
'An absolute page-turner' Mail on Sunday Dear Mr. M, I'd like to
start by telling you that I'm doing better now. I do so because you
probably have no idea that I was ever doing worse. Much worse, in
fact, but I'll get to that later on. Mr. M is being watched. As a
famous writer, he is no stranger to the limelight, although
interest in his work has been dwindling of late. His print runs are
smaller than they used to be, as are the crowds at his bookshop
signings . . . Our narrator clearly takes a keen interest in M.'s
work, and indeed in every aspect of his life. But what exactly are
his intentions? And to what does Mr. M owe the honour of his
undivided attention? Our narrator seems to be no stranger to
murder, while his own story appears to bear more than a passing
resemblance to the plot of Mr. M's most famous novel: a teacher has
an affair with a student, only to be brutally murdered by the girl
and her teenage boyfriend. The body is never found. That's the
problem with fiction: in real life, bodies have an awkward habit of
turning up. Mr. M has used some artistic licence, and our narrator
is not pleased, not pleased at all. And just before he fades into
obscurity, he's prepared to give Mr. M one last review. And it's
unlikely to be a rave. Dear Mr. M is an unsettling and irresistibly
readable novel, set in the world of writing and bookselling, by
Herman Koch, the author of the international bestseller, The
Dinner.
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Good Men (Paperback)
Arnon Grunberg; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R568
Discovery Miles 5 680
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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There will be a club. Important messages have been sent already. If
anybody wants to ruin it, he will be punished. Eleven-year-old
Elmer inhabits a childhood of superstition, private lore and secret
societies. When a new boy, pale, spindly Werther, arrives in the
neighbourhood, a subtle game of fascination and persecution begins.
In wartime Amsterdam, a young boy watches as Germans occupy the
city. At first his parents' friends, the Boslowits family, think
they have little to fear. Then, slowly, terribly, their fate is
sealed. These two haunting novellas, from the acclaimed author of
The Evenings, evoke the world of childhood, in all its magic and
strangeness, darkness and cruelty. Here, the things seen through a
child's eyes are far from innocent.
'An absolute page-turner' Mail on Sunday Dear Mr. M, I'd like to
start by telling you that I'm doing better now. I do so because you
probably have no idea that I was ever doing worse. Much worse, in
fact, but I'll get to that later on. Mr. M is being watched. As a
famous writer, he is no stranger to the limelight, although
interest in his work has been dwindling of late. His print runs are
smaller than they used to be, as are the crowds at his bookshop
signings . . . Our narrator clearly takes a keen interest in M.'s
work, and indeed in every aspect of his life. But what exactly are
his intentions? And to what does Mr. M owe the honour of his
undivided attention? Our narrator seems to be no stranger to
murder, while his own story appears to bear more than a passing
resemblance to the plot of Mr. M's most famous novel: a teacher has
an affair with a student, only to be brutally murdered by the girl
and her teenage boyfriend. The body is never found. That's the
problem with fiction: in real life, bodies have an awkward habit of
turning up. Mr. M has used some artistic licence, and our narrator
is not pleased, not pleased at all. And just before he fades into
obscurity, he's prepared to give Mr. M one last review. And it's
unlikely to be a rave. Dear Mr. M is an unsettling and irresistibly
readable literary thriller, set in the world of writing and
bookselling, by Herman Koch, the author of the international
bestseller, The Dinner.
'In a certain sense, nothing had changed - two men in a house and a
half-century passing without a ripple - but seen with the light
from a different angle, none of it had remained the same.' What is
the purpose of a man? Living in a disused farmhouse with his
elderly father, Paul Kruzen is not sure he knows anymore. The mill
his grandfather toiled in is closed, the glory of the Great Wars is
long past, and it has been many years since his mother escaped in
the arms of a Russian pilot, never once looking back. What do they
have to look forward to now? Saint Rita, the patron saint of lost
causes, watches over Paul and his best friend Horseradish Hedwig,
two misfits at odds with the modern world, while Paul takes comfort
in his own Blessed Rita, a prostitute from Quezon. But even she
cannot protect them from the tragedy that is about to unfold. In
this darkly funny novel about life on the margins of society, Dutch
sensation Tommy Wieringa asks what happens to those left behind.
Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing
the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to
Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and
witnesses, looking to define the condition of Europe at the verge
of a new millennium. The result is mesmerising: Mak's rare double
talent as a sharp-eyed journalist and a hugely imaginative
historian makes In Europe a dazzling account of that journey, full
of diaries, newspaper reports and memoirs, and the voices of
prominent figures and unknown players; from the grandson of Kaiser
Wilhelm II to Adriana Warno in Poland, with her holiday job at the
gates of the camp at Birkenau. But Mak is above all an observer. He
describes what he sees at places that have become Europe's
well-springs of memory, where history is written into the
landscape. At Ypres he hears the blast of munitions from the Great
War that are still detonated twice a day. In Warsaw he finds the
point where the tram rails that led to the Jewish ghetto come to a
dead end in a city park. And in an abandoned creche near Chernobyl,
where tiny pairs of shoes still stand in neat rows, he is
transported back to the moment time stood still in the dying days
of the Soviet Union. Mak combines the larger story of
twentieth-century Europe with details that suddenly give it a face,
a taste and a smell. His unique approach makes the reader an
eyewitness to his own half-forgotten past, full of unknown
peculiarities, sudden insights and touching encounters. In Europe
is a masterpiece; it reads like the epic novel of the continent's
most extraordinary century.
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The Rider (Paperback)
Tim Krabbe; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R406
R305
Discovery Miles 3 050
Save R101 (25%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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A literary sports classic, finally available in the U.S. Originally
published in Holland in 1978, "The Rider" became an instant cult
classic, selling over 100,000 copies. Brilliantly conceived and
written at a break-neck pace, it is a loving, imaginative, and,
above all, passionate tribute to the art of bicycle road racing.
Not a dry history of the sport, "The Rider" is beloved as a bicycle
odyssey, a literary masterpiece that describes in painstaking
detail one 150-kilometer race in a mere 150 pages. "The Rider" is
the ultimate book for bike lovers as well as the arm-chair sports
enthusiast.
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The Dinner (Paperback, Main)
Herman Koch; Translated by Sam Garrett
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R284
R253
Discovery Miles 2 530
Save R31 (11%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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This report considers contemporary developments in presidential
elections. It emphasizes three topics chosen for their recurring
importance and notable recent developments: (1) nominating
procedures; (2) campaign finance; and (3) the electoral college.
The report highlights significant developments in these areas,
particularly for the 2008 and 2012 elections. It also provides
background information about the presidential election process in
general. Other CRS products cited throughout this report provide
additional information about the topics introduced here. As the
report notes, 2012 was expected to be a noteworthy election cycle
for several reasons. Some are extensions of developments that
started in 2008 or before, while others are more recent. Key themes
discussed in this report include the following: In recent years,
the two major political parties have made efforts to control the
"front-loading" phenomenon, the tendency for states to vie to be
first or among the first to hold caucuses or primary elections to
select presidential nominees. As the result of inter-party
cooperation following the 2008 election, front-loading was
significantly reduced for 2012; Among Republicans, the
winner-take-all method that had been widely used was replaced with
a proportional system for contests before April 1, although strict
proportional allocation was not mandated. With an open race for the
Republican nomination, the pace of primaries and caucuses and the
new allocation rule were expected to have an unpredictable effect.
In the end, the changes prolonged the contest in comparison to
recent previous contests; Significant changes in campaign finance
law shaped campaign finance in the 2012 election cycle, largely as
a result of the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission. In the aftermath of Citizens United,
presidential candidates may face additional pressure to raise funds
to be able to compete against their opponents and outside groups,
particularly new organizations called "super PACs;" One of the most
notable campaign finance developments in recent elections is the
decline of the public financing system for presidential candidates.
The 2012 cycle marked the first since the public financing
program's inception that no major candidate accepted public funds;
After decades of congressional inactivity, state-level initiatives
to reform the electoral college were actively considered in 2012.
Among these were proposals to establish the district system of
awarding electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and further
discussion of the National Popular Vote initiative (NPV). NPV seeks
to implement direct popular election of the President and Vice
President through an interstate compact, rather than by
constitutional Amendment; Various states have considered or are
considering changes to their participation in the electoral
college. Moreover, a nongovernmental organization, the National
Popular Vote (NPV) campaign, has proposed an interstate compact
that would achieve direct election without a constitutional
amendment.
Super PACs emerged after the U.S. Supreme Court permitted unlimited
corporate and union spending on elections in January 2010 (Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission). Although not directly
addressed in that case, related, subsequent litigation (SpeechNow
v. Federal Election Commission) and Federal Election Commission
(FEC) activity gave rise to a new form of political committee.
These entities, known as super PACs or independent-expenditure-only
committees (IEOCs) have been permitted to accept unlimited
contributions and make unlimited expenditures aimed at electing or
defeating federal candidates. Super PACs may not contribute funds
directly to federal candidates or parties.
The new novel by the internationally acclaimed author- "a farce of
nuclear proportions"("Vanity Fair")
Arnon Grunberg is one of the most subtly outrageous provocateurs in
world literature. "The Jewish Messiah," which chronicles the
evolution of one Xavier Radek from malcontent grandson of a former
SS officer, to Jewish convert, to co- translator of Hitler's "Mein
Kampf" into Yiddish, to Israeli politician and Israel's most
unlikely prime minister, is his most outrageous work yet. Taking on
the most well-guarded pieties and taboos of our age, "The Jewish
Messiah" is both a great love story and a grotesque farce that
forces a profound reckoning with the limits of human guilt,
cruelty, and suffering. It is without question Arnon Grunberg's
masterpiece.
A stunning psychological thriller about friship, drugs, and murder
from the author of "The Vanishing."
Egon Wagter and Axel van de Graaf met when they were both fourteen
and on vacation in Belgium. Axel is fascinating, filled with an
amoral energy by which the more prudent, less adventurous Egon is
both mesmerized and repelled. Even as a teen, Axel has a strange
power over those around him. He defies authority, seduces women,
breaks the law. Axel chooses Egon as a friend, a friendship that
somehow ures over time and ends up determining Egon's fate.
During his university studies, Egon frequents Axel's house in
Amsterdam, where there is a party every night and women fill the
rooms. Though Egon chooses geology over Axel's life of avarice and
drug dealing, he remains intrigued by his friend's conviction that
the only law that counts is the law he makes himself. Egon believes
that Axel is a demonic figure who tempts others only because he
knows they want to be tempted. By the time he is in his forties,
Egon finds himself divorced and with few professional prospects. He
turns for help to Axel, who sends him to Ratanakiri, a fictional
country in Southeast Asia. Axel gives Egon a suitcase to
deliver-and Egon never returns.
Utterly compelling and resonant, "The Cave" is an unforgettable
story of betrayal in the spirit of Tim Krabbe's remarkable first
novel, "The Vanishing,"
During the 109th Congress, 51 bills were introduced to change the
nation's campaign finance laws (primarily under Titles 2 and 26 of
the U.S. Code). These bills - 43 in the House and 8 in the Senate -
sought to change the current system, including tightening perceived
loopholes. Two of those bills passed the House, but no bill passed
both chambers. Therefore, no statutory changes occurred in federal
campaign finance law during the 109th Congress. Although the 109th
Congress chose not to enact campaign finance legislation, Congress
nonetheless considered dozens of bills addressing a wide variety of
topics. In summarising that legislation, this book identifies 14
major topics (categories) addressed in the bills. These categories
are diverse, ranging from changing individual contribution limits
to regulating independent expenditures. Although some bills called
for increased regulation, others proposed less regulation. Hence,
legislative activity during the 109th Congress reflected a
long-standing debate in campaign finance policy over extending
regulation of campaign finance practices versus limiting the reach
of such regulation.
Istanbul's Galata Bridge has spanned the Golden Horn since the
sixth century AD, connecting the old city with the more Western
districts to the north. But the bridge is a city in itself, peopled
by merchants and petty thieves, tourists and fishermen, and at the
same time a microcosmic reflection of Turkey as the link between
Asia and Europe. Geert Mak introduces us to the woman who sells
lottery tickets, the cigarette vendors, and the best pickpockets in
Europe. He tells us about the pride of the cobbler and the
tea-seller's homesickness. And he describes the role of honor in
Turkish culture, the temptations of fundamentalism and violence,
and the urge to survive, even in the face of despair. These stories
of the bridge's denizens are interwoven with vignettes illuminating
moments in the history of Istanbul and Turkey and shedding light on
Turkey's relationship with Europe and the West, the Armenian
question, the migration from the Turkish countryside to the city,
and the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
This book reviews past proposals for and debate over congressional
public financing. It also discusses experiences with the
presidential and state public financing systems. Finally, the book
offers potential considerations for Congress in devising a public
financing system for its elections if it chooses to do so.
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