An invaluable record of the creative output of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power, Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag's shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life.
Ranging from allegory to parable to autobiography, these stories show Sontag wrestling with problems beyond the essayistic form, her more customary mode. Here, she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, and lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm. Sontag's work has typically required time for people to catch up to it. These challenging works of literary art--made more urgent by the passage of years--await a new generation of readers.
Mark Twain's gloriously funny Diary of Adam and Eve, which John Updike described as a paradigm of the relations between sexes, is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous episode of the Bible.
By giving a voice to Adam and Eve, and by hitting all the notes on the literary scale - from the intimate to the comical, from the journalistic to the idyllic - Twain displays the brilliance and wit for which he is rightly considered one of the greatest satirists of all time
Uplifting and utterly defiant' Matt Nixson, Daily Express 'Immediate and important ... This is an insider's account of how an ordinary life became extraordinary' Helen Davies, The Times'At first we did not understand what war was. You can't understand it until you see it and hear it.'As Russian forces build up beyond the Ukrainian borders and the prospect of war becomes a devastating reality, Andrey Kurkov chronicles the shocking impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Part political and historical commentary, part personal journal, Kurkov explores the fraught interrelation of Russian and Ukrainian history, the complicated coexistence of their languages, and in describing how a peaceful society defies occupation, the author builds an image of a culture which, contrary to Putin's claims, is unique and democratic, liberal and diverse, one that will 'resist to the end'. Redirecting his satirical flair to paint a defiant portrait of his compatriots, Kurkov tells of a people united against erasure. Bread is baked and shared in the ruins.
An amputee is carried aboard an evacuating train, grandmothers escape occupied towns with their noisome roosters. And despite the networks of toloka, of community work for common good, being stretched to breaking point, and the embittering reticence of some European nations to make good their promises of aid and armaments, hope channels its perennial resistance: children are born deep within besieged cities and farmers go on working the fields made lethal by unexploded shells. Kurkov braids his personal story with those of other displaced Ukrainians and the communities that have gone to extraordinary lengths to care for them.
Showing an irrepressible spirit, they 'wait for the moment when it will be safe to return,' he writes, 'just as I am waiting.'
A spoof encyclopedia of contemporary accepted wisdom and commonplaces, the Dictionary of Received Ideas sees Flaubert at his witty and satirical best. Perhaps intended as a companion to his final, unfinished novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, this compilation was the result of a lifetime of collecting the absurd and the cliched with darkly humorous explanations.
A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.