This passionate and monumental biography reassesses the life and legacy of one of the most significant cultural figures of the twentieth century Unevenly respected, easily hated, almost always suspected of being inferior to his reputation, Jean Cocte...

A good novel brings to life not only the nature of its characters, but also the physical presence of all of the things surrounding them, from the smallest trinkets to entire landscapes".Object Lessons" explores this phenomenon and addresses a fundame...

Diversity has always been central to Alaska identity, as the state's population consists of people with many different backgrounds, viewpoints, and life experiences. This book opens a window into these diverse lives, gathering stories and poems about...

Originally published in Italian in 1965, "A Test of Powers" was immediately seen as one of the central texts of Italian intellectual life. By the time of the 1968 student revolts, it was clear that Franco Fortini had anticipated many of the themes an...

In 1963, French-Spanish writer Jorge Semprun published "Le Grand Voyage" ("The Long Voyage"), a fictional account of his deportation to Buchenwald. Later, Semprun became an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and served as Spain's minister of cultur...

Acclaimed novelist and critic Tim Parks has long been fascinated by the complicated relationship between an author's life and work. Dissatisfied with the dominant modes of reading he encountered, he began exploring the underlying values and patterns...

James Joyce's Ulysses first appeared in print in the pages of an American avant-garde magazine, The Little Review, between 1918 and 1920. The novel many consider to be the most important literary work of the twentieth century was, at the time, deemed...

John Hollander, poet and scholar, was a master whose work joined luminous learning and imaginative risk. This book, based on the unpublished Clark Lectures Hollander delivered in 1999 at Cambridge University, witnesses his power to shift the horizons...

Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question "Why?" has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different...

Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence – in his many letters, extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating...