Since making his first voyage as a sailor to earn his passagefrom his native Holland to South America, Cees Nooteboom has neverstopped traveling. Now a selection of his best travel pieces aregathered together in this collection of immense range and depth,informed throughout by author's wonderful sense of humor. Fromexotic places like Isfahan, the Gambia, and Mali, to seemlydomesticated places like Australia and Munich, Nooteboom shares hisview of the world, showing us the strangeness in places we thoughtwe knew and the familiarity of places most of us will probablynever see. His phenomenal gifts as an observer and the wealth ofhis reading and learning make him an authoritative and delightfulcompanion.

This anthology represents Alice Walkers complete earlierpoetry, from the summer of 1965 when she traveled to East Africaand began the poems that would form her first collection, throughher poetry of the civil rights movement and beyond. Revelatoryintroductions to each group of poems provide a special insight intothe evolving consciousness of one of the most remarkable andprovocative literary minds of our time.

In despair at having no son to succeed him, the King of Turkeyleaves his palace to live in seclusion. Soon after, however, heencounters four wandering dervishes - three princes and a richmerchant from Persia, Yemen and China - who have been guided toTurkey by a supernatural force that prophesied their meeting. Thefive men sit together in the dead of night, each in turn tellingthe tale of lost love that led him to renounce the world. As theirstories within stories unfold, a magnificent world is revealed ofcourtly intrigue and romance, fairies and djinn, oriental gardensand lavish feasts, adventures and mishaps. "A Tale of FourDervishes" (1803) is an exquisite example of Urdu fiction thatprovides a fascinating glimpse into the customs, beliefs and peopleof the time.

What Pete Tarslaw wants is simple enough: a realistic amount offame that will open new avenues of sexual opportunity; the kind offinancial comfort that will allow him to spend his life pursuinghobbies such as boating or skeet shooting at his stately home bythe ocean or a scenic lake; and—perhaps mostly importantly—thechance to humiliate his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. This is thestory of how he succeeds in getting it all, and what it costs himin the end. Narrated by an unlikely literary legend, How I Became A FamousNovelist pinballs from the post-college slums of Boston, to thefear-drenched halls of Manhattan's publishing houses, from thegloomy purity of Montana’s foremost writing workshop to thehedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip. The horrifying,hilarious tale of how Pete’s “pile of garbage” called The TornadoAshes Club became the most talked about, blogged about, read,admired, and reviled novel in America will change everything youthink you know about literature, appearance, truth, be

In this "ingenious" novel (New York Times) by "one of Europe'smost original and remarkable writers" (Los Angeles Times), aproofreader's deliberate slip opens the door to romance-andconfounds the facts of Portugal's past. Translated by GiovanniPontiero.

"Drinking a toast to the visible world, his impendingdisappearance from it be damned." That's how John Updike describesan elderly character in his remarkable final collection. He mighthave been talking about himself. In My Father's Tears, Updikerevisits his people, places, and themes--Americans in suburbs,cities, and small towns grappling with faith and infidelity--invivid portraits of the aged, people for whom the past has becomeparamount. My Father's Tears is a superb set of tales that is avital and unforgettable farewell.

In this classic novel Richard Yates, hailed as a preeminentchronicler of the American condition and author of the acclaimed"Revolutionary Road, " weaves a masterful, unflinching tale of twofamilies brought together by chance, desperation, and desire. EvanShepard was born with good looks, bad luck, and a love for the openro But it was on one such drive, with his father from rural LongIsland into lower Manhattan, that Evan's life would be changedforever. When their car breaks down on a Greenwich Village street,Evan's father presses a random doorbell, looking for a telephone.Within hours, two families--sharing equally complex and addledhistories--will come together. There will be flirtation. There willbe a marriage. There will be a child, a new home... But as Evanmoves further into the uncharted land of manhood, as the women andmen around him come into focus, he faces roads not taken and ajourney not made--in Richard Yates' haunting exploration of humanrestlessness, family secrets, and a future shaped by them b

Many people among them Henry James) have considered Balzac tobe the greatest of all novelists. Eugenie Grandet, his spare,classical story of a girl whose life is blighted by her father'shysterical greed, goes a long way to justifying that opinion. Oneof the most magnificent of his tales of early nineteenth-centuryFrench provincial life, this novel is the work of a writer on whomnothing was lost, and who represents most fully the ability of thehuman animal to understand and illuminate its own condition. Translated By Ellen Marriage With An Introduction By Fredric R.Jameson Fredric R. Jameson is William A. Lane, Jr. Professor ofComparative Literature at Duke University in North Carolina. Hispublications include Sartre: The Origins of a Style, Signatures ofthe Visible, and Post-modernism, or, The Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism, with Aesthetics of the Geopolitical forthcoming. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

"I couldn't cook but I could sew. It would have been better theother way around." Trapped in Kansas at the turn of the twentiethcentury, Nell Plat is seventeen, unhappily married, and the motherof two baby girls. No reality could be further from her secretdreams of glamour and excitement, dreams that will tempt her to dothe unthinkable and run away to the glittering wonderland of LosAngeles and the burgeoning motion picture industry. Lucky for Nell,her experience as a seamstress to the ladies of her Kansas towntranslates beautifully to work as a costumer to Hollywood in theRoaring Twenties. She renames herself Madame Annelle, and builds anew life for herself that looks so much more like the one she hadalways imagined. But a knock on the door threatens to rip apart theseams of her own carefully constructed costume, and Nell is forcedto confront the legacy of her abandonment and deception. Can sherework the delicate fabric of her life?

Bakha is a young man, proud and even attractive, yet nonethe less he is an outcast in India s caste system: an Untouchable.In deceptively simple prose this groundbreaking novel describes aday in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, as hesearches for a meaning to the tragic existence he has been borninto - and comes to an unexpected conclusion. Mulk Raj Anand poureda vitality, fire and richness of detail into his controversialwork, which led him to be acclaimed as his country s CharlesDickens and one of the twentieth century s most important Indianwriters.

First in a brand new series from the "New York Times"bestselling creator of the Myth and Phule novels. A low-stakes conartist and killer poker player, Griffen "Grifter" McCandlesgraduated college fully expecting his wealthy family to have a jobwaiting for him. Instead, his mysterious uncle reveals a strangefamily secret: Griffen and his sister, Valerie, are actuallydragons. Unwilling to let Uncle Mal take him under his wing, so tospeak, Griffen heads to New Orleans with Valerie to make a livingthe only way he knows how. And even the criminal underworld of theFrench Quarter will heat up when Griffen lands in town.

Philippe and Joseph Bridau are two extremely differentbrothers. The elder, Philippe, is a superficially heroic soldierand adored by their mother Agathe. He is nonetheless a bitterfigure, secretly gambling away her savings after a brief butglorious career in Napoleon's army. His younger brother Joseph,meanwhile, is fundamentally virtuous - but their mother is blindedto his kindness by her disapproval of his life as an artist.Foolish and prejudiced, Agathe lives on unaware that she is beingcynically manipulated by her own favourite child, but will she everdiscover which of her sons is truly the black sheep of the family?A dazzling depiction of the power of money and the cruelty of lifein nineteenth-century France, The Black Sheep compellingly exploresis a compelling exploration of the nature of deceit.

Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republicof Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretlygathered seven of her most committed female students to readforbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative andreligious families, others were progressive and secular; some hadspent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first,unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon theyremoved their veils and began to speak more freely–their storiesintertwining with the novels they were reading by Jane Austen, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. As Islamicmorality squads staged arbitrary raids in Tehran, asfundamentalists seized hold of the universities and a blind censorstifled artistic expression, the women in Nafisi’s living roomspoke not only of the books they were reading but also aboutthemselves, their dreams and disappointments. Azar Nafisi’s luminous masterwork gives us a rare glimpse, fromthe inside, of women’s lives in rev

In her highly original new novel, Molly Gloss delivers a rareblend of "heady cerebral satisfactions, gorgeous prose, andpage-turning adventure" (Karen Joy Fowler). Set among lavasinkholes and logging camps at the fringe of the Northwest frontierin the early 1900s, WILD LIFE charts the life -- both real andimagined -- of the free-thinking, cigar-smoking, trouser-wearingCharlotte Bridger Drummond, who pens popular women's adventurestories. One day, when a little girl gets lost in the woods,Charlotte anxiously joins the search and embarks on an adventureall her own. With great assurance and skill, Molly Gloss quicklytransforms what at first seems to be pitch-perfect historicalfiction into a kind of wild and woolly mystery story, as Charlotteherself becomes lost in the dark and tangled woods and falls intothe company of an elusive band of mountain giants. Putting asurprising and revitalizing feminist spin on the classic legend ofTarzan and other wild-man sagas, Gloss takes us from the wilds ofthe western f

Best-selling novelist Ann Patchett’s second, "strikinglyoriginal"* novel tells the moving story of John Nickel, an ex–jazzmusician who wanted nothing more than to be a good father. When hislover takes away his son, he’s left only with his Beale Street bar.He hires a young waitress named Fay Taft, who brings with her adesperate, dangerous brother, Carl, and the possibility of newintimacy. Nickel finds himself consumed with Fay and Carl’s deadfather— Taft—obsessing over and reconstructing the life of a man henever met. A stunning artistic achievement, Taft confirms Ann Patchett’sstanding as one of the most gifted writers of her generation andreminds us of our deepest instincts to protect the people welove. *Kirkus Reviews

Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia,Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinatingstory of the final days of Russian monarchs Nicholas and Alexandraas seen through the eyes of the Romanov's young kitchen boy,Leonka.

Miss Read's charming chronicles of small-town life have achievedan almost legendary popularity worldwide by offering a welcomereturn to a gentler time and "wit, humor, and wisdom in equalmeasure" (Cleveland Plain Dealer). This volume introduces ThrushGreen, the neighboring village to Fairacre: its blackthorn bushes,thatch-roofed cottages, enchanting landscape, and jumble sales.Readers will delight in a new cast of characters and also welcomefamiliar faces as they become immersed in the village's turn ofevents on one pivotal day -- May Day. Before the day is over, lifeand love and perhaps eternity will touch the immemorial peace ofthe village.