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The story of how literature shaped world history, in sixteen acts—from Alexander the Great and the Iliad to Don Quixote and Harry Potter
In this groundbreaking book, Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today.
Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched the lives of generations and changed the course of history.
At the heart of this book are works, some long-lost and rediscovered, that have shaped civilization: the first written masterpiece, the Epic of Gilgamesh; Ezra’s Hebrew Bible, created as scripture; the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus; and the first great novel in world literature, The Tale of Genji, written by a Japanese woman known as Murasaki. Visiting Baghdad, Puchner tells of Scheherazade and the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, and in the Americas we watch the astonishing survival of the Maya epic Popol Vuh. Cervantes, who invented the modern novel, battles pirates both real (when he is taken prisoner) and literary (when a fake sequel to Don Quixote is published).
We learn of Benjamin Franklin’s pioneering work as a media entrepreneur, watch Goethe discover world literature in Sicily, and follow the rise in influence of The Communist Manifesto. We visit Troy, Pergamum, and China, and we speak with Nobel laureates Derek Walcott in the Caribbean and Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, as well as the wordsmiths of the oral epic Sunjata in West Africa.
Throughout The Written World, Puchner’s delightful narrative also chronicles the inventions—writing technologies, the printing press, the book itself—that have shaped religion, politics, commerce, people, and history. In a book that Elaine Scarry has praised as “unique and spellbinding,” Puchner shows how literature turned our planet into a written world.
Title: The Written World
Subtitle: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization
Author: Martin Puchner
Publisher: Random House
Format Hardcover, $32.00
ISBN-10 0812998936
ISBN-13 9780812998931
Publication Date: 24 October 2017
Nb of pages 448 p.
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Festival de la BnF 2018 Paris
Les textes de La Bibliothèque parlante dans les collections de la BnF (samedi 26 et dimanche 27 mai 2018 – François-Mitterrand – BnF Paris)
# Website La Bibliothèque parlante
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A wonderfully digressive little volume about our complex relationship with our books and being an incurable bibliophile. The perfect antidote to Walter Benjamin’s classic essay, Unpacking My Library.
A best-selling author and world-renowned bibliophile meditates on his vast personal library and champions the vital role of all libraries.
In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France’s Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Packing up his enormous, 35,000‑volume personal library, choosing which books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between books and readers, books and collectors, order and disorder, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illuminates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the vital role of public libraries.
Manguel’s musings range widely, from delightful reflections on the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, including the burning of ancient Alexandria’s library and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. With insight and passion, the author underscores the universal centrality of books and their unique importance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society.
Alberto Manguel is a writer, translator, editor, and critic, but would rather define himself as a reader and a lover of books. Born in Buenos Aires, he has since resided in Israel, Argentina, Europe, the South Pacific, and Canada. He is now the director of the National Library of Argentina.
Title: Packing My Library
Subtitle: An Elegy and Ten Digressions
Author: Alberto Manguel
Publisher: Yale University Press
Title First Published: 20 March 2018
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10 0300219334
ISBN-13 9780300219333
Nb of pages 160 p.
Hardcover – $23.00
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An extraordinary exploration of the medieval world – the most beguiling history book of the year
This is a book about why medieval manuscripts matter. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature.
The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to explore with the author what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history – and sometimes about the modern world too. Christopher de Hamel introduces us to kings, queens, saints, scribes, artists, librarians, thieves, dealers, collectors and the international community of manuscript scholars, showing us how he and his fellows piece together evidence to reach unexpected conclusions. He traces the elaborate journeys which these exceptionally precious artefacts have made through time and space, shows us how they have been copied, who has owned them or lusted after them (and how we can tell), how they have been embroiled in politics and scholarly disputes, how they have been regarded as objects of supreme beauty and luxury and as symbols of national identity. The book touches on religion, art, literature, music, science and the history of taste.
Part travel book, part detective story, part conversation with the reader, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts conveys the fascination and excitement of encountering some of the greatest works of art in our culture which, in the originals, are to most people completely inaccessible. At the end, we have a slightly different perspective on history and how we come by knowledge. It is a most unusual book.
Biography: In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s Christopher de Hamel has probably handled and catalogued more illuminated manuscripts and over a wider range than any person alive. Since 2000, he has been Fellow and Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The Parker Library, in his care, includes many of the earliest manuscripts in English language and history. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Historical Society.
♦’Endlessly fascinating and enjoyable’ Neil MacGregor
♦’A marvellous book’ David Attenborough
♦’Full of delights’ Tom Stoppard
Christopher de Hamel
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
Winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2017
Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year 2016
Published 5th April 2018
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780141977492
Number of pages: 656
Weight: 461 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 28 mm
Paperback – £12.99
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“Il fallait bien qu’un jour je croise la route de Lady Chatterley. J’ai fait mieux, je suis tombée amoureuse de celui qui l’imagina, D. H. Lawrence, à cause de sa figure de mauvais coucheur, à cause de l’extraordinaire sensibilité de son “écriture androgyne” dont parlait Anaïs Nin.
Pendant deux ans, je n’ai pas quitté cet amateur des grands espaces qui, lorsqu’il écrivait, ne s’est jamais encombré des barrières du surmoi. J’ai voulu faire redécouvrir cet auteur célèbre qui n’est plus assez lu, contemporain des suffragettes, et qui vécut entouré de femmes libres. Il avait compris qu’au vortex de leur émancipation et de leurs revendications se trouvait le plein accomplissement de leur jouissance sexuelle.” Catherine Millet.
Catherine Millet
Aimer Lawrence
Paru le 20/09/2017
Genre: Essais littéraires
304 pages
138 x 210 mm
Broché
ISBN-10: 2081372614
ISBN-13: 978-2081372610
€21,00
Editeur : Flammarion
Langue : Français
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Bernard Pivot, lecteur professionnel (“Apostrophes”, Lire, JDD) et sa fille Cécile, ardente lectrice amateur, confrontent leurs raisons, plaisirs et manières de lire, leur usage des livres, dans des textes très personnels, joliment illustrés, où le public des librairies et des bibliothèques retrouvera ses émotions, et celui qui n’ose pas en pousser les portes découvrira stimulations et conseils.
Un tonique et savoureux éloge des écrivains, des livres et de la lecture.
Bernard Pivot, Cécile Pivot
Lire !
Paru le 14/03/2018
Genre : Essais littéraires
192 pages
174 x 239 mm Couleur
Broché
EAN: 9782081416307
ISBN : 9782081416307
€25,00
Ed. Flammarion
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The judges of the Walter Scott Prize 2018 announced a longlist of thirteen books:
The books are:
# The Clocks In This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks
# Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore
# Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
# The Last Man In Europe by Dennis Glover
# Sugar Money by Jane Harris
# Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr
# The Draughtsman by Robert Lautner
# Grace by Paul Lynch
# The Wardrobe Mistress by Patrick McGrath
# Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves by Rachel Malik
# The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers
# The Horseman by Tim Pears
# The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley
The Judges said:
“This year our Prize has attracted a record number of entries, and historical fiction continues to ride a wave of publishing success. As a result, we have been able to make our selection from a body of remarkable and varied novels. In our longlist, we have attempted to represent different styles – from lyrical to experimental, and from epic to intimate.
“All human life is here, from outlaws making a living forging coins in Yorkshire’s badlands, to post-war London theatre society. We hope that in representing such a richness of styles and diversity of settings, the Walter Scott Prize can bring to public attention new work, while at the same time rewarding writers at the top of their game. We’re looking forward to bringing the best of these forward to shortlist in April.”
# end March 2018: Academy Recommends list announced
# April 2018: Shortlist announced
# 14th-17th June 2018: Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival, Melrose – Winner of Walter Scott Prize 2018 announced and presented
# more information on the website of the Walter Scott Prize
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The Man Booker International Prize has revealed the ‘Man Booker Dozen’ of 13 novels in contention for the 2018 prize, which celebrates the finest works of translated fiction from around the world.
The 2018 longlist:
• Laurent Binet (France), Sam Taylor, The 7th Function of Language (Harvill Secker)
• Javier Cercas (Spain), Frank Wynne, The Impostor (MacLehose Press)
• Virginie Despentes (France), Frank Wynne, Vernon Subutex 1 (MacLehose Press)
• Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany), Susan Bernofsky, Go, Went, Gone (Portobello Books)
• Han Kang (South Korea), Deborah Smith, The White Book (Portobello Books)
• Ariana Harwicz (Argentina), Sarah Moses & Carolina Orloff, Die, My Love (Charco Press)
• László Krasznahorkai (Hungary), John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet & George Szirtes, The World Goes On (Tuskar Rock Press)
• Antonio Muñoz Molina (Spain), Camilo A. Ramirez, Like a Fading Shadow (Tuskar Rock Press)
• Christoph Ransmayr (Austria), Simon Pare, The Flying Mountain (Seagull Books)
• Ahmed Saadawi (Iraq), Jonathan Wright, Frankenstein in Baghdad (Oneworld)
• Olga Tokarczuk (Poland), Jennifer Croft, Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
• Wu Ming-Yi (Taiwan), Darryl Sterk, The Stolen Bicycle (Text Publishing)
• Gabriela Ybarra (Spain), Natasha Wimmer, The Dinner Guest (Harvill Secker)
‘The longlist introduces a wealth of talent, a variety of forms and some writers little known in English before. It has great writing and translating energy and we hope readers take as much pleasure in discovering the work as we did.’
Lisa Appignanesi, chair of the 2018 judges
The prize is now awarded every year for a single book, which is translated into English and published in the UK. Both novels and short-story collections are eligible. The work of translators is equally rewarded, with the £50,000 prize divided between the author and the translator of the winning entry. In addition, each shortlisted author and translator will receive £1,000 each. The judges considered 108 books.
The longlist was selected by a panel of five judges, chaired by Lisa Appignanesi OBE, author and cultural commentator, with Michael Hofmann, poet, reviewer and translator from German; Hari Kunzru, author of five novels including The Impressionist and White Tears; Tim Martin, journalist and literary critic, and Helen Oyeyemi, author of novels, plays and short stories including The Icarus Girl.
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In this riveting, heartfelt debut, a young woman assumes a new name to escape her dark past and find the redemption she desperately seeks.
“A terrific debut, told gently, honestly, and with a generous amount of hope.”—New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford
Venus Black is a straitlaced A student fascinated by the study of astronomy—until the night she commits a shocking crime that tears her family apart and ignites a media firestorm. Venus refuses to talk about what happened or why, except to blame her mother. Adding to the mystery, Venus’s developmentally challenged younger brother, Leo, goes missing.
More than five years later, Venus is released from prison with a suitcase of used clothes, a fake identity, and a determination to escape her painful past. Estranged from her mother, and with her beloved brother still missing, she sets out to make a fresh start in Seattle, skittish and alone. But as new people enter her orbit—including a romantic interest and a young girl who seems like a mirror image of her former lost self—old wounds resurface, and Venus realizes that she can’t find a future while she’s running from her past.
In this gripping story, debut novelist Heather Lloyd brilliantly captures ordinary lives thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Told through a constellation of captivating voices, My Name Is Venus Black explores the fluidity of right and wrong, the pain of betrayal, and the meaning of love and family.
Heather Lloyd, who has spent many years working as an editor and writing coach, lives with her husband in New York City. My Name Is Venus Black is her first novel.
My Name Is Venus Black
A Novel
By Heather Lloyd
Category: Crime Mysteries
Hardcover : $27.00
Publ.: Feb 27, 2018
368 Pages
ISBN 9780399592188
Publ. by The Dial Press
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Rainer Maria Rilke feierte die Liebe, verschrieb sich ihr mit ganzer Seele. Die Frauen standen für ihn im Mittelpunkt.
Angefangen bei seiner innig geliebten Mutter Sophia und der gestrengen »Übermutter« Lou Andreas-Salomé über die Bildhauerin Clara Westhoff bis zu der großzügigen Mäzenin Fürstin von Thurn und Taxis. In seiner neuen, meisterlich geschriebenen Biografie erzählt Heimo Schwilk von diesen Frauen und ihren Schicksalen.
Ein Buch über die Liebe – und wie sie sich in großer Dichtung vollendet.
Heimo Schwilk, geboren 1952 in Stuttgart, Dr. phil., ist Autor zahlreicher Bücher über Politik und Literatur. Seine großen Biografien über Ernst Jünger und Hermann Hesse wurden im In- und Ausland hoch gelobt. Er war lange Jahre Leitender Redakteur der Welt am Sonntag und lebt in Berlin. 1991 wurde er mit dem Theodor-Wolff-Preis für herausragenden Journalismus ausgezeichnet.
Heimo Schwilk
Rilke und die Frauen
Biografie eines Liebenden
‘Piper’ Taschenbuch
Piper Verlag GmbH
Mit 22 Abbildungen
EAN: 9783492308878
ISBN: 3492308872
2016
336 Seiten
kartoniert
€ 11,00
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The year 1818 saw the publication of one of the most influential science-fiction stories of all time.
Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on gothic horror and science-fiction genres, and her creation has become part of our everyday culture, from cartoons to Hallowe’en costumes. Even the name ‘Frankenstein’ has become a by-word for evil scientists and dangerous experiments. How did a teenager with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein?
Clues are dotted throughout Georgian science and popular culture. The years before the book’s publication saw huge advances in our understanding of the natural sciences, in areas such as electricity and physiology, for example. Sensational science demonstrations caught the imagination of the general public, while the newspapers were full of lurid tales of murderers and resurrectionists.
Making the Monster explores the scientific background behind Mary Shelley’s book. Is there any science fact behind the science fiction? And how might a real-life Victor Frankenstein have gone about creating his monster? From tales of volcanic eruptions, artificial life and chemical revolutions, to experimental surgery, ‘monsters’ and electrical experiments on human cadavers, Kathryn Harkup examines the science and scientists that influenced Shelley, and inspired her most famous creation.
Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Kathryn completed a PhD then a postdoc at the University of York before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed far more than spending hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. Kathryn went on to run outreach in engineering, computing, physics and maths at the University of Surrey, which involved writing talks on science and engineering topics that would appeal to bored teenagers, and she is now a science communicator delivering talks and workshops on the quirky side of science.
Making the Monster
The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
By: Kathryn Harkup
Published: 08-02-2018
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 304 pp
ISBN: 9781472933737
Imprint: Bloomsbury Sigma
Illustrations: 11 black and white illustrations
Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm
£16.99
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Jaako ist 37, als sein Arzt ihm eröffnet, dass er keine Grippe hat, sondern sterben wird, und zwar sehr bald: Jemand hat ihn über längere Zeit hinweg vergiftet.
Das an sich ist schon geeignet, einem Mann so richtig den Tag zu verderben. Leider wird Jaako bei der Rückkehr nach Hause außerdem noch Zeuge, wie ihn seine Frau mit Petri betrügt, dem jungen, knackigen Angestellten ihrer gemeinsamen Firma. Der Firma, die in jüngster Zeit gefährlich Konkurrenz bekommen hat.
Jaako beschließt herauszufinden, wer ihn um die Ecke bringen will. Und er wird sein Unternehmen für die Zeit nach seinem Tod fit machen. Der Handel mit den in Japan zu Höchstpreisen gehandelten Matsutake-Pilzen läuft nämlich ausgezeichnet, und in Finnlands Wäldern wachsen nun einmal die besten. Doch das neue Konkurrenzunternehmen kämpft wirklich mit harten Bandagen.
Ist es da Jaakos Schuld, wenn es zu Toten kommt? Und hat er überhaupt Zeit für anderer Leute Sorgen? Denn so viel ist klar: Mit dem Tod vor Augen geht alles leichter, gilt es doch jede Minute zu genießen.
«Die letzten Meter bis zum Friedhof» ist nicht einfach ein Kriminalroman, sondern ein besonderes Buch: lustig und tragisch, berührend und skurril, lebensklug und nachdenklich, ein Roman, der trotz seines makabren Themas die Lebensgeister weckt, und eine schräge Lektüre, bei der man sich fühlt, als befände man sich in einem Film von Aki Kaurismäki.
Antti Tuomainen, Jahrgang 1971, ist einer der angesehensten und erfolgreichsten finnischen Schriftsteller. Er wurde u.a. mit dem Clue Award, dem Finnischen Krimipreis ausgezeichnet, seine Romane erscheinen in über 25 Ländern. Antti Tuomainen lebt mit seiner Frau in Helsinki.
Antti Tuomainen
Die letzten Meter bis zum Friedhof
Erscheinungstermin: 24.01.2018
384 Seiten
Hardcover
€19,95
Übersetzt von: Niina Wagner; Jan Costin Wagner
Verlag: Rowohlt
ISBN: 978-3-498-06552-2
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