Download or read book 7 best short stories Absurdist written by August Nemo and published by Tacet Books. This book was released on 2020-05-12 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Absurdist fiction is a genre of fictional narrative (traditionally, literary fiction), most often in the form of a novel, play, poem, or film, that focuses on the experiences of characters in situations where they cannot find any inherent purpose in life, most often represented by ultimately meaningless actions and events that call into question the certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value. The critic Augst Nemo selected seven short stories of the absurd for his appreciation: - A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka - In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka - Before the Law by Franz Kafka - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft - Andrey Semyonovich by Daniil Kharms - A sonnet by Daniil Kharms - Symphony no. 2 by Daniil Kharms For more books with interesting themes, be sure to check the other books in this collection!
Download or read book Contemporary American Novelists of the Absurd written by Charles H. Harris and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1972-07 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Download or read book The absurd in literature written by Neil Cornwell and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-19 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neil Cornwell's study, while endeavouring to present an historical survey of absurdist literature and its forbears, does not aspire to being an exhaustive history of absurdism. Rather, it pauses on certain historical moments, artistic movements, literary figures and selected works, before moving on to discuss four key writers: Daniil Kharms, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien. The absurd in literature will be of compelling interest to a considerable range of students of comparative, European (including Russian and Central European) and English literatures (British Isles and American) – as well as those more concerned with theatre studies, the avant-garde and the history of ideas (including humour theory). It should also have a wide appeal to the enthusiastic general reader.
Download or read book Today I Wrote Nothing written by Daniil Kharms and published by Duckworth Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Daniil Kharms has long been heralded as one of the most iconoclastic writers of the Soviet era, but the full breadth of his achievement is only in recent years, following the opening of Kharms's archives, being recognized internationally. Thanks to the efforts of translator and poet Matvei Yankelevich, English language readers now have a comprehensive collection of the prose and poetry that secured Kharms's literary reputation that grew in Russia even as the Soviet establishment worked to suppress it."--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Tenth of December written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.
Download or read book Fortune Smiles written by Adam Johnson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Book Award–winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master’s Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. “MASTERFUL.”—The Washington Post “ENTRANCING.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE.”—The New York Times Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear. In “Nirvana,” a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine” follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald • San Francisco Chronicle • USA Today AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • NPR • Marie Claire • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • BuzzFeed • The Daily Beast • Los Angeles Magazine • The Independent • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews “Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of America’s greatest living writers.”—The Huffington Post “Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnson’s writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring.”—USA Today “Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment.”—The Boston Globe “Johnson’s boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka and published by Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Kafka, the author has very nicely narrated the story of Gregou Samsa who wakes up one day to discover that he has metamorphosed into a bug. The book concerns itself with the themes of alienation and existentialism. The author has written many important stories, including The Judgement, and much of his novels Amerika, The Castle, The Hunger Artist. Many of his stories were published during his lifetime but many were not. Over the course of the 1920s and 30s Kafkas works were published and translated instantly becoming landmarks of twentieth-century literature. Ironically, the story ends on an optimistic note, as the family puts itself back together. The style of the book epitomizes Kafkas writing. Kafka very interestingly, used to present an impossible situation, such as a mans transformation into an insect, and develop the story from there with perfect realism and intense attention to detail. The Metamorphosis is an autobiographical piece of writing, and we find that parts of the story reflect Kafkas own life.
Download or read book Bad Day at Riverbend written by Chris Van Allsburg and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1995 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riverbend was a quiet little town, the kind of place where one day was just like all the rest and nothing ever happened. Occasionally the stagecoach rolled through, but it never stopped, because no one ever came to Riverbend and no one ever left. The day the stagecoach stood motionless in the center of town, Sheriff Ned Hardy knew something was terribly wrong. What was the mysterious substance on both coach and horses? It would not come off. Soon it was everywhere in the tidy little village. Something had to be done, and Sheriff Hardy aimed to do it.
Download or read book The Chronicles of Harris Burdick written by and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2011 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of stories based on illustrations in Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.
Download or read book The Troika written by Stepan Chapman and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beneath the glare of three purple suns, three travelers - an old Mexican woman, an automated jeep, and a brontosaurus - have trudged across a desert for hundreds of years. They do not know if the desert has an end, and if it does, what they might find there. Sometimes they come across perfectly-preserved cities, but without a single inhabitant, and never a drop of rain. Worse still, they have no memory of their lives before the desert. Only at night, in dreams, do they recall fragments of their past identities. But night also brings the madness of the sandstorms, which jolt them out of one body and into another in a game of metaphysical musical chairs. In their disorientation and dysfunction, they have killed each other dozens of times, but they cannot die. Where are they? How can they escape? From this quest form, Stepan Chapman has fashioned a poignant and powerful story of redemption in which pathos is leavened by humor and pain is softened by comfort. It is the story of deranged angels, deadly music boxes, and cellular transformation. It is also the tale of Alex who wanted to be a machine, Naomi, who spent 20 years as a corpsicle, and Eva, who escaped the whale emperor of her native land. The novel alternates between the three characters' attempts to discover where they are with their search for identity through the dream stories which reveal their fragmented pasts. The Troika's satisfying conclusion brings closure to one of the most harrowing journeys ever into the heart of surrealism and the human soul. The Troika has been praised as visionary and completely original by such writers as John Shirley, Kathe Koja, Brian Stableford, Alan Brennert, Lance Olsen, Kathleen AnnGoonan, Brian Evenson, Paul Riddell, and Don Webb. The author's work has frequently been compared to that of Philip K. Dick, Terry Southern, Kurt Vonnegut, Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter, and other fabulists of the first rank. The Troika confirms that status and is destined to become a cult classic of fabulist fiction. The Troika is being backed by extensive promotion and advertising in applicable national magazine markets such as SF Age, with distribution in both the United States and in the United Kingdom.
Download or read book The Stranger written by Albert Camus and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-08-08 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, Camus's masterpiece gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. Behind the intrigue, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.
Download or read book A Sick Day for Amos McGee written by Philip C. Stead and published by . This book was released on 2018-01-02 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2011 Caldecott Medal winner is now available as a board book, perfect forthe youngest of readers. Full color.
Download or read book Year of the Goose written by Carly J. Hallman and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Corporations rise quickly in today's China, and none are more successful than the Bashful Goose Snack Company. Founded by the self-made Papa Hui, the company is a national treasure, as is his beloved pet goose. Meanwhile, Papa Hui's daughter, Kelly, is desperate to prove herself to her father, and take her rightful place as the heir to his empire. But Lulu, the woman with the most lustrous hair in China, and Wang Xilai, the disturbed celebrity hair-stylist farming Lulu for extensions, stand in Kelly's way--not to mention that infernal goose! From a middle school mogul to a talking turtle, a grotesque "fat camp" for children to a mythical settlement of ex-millionaires, Carly J. Hallman's vision of a fragmented Chinese society is brimming with bawdy humor and sharp wit. In the absurdist tradition of the great contemporary Chinese author Mo Yan comes a searing, yet whimsical portrayal of wealth and ambition in an ogliarchical, tabloid-driven society, not so unlike our very own."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Seventh Day written by Yu Hua and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-01-13 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Brothers and To Live: a major new novel that limns the joys and sorrows of life in contemporary China. Yang Fei was born on a moving train. Lost by his mother, adopted by a young switchman, raised with simplicity and love, he is utterly unprepared for the tempestuous changes that await him and his country. As a young man, he searches for a place to belong in a nation that is ceaselessly reinventing itself, but he remains on the edges of society. At age forty-one, he meets an accidental and unceremonious death. Lacking the money for a burial plot, he must roam the afterworld aimlessly, without rest. Over the course of seven days, he encounters the souls of the people he’s lost. As Yang Fei retraces the path of his life, we meet an extraordinary cast of characters: his adoptive father, his beautiful ex-wife, his neighbors who perished in the demolition of their homes. Traveling on, he sees that the afterworld encompasses all the casualties of today’s China—the organ sellers, the young suicides, the innocent convicts—as well as the hope for a better life to come. Yang Fei’s passage maps the contours of this vast nation—its absurdities, its sorrows, and its soul. Vivid, urgent, and panoramic, The Seventh Day affirms Yu Hua’s place as the standard-bearer of modern Chinese fiction.
Download or read book Death and the Penguin written by Andrey Kurkov and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "No summary can do justice to the strange appeal of this unusual, short book, which is at once a crime novel, a comic novel and a serious political satire on contemporary Ukraine." —Anne Applebaum, The Wall Street Journal With the collapse of the Soviet Union, newly-free Ukraine is a shell-shocked land . . . In poverty-and-violence-wracked Kyiv, unemployed writer Viktor Zolotaryov leads a down-and-out life with his only friend, Misha, a penguin that he rescued when the local zoo started getting rid of animals it couldn't feed. Even more nerve-wracking for Victor: a local mobster has taken a shine to Misha and wants to borrow him for events. But Viktor thinks he’s finally caught a break when he lands a well-paying job at the Kyiv newspaper writing “living obituaries” of local dignitaries—articles to be filed for use when the time comes. The only thing is, the time always seems to come as soon as Viktor finishes writing the article. Slowly understanding that his own life may be in jeopardy, Viktor also realizes that the only thing that might be keeping him alive is his penguin.
Download or read book Jesus Christs written by A. J. Langguth and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Answers written by Catherine Lacey and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED A TOP 10 NOVEL OF 2017 BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AND VOGUE, A BEST BOOK OF 2017 BY ESQUIRE, HUFFINGTON POST, POP SUGAR, ELECTRIC LITERATURE AND KIRKUS, AND A 2017 NPR GREAT READ. ONE OF DWIGHT GARNER'S TOP BOOKS OF 2017 IN THE NEW YORK TIMES. A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE AND A FINALIST FOR THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS FICTION AWARD. "Like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, [The Answers] is also a novel about a subjugated woman, in this case not to a totalitarian theocracy but to subtler forces its heroine is only beginning to understand and fears she is complicit with." --Dwight Garner, New York Times Mary Parsons is broke. Dead broke, really: between an onslaught of medical bills and a mountain of credit card debt, she has been pushed to the brink. Hounded by bill collectors and still plagued by the painful and bizarre symptoms that doctors couldn’t diagnose, Mary seeks relief from a holistic treatment called Pneuma Adaptive Kinesthesia—PAKing, for short. Miraculously, it works. But PAKing is prohibitively expensive. Like so many young adults trying to make ends meet in New York City, Mary scours Craigslist and bulletin boards for a second job, and eventually lands an interview for a high-paying gig that’s even stranger than her symptoms or the New Agey PAKing. Mary’s new job title is Emotional Girlfriend in the “Girlfriend Experiment”—the brainchild of a wealthy and infamous actor, Kurt Sky, who has hired a team of biotech researchers to solve the problem of how to build and maintain the perfect romantic relationship, cast - ing himself as the experiment’s only constant. Around Kurt, several women orbit as his girlfriends with spe - cific functions. There’s a Maternal Girlfriend who folds his laundry, an Anger Girlfriend who fights with him, a Mundanity Girlfriend who just hangs around his loft, and a whole team of girlfriends to take care of Intimacy. With so little to lose, Mary falls headfirst into Kurt’s messy, ego-driven simulacrum of human connection. Told in Catherine Lacey’s signature spiraling, hypnotic prose, The Answers is both a mesmerizing dive into the depths of one woman’s psyche and a critical look at the conventions and institutions that infiltrate our most personal, private moments. As Mary struggles to understand herself—her body, her city, the trials of her past, the uncertainty of her future—the reader must confront the impossible questions that fuel Catherine Lacey’s work: How do you measure love? Can you truly know someone else? Do we even know ourselves? And listen for Lacey’s uncanny answers.
