Download or read book The Year of Endless Sorrows written by Adam Rapp and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-12-26 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York City, the early 1990s: the recession is in full swing and young people are squatting in abandoned buildings in the East Village while the homeless riot in Tompkins Square Park. The Internet is not part of daily life; the term "dot-com" has yet to be coined; and people's financial bubbles are burst for an entirely different set of reasons. What can all this mean for a young Midwestern man flush with promise, toiling at a thankless, poverty-wage job in corporate America, and hard at work on his first novel about acute knee pain and the end of the world? With The Year of Endless Sorrows, acclaimed playwright and finalist for the 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Adam Rapp brings readers a hilarious picaresque reminiscent of Nick Hornby, Douglas Copeland, and Rick Moody at their best—a chronicle of the joys of love, the horrors of sex, the burden of roommates, and the rude discovery that despite your best efforts, life may not unfold as you had once planned.
Download or read book Mother of Sorrows written by Richard McCann and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the breadth and cumulative force of a novel, Mother of Sorrows presents ten interwoven stories of an American family starting out in the post—World War II suburbs of Washington, D.C., a world of identical brick houses and sunstruck, treeless lawns, a world of initial hopefulness from which shame and loss have seemingly been banished. This is the story of two adolescent brothers whose father has suddenly died, and of their beautiful and complicated mother, a mother whom the younger son worshipfully imagines as “Our Mother of the Sighs and Heartaches . . . Our Mother of the Gorgeous Gypsy Earrings . . . Our Mother of the Late Movies and the Cigarettes . . . Our Mother of Sudden Attentiveness . . . Our Mother of Sudden Anger.” This is the brother who narrates these tales as he looks back thirty years later, the only remaining survivor of a world he seeks both to leave behind and to preserve in words forever, a world of sorrow that has held him spellbound even as he has attempted to create a life of his own. Suffused with the beauty of Richard McCann’s extraordinary language, Mother of Sorrows introduces us to a voice that is urgent, contemplative, elegant, angry, revelatory, and like no other in contemporary fiction.
Download or read book The Book of Sorrows written by Walter Wangerin, Jr. and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following a conflict with the dreaded Wyrm, the barnyard animals try to piece together their shattered lives while unaware that their enemy plans new attacks.
Download or read book Nocturne written by Adam Rapp and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2002-02-10 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A devastating, elegant, and gripping dissection of the American dream, Adam Rapp's Nocturne signals a brave new voice in American theater. "Fifteen years ago I killed my sister." So begins Adam Rapp's highly acclaimed play Nocturne, in which a 32-year-old former piano prodigy recounts the tragic events that tore his family apart. With a keen eye for human relationships and a deft ear for language, Rapp explores the aftershock of this unimaginable event. The father is so incapable of forgiveness he puts a gun in his son's mouth; the mother so shattered, she deserts the family and eventually takes leave of her sanity altogether; the son--only 17 years old at the time--sets out for New York City. There, he seeks an uneasy refuge in books and reinvents himself as a writer. Across the decade and a half that follows he tries to cope with the ramifications of his own anguish and estrangement while making a desperate search for redemption.
Download or read book Kindness written by Adam Rapp and published by Samuel French, Inc.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 69 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Premiered at Playwrights Horizons, New York City, in 2008.
Download or read book The Sorrow of War written by Bao Ninh and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Vietnam War Bao Ninh served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the five hundred men who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of only ten who survived. The Sorrow of War is his autobiographical novel. Kien works in a unit that recovers soldiers' corpses. Revisiting the sites of battles raises emotional ghosts for him and the memory of war scenes are juxtaposed with dreams and remembrances of his childhood sweetheart. The Sorrow of War burns the tragedy of war in our minds.
Download or read book The Witch of Painted Sorrows written by M. J. Rose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-03-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possession. Power. Passion. New York Times bestselling novelist M.J. Rose creates her most provocative spellbinder to date in this gothic novel set against the lavish backdrop of Belle Époque Paris. Indie Next Pick • Library Reads Pick • People Magazine Pick • Boston Globe Pick of the Week Called an “elegant tale of rare depth and beauty, as brilliantly crafted as it is wondrously told” by the Providence Journal, The Witch of Painted Sorrows “melds the normal and paranormal in the kind of seamless fashion reserved for such classic ghost stories as Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.” New York socialite Sandrine Salome flees an abusive husband for her grandmother’s Paris mansion, despite warnings that the lavish family home is undergoing renovation and too dangerous to enter. There Sandrine meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing architect who introduces her to the City of Lights—its art world, forbidden occult underground, nightclubs—and to her own untapped desires. Soon Sandrine’s husband tracks her down and an insidious spirit takes hold: La Lune, a witch and a legendary sixteenth-century courtesan who exposes Sandrine to a deadly darkness. “M.J. Rose has a talent for compelling writing, and this time she has outdone herself. Fear, desire, lust, and raw emotion ooze off the page,” says the Associated Press. In her instantly absorbing tour de force, Rose imagines Sandrine’s “wild night of the soul” dramatically underwritten by a tragic love story and a family curse that illuminates the fine line between explosive passion and complete ruination.
Download or read book The Sorrows of an American written by Siri Hustvedt and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sorrows of an American is a soaring feat of storytelling about the immigrant experience and the ghosts that haunt families from one generation to another When Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga, find a disturbing note from an unknown woman among their dead father's papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. Siri Hustvedt's The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister uncover its secrets and unbandage its wounds in the year following their father's funeral. Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erik's fascination with his new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connected to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfolds, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden father's history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husband's double life. A novel about fathers and children, listening and deafness, recognition and blindness; the pain of speaking and the pain of keeping silent, the ambiguities of memory, loneliness, illness, and recovery. Siri Hustvedt's exquisitely moving prose reveals one family's hidden sorrows through an extraordinary mosaic of secrets and stories that reflect the fragmented nature of identity itself.
Download or read book The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows written by John Koenig and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s undeniably thrilling to find words for our strangest feelings…Koenig casts light into lonely corners of human experience…An enchanting book. “ —The Washington Post A truly original book in every sense of the word, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows poetically defines emotions that we all feel but don’t have the words to express—until now. Have you ever wondered about the lives of each person you pass on the street, realizing that everyone is the main character in their own story, each living a life as vivid and complex as your own? That feeling has a name: “sonder.” Or maybe you’ve watched a thunderstorm roll in and felt a primal hunger for disaster, hoping it would shake up your life. That’s called “lachesism.” Or you were looking through old photos and felt a pang of nostalgia for a time you’ve never actually experienced. That’s “anemoia.” If you’ve never heard of these terms before, that’s because they didn’t exist until John Koenig set out to fill the gaps in our language of emotion. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows “creates beautiful new words that we need but do not yet have,” says John Green, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars. By turns poignant, relatable, and mind-bending, the definitions include whimsical etymologies drawn from languages around the world, interspersed with otherworldly collages and lyrical essays that explore forgotten corners of the human condition—from “astrophe,” the longing to explore beyond the planet Earth, to “zenosyne,” the sense that time keeps getting faster. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is for anyone who enjoys a shift in perspective, pondering the ineffable feelings that make up our lives. With a gorgeous package and beautiful illustrations throughout, this is the perfect gift for creatives, word nerds, and human beings everywhere.
Download or read book Punkzilla written by Adam Rapp and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning writer and playwright hits the open road for a searing novel-in-letters about a street kid on a highstakes trek across America. For a runaway boy who goes by the name "Punkzilla," kicking a meth habit and a life of petty crime in Portland, Oregon, is a prelude to a mission: reconnecting with his older brother, a gay man dying of cancer in Memphis. Against a backdrop of seedy motels, dicey bus stations, and hitched rides, the desperate fourteen-year-old meets a colorful, sometimes dangerous cast of characters. And in letters to his sibling, he catalogs them all -- from an abusive stranger and a ghostly girl to a kind transsexual and an old woman with an oozing eye. The language is raw and revealing, crackling with visceral details and dark humor, yet with each interstate exit Punkzilla’s journey grows more urgent: will he make it to Tennessee in time? This daring novel offers a narrative worthy of Kerouac and a keen insight into the power of chance encounters.
Download or read book By Sorrow s River written by Larry McMurtry and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this tale of high-spirited and terrifying adventure, set against the background of the West that Larry McMurtry has made his own, By Sorrow’s River is an epic in its own right with the return of the formidable, young Tasmin Berrybender. At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the “Sin Killer” and mother to their young son, Monty. By Sorrow’s River continues the Berrybender party’s trail across the endless Great Plains of the West toward Santa Fe, where they intend, those who are lucky enough to survive the journey, to spend the winter. They meet up with a vast array of characters from the history of the West: Kit Carson, the famous scout; Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; two aristocratic Frenchmen, whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a party of slavers; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other astonishing characters who prove, once again, that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look. Most of what is there is dangerous and hostile, even when faced with Tasmin’s remarkable, frosty sangfroid. She is one of the strongest and most interesting of Larry McMurtry’s characters, and she stands at the center of this powerful and ambitious novel of the West.
Download or read book South Sudan s Endless Sorrows written by Lul Gatkuoth Gatluak and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-28 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the Book In depth, comprehensive, and extensively researched, South Sudan’s Endless Sorrows chronicles the complex history of South Sudan and its long, bitter struggle for freedom. South Sudan’s long battle with colonization and invasion of foreign powers began as early as the twelfth century and has continued up until the twentieth century, when the struggle for liberation came to a long period of bloody civil unrest and war. To this day, South Sudan still struggles to find its own identity, voice, and freedom. With a devout love of his homeland and the people he holds dear, Gatluak’s history of South Sudan doubles as a heart-wrenching plea for intervention, compromise, and peace in the country that has been ransacked by violence for centuries. About the Author Lul Gatkuoth Gatluak is a South Sudanese American born in the Puldeng village near Bilpam, at the border of South Sudan and Ethiopia. Lul has always had a drive and passion for education; after moving to the United States, he received his high school diploma, his associate’s degree in Liberal Arts from Minneapolis Community and Technical College, a bachelor of arts in Criminal Justice from Metropolitan State University with a minor in English, and a bachelors of science in Communication Studies at Minnesota State University-Mankato with a minor in Sociology. Lul also hold a master’s degree in Public Administration at Hamline University. Besides this book, Lul has also written several articles.
Download or read book Under the Wolf Under the Dog written by Adam Rapp and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternately heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this teenager's brutal story of escape and desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp. I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids. Steve Nugent is in a facility called Burnstone Grove. It's a place for kids who are addicts, like Shannon Lynch, who can stick $1.87 in change up his nose, or for kids who have tried to commit suicide, like Silent Starla, whom Steve is getting a crush on. But Steve doesn't really fit in either group. He used to go to a gifted school. So why is he being held at Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, in which he recalls his confused and violent past, Steve is left to figure out who he is by examining who he was.
Download or read book The Endless Forest written by Sara Donati and published by Dell. This book was released on 2010-01-19 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich, passionate, multilayered portrayal of family strength and endurance from bestselling author Sara Donati In the spring of 1824, in the remote village of Paradise on the New York frontier, Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner celebrate a glorious reunion as their children return from far-off places: Lily and her husband from Italy, and Martha Kirby, the Bonners’ ward, from Manhattan. In the peace that follows a devastating flood, childhood friends Martha and Daniel, Lily’s twin brother, suddenly begin to see each other in a new light. But their growing bond is threatened when Martha’s estranged mother arrives back in Paradise. Jemima Southern is a dangerous schemer who has destroyed more than one family, and her anger touches everyone, as do her secrets. Has Jemima come to claim her daughter—or does she have other, darker motives? Whatever transpires, Martha, Daniel, and all the Bonners must stand united against the threats to both heart and home.
Download or read book Stone Cold Dead Serious written by Adam Rapp and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2004-08-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of plays from Pulitzer Prize finalist Adam Rapp, "one of the more daring young stylists working today" (Time Out New York) Adam Rapp's plays have captivated audiences across the country with their unflinching explorations of the good, the bad, and the ugly in America's heartland and cities. Gathered here are three of his works: Faster, in which two young grifters try to strike a deal with the devil during the hottest summer on record; Finer Noble Gases, a lament for a band of arrested thirty-year-olds slouching toward adulthood amid East Village decay; and the Off-Broadway hit Stone Cold Dead Serious. An honest, strange, and humorous look at a blue-collar family struggling to survive in the face of disability and addiction, and the seemingly surreal lengths their teenage son will go to save them from themselves. "Rapp is very gifted, and, even rarer, he has something to say . . . Stone Cold Dead Serious [is] brave, compassionate, and . . . breathtakingly moving." -(New York Times)
Download or read book 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows written by Ai Weiwei and published by Crown. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “intimate and expansive” (Time) memoir of “one of the most important artists working in the world today” (Financial Times), telling a remarkable history of China over the last hundred years while also illuminating his artistic process “Poignant . . . An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallels Ai traces between his life and his father’s.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BookPage, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist—and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. Ai Weiwei’s sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his life story and that of his father, whose creativity was stifled. At once ambitious and intimate, Ai Weiwei’s 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.
Download or read book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work written by Alain De Botton and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the international bestselling author of The Architecture of Happiness and How Proust Can Change Your Life comes this lyrical, erudite look at our world of work. We spend most of our time at work, but what we do there rarely gets discussed in the sort of lyrical and descriptive prose our efforts surely deserve. Determined to correct this lapse, armed with a poetic perspective and his trademark philosophical sharpness, Alain de Botton heads out into the world of offices and factories, ready to take in the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace. De Botton spends time in and around some less familiar work environments, including warehouses, container ports, rocket launch pads, and power stations, and follows scientists, landscape painters, accountants, cookie manufacturers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and aircraft salesmen as they do their jobs. Along the way, de Botton tries to answer some of the most urgent questions we can pose about work: Why do we do it? What makes it pleasurable? What is its meaning? To what end do we daily exhaust not only ourselves but also our planet? Equally intrigued by work’s pleasures and its pains, Alain de Botton offers a characteristically lucid and witty tour of the working day and night, in a book sure to inspire a range of life-changing and wise thoughts.
