Download or read book Romain Gary written by David Bellos and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Airman, war hero, immigrant, law student, diplomat, novelist and celebrity spouse, Romain Gary had several lives thrust upon him by the history of the twentieth century, but he also aspired to lead many more. He wrote more than two dozen books and a score of short stories under several different names in two languages, English and French, neither of which was his mother tongue. Gary had a gift for narrative that endeared him to ordinary readers, but won him little respect among critics far more intellectual than he could ever be. His varied and entertaining writing career tells a different story about the making of modern literary culture from the one we are accustomed to hearing. Born Roman Kacew in Vilna (now Lithuania) in 1914 and raised by only his mother after his father left them, Gary rose to become French Consul General in Los Angeles and the only man ever to win the Goncourt Prize twice. This biography follows the many threads that lead from Gary's wartime adventures and early literary career to his years in Hollywood and his marriage to the actress Jean Seberg. It illuminates his works in all their incarnations, and culminates in the tale of his most brilliant deception: the fabrication of a complex identity for his most successful nom de plume, Émile Ajar. In his new portrait of Gary, David Bellos brings biographical research together with literary and cultural analysis to make sense of the many lives of Romain Gary - a hero fit for our times, as well as his own.

Download or read book Hope and Memory written by Tzvetan Todorov and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-31 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness. Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. While democracy eventually won the struggle against totalitarianism in much of the world, democracy itself is not immune to the pitfall of do-goodery: moral correctness at home and atomic or "humanitarian" bombs abroad. Todorov explores the history of the past century not only by analyzing its spectacular political conflicts but also by offering moving profiles of several individuals who, at great personal cost, resisted the strictures of the communist and Nazi regimes. Some--Margarete Buber-Neumann, David Rousset, Primo Levi, and Germaine Tillion--were deported to concentration camps. Others--Vasily Grossman and Romain Gary--fought courageously in World War II. All became exemplary witnesses who described with great lucidity and humanity what they had endured. This book preserves the memory of the past as we move into the twenty-first century--arguing eloquently that we must place the past at the service of a just future.

Download or read book Self Portrait with Parents and Footnotes written by Annette Aronowicz and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-Portrait, with Parents and Footnotes is a story of movement. Moving from city to city characterized the author's growing up—from Poland to Belgium and from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States. The book also moves between past and present. The authors' parents, Jews from Eastern Europe, lived through the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the post-war Communist world, and much migration in between. How were these events transmitted to their child, and what questions do they give rise to today? The book moves between straightforward story-telling and reflections on memory, on politics and religion, and on literature. It seeks the genesis of intellectual interests in personal story.

Download or read book Promise at Dawn written by Romain Gary and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-31 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic of modern French literature, the thrilling real-life story of the military hero, ambassador, ladies man, writer, and loving son "I grew up in the certitude that one day I should help give back the earth to those who ennoble it with their courage and warm it with their love." Promise at Dawn begins as the story of a mother’s sacrifice: alone and poor, she fiercely battles to give her son the very best. Romain Gary chronicles his childhood in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera and recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in World War II. But above all he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his life—their secret and private planet, their wonderland “born out of a mother’s murmur into a child’s ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love.”

Download or read book All Happy Families written by Herv# Le Tellier and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestselling and Goncourt Prize-Winning Author of The Anomaly A prominent French writer delves into his own history in this eloquent reflection on dysfunctional family relationships. Hervé Le Tellier did not consider himself to have been an unhappy child—he was not deprived, or beaten, or abused. And yet he understood from a young age that something was wrong, and longed to leave. Children sometimes have only the option of escaping, driven by their even greater love of life. Having reached a certain emotional distance at sixty years old, and with his father and stepfather dead and his mother suffering from late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, Le Tellier finally felt able to write the story of his family. Abandoned early by his father and raised in part by his grandparents, he was profoundly affected by his relationship with his mother, a troubled woman with damaging views on love. In this perceptive, deeply personal account, Le Tellier attempts to look back on trying times without anger or regret, and sometimes even with humor.

Download or read book Promise at Dawn written by Romain Gary and published by New Directions. This book was released on 1987-04-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author recounts the special relationship he had with his mother and explains how he worked to achieve the many goals and accomplishments she expected of him

Download or read book The Routledge Encyclopedia of Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century written by Sorrel Kerbel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 1394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available in paperback for the first time, Jewish Writers of the Twentieth Century is both a comprehensive reference resource and a springboard for further study. This volume: examines canonical Jewish writers, less well-known authors of Yiddish and Hebrew, and emerging Israeli writers includes entries on figures as diverse as Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Tristan Tzara, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, and Woody Allen contains introductory essays on Jewish-American writing, Holocaust literature and memoirs, Yiddish writing, and Anglo-Jewish literature provides a chronology of twentieth-century Jewish writers. Compiled by expert contributors, this book contains over 330 entries on individual authors, each consisting of a biography, a list of selected publications, a scholarly essay on their work and suggestions for further reading.

Download or read book National Union Catalog written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The National Union Catalogs 1963 written by and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 654 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries Third Series written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by Copyright Office, Library of Congress. This book was released on 1962 with total page 1052 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

Download or read book The British National Bibliography Cumulated Subject Catalogue written by and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 1028 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The British National Bibliography written by Arthur James Wells and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 2098 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book OLR Index written by and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book London Magazine written by Alan Ross and published by . This book was released on 1962-04 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Romain Gary written by Ralph Schoolcraft and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-05-26 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Ralph Schoolcraft explores the extraordinary career of the modern French author, film director, and diplomat—a romantic and tragic figure whose fictions extended well beyond his books. Born Roman Kacew, he overcame an impoverished boyhood to become a French Resistance hero and win the coveted Goncourt Prize under the pseudonym—and largely invented persona—Romain Gary. Although he published such acclaimed works as The Roots of Heaven and Promise at Dawn, the Gaullist traditions that he defended in the world of French letters fell from favor, and his critical fortunes suffered at the hands of a hostile press. Schoolcraft details Gary's frustrated struggle to evolve as a writer in the eye of a public that now considered him a known quantity. Identifying the daring strategies used by this mysterious character as he undertook an elaborate scheme to reach a new readership, Schoolcraft offers new insight into the dynamics of authorship and fame within the French literary institutions. In the early 1970s Gary made his departure from the conservative literary establishment, publishing works that boasted a quirky, elliptical style under a variety of pseudonymous personae, the most successful of which was that of an Algerian immigrant by the name of Emile Ajar. Moving behind the mask of his new creation, Gary was able to win critical and popular acclaim and a second Goncourt in 1975. But as Schoolcraft suggests, Gary may have "sold his shadow"—that is, lost his authorial persona—by marketing himself too effectively. Going so far as to recruit a cousin to stand in as the public face of this phantom author, Gary kept the secret of his true authorship until his violent death in 1980 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The press reacted with resentment over the scheme, and he was shunned into the ranks of literary oddities. Schoolcraft draws from archives of the several thousand documents related to Gary housed at the French publishing firms of Gallimard and Mercure de France, as well as the Butler Library at Columbia University. Exploring the depths of a story that has long remained shrouded in mystery, Romain Gary: The Man Who Sold His Shadow is as much a fascinating biographical sketch as it is a thought-provoking reflection on the assumptions made about identities in the public sphere.

Download or read book New York Times Saturday Book Review Supplement written by and published by . This book was released on 1961-12 with total page 1016 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library 1911 1971 written by New York Public Library. Research Libraries and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: