Download or read book Tales of Columbia written by Nell S. Graydon and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of tales of the Columbia of a half century, a century and longer ago.
Download or read book Tales of Love written by Julia Kristeva and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Publisher: Assuming the voices of psychoanalyst, scholar, and postmodern polemicist, Kristeva discusses both the conflicts and commonalities among the Greek, Christian, Roman, and contemporary discourses on love, desire, and self.
Download or read book To the Stars and Other Stories written by and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A boy who feels persecuted by the banality of everyday life yearns to ascend to the cold and majestic plane of the stars. A seamstress finds liberation of a sort in “becoming” a dog and howling at the moon. A club of young girls masquerade as the grieving fiancées of strange men. This book brings together these and other remarkable short stories by the Russian Symbolist Fyodor Sologub that explore the lengths to which people will go to transcend the mundane. Renowned as one of late imperial Russia’s finest stylists, Sologub bridges the great nineteenth-century novel and the fin-de-siècle avant-garde. He stands out for his masterful command of both realist and fantastic storytelling; his play with language evinces a belief in its capacity to access other worlds and other levels of meaning. Many of Sologub’s stories are set among children whose alienation from the adult world has lent them imagination and curiosity, enabling them to create an alternative reality. At the same time, he bluntly examines the sordid realities of late imperial Russian society and frankly presents sometimes unconventional sexuality. The book also features a selection of Sologub’s “little fairy tales,” ambiguous parables couched in childlike language whose ingenuity anticipates the miniatures and “incidents” of Daniil Kharms. Susanne Fusso’s elegant translation offers these artful tales to an English-speaking audience.
Download or read book The Curious Tale of Mandogi s Ghost written by Sekihan Kin and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident of Japan who is not of Japanese ancestry, the novel tells the story of Mandogi, a young priest living on the island of Cheju-do. Mandogi becomes unwittingly involved in the Four-Three Incident of 1948, in which the South Korean government brutally suppressed an armed peasant uprising and purged Cheju-do of communist sympathizers. Although Mandogi is sentenced to death for his part in the riot, he survives (in a sense) to take revenge on his enemies and fully commit himself to the resistance. Mandogi's indeterminate, shapeshifting character is emblematic of Japanese colonialism's outsized impact on both ruler and ruled. A central work of postwar Japanese fiction, The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost relates the trauma of a long-forgotten history and its indelible imprint on Japanese and Korean memory.
Download or read book The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales written by Sean Meighoo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most historical accounts of "the West" take it for granted that the guiding principles of the Western tradition—reason, progress, and freedom—have been passed down directly from ancient Greece to modern Europe, evolving in isolation from all non-Western cultures. Today, many political analysts and cultural critics maintain that the Western tradition is fast approaching its end, for better or worse, as it becomes more and more integrated with non-Western cultures in an increasingly globalized world. But what if we are witnessing something else entirely—not the "end" of the West but rather another historical mutation of the idea of the West itself? This groundbreaking work shows that whether the West is hailed as the source of all historical progress or scorned as the root of all cultural imperialism, it remains a deeply problematic concept that is intrinsically connected to an ethnocentric view of the world. In a critical reading of the continental philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida as well as the postcolonial thinkers Said, Mohanty, Bhabha, and Trinh, Sean Meighoo strikes at the intellectual foundations of Western exceptionalism until its ideological supports show through. Deconstructing the concept of the West in his provocative interpretations of Martin Bernal's controversial publication Black Athena and the Beatles' second film Help!, Meighoo poses a formidable question to philosophers, writers, political analysts, and cultural critics alike: Can we mount an effective critique of Western ethnocentrism without reinforcing the very idea of the West?
Download or read book The Demon at Agi Bridge and Other Japanese Tales written by Haruo Shirane and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haruo Shirane and Burton Watson, renowned translators and scholars, introduce English-speaking readers to the vivid tradition of early and medieval Japanese folktales. These dramatic and often amusing stories offer a major view of the foundations of Japanese culture.
Download or read book The Little Devil and Other Stories written by Alexei Remizov and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a dilapidated and isolated old house, something peculiar seems to happen whenever the town’s bestial exterminator visits. On a seemingly bucolic country estate, the head of the household is a living corpse obsessed with other corpses. An adolescent boy who passes his days in private dream worlds experiences a sexual awakening spurred by his family’s scandalous tenant. In these and other stories, the modernist writer Alexei Remizov offers a panorama of Russian mythology, the supernatural, rural grotesques, and profound religious faith in fiery revolutionary settings. Alexei Remizov was one of the greatest writers of the Russian symbolist movement of the early twentieth century. In the thirteen stories collected in this volume, his exceptional stylistic achievements are on full display. Equally drawing on rural colloquial speech, the language of Russian fairy tales, and the customs of the Old Believers and Russian Orthodoxy, they transport the reader into a mysterious world in between uncanny folktales and encroaching modernity. The Little Devil and Other Stories includes works from across Remizov’s career, encompassing his thematic preoccupations and stylistic experimentation. Antonina W. Bouis’s translation captures Remizov’s many registers to offer English-language readers a sampling of a remarkable Russian writer.
Download or read book Stories from the Field written by Peter Krause and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 547 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do you do if you get stuck in an elevator in Mogadishu? How worried should you be about being followed after an interview with a ring of human traffickers in Lebanon? What happens to your research if you get placed on a government watchlist? And what if you find yourself feeling like you just aren’t cut out for fieldwork? Stories from the Field is a relatable, thoughtful, and unorthodox guide to field research in political science. It features personal stories from working political scientists: some funny, some dramatic, all fascinating and informative. Political scientists from a diverse range of biographical and academic backgrounds describe research in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, ranging from archival work to interviews with combatants. In sharing their stories, the book’s forty-four contributors provide accessible illustrations of key concepts, including specific research methods like conducting surveys and interviews, practical questions of health and safety, and general principles such as the importance of flexibility, creativity, and interpersonal connections. The contributors reflect not only on their own experiences but also on larger questions about research ethics, responsibility, and the effects of their personal and professional identities on their fieldwork. Stories from the Field is an essential resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate students learning about field research methods, as well as established scholars contemplating new journeys into the field.
Download or read book Sentimental Tales written by Mikhail Zoshchenko and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dralyuk’s new translation of Sentimental Tales, a collection of Zoshchenko’s stories from the 1920s, is a delight that brings the author’s wit to life.”—The Economist Mikhail Zoshchenko’s Sentimental Tales are satirical portraits of small-town characters on the fringes of Soviet society in the first decade of Bolshevik rule. The tales are narrated by one Kolenkorov, a writer not very good at his job, who takes credit for editing the tales in a series of comic prefaces. Yet beneath Kolenkorov’s intrusive narration and sublime blathering, the stories are genuinely moving. They tell tales of unrequited love and amorous misadventures among down-on-their-luck musicians, provincial damsels, aspiring poets, and liberal aristocrats hopelessly out of place in the new Russia, against a backdrop of overcrowded apartments, scheming, and daydreaming. Zoshchenko’s deadpan style and sly ventriloquy mask a biting critique of Soviet life—and perhaps life in general. An original perspective on Soviet society in the 1920s and simply uproariously funny, Sentimental Tales at last shows Anglophone readers why Zoshchenko is considered among the greatest humorists of the Soviet era. “A book that would make Gogol guffaw.”—Kirkus Reviews “If you find Chekhov a bit tame and want a more bite to your fiction, then you need a dose of Zoshchenko, the premier Russian satirist of the twentieth century . . . Snap up this thin volume and enjoy.”—Russian Life “Mikhail Zoshchenko masterfully exhibits a playful seriousness. . . . Juxtaposing joyful wit with the bleakness of Soviet Russia, Sentimental Tales is a potent antidote for Russian literature’s dour reputation.”—Foreword Reviews “Superb.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
Download or read book The Book of Swindles written by Yingyu Zhang and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late Ming China. Each story comes with commentary by the author, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle.
Download or read book Bringing Columbia Home written by Michael D. Leinbach and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voted the Best Space Book of 2018 by the Space Hipsters The dramatic inside story of the epic search and recovery operation after the Columbia space shuttle disaster. On February 1, 2003, Columbia disintegrated on reentry before the nation’s eyes, and all seven astronauts aboard were lost. Author Mike Leinbach, Launch Director of the space shuttle program at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center was a key leader in the search and recovery effort as NASA, FEMA, the FBI, the US Forest Service, and dozens more federal, state, and local agencies combed an area of rural east Texas the size of Rhode Island for every piece of the shuttle and her crew they could find. Assisted by hundreds of volunteers, it would become the largest ground search operation in US history. This comprehensive account is told in four parts: Parallel Confusion Courage, Compassion, and Commitment Picking Up the Pieces A Bittersweet Victory For the first time, here is the definitive inside story of the Columbia disaster and recovery and the inspiring message it ultimately holds. In the aftermath of tragedy, people and communities came together to help bring home the remains of the crew and nearly 40 percent of shuttle, an effort that was instrumental in piecing together what happened so the shuttle program could return to flight and complete the International Space Station. Bringing Columbia Home shares the deeply personal stories that emerged as NASA employees looked for lost colleagues and searchers overcame immense physical, logistical, and emotional challenges and worked together to accomplish the impossible. Featuring a foreword and epilogue by astronauts Robert Crippen and Eileen Collins, and dedicated to the astronauts and recovery search persons who lost their lives, this is an incredible, compelling narrative about the best of humanity in the darkest of times and about how a failure at the pinnacle of human achievement became a story of cooperation and hope.
Download or read book The Handsome Monk and Other Stories written by Tsering Dondrup and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsering Döndrup is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed authors writing in Tibetan today. In a distinct voice rich in black humor and irony, he describes the lives of Tibetans in contemporary China with wit, empathy, and a passionate sense of justice. The Handsome Monk and Other Stories brings together short stories from across Tsering Döndrup’s career to create a panorama of Tibetan society. With a love for the sparse yet vivid language of traditional Tibetan life, Tsering Döndrup tells tales of hypocritical lamas, crooked officials, violent conflicts, and loyal yaks. His nomad characters find themselves in scenarios that are at once strange and familiar, satirical yet poignant. The stories are set in the fictional county of Tsezhung, where Tsering Döndrup’s characters live their lives against the striking backdrop of Tibet’s natural landscape and go about their daily business to the ever-present rhythms of Tibetan religious life. Tsering Döndrup confronts pressing issues: the corruption of religious institutions; the indignities and injustices of Chinese rule; poverty and social ills such as gambling and alcoholism; and the hardships of a minority group struggling to maintain its identity in the face of overwhelming odds. Ranging in style from playful updates of traditional storytelling techniques to narrative experimentation, Tsering Döndrup’s tales pay tribute to the resilience of Tibetan culture.
Download or read book Monsters Animals and Other Worlds written by Keller Kimbrough and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds is a collection of twenty-five medieval Japanese tales of border crossings and the fantastic, featuring demons, samurai, talking animals, amorous plants, and journeys to supernatural realms. The most comprehensive compendium of short medieval Japanese fiction in English, Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds illuminates a rich world of literary, Buddhist, and visual culture largely unknown today outside of Japan. These stories, called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337 to 1573), date from approximately the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format, these vernacular stories frequently express Buddhist beliefs and provide the practical knowledge and moral education required to navigate medieval Japanese society. The otogizōshi represent a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature. They bring together many earlier types of narrative—court tales, military accounts, anecdotes, and stories about the divine origins of shrines and temples––joining book genres with parlor arts and the culture of itinerant storytellers and performers. The works presented here are organized into three thematically overlapping sections titled, “Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds,” “Buddhist Tales,” and “Interspecies Affairs.” Each translation is prefaced by a short introduction, and the book features images from the original scroll paintings, illustrated manuscripts, and printed books.
Download or read book Slow Boat to China and Other Stories written by Kim Chew Ng and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dream and Swine and Aurora," "Deep in the Rubber Forest," "Fish Bones," "Allah's Will," "Monkey Butts, Fire, and Dangerous Things"—Ng Kim Chew's stories are raw, rural, and rich with the traditions of his native Malaysia. They are also full of humor and spirit, demonstrating a deep appreciation for human ingenuity in the face of poverty, oppression, and exile. Ng creatively captures the riot of cultures that roughly coexist on the Malay Peninsula and its surrounding archipelago. Their interplay is heightened by the encroaching forces of globalization, which bring new opportunities for cultural experimentation, but also an added dimension of alienation. In prose that is intimate and atmospheric, these sensitively crafted, resonant stories depict the struggles of individuals torn between their ancestral and adoptive homes, communities pressured by violence, and minority Malaysian Chinese in dynamic tension with the Islamic Malay majority. Told through relatable characters, Ng's tales show why he has become a leading Malaysian writer of Chinese fiction, representing in mood, voice, and rhythm the dislocation of a people and a country in transition.
Download or read book The Tale of Genji written by Michael Emmerich and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Emmerich thoroughly revises the conventional narrative of the early modern and modern history of The Tale of Genji. Exploring iterations of the work from the 1830s to the 1950s, he demonstrates how translations and the global circulation of discourse they inspired turned The Tale of Genji into a widely read classic, reframing our understanding of its significance and influence and of the processes that have canonized the text. Emmerich begins with an analysis of the lavishly produced best seller Nise Murasaki inaka Genji (A Fraudulent Murasaki's Bumpkin Genji, 1829–1842), an adaptation of Genji written and designed by Ryutei Tanehiko, with pictures by the great print artist Utagawa Kunisada. He argues that this work introduced Genji to a popular Japanese audience and created a new mode of reading. He then considers movable-type editions of Inaka Genji from 1888 to 1928, connecting trends in print technology and publishing to larger developments in national literature and showing how the one-time best seller became obsolete. The study subsequently traces Genji's reemergence as a classic on a global scale, following its acceptance into the canon of world literature before the text gained popularity in Japan. It concludes with Genji's becoming a "national classic" during World War II and reviews an important postwar challenge to reading the work after it attained this status. Through his sustained critique, Emmerich upends scholarship on Japan's preeminent classic while remaking theories of world literature, continuity, and community.
Download or read book Extinction Studies written by Deborah Bird Rose and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations. The volume opens up important philosophical questions about our place in, and obligations to, a more-than-human world. Drawing on fieldwork, philosophy, literature, history, and a range of other perspectives, each of the chapters in this book tells a unique extinction story that explores what extinction is, what it means, why it matters—and to whom.
Download or read book The Nose and Other Stories written by Nikolai Gogol and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls and play The Government Inspector revolutionized Russian literature and continue to entertain generations of readers around the world. Yet Gogol’s peculiar genius comes through most powerfully in his short stories. By turns—or at once—funny, terrifying, and profound, the tales collected in The Nose and Other Stories are among the greatest achievements of world literature. These stories showcase Gogol’s vivid, haunting imagination: an encounter with evil in a darkened church, a downtrodden clerk who dreams only of a new overcoat, a nose that falls off a face and reappears around town on its own, outranking its former owner. Written between 1831 and 1842, they span the colorful setting of rural Ukraine to the unforgiving urban landscape of St. Petersburg to the ancient labyrinth of Rome. Yet they share Gogol’s characteristic obsessions—city crowds, bureaucratic hierarchy and irrationality, the devil in disguise—and a constant undercurrent of the absurd. Susanne Fusso’s translations pay careful attention to the strangeness and wonder of Gogol's style, preserving the inimitable humor and oddity of his language. The Nose and Other Stories reveals why Russian writers from Dostoevsky to Nabokov have returned to Gogol as the cornerstone of their unparalleled literary tradition.
