The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse

The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse
Author: Robert Muponde
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1485904765

A magical coming-of-age tale in rural Zimbabwe Ah, you’ve arrived. Sit down, please, and make yourself comfortable. There may not be much dinner tonight – Father is still out of work; Mother can’t do anything with those stunted maize plants in the stony ground – but at least you are here, in Gushure Village, home to unsurpassed raconteurs and the Guramatunhu family, who know that telling stories staves off hunger. Surprise awaits at every turn: thoughts and conversations bloom into poems, political speeches and songs. You will find instructions for cooking a hare, for how to defend yourself when a dead snake is your enemy’s chosen weapon, how to speak in war tongues, how to compose a fist and aim it at a tree trunk, how to eliminate animal terrorism in a time of rabies, how to rehearse the body-viewing of a good-looking corpse, how to rock under flying okapis with The Double Shuffle, and how to practise your lovemaking technique on a woman drawn in the sand. At a time when cooked ants constitute a feast, the future nevertheless holds abundant prospects for the boy who devours words. But there is an unexpected fork in the road for this book louse, and plenty of wondrous twists and shocking turns. Hilarious, poetic and poignant, Robert Muponde’s vibrant coming-of-age story of Ronald Guramatunhu brings to life rural Zimbabwe from the Second Chimurenga to independence. There are malevolent mermaids, eccentric shamans, outrageous relatives, fearsome teachers, and men who transform into hippos in a tale that captures all the magic of childhood.

The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse

The Scandalous Times of a Book Louse
Author: Robert Muponde
Publisher:
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2021
Genre: Children's stories, Zimbabwean
ISBN: 9781415210550

Ah, you've arrived. Sit down, please, and make yourself comfortable. There may not be much dinner tonight - Father is still out of work; Mother can't do anything with those stunted maize plants in the stony ground - but at least you are here, in Gushure Village, home to unsurpassed raconteurs and the Guramatunhu family, who know that telling stories staves off hunger. Surprise awaits at every turn: thoughts and conversations bloom into poems, political speeches and songs. You will find instructions for cooking a hare, for how to defend yourself when a dead snake is your enemy's chosen weapon, how to speak in war tongues, how to compose a fist and aim it at a tree trunk, how to eliminate animal terrorism in a time of rabies, how to rehearse the body-viewing of a good-looking corpse, how to rock under flying okapis with The Double Shuffle, and how to practise your lovemaking technique on a woman drawn in the sand. At a time when cooked ants constitute a feast, the future nevertheless holds abundant prospects for the boy who devours words. But there is an unexpected fork in the road for this book louse, and plenty of wondrous twists and shocking turns. Hilarious, poetic and poignant, Robert Muponde's vibrant coming-of-age story of Ronald Guramatunhu brings to life rural Zimbabwe from The Second Chimurenga to independence. There are malevolent mermaids, eccentric shamans, outrageous relatives, fearsome teachers, and men who transform into hippos in a tale that captures all the magic of childhood.

Mintirho ya Vulavula

Mintirho ya Vulavula
Author: Jabulisile Mhlambi
Publisher: African Books Collective
Total Pages: 478
Release: 2021-04-19
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1920690174

Mintirho ya Vulavula: Arts, National Identities and Democracy examines the role of arts and culture in development, and specifically its value in consolidating our nascent democracy and in facilitating the transformation of South African society. Contributors to this edited volume interrogate the role of arts, culture and heritage from a transdisciplinary perspective, enriched by the cross-generational perspectives offered by young and older artists, cultural practitioners, activists and scholars. Authors also offer some policy recommendations on how the contribution of arts and culture to social cohesion and nation-building can be enhanced.

Scandalous Times

Scandalous Times
Author: Alex Ling
Publisher:
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021
Genre: Immorality
ISBN: 9781350068582

"We live in scandalous times. Every day some new controversy demands our attention, our emotional investment, and ultimately our judgment. The transgressive nature of these scandals leads many to understand them in revelatory terms: as offering a tantalising glimpse of what really goes on, cutting through the multiple layers of artifice to reveal an underlying 'truth'. Others, however, contend that these routine transgressions simply present the strategic face of contemporary capitalism. Yet there exists today another, far more insidious form of scandal, one that is concerned less with the direct accumulation of capital than with shoring up the base mechanisms of power. Here, the scandal paradoxically replicates the disruptive effects of radical creation (without, for all that, presenting anything new) in order to produce its very opposite: stasis. What we instead bear witness to is the production of the simulacrum of novelty, the sole purpose of which is to stand in for - and thereby neutralise - the very possibility of real creation and the threat it entails. From Donald Trump to Kanye West to the Academy Awards, Scandalous Times explores the ways in which areas like art, advertising, social media and politics actively contribute to this 'static' fabrication of controversy, all the while arguing for the need to rethink creation as a radical exception to the state, and not its proxy"--

Quiet Journal

Quiet Journal
Author: Susan Cain
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 059313592X

Harness your hidden talents, empower communication at home and at work, and nurture your best self with this guided journal based on the #1 New York Times bestselling phenomenon Quiet. Susan Cain’s Quiet permanently changed how we see the psychology of introverts and, equally important, how introverts see themselves. Now here is the companion journal for the textbook introvert, the natural extroverts, and everyone in between, with a self-assessment quiz and powerful prompts that take you on the Quiet journey to becoming a stronger, more confident person. In part one, you’ll learn more about yourself and your own mindset and temperament, make progress towards self-awareness, and realize your own authentic qualities and worth. Then, in part two, you’ll put that knowledge into practice with prompts for taking action to better empower yourself when communicating with family, friends, or colleagues. With a lay-flat cover, smooth writing paper, and a ribbon marker, Quiet Journal is a beautiful and accessible tool for reflection and exploration.

Sophie's World

Sophie's World
Author: Jostein Gaarder
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 735
Release: 2007-03-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466804270

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Straight Man

Straight Man
Author: Richard Russo
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2011-11-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307809943

Hilarious and true-to-life, witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down, Straight Man follows Hank Devereaux through one very bad week in this novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls. • Now the AMC Original Series Lucky Hank. William Henry Devereaux, Jr., is the reluctant chairman of the English department of a badly underfunded college in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Devereaux's reluctance is partly rooted in his character—he is a born anarchist—and partly in the fact that his department is more savagely divided than the Balkans. In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions. In short, Straight Man is classic Russo—side-splitting, poignant, compassionate, and unforgettable. Look for Richard Russo's new book, Somebody's Fool, coming soon.

Mongrel

Mongrel
Author: William Dicey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2016
Genre: Books and reading
ISBN: 9781415206881

"From a carcass competition in the Karoo to a shambolic murder trial in Cape Town, William Dicey's essays freewheel across an open terrain of interests. Dicey is curious and inventive, weaving strands of essay, journalism, fiction and self-reportage into something uniquely his own. Mongrel investigates a range of topics - radical environmentalism, the fault lines between farmer and farm worker, the joys and sorrows of reading - yet drifts of concern and sensibility draw the collection together. Several essays touch on how books can move, and sometimes maul, their readers. Mongrel is idiosyncratic, witty, potent."--From back cover.

Sabrina & Corina

Sabrina & Corina
Author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Publisher: One World
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525511318

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • Latinas of Indigenous descent living in the American West take center stage in this haunting debut story collection—a powerful meditation on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands. “Here are stories that blaze like wildfires, with characters who made me laugh and broke my heart.”—Sandra Cisneros WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE STORY PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit in the American West. Against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado—a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite—these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force. In “Sugar Babies,” ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West” follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,” a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,” a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual. Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal “Sabrina & Corina isn’t just good, it’s masterful storytelling. Fajardo-Anstine is a fearless writer: her women are strong and scarred witnesses of the violations of their homelands, their culture, their bodies; her plots turn and surprise, unerring and organic in their comprehensiveness; her characters break your heart, but you keep on going because you know you are in the hands of a master. Her stories move through the heart of darkness and illuminate it with the soul of truth.”—Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents “[A] powerhouse debut . . . stylistically superb, with crisp dialogue and unforgettable characters, Sabrina & Corina introduces an impressive new talent to American letters.”—Rigoberto González, NBC News