Weary Sons of Conrad

Weary Sons of Conrad
Author: Brenda Cooper
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2002
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:
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"Is it possible for European and North American men to depict Africa in a wise and non-exploitative manner?" That's the question Cooper (African studies, U. of Cape Town, South Africa) hopes to answer in her examination of writers whose opposition to racism, the nature of imperialism, and gender stereotypes make them "weary" inheritors of the legacy of Joseph Conrad. She borrows concepts and methodologies from Said's Orientalism, postmodernism, Lacanian theory, and other areas, rejecting a unified approach. Among the works she examines are Adam Thorpe's Pieces of Light, Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library, Patrick Roscoe's The Lost Oasis, William Boyd's Brazzaville Beach, Will Self's Great Apes, Peter Hoeg' s The Woman and the Ape, and Lawrence Norfolk's The Pope's Rhinoceros. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Catching the Current

Catching the Current
Author: Jenny Pattrick
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1869798570
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A terrific historical novel full of compelling events, vivid communities and the irresistible character of Conrad Rasmussen. In this companion novel to the bestselling Denniston novels, the free spirit is pitted against the forces of tradition. On the run from an unfortunate 'indiscretion', young Conrad Rasmussen finds refuge in the North Island of New Zealand under the employ of the famous (or notorious) Dane, Bishop Monrad. However Conrad - a talented and impetuous Faroeman, known in bestselling author Jenny Pattrick's Denniston novels as Con the Brake - finds he cannot escape his past. This is Conrad's story, and that of the unusual woman Anahuia. It is a tale of new lands and old songs, of seafaring and war and the search for love. It is also the story of the Faroe Islands and of Denmark's early connection with New Zealand.

Essay and General Literature Index

Essay and General Literature Index
Author: Minnie Earl Sears
Publisher:
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2004
Genre: Electronic reference sources
ISBN:
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Includes "List of books indexed" (published also separately).

Colonial Odysseys

Colonial Odysseys
Author: David Adams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2018-08-06
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501720422
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Works such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, E. M. Forster's A Passage to India, and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust explore the relationship between Britain and its colonies when the British Empire was at its height. David Adams observes that, because of their structure and specific literary allusions, they also demand to be read in relation to the epic tradition. The elegantly written and powerfully argued Colonial Odysseys focuses on narratives published in English between 1890 and 1940 in which protagonists journey from the familiar world of Europe to alien colonial worlds. The underlying concerns of these narratives, Adams discovers, are often less political or literary than metaphysical: in each of these fictions a major character dies as a result of the journey, inviting reflection on the negation of existence. Repeatedly, imaginative encounters with distant, uncanny colonies produce familiar, insular presentations of life as an odyssey, with death as the home port. Expanding postcolonial and Marxist theories by drawing on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, Adams finds in this preoccupation with mortality a symptom of the failure of secular culture to give meaning to death. This concern, in his view, shapes the ways modernist narratives reinforce or critique imperial culture—the authors project onto British imperial experience their anxieties about the individual's relation to the absolute.

Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing

Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing
Author: Catharine Mee
Publisher: Anthem Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2015-03-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1783084200
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This critical study examines the theme of interpersonal encounter in a range of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century travel writing written in French and Italian. Structured typologically, each chapter focuses on a typical activity that brings traveller-protagonists into contact with other people. Drawing on literary critical studies of travel writing, sociological and anthropological approaches to tourism, as well as research in French and Italian area studies, ‘Interpersonal Encounters in Contemporary Travel Writing’ locates the concept of encounter within the context of modern tourism.

The Weight of Winter

The Weight of Winter
Author: Cathie Pelletier
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2014-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1402294883
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Winner of the New England Book Award"Cathie Pelletier generates the sort of excitement that only writers at the very top of their form can provide."—Stephen King Welcome to Mattagash, Maine, a small, quirky town where everyone's personal lives are as entwined as their family trees. On the day of the first snowfall, the residents brace themselves for the long winter ahead. Mere survival will be hard; dealing with each other is another story. As winter settles in, various Mattagashians careen from conundrum to conundrum, trying to save dying small businesses, caring for crabby loved ones, and cruising through town, stirring up gossip any way they can get it. Through it all, 107-year old Mathilda Fennelson reflects on her life as the town's oldest resident, born the year Mattagash was founded. Through her dreams and memories, she reveals the scrappy, strange, and earnest pioneer history of these people weighed down by their own existence. At once funny, insightful, and heartbreaking, The Weight of Winter is a perfect for fans of Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout), The Language of Flowers (Vanessa Diffenbaugh), and The Good House (Ann Leary) who will fall in love with Mattagash and its people. More from Mattagash, Maine: The Funeral Makers (Book 1): Mattagash, Maine: a quiet town rocked by scandal, seduction, mayhem, blackmail, and the only recorded case of beriberi on the entire North American continent! Wedding on the Banks (Book 2): Amy Joy Lawler just announced her engagement—to an outsider! The Weight of Winter (Book 3) The One-Way Bridge (Book 4): Return to Mattagash—the anything but tranquil town where a mysterious dead body has just been found in the woods. What readers are saying about The Weight of Winter "While wildly funny at time, The Weight of Winter is a much darker and even more compelling novel than was the first book in the series." "Wonderfully written with humor, yet extremely hard-hitting." "This was one of those books that I looked forward to falling back into each time I picked it up, and each time, it felt like going home." What reviewers are saying about The Weight of Winter "Pelletier's ear for dialogue is exceptional, and her characters' interior monologues, what they think but don't say, are subversive, humorous and heartbreaking."—Publishers Weekly "Frequently funny and always poignant, it is a chronicle of past and present times, detailing lost dreams, found meaning, and echoing the sins of generations."—Library Journal What people are saying about Cathie Pelletier "Nobody walks the knife-edge of hilarity and heartbreak more confidently than Cathie Pelletier."— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls "It is Pelletier's gift to be able to coax the drama from stony ground without artifice or sentimentality."—Boston Globe "An ambitious, fearless novelist."—The Washington Post "Cathie does a wonderful job of capturing [her characters'] moods and loves and losses, and yearnings...Her writing is lovely and so descriptive"— Annie Philbrick, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT "Sharp stuff...Her sentences are powerful and unique as snowflakes."—New York Times

The Dawn Watch

The Dawn Watch
Author: Maya Jasanoff
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2017-11-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0698137477
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“Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le Carré Winner of the 2018 Cundhill History Prize A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2017 A visionary exploration of the life and times of Joseph Conrad, his turbulent age of globalization and our own, from one of the most exciting young historians writing today Migration, terrorism, the tensions between global capitalism and nationalism, and a communications revolution: these forces shaped Joseph Conrad’s destiny at the dawn of the twentieth century. In this brilliant new interpretation of one of the great voices in modern literature, Maya Jasanoff reveals Conrad as a prophet of globalization. As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. His life story delivers a history of globalization from the inside out, and reflects powerfully on the aspirations and challenges of the modern world. Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857, to Polish parents in the Russian Empire. At sixteen he left the landlocked heart of Europe to become a sailor, and for the next twenty years travelled the world’s oceans before settling permanently in England as an author. He saw the surging, competitive "new imperialism" that planted a flag in almost every populated part of the globe. He got a close look, too, at the places “beyond the end of telegraph cables and mail-boat lines,” and the hypocrisy of the west’s most cherished ideals. In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works—The Secret Agent, Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo. Genre-bending, intellectually thrilling, and deeply humane, The Dawn Watch embarks on a spell-binding expedition into the dark heart of Conrad’s world—and through it to our own.

Africa's Transition from Colonisation to Independence and Decolonisation: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles

Africa's Transition from Colonisation to Independence and Decolonisation: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles
Author: Ulrich Pallua
Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2004-03-08
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3838253531
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The concept of Africaness visualises Africa from three different points of view and at three different stages of history. With reference to Africa’s political background from the 19th to the 20th century, Joseph Conrad (the coloniser), Chinua Achebe (the colonised), and Moses Isegawa (the decolonised) tell the story of the ‘black continent’ and its development from colonisation to independence. This development epitomises the ‘heart of darkness’ whose laws and characteristics have changed throughout the centuries.