Author: Frances Larson Publisher: Granta Books ISBN: 1847088015 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.
Author: Ling Ma Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374717117 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Maybe it’s the end of the world, but not for Candace Chen, a millennial, first-generation American and office drone meandering her way into adulthood in Ling Ma’s offbeat, wryly funny, apocalyptic satire, Severance. "A stunning, audacious book with a fresh take on both office politics and what the apocalypse might bring." —Michael Schaub, NPR.org “A satirical spin on the end times-- kind of like The Office meets The Leftovers.” --Estelle Tang, Elle NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR * The New Yorker ("Books We Loved") * Elle * Marie Claire * Amazon Editors * The Paris Review (Staff Favorites) * Refinery29 * Bustle * Buzzfeed * BookPage * Bookish * Mental Floss * Chicago Review of Books * HuffPost * Electric Literature * A.V. Club * Jezebel * Vulture * Literary Hub * Flavorwire Winner of the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award * Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction * Winner of the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award * Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel * A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 * An Indie Next Selection Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend. So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers? A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.
Author: Iris Murdoch Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101495839 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 199
Book Description
A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.
Author: Julia Kristeva Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231157207 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
Renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection) offers an extended consideration of artistic figurations of the severed head, the organizing theme to an exhibition she coordinated at the Louvre in 1998. Though she follows a single historical trajectory, moving from Paleolithic skull cults to antique Greek sculpture to the Surrealist drawings, Kristeva eschews the disciplinary constraints of art history, instead employing psychoanalysis to explore the intertwined problems of representation and mortality posed by the severed head. For Kristeva, the capacity to figure the life of the mind first requires a confrontation with this horrific object that stands at the boundary between life and death, registering not only the loss of corporeal form but also subjective interiority. Though this book does not engage with recent images of decapitation, it is not without contemporary political-cultural import; for Kristeva, these cruel artistic figurations offer us the capacity to contemplate the sacred within a technology-driven contemporary visual culture. Verdict While a challenging text, this beautifully written and richly layered meditation on mortality and representation will undoubtedly appeal to those readers interested in semiotic and psychoanalytically informed readings of art.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr.(c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Author: Alex Lang Publisher: Independently Published ISBN: 9781074233488 Category : Languages : en Pages : 480
Book Description
As a boy of eleven, Kyris made a vow to kill a man. A holy man with the blessing of a sun god. Kyris swore that he would let nothing and no one stand in his way. For eight years he trained and strove, until he was ready to seek out his quarry.Now his hunt leads him to the great city of Vigil, seat of the Tesrin Imperium, center of the civilized world, and stronghold of his enemy. The one he seeks is powerful, able to call and command hallowed flames at will. But Kyris isn't without a talent of his own, a dark ability unseen and unknown to all. In the capital, games of intrigue are played among the merchant houses, slaves struggle against their masters, and the faithful preserve the Light to keep the Darkness at bay. Kyris, however, cares not for any of it. He steals from the city's highborn to further his cause, but when a simple job goes wrong, when a single knife thrown without thinking embroils him in the schemes of the powerful, his convictions are put to the test.Vengeance at any cost, or so he's always told himself. Will it be harder to fulfill that promise or walk away from it?
Author: Justin Sirois Publisher: ISBN: 9781793107480 Category : Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
"The Party Backstory Generator is a collaborative storytelling supplement that's a helluva a lot of fun for you and your players. It's sort of like a workbook from your college lab class in that you get to draw out the starting region for your campaign, but everyone gets to collaborate and add their own touch so your whole group is invested in the setting. This book is a fun improv exercise that will get your group off to a great new start." -- LUKE GYGAX. How did everyone in your party meet? What alliances or tensions exist? Who screwed over who and what will you do about it?For D&D, Pathfinder, and other systems, the Party Backstory Generator solves this problem quickly and easily. This is a simple, straightforward guide of limitless customization.Build meaningful alliances and tensions between multiple party members with this map making, backstory and one-shot off-night story builder. "Choose two characters..." - it's the prompt in this unique book that will bond your party in fun and meaningful ways. This book doesn't create individual characters. It solely focuses on unifying your players with randomized background, conflicts, skills, and tragedies.
Author: Terry Goodkind Publisher: Tor Books ISBN: 1429948442 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 563
Book Description
From Terry Goodkind, author of the Sword of Truth series, comes Severed Souls, a New York Times best selling novel of Richard Rahl, Kahlan Amnell, and their world. From the far reaches of the D'Haran Empire, Bishop Hannis Arc and the ancient Emperor Sulachan lead a vast horde of Shun-Tuk and other depraved "half-people" into the Empire's heart, raising an army of the dead in order to threaten the world of the living. Meanwhile, far from home, Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell must defend themselves and their followers from a series of terrifying threats, despite a magical sickness that depletes their strength and which, if not cured, will take their lives...sooner rather than later. "Richard saw the point of a sword blade sticking out from between the man's shoulder blades. He spun back toward Richard after throwing the woman out of the opening, ready to attack. It seemed impossible, but the man looked unaffected by the blade that had impaled him through the chest. It was then, in the weak light from the fire pit off to the side, that Richard got his first good look at the killer. Three knives were buried up to their brass cross-guards in the man's chest. Only the handles were showing. Richard saw, too, the broken end of a sword blade jutting out from the center of the man's chest. The point of that same blade stuck out from the man's back. Richard recognized the knife handles. All three were the style carried by the men of the First File. He looked from those blades that should have killed the big man, up into his face. That was when he realized the true horror of the situation, and the reason for the unbearable stench of death." At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author: E. J. W. Barber Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691127743 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching about storytelling.
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Author: Frances Larson
Author: Scott Snyder
Author: Ling Ma
Author: John Gilmore
Author: Iris Murdoch
Author: Julia Kristeva
Author: Alex Lang
Author: Justin Sirois
Author: Terry Goodkind
Author: E. J. W. Barber