Maud Martha (Faber Editions)

Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571373267
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Book Description
'Such a wonderful book. Utterly unique, exquisitely crafted and quietly powerful. I loved it and want everyone to read this lost literary treasure.' Bernardine Evaristo 'Maud Martha finds beauty in the brutal formative moments that make us. It is one of my favorite depictions of how a woman comes to trust her eyes.' Raven Leilani 'The quotidian rises to an exquisite portraiture of black womanhood in the hands of one of America's most foundational writers.' Claudia Rankine 'Maud Martha reveals the poetry, power, and splendor of an ordinary life.' Tayari Jones 'Incredible ... She is a quietly radical seer, she is literature itself, a person in the world. It's a rare kind of perfect!' Max Porter What, what , am I to do with all of this life? Maud Martha Brown is a little girl growing up on the South Side of 1940s Chicago. Amidst the crumbling taverns and overgrown yards, she dreams: of New York, romance, her future. She admires dandelions, learns to drink coffee, falls in love, decorates her kitchenette, visits the Jungly Hovel, guts a chicken, buys hats, gives birth. But her lighter-skinned husband has dreams too: of the Foxy Cats Club, other women, war. And the 'scraps of baffled hate' - a certain word from a saleswoman; that visit to the cinema; the cruelty of a department store Santa Claus- are always there . Written in 1953 but never published in Britain, Maud Martha is a poetic collage of happenings that forms an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary life: one lived with wisdom, humour, protest, rage, dignity, and joy.

Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha

Author: Jacqueline K. Bryant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
In September 1953, legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks introduced the reading world to Maud Martha, a complex urban black heroine, in her only published novel of the same name in her long and celebrated literary career. By the time the novel was published, indeed, Brooks had secured two Guggenheim Fellowships (1946,1947), and had already become the first black to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (Annie Allen, 1950). But the success of two other major black literary works by Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) and Richard Wright (The Outsider) would overshadow the work initially entitled 'American Family Brown'. Still, the work would prove to be a critical one for Brooks enthusiasts, who followed the poet's literary career. In her introduction to this collection of literary criticism that is rooted in a deep reverence, love and respect for the honourable Ms Brooks, Jacqueline Bryant explains that, though Brooks had certainly captured national attention and had published two critically acclaimed volumes of poetry by this time (Annie Allen and A Street in Bronzeville), Maud Martha was introduced to some great acclaim in Chicago; yet national critical reception was mixed.Bryant cites as one of the goals of this collection increased attention to the too long eclipsed work.

Maud Martha

Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780883780619
Category : African American novelists
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Symbolising some of the author's most provocative writing, this novel captures the essence of Black life, and recognises the beauty and strength that lies within each of us.

Termush (Faber Editions)

Author: Sven Holm
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571379168
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 132

Book Description
Introduced by Jeff VanderMeer - 'a classic: stunning, dangerous, darkly beautiful' - welcome to the post-apocalyptic White Lotus: a luxury hotel at the end of the world in this lost 1967 dystopia ... 'Chilling and prescient.' Andrew Hunter Murray 'Elemental and true.' Kiran Millwood Hargrave 'Mesmerizing.' Sandra Newman 'Like someone from the future screaming to us.' Salena Godden The day we came up from the shelters four people were found dead on the steps of the hotel. Welcome to Termush: a luxury coastal resort like no other. All the wealthy guests are survivors: preppers who reserved rooms long before the Disaster. Inside, they embrace exclusive radiation shelters, ambient music and lavish provisions; outside, radioactive dust falls on the sculpture park, security men step over dead birds, and a reconnaissance party embarks. Despite weathering a nuclear apocalypse, their problems are only just beginning. Soon, the Management begins censoring news; disruptive guests are sedated; initial generosity towards Strangers ceases as fears of contamination and limited resources grow. But as the numbers - and desperation - of external survivors increase, they must decide what it means to forge a new moral code at the end (or beginning?) of the world ... Translated by Sylvia Clayton

The Glass Pearls (Faber Editions)

Author: Emeric Pressburger
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571371051
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
For fans of The Passenger, this thrilling tale of an ex-Nazi surgeon hiding in plain sight in 1960s London by the celebrated filmmaker is a lost noir gem, introduced by Anthony Quinn and narrated on audio by Mark Gatiss. 'Stunning: incredibly good, thought-provoking and tense.' Ian Rankin 'This extraordinary novel had me hooked from start to finish.' Sarah Waters 'An outstanding novel: gripping, tense and darkly unsettling.' Jonathan Freedland 'A wonderfully compelling noir thriller and audacious and challenging act of imagination.' William Boyd 'One of the best London novels of the 20th century.' Benjamin Myers Nothing is more inviting to disclose your secrets than to be told by others of their own ... London, June 1965. Karl Braun arrives as a lodger in Pimlico: hatless, with a bow-tie, greying hair, slight in build. His new neighbours are intrigued by this cultured German gentleman who works as a piano tuner; many are fellow émigrés, who assume that he, like them, came to England to flee Hitler. That summer, Braun courts a woman, attends classical concerts, dances the twist. But as the newspapers fill with reports of the hunt for Nazi war criminals, his nightmares become increasingly worse . 'A haunting, remarkable novel, as startlingly original as any of Pressburger's films.' Nicola Upson 'A dark and harrowing window on the past: the ending will haunt your dreams.' Janice Hallett

Report from Part One

Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
The author relates the events of her life to her ongoing struggle to freely express the ideas and emotions of an African-American poet

A Wreath for Udomo (Faber Editions)

Author: Peter Abrahams
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571376401
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
'The forerunner of an entire school of African literary art.' Sunday Times Those men who are history now; did they feel like this? A 1950s Hampstead pub; a freezing night. Lois can't tear her eyes away from the haunted, restless African man in the corner. Over brandy and stew, she discovers he is in awe of her friend, Panafrica's greatest political writer and fighter. Their meeting inducts this stranger, Udomo, into London's revolutionary community of exiled African activists: the start of a life-changing journey. Amidst the internal politics and love affairs, Udomo is inspired by other leaders' independence uprisings; but when he returns to his native land to overthrow the colonial oppressors, his idealism is put to the ultimate test ... Inspired by Peter Abrahams' befriending of future African heads of state in mid-century London , A Wreath for Udomo (1956) is a radical lost classic, unforgettably exploring the nature of freedom, power, leadership and love.

Pigs in Heaven

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061842214
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart. This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

The Anthill

Author: Julianne Pachico
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385545908
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
"Pachico's The Anthill is superb"--KELLY LINK A wildly original blend of social horror and razor sharp satire, The Anthill is a searing exploration of privilege, racism, and redemption in the Instagram age. In the end, it's much easier to not look at the screaming feeling. To not examine it. Better to just keep on rushing on... Lina has come home to the country of her childhood. Sent away from Colombia to England after her mother's death twenty years before, she's searching for the one person who can tell her about their shared past. She's never forgotten Matty - her childhood friend and protector who now runs The Anthill, a day care refuge for the street kids of Medellín. Lina begins volunteering there, but her reunion with Matty is not what she hoped for. She no longer recognizes Medellin, now rebranded as a tourist destination, nor the person Matty has become: a guarded man uninterested in reliving the past she thought they both cherished. As Lina begins to confront her memories and the country's traumatic history, strange happenings start taking place at The Anthill: something is violently scratching at the inside of the closet door, the kids are drawing unsettling pictures, and there are mysterious sightings of a small, dirty boy with pointy teeth. Is this a vision of the boy Lina once knew, or something more sinister? Did she bring these disturbances with her? And what will her search for atonement cost Matty? A visceral, hallucinatory ride by an author who has been called "blunt, fresh, and unsentimental" (The New York Times Book Review) and "remarkably inventive" (The Atlantic), The Anthill is a ghost story unlike any other, a meditation on healing--for both a person and a country--in the wake of horror.

Blacks

Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780883781050
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
Presents a collection of the author's poetry and prose.