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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2021

        Tales of magic, tales in print

        On the genealogy of fairy tales and the Brothers Grimm

        by Willem De Blecourt

        Since the beginning of the nineteenth century folklorists, and the general public in their wake, have assumed the orality of fairy tales. Only lately have more and more specialists been arguing in favour of at least an interdependence between oral and printed distribution of stories. This book takes an extreme position in that debate: as far as Tales of magic is concerned, the initial transmission proceded exclusively through prints. From a historical perspective, this is the only viable approach; the opposite assumption of a vast unrecorded and thus inaccessible reservoir of oral stories, presents a horror vacui. Only in the course of the nineteenth century, when folklorists started collecting in the field and asked their informants for fairy tales, was this particular genre incorporated into a then feeble oral tradition. Even then story tellers regularly reverted to printed texts. Every recorded fairy tale can be shown to be dependent on previous publications, or to be a new composition, constructed on the basis of fragments of stories already in existence. Tales of magic, tales in print traces the textual history of a number of fairy tale clusters, linking the findings of literary historians on the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries to the material collected by nineteenth- and twentieth-century field workers. While it places fairy tales as a genre firmly in a European context, it also follows particular stories in their dispersion over the rest of the world.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 2020

        Interweaving myths in Shakespeare and his contemporaries

        by Janice Valls-Russell, Agnès Lafont, Charlotte Coffin

        This volume proposes new insights into the uses of classical mythology by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, focusing on interweaving processes in early modern appropriations of myth. Its 11 essays show how early modern writing intertwines diverse myths and plays with variant versions of individual myths that derive from multiple classical sources, as well as medieval, Tudor and early modern retellings and translations. Works discussed include poems and plays by William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and others. Essays concentrate on specific plays including The Merchant of Venice and Dido Queen of Carthage, tracing interactions between myths, chronicles, the Bible and contemporary genres. Mythological figures are considered to demonstrate how the weaving together of sources deconstructs gendered representations. New meanings emerge from these readings, which open up methodological perspectives on multi-textuality, artistic appropriation and cultural hybridity.

      • Fiction

        The Guard

        by Peyman Esmaili

        A thrilling novel; a modern narrative of a Persian myth   Siamak has lost his parents in a car accident many years ago. This incident and the harm it has inflicted on him change his whole future. Years later, he is an engineer working in southern Iran and is in love with Roshanak. She’s fallen for him too. However, his past always casts a shadow over him making him unable to cope with his destiny. He’s always on the run; from the accident and its perpetual wound, and the weird occurrence he faces in the south leading to a mysterious crime. Siamak moves to Kordestan to get away from it all forever, but instead, he gets stuck in a frozen desert full of abandoned houses and horrifying sounds. As he is passing through the desert, he realizes that he is not alone and is surrounded by shadows closing in on him: Sard-Khabs who are neither human nor animal, but something in between and even more terrifying; ghosts following him from the south to the frozen desert in Kordestan to take revenge. They govern this hell-like nature. There’s also a bizarre father and son with an even more bizarre history. In this most remote part of the world, Siamak remembers his past. He recalls the happenings and people from his past, which complete the puzzle of his adventurous life. It is concerning other inhabitants of this haunted world that he is to make a risky decision; a decision that carries the trace of his last memory of his father and that incident.

      • Thriller / suspense
        March 2017

        The universal meter

        by Luis Benítez

        Charles Baudelaire, a French poet and journalist, lives very poorly in a pension in Paris. He hopes to succeed in the world of letters and win back his lover, Jeanne Duval. Meanwhile Duke Rémy, a very wealthy aristocrat, science fan and scientific patron, unscrupulous, despotic and irritable, aspires to reformulate the decimal metric system, established during the past French Revolution to achieve his personal glory. To do this, Rémy wildly plans to measure one ten millionth of the planet in the Argentine pampas, the flattest place on Earth. The duke is ready to do anything to achieve his mission. The lives of these two very dissimilar characters will intersect in the most unexpected way. The author

      • Fiction
        November 2020

        Herzen - Von dir berührt

        by Veronika Engler

        Edinburgh, the city of myths and dark legends. Actually, the perfect place to stay for a sullen, highly sought-after demon who was once doomed to an eternity in the underworld. If it weren't for this annoying new and, for the first time, female job assigned to him by the karma department: small, stubborn, with big blue eyes and the firm resolve to declare war on the male world. Sensual temptation, tension, magical humor and a love that shouldn't exist like this. Because sometimes stars collide unexpectedly, and new galaxies arise ...

      • Fiction

        Armenian Legends

        by Nver Virabyan

        The traditions and folk stories on Armenian landscape, history and key historic events included in the book are instructive and interesting for all times and for wide circle of readers. These stories are insightful and of high literary value and may be used during the teaching process. The reading of the folk stories will inspire the readers and trigger their imagination and will make them admire the beauty of Armenian language and profound national wisdom.

      • Fiction
        January 2015

        Al Azbakia

        Winner of Katara Prize For Arabic Novel 2016

        by Nasr Iraq

        In Al-Azbakia, Nasser Iraq endeavors to draw on the past, specifically the time when Muhammad Ali Pasha ruled Egypt, in an attempt to make sense of the present. His purpose is to shed light on some of today’s details that many fail to recognize as nothing more than a glimpse, or in one way or another a continuation, of the past.The novel gives a realistic aura to historical moments that makes them more glorious and lively; a rhythm that brings them from the past to our present without losing their freshness or making them less surprising. The novel captures such realistic moments so vividly that they touch your soul and enter your heart. You feel them so that you begin to think that you went into a trance, travelling times and distances to live within the world depicted by the story. You start to live with its heroes, sharing their happy and sad moments and dreams and nightmares. There, between the lines and sentences, you meet with some well-known names, like Muhammad Ali Pasha, Abdulrahman Al Jabarti and Napoleon Bonaparte, and some others, like Ayoub, Shaldam, Khawaja (a colloquial form of address for a foreigner) Sharl and Mese’ada Hijab, that you will never meet except in this novel. The writer does a good job of picking up his characters and sketching them. The historical facts do not prevent him from creating fictional characters to whom he quickly gives flesh, blood and ideas. Events gets intertwined, and characters interact lively to create a world of dynamic events and people breathing life between facts supported by history and fiction to which the writer gives a realistic touch as it becomes an imaginary reality.

      • Fiction

        La Princesse au visage de nuit

        by David Bry

        An intense and harrowing modern tale   Hugo, molested by his parents as a child, ran away with his friends in the forest to find the Nightfaced Princess who, as the legend goes, grants the wishes of wretched children, sometimes at the cost of their lives. After a whole night, Hugo came back alone and amnesic. Twenty years later, Hugo learns of his parents’ death. Once back to his land, strange events are occurring. Mysterious lights shine in the woods and the storms are whispering names in the wind. Between investigation and legends, Hugo will retrace his child steps in order to understand how his parents died, how his former friends got lost, and finally find what awaits him in the woods of the Nightfaced Princess. The Nightfaced Princess is the tale of broken childhoods, of adults that had to grow with their wounds. Because we, sometimes, finally succeed to live. And eventually, maybe, to be happy?

      • Fiction

        Whirling On The Saloon’s Chair (Salūṉ nāṟkāliyil suuḻaṉṟapaṭi)

        Seventy Tales of Wide Ranging Themes and Narrative techniques

        by Konangi

        This is a representative anthology of the First 70 stories penned by  Konangi spanning the first two decades of his literary career. This collection Comprises of stories depicting the livelihood of farmers, blacksmiths, washermen and other subaltern people and their trials and tribulations. It also throws light on unique stylistic and narratological experimentation performed by Konangi which anticipated and inaugurated his Avatar as a novelist. Several short stories are endowed with a rich sense of the agrarian life of Tamil Nadu followed by poetic references to the socio-cultural life of the Tamils. Translators can enjoy bounteous choices offered by this quintessential anthology covering a wide range of themes and treatment of stories followed by glimpses of the significant transition of Konangi's style from realism to magical realism.

      • Fiction

        Water Boomerang (Nīrvaḷari)

        An Epic Novel on the Ancient Tamil Life and Culture

        by Konangi

        Nīrvaḷari is the fourth novel of Konangi. It comprises 21 chapters inspired by Konangi's spectacular vision of the infinitesimal moments of perennial ancestrality of the Tamils. The novel has resonances with Cilappatikaram, the great epic of Tamil language. Konangi has composed beautiful chapters on Islamic architecture, antique cities and their people, imaginary meetings between  Dostoevsky and Van Gogh and several other poetic Odysseys towards surreal landscapes. Neer Valari offers a hermetic and encyclopedic fusion of painting, music, sculpture, architecture, anthropology, literature and culture composed with the musical mythic - poetic prose of Konangi which has enthralled his readers for many decades offering them the surreal dimensions of Tamil Prose.

      • Fiction

        Kinder des Labyrinths / Children of the Labyrinth

        by Thomas Fritz

        The ever-lasting question: is it possible to reconcile technology and empathy, progress and responsibility? A tragic accident or rather a case of murder? After the deadly fall of his nephew Talos the ingenious inventor Daedalus is suspected of murder and has to leave Athens in a rush. He finds refuge at King Minos’ court, but the protection of the Crete ruler has its price: Daedalus looses the decision power over his own inventions. With the building of the Labyrinth, the human tragedy takes its course. Thomas Fritz re-tells Dädalus’ story in a powerful and visionally strong language; the reader finds himself on the dusty streets of Crete, at the simple dwellings of the locals, as an eye-witness of human happiness and tragedy - the lines between fiction and reality are blurring ...

      • Fiction

        Reisende Mutter. Indianische Parabeln / Travelling Mother. First Nations’ Parables

        by David Seven Deers

        Three mystical parables told by a First Nations author Eagle Man and Travelling Mother visit the People of the River; the birds meet at a secret Bird Council in the forest; two First Nations children ride to their future on the back of an enormous grizzly bear … In his three parables, Canadian sculptor and writer David Seven Deers leads us inside the hidden mysticism of his native country. While reality and fiction are merging, an optimistic and joyful perspective on the world reveals itself.

      • Fiction
        February 2023

        The Adventures of Nihu

        by Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

        Nihu is falsely accused of a crime and is banished to the Lonely Forest. He is challenged with a mission by a magical character. As brave Nihu quests to fulfill the mission and gain his freedom, he is sucked into a world inside of a stone, visits a powerful ruler in an underwater city, and makes friends with a group of refugees only a hero could love.

      • Fiction
        April 2023

        Pirates of the Sub-Sahara

        by Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

        After his escape, a sailor immediately seeks to settle old scores. He meets a dangerous man who knew the gunmen that killed his father. But in the process, he comes to learn the true cost of vengeance. In the Gulf of Guinea, dark spirits roam free.

      • Fiction
        October 2018 - October 2023

        Selected Stories by Xuemo

        A collection of seven wonderful stories taking place on the silk road.

        by Xuemo

        Selected Stories by Xue Mo is a collection of four wonderful stories taking place on the silk road.The stories features the desert, camels, dholes, yellow sand and a great number of other elements typical in the life of western China,and expressing the themes of love, faith, eternity, life and death, and depicting the souls of the farmers of western China stubbornly arise from pains and suffering.The book is a bridge to the literature world of the novels by the author Xuemo,fitting for reading in fragmented time. Selected Stories by Xue Mo has been translated into more than twenty different languages until now.

      • Fiction
        January 2022

        Il Sangue della Veggente

        by Lisa Bilotti

        The dawn of the world has just dawned and men and gods tread the same earth. The People survive the darkness and the light, which alternate for long periods. Mord is the chosen one, the Guide to whom the Gods have bestowed the Mark. But his authority is challenged when a secret kept silent for too long comes to light. While the People are divided, war looms. The People are not alone. The danger comes from the sea, with massive ships and iron weapons; they kill, pillage, and plunder. The Seer, the one in contact with the Gods, is snatched from the village. So men unite again and the gods reclaim their power. War, blood, wonders, warnings. The People yearn for revenge and seek retribution from the invader. Without mercy, a battle breaks out between heaven and earth.

      • Myth & legend told as fiction
        August 2022

        The Unofficial Harry Potter Companion

        An In-Depth Exploration of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

        by The Alohomora! MuggleNet Podcast

        This new companion series is designed to help readers discover new ideas, connections and secrets embedded throughout the books and explore them in a whole new way. For each chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, readers will find information gathered from a multitude of official sources, including a timeline that puts everything into an easily envisioned context. Readers will discover helpful information about characters, events, artifacts and more. Insights and analysis drawn from the hosts and guests of the podcast starts a reader of the companion on their journey of their own analysis.

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