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America's friends and our enemies alike are scratching their collective heads and thinking, "If you turned the world on its side all of the loose nuts would end up in the United States." The Theater of the Absurd has come to life on every television set, smart phone, and social media outlet around the world. A megawealthy upraised carnival barker, who has systematically alienated every segment of society in the United States, stands poised to become the next president! Candidates deny the signs of global climate change—never mind, God will protect us, and since he's a Christian God, he will help us get rid of the Muslims in the process! Can anyone imagine two serious candidates for the highest office in the United States arguing over the size of their genitals? ("You know what they say about men with small hands..."). Welcome to The Politics of Insanity, a serious look at the newest form of the bizarre "reality TV." Where thoughtful, serious contenders eke out 2% of the vote at best. Where it's acceptable to say, "Would you want to have a president with a face like that?" Where a semi-nude photo of a candidate's gorgeous wife is splashed across a TV ad? But believe it or not, Ecclesiastes 1:9 is accurate: "There is nothing new under the sun." Political insanity did not start in the United States, and even in America we've been down this road before. Hugo N. Gerstl, author of The Politics of Hate (2012), slices into the "American Pie" of 2016 politics with a clear-eyed analytical scalpel, and, despite what appears to be an impenetrable tragicomic maze of craziness, he optimistically concludes, in the words of a former president whose wife is the frontrunner in the race for the White House, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right with America." An English-language eBook edition was published in fall 2016 by Samuel Wachtman's Sons, Inc., CA. 250 Pages, 15X22.5 cm
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The Wall, Etc. by Hamutal Bar-Yosef is a collection of eighteen powerfully written stories, some of which are based on true stories. Israel’s celebrated writer Amos Oz called the collection "especially strong and heartbreaking." Hamutal Bar-Yosef creates in The Wall, Etc., a tragicomic, sometimes grotesque slice-of-life narrative that portrays the human condition as the yawning abyss between desires and reality. She expresses great empathy and respect for the characters she depicts, and she enters their inner worlds with a breathtaking sensitivity. Hamutal Bar-Yosef is a well-known Israeli writer, poet, translator, and scholar. She was born in a kibbutz to parents who lost their family in the Holocaust. Her only brother was killed in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. At age twenty, the author married the playwright Yosef Bar-Yosef and had four children; one committed suicide at sixteen. She provided for her family first as a high school teacher, and then by writing guides for teachers. The author didn’t write her PhD dissertation until after turning forty, and she became a professor of Hebrew literature at Ben-Gurion University. She has published eight scholarly books and fifteen books of poetry, and she has won numerous distinguished prizes for her poetry. Her collection of stories, The Wall, Etc., (originally titled Music) won the ASI (Association of Israeli Writers) prize. Professor Bar-Yosef has translated poetry and prose fiction from English, French, and Russian. An English-language North-American edition was published in early 2019 by Samuel Wachtman's Sons, Inc., CA. A French-Language Edition, Called Le Mur Etc. was Published BY SWS In 2020: https://frankfurtrights.com/Books/Details/le-mur-etc-french-edition-19001778 294 Pages, 15X22.5 cm.
For days, Marieke has been sleeping in a rental car parked along the canal. Just as she was about to do the laundry, her childhood sweetheart threw her out on the street. She lost her clothes, her home, and herself. The summer is getting hotter and hotter. So is the care home where she works the morning shift as a nurse. Due to problems with the move from the old premises to the new, more modern building, Marieke is left alone with the elderly residents in the stifling heat. But as long as she does not think too much, everything will be okay. She tries not to think about meatballs. About the old people wasting away in the facility. About that visitor she followed home. About her upbringing. About sausage with applesauce. About pralines. Or about raw meat and seafood salad. Then everything will be alright. Or will it? Pork Ribs is a tragicomic story about caring, loyalty, how memories affect a person’s life, and how food can be a substitute for all basic emotions.
If someone offered you a place to hide out from your life, would you take it? Linda, Friederike, and Valentin move into a peculiar hotel and get the opportunity to change their lives A magnificently told, tragicomic, and hope-giving novel about how terrible and how wonderful life can be all at once An Invitation to Disappear Hempel has no dreams. No, really. Unlike most people, he’s reasonably content and there’s nothing in particular that he’d wish for his life. So everything would be great if it weren’t for his girlfriend Elfie, who’s obsessed with her own dreams: “Don’t dream about what your life could be, live your dream,” is her motto, emblazoned on her living room wall in gold script. So Hempel invents his own dream for Elfie: running the New York marathon. But when Elfie enters him into the race and he is accepted, he’s got a problem. Friederike has everything she could wish for: she’s a successful professor, she has a great husband and, at the age of forty, she’s just become a mother. Everyone around her thinks she must be on top of the world – but it’s quite the opposite, and she wishes she could disappear out of her life forever. One day, Hempel and Friederike are presented with precisely this opportunity: to disappear for a time and leave everything behind them – in a hotel that doesn’t host tourists but people who have lost their footing. They can stay as long as they like, take some time out, think their lives over until it all becomes clear. But when Hempel and Friederike meet Linda, who has an extreme fear of heights, and Valentin, the owner of the hotel, any notion of peace or care goes out the window... ‘Not Out Of The World’ tells a story about the loneliness at the heart of people, about lies and unspoken truths, and about many different kinds of disappearing. Anne Köhler employs plenty of imagination and humour to expose the unfathomable and the absurd in the everyday and reveals people with deep-seated insecurity in our supposedly secure modern western world.
Series - With zero choice in the matter, four little girls end up living in a mansion, which is literally falling apart, with a guardian, who’s literally gross. Then, a tornado comes and sweeps away misunderstandings, pessimism, and even their guardian. The tragicomic events are told in a light, irreverent style offering a glimpse into the lives of kids forced to grow up faster.
Farfariel is a weird bildungsroman for young adults, somehow reminiscing of The Never Ending Story by Michael Ende. Micù is a preadolescent with physical disability born before World War II in the poor but magical atmos-phere of rural southern Italy. He is trying to grow up despite his own difficulties, the tragicomic inhabitants of the village and a spiteful demon who has the power to interfere with the story and its writer... In fact Far-fariel, unhappy about the way the writer is telling the story, edit and correct the book with his red pen!
All houses have their secrets, but the Delorme family home has a darker one: the mummified remains of a woman buried alive. It is kept in a sealed basement vault called the Green Room. Neil Gaiman meets Lemony Snicket in this tragicomic family saga where spinsters get drunk on vanilla extract, cats are thrown into burning furnaces, orphans seek revenge for stolen inheritances, and houses satisfy their most murderous intents. Winner of the Prix Jacques-Brossard. To learn more about this title, click here: https://editionsalto.com/droits-rights/la-chambre-verte/
England On This Day revisits all the most magical and memorable moments from the national cricket team’s illustrious past, mixing in a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable England diary – with an entry for every day of the year. From the first ever Test match in 1877 through to the Twenty20 era, England’s faithful fans have witnessed world domination and tragicomic failures, grudge matches, controversy and absurdity – all present here. Timeless greats such as Ian Botham, Jack Hobbs and Fred Trueman, Denis Compton, Harold Larwood and Andrew Flintoff all loom larger than life. Revisit 5 January 1971, when a Melbourne Test became the first ever one day international. 30 July 1995: Dominic Cork takes England’s first hat-trick in 38 years! Or 6 September 1880, when WG Grace and his two brothers all made their Test debuts – two successful, one tragic.
England On This Day revisits all the most magical and memorable moments from the national side’s rollercoaster past, mixing in a maelstrom of quirky anecdotes and legendary characters to produce an irresistibly dippable Lions diary – with an entry for every day of the year. From the first ever international match in 1872 to the Premier League era, England’s faithful fans have witnessed decades of world domination and tragicomic failures, grudge matches, World Cup heroics, bizarre goals, fouls and metatarsals – all featured here. Timeless greats such as Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Paul Gascoigne, Steve Bloomer, David Beckham and Stanley Matthews all loom larger than life. Revisit May 12 1971, when England beat Malta 5-0 and Gordon Banks only got four touches – all backpasses! September 1 2001: Germany 1-5 England! Or July 12 1966, when the England team took a morale-boosting trip to the set of You Only Live Twice…
Proof of the chaos and misery that plague Caracas are the hordes of dogs that roam the streets, abandoned by the millions of Venezuelans who flee the country. That’s why Ulises, who’s flat broke and teaches in a modest cinema workshop, agrees to create a foundation to rescue dogs in need. Ulises is unwittingly dragged into an odyssey of family entanglements, dangers that have him doubting the people around him—where suddenly no one is what they seem—and mysteries surrounding the most famous, patriotic dogs in Venezuela. With a masterful hand and refined sense of humour, Rodrigo Blanco has produced a mystery, not without parodic elements, packed with references to cinema, literature, and dogs. Simpatía is like a tragicomic fresco, sometimes grotesque, of Venezuela today. There’s an ironic, irreverent take on some of the country’s most mythical figures, from Simón Bolívar to Hugo Chávez, and a sharp, hilarious reflection on inheritance and identity.
A heart-wrenching memoir about coming-of-age, leaving home, losing family and friends, and finding one's place in the world. Growing up in an underprivileged family, Cai Chongda’s childhood is nevertheless one of quiet happiness. Things change when his father had a stroke – Cai was still in high school. In the next eight years, Cai's only goal is to make money to pay for Dad's medical bill. Like millions of young people in China, he left home for university in Beijing, hoping to eventually find a well-paid job in the capital. He became one of the most successful young journalists in the country, yet none of the fame or money could save his father. After his father’s death, Cai checked into a hotel room and began writing furiously. The result is VESSEL, in which he writes about his almost witch-doctor-like Nana, his mother's obsession of building her own house, and the long and tragicomic passing of his father. He also writes about childhood friends, most of which left their hometown like he did and struggled to find a place for themselves in big cities. In Cai’s own words, it’s a book about losers and survivors, generations of Chinese men and women caught in the whirlwind of manic economic growth from the 1980s to the present. VESSEL is Cai's story, but also theirs.
Following the fall of African dictator Idi Amin, remnants of his army were rounded-up and thrown in jail. John Pancras Orau, a member of Amin’s Ugandan Air Force was one of these men. He saw first-hand the privations, isolation, hunger and humiliation in what were little more than concentration camps. In this book he describes the uncertainty and arbitrary punishments that—alongside fear that prisoners might just ‘disappear’ —were part of daily life. A true story of hope and belief, Amin’s Soldiers is a masterpiece of tragicomic writing falling somewhere between Catch 22 and Animal Farm as The Chieftan and his Brains Trust of fellow inmates try to govern themselves against a backdrop of prison gossip, rumour, misinformation and ever-changing rules. Yet it is not without a rich vein of humour as prisoners set up shops, cafes, entertainment, salvage teams and work on dubious escape plans. Equally comical are the ruses, subterfuge and corruption that become endemic as guards and prisoners seek to outwit each other. For more serious students of imprisonment, the book is about crime and punishment in a fluctuating political landscape – about ordinary people whose only real offence was being left on the wrong side of History. It is also a true story of belief and survival.The book came about as a result of links between the Anglican Diocese of Winchester and the Church of Uganda. ‘The last time I saw John Orau he was sitting in his tiny bookshop in Uganda wiling away his time reading. I asked how many he had sold today, he thought hard then answered, “None”. “And yesterday?” “None, either”. He was writing this book and his only ambition was to one day see it in print’: Reverend Gordon Randall.
Warm-Hearted, Clever, Subtle, Comforting, Delightful "Everyone seemed squeaky clean on the inside, only on the inside of us it looked like Hempel's under the sofa," kiosk owner Armin thinks to himself as he tries in vain to meditate successfully. And there is also disorder inside the other characters in these literary columns: Mrs. Wiese can no longer sleep, Mr. Pohl is permanently despondent, Lisa has her first lovesickness, Vadim's hands are trembling, Mrs. Schwerter urgently needs to relax, a sad patient has lost his flock and psychoanalyst Ulrich is messing with transience. Grief of all kinds plagues the people who manoeuvre through everyday life, sometimes better, sometimes worse. But sorrow also unites them, for example when problems are not solved on walks, but at least come out into the open and into the light. Clever, humorous and with a great sense of subtlety and absurdity, Mariana Leky portrays the situations of people who do not lack trustworthiness, but rather the courage to realise that, fortunately, one cannot permanently avoid life.
The economic crisis of 2008 made Karl Marx’s works highly successful. Considering the growing impoverishment of developed countries, the increase of social inequalities, the threats of war and the spreading unemployment, one wonders whether Marxism cannot be a possible alternative to the current “sprawling globalization regime”. Therefore, Nicola Spada met him and interviewed him. It wasn’t easy, at the beginning, because Marx doesn’t like to be in the spotlight. Nevertheless, after a while he seems to have already forgotten the camera and lets himself go. His words are sharp, analytical, sometimes surprising (when he dismantles his dependence on Giorgio Hegel, for example, or when he clarifies the concept of religion as “opium of the people”). In this dialogue the basis of Marxist thought are deeply analyzed; a difficult but successful work, a book everyone can read. Politics, science, ethics, theology; what would you like to ask to the father of socialism? Here you will find the answers.
Illustrated with images as iconic as they are stunning and including the author’s first-hand experiences on set and interviews with Scott himself, this book charts the extraordinary journey of Britain’s greatest living director.Telling the stories behind Alien and Blade Runner, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, and many more, it also goes in search of the themes and motifs that unite such different films, and the methods and madness of Scott’s approach to his medium.This is the account of a director who has never been less than stubbornly, brilliantly, unforgettably his own man. Author Ian Nathan is one of the UK’s best-known film writers. He is the author of eight previous books, including Alien Vault, the bestselling history of Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, and Terminator Vault. He is the former editor and executive editor of Empire, where he remains a contributing editor.
