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        Literature & Literary Studies
        December 2005

        Graham Swift

        by Daniel Lea, Susan Williams

        This book offers an accessible critical introduction to the work of Graham Swift, one of Britain's most significant contemporary authors. Through detailed readings of his novels and short stories from 'The Sweet Shop Owner' (1980) to 'The Light of Day' (2003), Daniel Lea lucidly addresses the key themes of history, loss, masculinity and ethical redemption, to present a fresh approach to Swift. This study proposes that one of the side-effects of modernity has been the destruction of traditional pathways of self and collective belief, leading to a loss of understanding between individuals about their duties to each other and to society. Swift's writing returns repeatedly to the question of what we can believe in when all the established markers of identity - family, community, gender, profession, history - have become destabilised. Lea suggests that Swift increasingly moves towards a notion of redemption through a lived ethical practice as the only means of finding solace in a world lacking a central symbolic authority. ;

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        October 2021

        Clanlands

        Zwei Männer, Kilts und jede Menge Whisky | Mit einem Vorwort von Diana Gabaldon

        by Heughan, Sam McTavish, Graham

        Übersetzt von Barbara Schnell

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        October 2023

        Post-Mortem

        Autopsy stories: the unusual experiences of a pathologist

        by Roland Sedivy

        — True crime stories from the morgue — Famous deaths and autopsy stories resolved, such as Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and the case of Anne Greene, who survived her execution by hanging The post-mortem examination. A glimpse inside the interior of the human being. Many find the idea fascinating; for others it is creepy or even repugnant. There are still numerous myths and horror stories surrounding the autopsy, many of them associated with primal human fears such as that of being buried alive, which have existed since Antiquity. It is precisely for this reason that it is important to carry out the post-mortem examination with the utmost conscientiousness. Pathologist Roland Sedivy provides an exciting insight into his profession. Profound and with tremendous humour, he tells us about the early days of the autopsy, and shares with us some macabre and some mysterious cases.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan

        The cult of the Two Grand Elders

        by Fabian Graham

        In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

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        January 1984

        Sag mir dein Sternzeichen, und ich sage dir, wie du liebst

        Was die Sterne über unsere Partner und über uns zum Vorschein bringen

        by Greene, Liz / Übersetzt von Janus, Edda

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        Biography & True Stories
        March 2024

        Barbara Comyns

        A savage innocence

        by Avril Horner

        The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on to publish a sequence of novels that are unique in the English language. Comyns turned her hand to many jobs in order to survive, from artist's model to restoring pianos. Hundreds of unpublished letters reveal an occasionally desperate but resourceful and witty woman whose complicated life ranged from enduring poverty when young to mixing with spivs, spies and high society. While working as a housekeeper in her mid-thirties, Comyns began transforming the bleak episodes of her life into compelling fictions streaked with surrealism and deadpan humour. The Vet's Daughter (1959), championed by Graham Greene, brought her fame, although her use of the gothic and macabre divided readers and reviewers. This biography not only excavates Comyns's life but also reclaims her fiction, providing a timely reassessment of her literary contribution. It sheds new light on a remarkable author who deftly captured the complexities of human life.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2023

        Rethinking Norman Italy

        Studies in honour of Graham A. Loud

        by Joanna Drell, Paul Oldfield

        This volume on Norman Italy (southern Italy and Sicily, c. 1000-1200) honours and reflects the pioneering scholarship of Graham A. Loud. An international group of scholars reassesses and recasts the paradigm by which Norman Italy has been conventionally understood, addressing varied subjects across four key themes: historiographies, identities and communities, religion and Church, and conquest. The chapters revise and refine our understanding of Norman Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, demonstrating that it was not just a parochial Norman or Mediterranean entity but also an integral player in the medieval mainstream.

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        May 2004

        Das Bildnis des Mr. W. H

        by Oscar Wilde, Christine Hoeppener, Joachim Kalka

        Die Frage nach der Identität von W. H., dem Shakespeare seine Sonette widmete, ist eines der klassischen Rätsel der Shakespeare-Forschung. Auch Cyril Graham, der jugendliche Held in Wildes Geschichte, verfällt dem Sog der Spekulation. Er ist überzeugt, W. H.s Identität gelüftet zu haben: Willie Hughes, ein jugendlicher Schauspieler aus Shakespeares Truppe, ist, so beweist er glaubhaft, der Adressat der Sonette. Um die letzten Zweifler zu überzeugen, begeht er eine Fälschung – doch der Betrug wird aufgedeckt ...Wildes virtuose Geschichte einer Obsession ist ein amüsantes Verwirrspiel über die enge Verflechtung von Kunst und Leben und eine gelungene Parodie der biographischen Methode in der Literaturwissenschaft – ein Muß für Wilde- und Shakespeare-Leser.

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