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A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his thought and his appeal, 50 Drawings to Murder Magic is rooted in the nine years Artaud spent in mental asylums, struggling with schizophrenia and the demonic, persecutory visions it unleashed. Set down in a dozen exercise books written between 1946 and 1948, these pieces trace Artaud's struggle to escape a personal hell that extends far beyond the walls of asylums and the dark magicians he believed ran them. The first eleven notebooks are filled with fragments of writing and extraordinary sketches: totemic figures, pierced bodies, and enigmatic machines, some revealing the marks of a trembling hand, others carefully built up from firm, forceful pencil strokes. The twelfth notebook, completed two months before Artaud's death in 1948, changes course: it's an extraordinary text on the loss of magic to the demonic--the piece that gives the book its title. "Artaud matters," wrote John Simon in the Saturday Review years ago. Nearly seventy years after his death, that remains true--perhaps more than ever.

A tragicomic novel that explores deep-seated tensions and social violence in Haiti.   After committing an irreparable crime, the narrator of The Emperor waits in his bedroom for the police to arrest him. His past reverberates inside of him like a drum: his youth spent in captivity as a zonbi, under the control of a charlatan Vodou leader, and many an alienating dawn delivering the daily newspaper through the cutthroat neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He now has blood on his hands because of the woman on the bus-the only woman he had ever loved.   Part crime fiction, part fable gone awry, The Emperor invites readers to follow the narrator's life as he moves from the Haitian countryside to the sprawling city, learning about the corruptible nature of power in his quest for freedom. Along the way, Makenzy Orcel blends the marvelous with the real by introducing readers to an unforgettable cast of characters including the Very Old Sheep, a deceitful Emperor, and the narrator's so-called Enlightened Colleague. Written with Orcel's distinctive verve, this novel offers readers a story set in contemporary Haiti that is rich in poetry and full of narrative intrigue.

Three short story collections that sink into the lives of characters seeking meaning in a post-war world, available in a boxed set.   Sharp as a razor and as subtle as gossamer, Shmuel T. Meyer's masterfully crafted stories evoke unique individual sensibilities and destinies, resonating with the sensual details, smells, tastes, music, and sounds of a specific time and place. And the War Is Over brings together three collections of short stories set on three continents in the aftermath of war: World War II and the Shoah in Grand European Express, the Korean War in The Great American Disaster, and the Arab-Israeli conflict in Kibbutz.   Characters both real and imagined run through a fabric so tightly woven that the threads of history and fiction can barely be separated: the Roman poet Clara who will never write again; Saul, a New York City police detective haunted by memories of the Pusan Perimeter; a brother out to avenge his sister's murder; the son of a former Nazi who joins the Red Army Faction. Tracing moments of encounter, their paths cross those of Allen Ginsberg, Albert Cossery, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington. Characters travel by train from Venice to Paris, hike up the Val d'Annivers, listen to jazz in Greenwich Village, and ride a motorcycle along the sandy road to Haifa. Under the shadow of war, with death lurking, these multifaceted, evocative lives move in a space between coincidence and fate.

An intimate glimpse into the life and letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century.   In July 1921, displaced European poet Rainer Maria Rilke sequestered himself in the chateau of Muzot, a thirteenth-century medieval tower perched in the vineyards above the town of Sierre in the Canton Valais, Switzerland. In this sun-flooded landscape of the Rhone Valley, he found beguiling echoes of Spain and his beloved Provence. Here, the Duino Elegies were famously completed and the Sonnets to Orpheus followed.   During this time, Rilke's correspondence also bloomed, and Letters around a Garden collects some of those letters together into English for the first time. One intriguing exchange from 1924 to 1926 was with a young aristocratic Swiss woman Antoinette de Bonstetten, a passionate horticulturist who had been recommended as a potential advisor for the redesign and upkeep of the Muzot rose garden. In twenty-two precious letters originally written in French, Rilke relishes the prospect of their elusive meeting, keenly discusses the plans for his garden, and wittily laments the trials of his plants. Beyond the encomium for Paul Valéry and poignant memory of place are passages of exquisite writing, in which Rilke evokes with trademark sensitivity the delicate relationship between the changing seasons and the natural world of his adopted region. We also witness the loving relationship evolve between these sometime-fugitive correspondents and how questions of solitariness and companionship impinge on one who faces unaccustomed challenges as his health tragically declines.

A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback.   Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator‿often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another‿he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France‿s preeminent Collÿge de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980.   The greater part of Barthes‿s published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume five, Simply a Particular Contemporary includes four interviews Barthes conducted between 1970 and 1979, varying widely in style and content.

A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback.   Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator‿often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another‿he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France‿s preeminent Collÿge de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980.   The greater part of Barthes‿s published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume two, The “Scandalâ€? of Marxism, contains a wide range of his more overtly political writings, with an emphasis on his early work and the serious national turbulence in the French 1950s.

A major collection of essays and interviews from an iconic 20th-century philosopher in five volumes, now all available together in paperback.   Roland Barthes was a restless, protean thinker. A constant innovator‿often as a daring smuggler of ideas from one discipline to another‿he first gained an audience with his pithy essays on mass culture and then went on to produce some of the most suggestive and stimulating cultural criticism of the late twentieth century, including Empire of Signs, The Pleasure of the Text, and Camera Lucida. In 1976, this one-time structuralist outsider was elected to a chair at France‿s preeminent Collÿge de France, where he chose to style himself as a professor of literary semiology until his death in 1980.   The greater part of Barthes‿s published writings has been available to a French audience since 2002, but now, translator Chris Turner presents a collection of essays, interviews, prefaces, book reviews, and other journalistic material for the first time in English and divided into five themed volumes. Volume three, Masculine, Feminine, Neuter, consists of his writing on literature, covering his peers and influences, writers in French and other languages, contemporary and historical writers, and world literature.Â

The first English translation of Yves Bonnefoy's account of his life as a traveler.  The Wandering Life is a poetic culmination of Yves Bonnefoy's wanderings and characterizes the final twenty-five years of his work. Bonnefoy was an ardent traveler throughout his life, and his journeys in foreign countries left a profound imprint on his work. The time he spent in Italy, translating Shakespeare's work in England, in universities in the United States, in India with Octavio Paz, and more, affected his poetry in discernible ways and inspired The Wandering Life. Interweaving verse and prose-vignettes that range from a few lines in length to several pages-this volume is a fitting capstone to Bonnefoy's oeuvre and appears in English translation for the first time to mark the centenary of Yves Bonnefoy's birth.

Masterfully translated by Laurent Milesi, this book preserves the sonic complexities and intricate wordplay at the core of author's writing, and reveals the struggles, ideas, and intents at the center of her work.

The first and exhaustive biography of twentieth-century leftist philosopher Andre Gorz. Recognized as one of the most lucid and innovative critics of contemporary capitalism, Andre Gorz (1923-2007) was known for asking fundamental questions regarding the meaning of life and work. This first biography of a unique figure operating at the confluence of literature, philosophy, and journalism revisits half a century of intellectual and political life. Born Gerhart Hirsch in Vienna, he studied in Switzerland before opting to live and work in France. A self-taught existentialist thinker, he was constantly revising his view of the world, unafraid to break new theoretical ground in doing so. Influenced by Marx, Husserl, Sartre, and Illich, he had very close affinities with the new thinking on the Left that was coming out of Italy in the 1960s and 70s. He was also one of the first thinkers to shape political ecology and to advocate de-growth. The intellectual on the editorial board of Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes, Gorz was also a mainstream journalist. He wrote in L'Express under the sobriquet Michel Bosquet before joining others in the creation of Le Nouvel Observateur. Through Gorz's life journey, we meet not only Sartre and de Beauvoir, but also Herbert Marcuse, Fidel Castro, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Ivan Illich, Felix Guattari, Antonio Negri, and many others. Beyond his poignant autobiographical narratives, The Traitor and Letter to D, which attest to his deep humanity, Gorz remains a precious guide for all who believe that another world is still possible.

A haunting, multivocal novel full of stories of the lives of women of African descent. Four women speak. They speak to the same man, who is not there. He is the son of the first, the great-yet-impossible love of the second, the platonic companion of the third, the older brother of the last. Speaking to him in his absence, it is to themselves that these women turn, examining their own stories to make sense of their journey, from twilight to twilight, through a mysterious stormy night in the middle of the dry season. Together, the voices in Twilight of Torment: Melancholy, the first volume of a two-volume novel, perform a powerful and sometimes discordant jazz-inspired chorus about issues such as femininity, sexuality, self-love, and the intrusion of history into the intimate lives of people of African descent. Blackness confronts African-ness, love is sometimes discovered in the arms of another woman, the African renaissance tries to establish itself on the rubble of self-esteem damaged by history. Each of these women, with her own language and rhythm, ultimately represents a specific aspect of the tormented history of Africans in today's world, and at the end of the night, they will each arrive at a dawn of hope.

Mingling fact and fiction, The Three Rimbauds imagines how Rimbaud‿s life would have unfolded had he not died at the age of thirty-seven. The myth of Arthur Rimbaud (1854‿1891) focuses on his early years: how the great enfant terrible tore through the nineteenth-century literary scene with reckless abandon, leaving behind him a trail of enemies, the failed marriage of an ex-lover who shot him, and a body of revolutionary poetry that changed French literature forever. He stopped writing poetry at the age of twenty-one when he left Europe to travel the world. He returned only shortly before his death at the age of thirty-seven.    But what if 1891 marked not the year of his death, but the start of a great new beginning: the poet‿s secret return to Paris, which launched the mature phase of his literary career? This slim, experimental volume by Dominique Noguez shows that the imaginary “matureâ€? Rimbaud‿the one who returned from Harar in 1891, married Paul Claudel‿s sister in 1907, converted to Catholicism in 1925, and went on to produce some of the greatest works in twentieth-century French prose‿was already present in the almost forgotten works of his childhood, in style and themes alike. Only by reacquainting ourselves with the three Rimbauds‿child, young adult, and imaginary older adult‿can we truly gauge the range of the complete writer.

Disguised as a passenger, a homeless woman lives in Paris‿s Roissy airport until she meets a man who makes her confront her past. Every day the narrator of this gripping novel hurries from one terminal to another in Charles de Gaulle Roissy airport, Paris, pulling her suitcase behind her, talking to people she meets‿but she never boards an airplane. She becomes an “unnoticeable,â€? a homeless woman disguised as a passenger, protected by her anonymity. When a man who comes to the airport every day to await the Rio-to-Paris flight‿the same route on which a plane crashed into the sea a few years earlier‿attempts to approach her, she flees, terrified. But eventually, she accepts his kindness and understands his loss, and she gives in to the grief they share, forming a bond with him that becomes more than friendship. A magnificent portrait of a woman who rediscovers herself through a chance connection, Roissy is a powerful, polyphonic book, a glimpse at the infinite capacity of the human spirit to be reborn. Â

Bringing his troubling, questing characters - souls who are fascinated by what preceded and conceived them, the author writes with a rich mix of anecdote and reflection, aphorism and quotation, offering enigmatic glimpses of the present, and confident, pointed borrowings from the past.

Rene Char (1907-88) is considered the most important French poet of his generation. A tribute to the individual men and women who fought at his side, this book is also a celebration of the power of art to combat terror and to transform our lives.

Egocentric and domineering, the author's grandmother was once a vibrant and sensual beauty. In Indochina at the end of World War II, she thrived in the social life of the French colony. In this memoir, the author reweaves the history of her family - and the legend of her grandmother - leaving no stone unturned and no skeleton in the closet.

Introducing a refreshing young French voice to English readers, this slim novel is both a riveting love story and an examination of humanity‿s assault on the natural world. After a seven-day journey on the South Atlantic Ocean aboard a lobster boat servicing Cape Town, Ida arrives on the island of Tristan. In the little island community, a village nestled on the slopes of a volcano whose only limits are the immense sky and the ocean, her bearings are gradually shifted as time slowly begins to expand.   When a cargo ship runs aground near a neighboring island, spilling massive amounts of oil, there is suddenly frantic activity in the town. Ida eagerly joins a team of three men who go to the small island to rescue oil-drenched penguins. One night, one of the men walks her back to the cabin where she is staying. They experience a night of love that continues to grow on the secluded island. For two weeks away from the world‿the sea is rough, no boat can come to pick them up‿the dance of their bodies and their all-consuming love is their only horizon.   Following the rhythm of the ocean and the untamed wind, Clarence Boulay brilliantly gives flesh to a dizzying sensation of sensual abandonment. Tristan raises emotional sails and upends all certainty.

An engrossing novel about love and grief that introduces an important francophone author to English-speaking readers. Rome, 2014, late summer. While he is reading on his sun-drenched terrace, Giangiacomo‿s heart stops. A quick, painless death‿something he had always hoped for, his daughter, Elvira, remembers. A few days later, Elvira comes across an unfinished manuscript in her father‿s flat. In it, she discovers a love story between Giangiacomo‿Gigi, to his loved ones‿and a Belgian journalist, Clara, which had been going on for over four years. Gigi‿s manuscript tells of how their “mature love,â€? an expression that became code between Gigi and Clara, blossomed unexpectedly and of the happiness of their meetings, the abandon of their bodies, their laughter, the films they watched and rewatched together. As she struggles to cope with the loss of Gigi, Clara writes her own version of their story. Her “journal of absenceâ€? is first addressed to Gigi, then, gradually, to Elvira. She confides in the young woman on the threshold of adult life, with discretion and tenderness, describing the fullness of the hidden love she shared with her father.

A brief, powerful analysis of three major twentieth-century writers: Dos Passos, Nabokov, and Faulkner. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   Sartre‿s engagement with the literature of his day extended well beyond the works of his French contemporaries. This short volume testifies to his astonishing grasp of the nuances of American fiction, as he analyzes three of the most important twentieth-century writers: John Dos Passos, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Faulkner, whose “humanism,â€? writes Sartre, “is the only acceptable sort.â€? Â

A collection of essays on renowned French writers, including Sarraute, Renard, and Gide. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   In this collection of brief, insightful essays, we find ourselves face to face with Sartre the literary critic, as he carefully examines the works of renowned French writers such as François Mauriac, Nathalie Sarraute, Jean Giraudoux, and Jules Renard. Most moving is an essay on André Gide, written right after his death, in which Sartre writes, “We thought him scared and embalmed; he dies and we discover how alive he was.â€? Â

Four essays by the French master addressing other philosophers and their work. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions. The four essays of varying length assembled in this volume bear witness to Sartre's preoccupation with philosophers and their work. In these pages he examines Descartes's concept of freedom; comments on a fundamental idea in Husserl's phenomenology: intentionality; writes a mixed review of Denis de Rougemont's monumental Love in the Western World; and provides an extensive critical analysis of the work of Brice Parain, one of France's leading philosophers of language.

An in-depth analysis of two of Sartre‿s contemporaries, Bataille and Blanchot. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   “There is a crisis of the essay,â€? begins Sartre as he ventures into a long analysis of the work of one of his contemporaries who he argues might save this form: Georges Bataille. From there, Sartre moves on in this compact volume to consider Aminadab, the most important work of another hugely influential philosopher, Maurice Blanchot, through whom, writes Sartre, “the literature of the fantastic continues the steady progress that will inevitably unite it, ultimately, with what it has always been.â€? Â

A collection of insightful essays by the French philosopher on contemporary art. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions. Sartre was a prodigious commentator on contemporary art, as is evident from the short but incisive essays that make up this important volume. Sartre examines here the work of a wide range of artists, including recognized masters such as Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, and Andre Masson, alongside unacknowledged greats like French painter Robert Lapoujade and German painter-photographer Wols.

A window onto one of the most consequential friendships in philosophical history, that of Sartre and Camus‿and on its end. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.   Sartre met Albert Camus in Occupied France in 1943, and from the start, they were an odd pair: one from the upper reaches of French society; the other, a pied-noir born into poverty in Algeria. The love of “freedom,â€? however, quickly bound them in friendship, while their fight for justice united them politically. But in 1951 the two writers fell out spectacularly over their literary and political views, their split a media sensation in France. This volume holds up a remarkable mirror to that fraught relationship. It features an early review by Sartre of Camus‿s The Stranger; his famous 1952 letter to Camus that begins, “Our friendship was not easy, but I shall miss itâ€?; and a moving homage written after Camus‿s sudden death in 1960.

A collection of pieces on politically engaged fiction of Sartre‿s day, including works by André Gorz and Paul Nizan. Iconic French novelist, playwright, and essayist Jean-Paul Sartre is widely recognized as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, and his work has remained relevant and thought-provoking through the decades. The Seagull Sartre Library now presents some of his most incisive philosophical, cultural, and literary critical essays in twelve newly designed and affordable editions.  Political Fictions includes Sartre‿s long foreword to André Gorz‿s The Traitor, which has often been called the most intimate and profound book to emerge from the existentialist movement. Sartre also presents a detailed portrait of his friend and fellow writer Paul Nizan (1905‿1940), once a committed communist, who died fighting the Nazis at the Battle of Dunkirk. Also featured here is Sartre‿s famous foreword to Nizan‿s novel The Conspiracy, which made the novel famous on its republication in the 1960s, when it was adopted as an iconic text during the events of May ‿68. Â