Bøger udgivet af Balestier Press

Roger Pulvers' translations - with detailed notes and commentary - of Japan's greatest tanka poet, Takuboku Ishikawa, is now available here for the first time in this volume. Each tanka - a poem that in Japanese has thirty-one syllables - is a microcosm of the human psyche, revealing astounding insights into human behaviors, love (and hate) relationships, as well as social and political circumstances that presage our own times.In his short life (1886-1912) Takuboku experienced many loves, a tumultuous marriage, fatherhood of three children, one of whom died shortly after birth, a brilliant career as a journalist and wildly popular poet, not to mention a political awakening that was leading him onto the path of the revolutionary.In "Old Love Letters," he writes ... There are so many spelling mistakes In those old love letters. I never noticed until now.In "The New Year" ... Will this year be like all others With my mind conjuring only things That the world will not accept?And in "The Patient" ... One push of the door, a single step And the corridor seems to stretch As far as the eye can see.Pulvers writes in The Illusions of Self ...Takuboku puts every aspect of his character on the line for us to judge. Japan today craves writers who have the integrity of self-expression and the clarity of vision on their society that Takuboku expresses to us. In the mirror of his works, we are compelled to see our own face in a clear and honest light.Of these translations, distinguished author and translator of American literature Motoyuki Shibata has written: "These masterful translations will be a revelation for lovers of Takuboku's poetry while, at the same time, comprising a stylish introduction to those who wish to know it."

Roger Pulvers has been writing fiction set in Japan for over fifty years. Now, for the first time, a collection of his very best short stories has been brought together in a single volume. Some of these stories, like the one that gives the collection its title, The Charter tells the story of a man who has chartered a boat on Tokyo's Sumida River. He is celebrating his eightieth birthday and has invited his entire family to celebrate with him. But, curiously, it is a little girl engaging with him on the deck who comes to symbolize the real love that seems absent in his 'loved ones'. The two make a promise to each other there and then that represents another kind of 'charter'.The great variety of characters encountered in these poignant and often highly humourous stories include a little boy who, it seems, will stop at nothing to get his feuding parents together again; a young woman who reconnects with an ancestor and finds love in the process; a beautiful Japanese singer who goes to Las Vegas to make it big time; a Japanese salaryman who, on an impulse, travels to Holland in search of Vermeer and loses himself instead; a naïve American who falls for a young Japanese woman, only to have to witness her modelling in the nude for a dissolute artist he despises; two young women - one Japanese, the other Indonesian - who discover that they have the same father ... and other colourful characters that give great insight into contemporary Japanese life.

"If you want to know how Russians feel about their country, read the poetry of Sergei Esenin. "The 'old plank bridge' spans not only eras but centuries; not only one Russia with another, but Russia with the rest of the world."So writes acclaimed author and translator Roger Pulvers about this collection of translations of the best and most moving poems by Sergei Esenin, still, nearly a century after his death, Russia's most popular poet.I am the last poet of the village.The old plank bridge is humble in my songs.With extensive notes and commentary on the poet, his life, loves and the tumultuous times that straddled the Russian revolution, this new collection of beautiful poems brings to light an era of grand romance and high tragedy.¿¿¿Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theater director, translator and filmmaker. He has published more than fifty books in Japanese and English, including novels, essays, plays and poetry. Working as assistant to director Oshima Nagisa on Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence brought him back to Japan and inspired him to become the award-winning playwright, film director and prolific author he is today. His novel, Hoshizuna Monogatari (Star Sand), which he wrote in Japanese, was published by Kodansha, Japan's largest publisher, in 2015, and subsequently in English and French in 2016 and 2017 respectively. It was released as a film, directed by him, in 2017. His most recent books are the novels, Half of Each Other and Peaceful Circumstances, his autobiography, The Unmaking of an American, and a cultural memoir, My Japan, all published by Balestier Press.

"The book spells out the great human achievements that have been brought about by humans who hunt and gather - across the millennia. It also shows that these achievements go beyond hunting and gathering alone. They depend on particular ways of understanding the human environment and the world at large. Barnard points out that there is a lot to be learned for our own lives when getting to know a life based on hunting and gathering. This also has to do with the fact that their mode of living in many ways continues to be deeply enshrined in what we are and what we do. At the same time, learning from hunter-gatherers helps to unsettle us in a positive way. Maybe your and my way of doing things is not without alternative after all. And getting to know alternative ways of life that have been successfully put into practice by the people described in this book are a better start than fantasy and science fiction. However, the biggest lesson of all is to understand how things are connected and how people are connected. This also means that it would be naive to think that one could simply import isolated practices from elsewhere without there being effects that reach far into all domains of life. The living hunter-gatherers that Alan Barnard introduces us to in this book are often prevented to continue their way of life because of what the rest of us do: the amount of resources that we use and waste, the grabbing of land that serves a world economy banking on unsustainable growth, the power that we abuse when dealing with indigenous minorities and a false sense of superiority towards hunter-gatherers."Thomas Widlok, University of Cologne Alan Barnard FBA is Emeritus Professor of the Anthropology of Southern Africa in the University of Edinburgh. He studied in the United States, Canada and England and has taught at the University of Cape Town, University College London and the University of Edinburgh. Since 1974, he has conducted field research with Bushmen or San in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. He served as an Honorary Consul of Namibia for eleven years, and in 2010 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Among his many books are Research Practices in the Study of Kinship (co-authored, 1984), A Nharo Wordlist with Notes on Grammar (1985), Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples (1992), Kalahari Bushmen (children's book, 1993), History and Theory in Anthropology (2000), Social Anthropology (2006), Anthropology and the Bushman (2007), Social Anthropology and Human Origins (2011), Genesis of Symbolic Thought (2012), Language in Prehistory (2016) and Bushmen: Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers and Their Descendants (2019). His works were all written in English, but have been translated into 18 other languages.

ROGER PULVERS'S ACCLAIMED TRANSLATION of Night on the Milky Way Train, previously available only in a bilingual edition in Japan, is here now for readers of all ages around the world to enjoy.Night on the Milky Way Train occupies the place in the literature of Japan that Alice in Wonderland does in the English-speaking world. This amazing story of two boys - Kenji named them Giovanni and Campanella - who find themselves on a miraculous train running through the heavens, has entranced Japanese readers for many years. What happens to the boys is a tale of both immense sorrow and equally immense hope.In addition, Pulvers offers nine other translations, all of them appearing in print outside Japan for the first time. The comical character Gauche, whose cello playing soothes the animals at his humble little cottage. The two hunters who find the tables literally turned on them as they are about to be served up to the animals they have been hunting. The pig at the Frandon Agricultural School who refuses to die. The nighthawk who, rejected by the other birds, chooses immortality in the form of a star … and more.Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) has been compared to Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm. But his profound compassion, stemming from his Buddhist faith and his scientific background, makes him that unique combination of East and West that symbolises Japan's great gifts to the world. A dedicated vegetarian (a rarity even in today's Japan) and a staunch believer in animal rights mark him as a pioneer of his time and a writer who speaks directly to the greatest concerns of the twenty-first century.

Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran's eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself (Winner of English Pen Award)';Yan Ge's writing is outstandingly imaginative The Chilli Bean Paste Clan delves deep into the pettiness and shortcomings of family relationships, dissecting them with remarkable insight and humour.... Yan Ge is not just a talented story-teller, she is also a versatile stylist, able to put her mastery of the local dialect to excellent use.' China Literature Media Award judging panel, 2013';A fascinating glimpse into the life of a dysfunctional family in modern China.'Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

Liv Grimstad is riding on a suburban train in Sydney, Australia in 1975 when she takes notice of the old man sitting opposite her. Though his features are different, she recognizes that man by the piercing look in his cornflower-blue eyes.She is convinced it is Donald Meissner, the man who has haunted her memory since they both worked at the German Embassy in Tokyo during the war. He was the beast who tormented and persecuted people, sending them into the hands of the Japanese Military Police. She does not confront him at first but rather sets out on a journey of detective work to uncover this man.LIV is a personal detective story and thrilling historical mystery set in Australia in 1975 and Tokyo in 1945. But it tells a universal tale about how the past bears on our present and future. LIV is a gripping mystery, of a present haunted by the past, but also a profoundly moral book, asking of the reader: what would you do? In this, LIV deserves comparison with novels as great as An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero

An award-winning unput-downable tale of two children building a boat from a log they find buried in the sand and sailing off to far-off fantastic lands in a stormy sea-driven adventure with their faithful - but accident-prone - dog Holly. There they learn much wisdom from a king who, like God, has many names. After an incredible sacrifice of his dearest dream by the boy (now growing up) they return - another dream - to a family tea with their loved ones. The tale is a prequel and companion to Ruth Finnegans award-winning epic romance Black inked pearl, here adapted for preteens but characterised by (in a simpler form) the same unique dream-like and enchanted style as in the original novel.

When the fervour of revolution is gone, what remains? Four leftist teenagers in 1950s Malaya dedicate themselves to overthrowing colonialism and bringing about a better world. With time, their paths diverge into capitalism, into adultery, into the dark heart of the Cultural Revolution. Disillusioned and middle-aged, they look back at their lives from the prosperous but soulless 1980s, wondering what has become of their dreams and ideals. Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize

After the tragic death of Liur's mother, her father, a thwarted artist working as a doctor in the family hospital, is overcome with grief. He goes to study in America, leaving six-year-old Liur in the care of her grandparents, promising to return with a special doll for her.But instead of studying, her father travels to the Andes, where he meets a mysterious ventriloquist who takes him as a pupil.Five years later, he returns home, bringing with him one of the ventriloquist's dolls. But it is not a present for Liur; instead, it becomes a menacing presence in the house, causing strife within the family. After observing her father performing strange rituals with the doll, Liur must find a way to defeat her demons real or imagined.

Riku Sato is in the fifth grade, when he moves from Utsunomiya to Fukushima to switch schools. Minamisoma, the town he arrives in, is virtually desertedafter the devastating earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11, 2011, which struck the Tohoku region in Japan and triggered a nuclear meltdown, not a single soul is in sight; not in the roads, nor in the school grounds. Riku spends endless, humdrum days in this ghost town, yearning to play outside, to take his bicycle out for a spin and ride like the wind, when he comes across the otherworldly, sparkling snowscape of a mountain in northern Japan. There, in the majestic kingdom of white, he befriends good-natured grownups; encounters wild animals in the mountains; and comes into contact with a mysterious boy and his equally mysterious companion, Tonchi Riku and the Kingdom of White is a coming-of-age story of a wide-eyed boys courage, brimming with hope of a bright and shining future. It is also the story of the lost innocence of an untold number of children who continue to live, day after day, undaunted, in Fukushima, after March 11, 2011, in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Every culture has some system of knowledge to explain its place in the world. Some of these systems are more complex than others, but each has an internal consistency based on what people have experienced. Some cultures have been characterized as "savage," or "primitive" and have been considered as inferior by other cultures. Some cultures have become highly "scientific," based on certain accepted practices of controlling their environments. This book presents examples from cultures in Mesoamerica and North America of different ways of seeing the world. These examples may inspire readers to examine their own ways of knowing. Clara Sue Kidwell has served as associate dean for program development at Bacone college in Muskogee, Oklahoma (2011-2013), director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2007-2011), and director of the Native American Studies program and Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma in Norman (1995- 2007). Her tribal affiliations are Choctaw and Chippewa. She received Ph.D. in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma. Before joining the faculty there in 1995 she served for two years as Assistant Director of Cultural Resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.Her publications include Choctaws and Missionaries in Mississippi, 1818-1918, A Native American Theology, co-authored with Homer Noley and George Tinker, Native American Studies co-authored with Alan Velie, and The Choctaws in Oklahoma: From Tribe to Nation, 1855-1970.

Half of Each Other takes place in Tokyo. It tells the story of Nick and Setsuko York, a once very fond married couple devoted to their adorable five-year-old daughter, Emi.Half of Each Other is the story of a woman and a man challenged by the shock of an overwhelming grief. Both are overcome by an immense sorrow … both are tempted by the passions of an extra-marital affair.We are all half of each other.How these two people, who were once madly in love with each other, overcome their grief and come to terms with the death of their daughter, provides the narrative of this intensely moving, heart-rending and uplifting Irish-Japanese love story.

Kris et Kate construisent un bateau dans le sable et leur chien Holly gambade autour d'eux. Ils s'aventurent dans une crique, sous le regard de leur me¿re reste¿e sur le rivage.Un doux conte magique admirablement illustre¿ qui incite ä la de¿couverte de l'histoire naturelle.Traduit de l'anglais par Gwendolyne Thio et Jocelyne Chalumeau-Thio

"It is my belief that there is no such thing as silence," declares profoundly Evelyn Glennie. In Listen World!, the Grammy Award-winning percussionist challenges misconceptions about deafness, and asserts instead the incredible world of sound she lives in. Having dedicated her entire life to breaking boundaries, Glennie now seeks to transform the entire world - to listen, and to teach others to listen.Listen World! is an incredible insight into the mind behind a musical revolution. From innovative collaborations with choreographers to the incorporation of technology into her work, from her performance at the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony to her production of Shakespeare, Glennie has undoubtedly changed the way we think of sound in the world. More than that, her autobiography gives an unprecedented sense of the character, passion and heart behind it all. In listening to her story, every reader moves one step closer to the compassionate, sensitive, and individual new world she imagines."I've never met anyone who listens with as much of herself-mind, body, and heart-as does Dame Evelyn Glennie. Her listening is a bridge, a profound and self-giving attentiveness that can heal what can't be cured. I was blessed to learn from Evelyn what it means to truly listen, and I trust you will be as well."-Michael Verde, Founder of Memory Bridge"In this immensely personal book, Evelyn Glennie asks us to listen with our whole being to the magic of music"-Keith Howard, Professor of Music, SOAS, University of London"This book is an invitation to tap into the wonders of listening, what that means to you and everything you engage in. What happens when you engage with the chatter in your head? When you travel to school and college. Is listening only about sound or can our whole body be a resonating chamber? Is listening about observing? How can we begin to enhance our relationship to 'listening' and how can it influence all the decisions you make from minute to minute? My experience is that listening is an activity that never sleeps… even when we are asleep we continue to listen! What an opportunity we have to re-engage, rethink, revisit our everyday lives to make what we do much more vivid and meaningful, and as a result, feel part of the wonders of the world?"- Evelyn Glennie

"Roger has fearlessly thrown himself into the whirlpool of cross-culturalism. His life reads like an adventure story."-Ryuichi SakamotoThe Unmaking of an American is an engaging and entertaining cross-cultural memoir spanning decades of dramatic history on four continents. Author, playwright, translator, journalist, theater and film director Roger Pulvers explores the nature of memory through life connections created from people and places, both past and present.Born into a Jewish American family in New York and raised in Los Angeles, Roger Pulvers journeyed outside the U.S. for the first time in 1964, when he visited the Soviet Union, returning there the following year and heading to Poland in 1966. In 1967, he moved to Japan, forming a tie to that country that has lasted more than half a century. Pulvers became an Australian citizen in 1976 and has chronicled life-political, social and cultural-in those countries in hundreds of articles and essays, as well as works of fiction."No memory, however trivial and banal, is unimportant if it remains with you; no feeling that was once felt cannot be retrieved when you feel the absolute need to access it. And it is our memories that order the chaotic conglomeration of experience and sentiment that make up our selves.""I drifted from the United States to Eastern Europe to Japan and then to Australia. This movement in itself was no different from that of hundreds of millions of people who have migrated from one country to another. The only anomalous feature of my choices is that not many people leave the "land of golden opportunity" for good; not many choose to opt out of their tie to "the home of the free.""You are taking a step. But it is not leading you in a straight line. Each step reminds you that your life is taking a turn, however imperceptible, and each turn represents a moment in the present where the future can be glimpsed simultaneously. What is the direction of these stepping-stones? Where are they leading you? It is impossible to tell. They lead nowhere, and they seem to come back to the place you were before."

The book is a vivid honest story of a Fashion designer, looking for her inner voice and true self, throughout creative process dynamics, critical thinking, inspirations, fashion dramas, failing attempts and lots of self-analysis.Deep socio-anthropological reflections alternate with story-telling, helping the curious reader to discover the intricate maze of an artist's mind, unravelling doubts and questions regarding the psychological flux at the base of every creative process, its relevance, and crucial role in fostering a deeper sense of awareness and consistent artistic sensitivity within the individual.The "blank canvas", as a constant, delicate presence, since the very beginning, is a metaphor of our existence, of a never-ending learning process, that finally finds its perfect solution and representation in the final chapters, unleashing its inner deepest meaning. The results is a perfect blend of narrative, non fiction, and ironic autobiography, that not only leads the upcoming artist, but also the curious reader, even when avulsed from creative processes towards a journey of re-discovery of its imaginative potential, and creative being.Marella Campagna is a fashion designer by origin and a writer by adoption.In her adolescence she endured classical studies, which lit her passion for literature, reading and writing, complementing the artistic skills which she nurtured ever since she was a child, particularly in the areas of drawing and garment design.

Once upon a time in the long long ago there were two children. One was poor. One was rich. One was very good at sums. The other one was not. But they liked each other a lot. And all the time they were playing together... A fairytale retold by Ruth Finnegan, illustrated by Liz Amini-Holmes.