2003, ISBN: 9780330413206

Gebundene Ausgabe

Grove/Evergreen, New York, 1988. First Evergreen printing. Condition: Good, edge and corner wear, spine has creasing and light scuffing, rear cover has light scuffing.This is the third of… Mehr…

Grove/Evergreen, New York, 1988. First Evergreen printing. Condition: Good, edge and corner wear, spine has creasing and light scuffing, rear cover has light scuffing.This is the third of Genet's prose works to be published in the United States, following Our Lady of the Flowers (1963) and The Thief's Journal (1964). It is, however, Genet's second novel, having been written in La Santé and Tourelles prisons in 1943, directly after Our Lady of the Flowers. Like that first work, Miracle of the Rose was written in the solitude of a prison cell, on the pieces of white paper the penal authorities furnish the convicts for making paper bags.The work is set in the State prison of Fontevrault. It is the height of the German Occupation and in the prisons of France the convicts, barely subsisting on near-starvation rations, spend their endless days weaving camouflage nets for their German conquerors. Miracle of the Rose is, first of all, an account of life at Fontevrault during that period. But Genet is no realist, and his account of prison life is an extraordinary mixture of dreams and reality, past and present.If Fontevrault is the present of his narrative, the past is the Mettray Reformatory, the almost idyllic, flower-covered "prison colony" for boys to which he was sent for theft as a mere child. It was here at Mettray that he was initiated into the life of confinement, into the world of the criminals and homosexuals in which he was to live for the next twenty-five years. Genet's story moves back and forth between Fontevrault and Mettray almost without the reader's being aware of the transition. Doubtless, in Genet's mind, there is no transition. Both prisons and both times fuse into one immense and erotic dream.The boys at Mettray do not pity or despise the hardened criminals at neighboring Fontevrault; on the contrary, they are the "saints" the boys look up to, the heroes they hope to emulate. More than fifteen years after his precocious arrival at the Mettray Reformatory, Genet finally reaches the Fontevrault Prison. Among the pimps and big shots, the crashers and chickens that form the homosexual hierarchy of the convict criminal society, he finds again many of his former boyhood friends and lovers.Foremost among them is Harcamone, a character notable in the narrative for his off-stage presence. Harcamone has been condemned to death for having killed the only guard at Fontevrault who had ever shown him the least bit of kindness. During the month and a half prior to his execution, his presence from his solitary cell on death row both encompasses and dominates the prison. At one point, as Harcamone passes Genet in the prison corridor, the author has a vision in which he sees the chains that bind Harcamone miraculously flower into a garland of white roses.Miracle of the Rose contains many such visions wherein Genet, taking the dross of "evil'' transmutes it into a work of beauty., Grove Press, 1988, 2.5, Picador, 2003. Hardcover. Used: Acceptable. Paperback in good condition. 2003 Picador, our cover different to one shown. Amazon - Jonathan Raban's Waxwings is a canticle for the late 1990s told through the intertwined lives of several Seattlites. In the novel, the city becomes a microcosm of America at the turn of the millennium, and Raban's characters all in some way tragic "tourists" in the world are rendered with a compassion that redeems their personal failings. Thomas Janeway is a British novelist and professor of literature at the University of Washington whose life is coming apart in his adopted home. He deeply loves his four-year-old son, Finn, but his wife, Beth, is caught up in the internet explosion, and the couple has grown apart. As Seattle erupts in the WTO riots and terrorist plots, Janeway's life crumbles around him. His wife leaves him, his house becomes a shambles of half-completed reconstruction, and his son is caught fighting in school. When he becomes a "person of interest" in the abduction and possible murder of a local girl, he is put on leave with pay from the university. Yet, Raban does not let Janeway or any of his characters wallow in self-pity. They all try to move forward with life, and even Janeway "the suspect" finds sympathetic allies in surprising places. At one point in the novel, Janeway lectures his students on the "generosity" of V.S. Pritchett, saying that the writer believed "in a general redistribution of verbal wealth, in taking good lines from the haves, and giving them to the have-nots." This "liberal realism" also characterizes Raban's work. Raban treats all of his characters, from Janeway to Finn, with patience and balance. He fully inhabits each and tells fragments of the story from the perspective of Beth, Tom, Finn, and even Tom's illegal-immigrant contractor, Chick. One narrative infuses another, lending the novel a Dickensian universality. Together the disparate voices perfectly capture the particulars of a place, Seattle, at a unique moment in American history. - . Excess postage may be required for books over 1 kg in weight outside the EU. ISBN 0-330-41320-1 0330413201., Picador, 2003, 2.5<

2003, ISBN: 9780330413206

Gebundene Ausgabe

Picador, 2003. Hardcover. Used: Acceptable. Paperback in good condition. 2003 Picador, our cover different to one shown. Amazon - Jonathan Raban's Waxwings is a canticle for the lat… Mehr…

Picador, 2003. Hardcover. Used: Acceptable. Paperback in good condition. 2003 Picador, our cover different to one shown. Amazon - Jonathan Raban's Waxwings is a canticle for the late 1990s told through the intertwined lives of several Seattlites. In the novel, the city becomes a microcosm of America at the turn of the millennium, and Raban's characters all in some way tragic "tourists" in the world are rendered with a compassion that redeems their personal failings. Thomas Janeway is a British novelist and professor of literature at the University of Washington whose life is coming apart in his adopted home. He deeply loves his four-year-old son, Finn, but his wife, Beth, is caught up in the internet explosion, and the couple has grown apart. As Seattle erupts in the WTO riots and terrorist plots, Janeway's life crumbles around him. His wife leaves him, his house becomes a shambles of half-completed reconstruction, and his son is caught fighting in school. When he becomes a "person of interest" in the abduction and possible murder of a local girl, he is put on leave with pay from the university. Yet, Raban does not let Janeway or any of his characters wallow in self-pity. They all try to move forward with life, and even Janeway "the suspect" finds sympathetic allies in surprising places. At one point in the novel, Janeway lectures his students on the "generosity" of V.S. Pritchett, saying that the writer believed "in a general redistribution of verbal wealth, in taking good lines from the haves, and giving them to the have-nots." This "liberal realism" also characterizes Raban's work. Raban treats all of his characters, from Janeway to Finn, with patience and balance. He fully inhabits each and tells fragments of the story from the perspective of Beth, Tom, Finn, and even Tom's illegal-immigrant contractor, Chick. One narrative infuses another, lending the novel a Dickensian universality. Together the disparate voices perfectly capture the particulars of a place, Seattle, at a unique moment in American history. - . Excess postage may be required for books over 1 kg in weight outside the EU. ISBN 0-330-41320-1 0330413201., Picador, 2003, 2.5<

2003, ISBN: 9780330413206

In Seattle at the turn of the millennium, two hopeful new immigrants are drawn to Seattle by their own different versions of the American Dream. For Tom Janeway - a Hungarian-born English… Mehr…

In Seattle at the turn of the millennium, two hopeful new immigrants are drawn to Seattle by their own different versions of the American Dream. For Tom Janeway - a Hungarian-born Englishman most at home with books - it is the chance for family he thought he'd never have. For an illegal alien - Chick, as he comes to call himself not long after escaping a cargo container - it is a land of opportunity that is his for the taking. With the local economy in flux, mutual need soon brings enterprising Chick together with the distracted professor, and each man finds himself more dependent on the other than he could ever have expected. The people around them are also in flux, busily charting imaginary futures that are baffling and obscure to friends and family, or exclude them altogether, until Tom's life suddenly tailspins into American tragedy, or American farce. Moving from the sheetrock cubicles of an Internet start-up to fund-raising dinners in lakeside mansions, from brand-new condos in Belltown to the tents of the homeless, from businessmen's clubs to police stations and the creaking timber houses of Queen Anne Hill - Jonathan Raban recreates the intricate honeycomb of a boom-town in winter, of a nation on the verge.This book is in good condition, some slight staining on edges of pages. Dust jacket is in good condition, with some signs of shelf war, Picador, 2003, 2.5<

2003, ISBN: 0330413201

[EAN: 9780330413206], Gebraucht, sehr guter Zustand, [SC: 5.85], [PU: Picador, London, U.K.], Jacket, Hardcover. Dust jacket is slightly worn along upper edges and a little faded, with a … Mehr…

[EAN: 9780330413206], Gebraucht, sehr guter Zustand, [SC: 5.85], [PU: Picador, London, U.K.], Jacket, Hardcover. Dust jacket is slightly worn along upper edges and a little faded, with a few minor surface scratches. Very light bumping to hardcover spine foot. Binding is sound; pages are tight and clean; text is clear. AF, Books<

ISBN: 9780330413206

Hardback. Very Good., 3