The Obsession Of Henry Enright

Poignant and heart wrenching yet replete with hope, The Obsession of Henry Enright captures the mood of an era through the eyes of a misguided soul seeking to know and be known. A stranger in a strange town, Henry Enright is thirteen when he moves with his Irish Catholic family from Boston to Union in 1954. The simple country life and relief from the oppression of his strict Catholic upbringing was at first freedom and joy but it turned to tragedy when he was forced to identify the bodies of his friends killed in a car wreck. In a time when rock and roll has just started to play from the jukeboxes and the sexual revolution is on the rise, Henry, determined to remake his image and be accepted by his peers, begins to make a dramatic transformation. With only his wits to guide him in his rebellion against authority and religious hypocrisy, Henry has no idea how devastating the consequences of his revolt against the world around him will be. Presented as fiction but reading like a memoir the reminisces of Henry Enright reveal with candor what life was like in the rural town of Union, Massachusetts in the 1950’s.

Learn how the extraordinary impact of the panda—from obscurity to fame—is also the story of China’s transition from shy beginnings to center stage. Giant pandas have been causing a stir ever since their formal scientific discovery just over 140 years ago. Yet in spite of humankind’s evident obsession with the giant panda, it is only in the last few decades that scientific research has begun to show us what this mysterious, frequently misunderstood creature is really like. Henry Nicholls uses the rich and curious history of the giant panda to do several things: to ponder our changing attitudes toward the natural world; to offer a compelling history of the conservation movement; and to chart the rise of modern China on its journey to become the self-sufficient, twenty-first-century superpower it is today.

Irish Book of the Year Finalist An Amazon “Best Books of the Year So Far” An Irish Times Book Club Selection An eccentric young woman searches for friendship, understanding, and belonging as she roams Dublin in this “wildly funny” debut from an exciting voice in Irish literature (New York Times Book Review) Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in—and never has. As a child, she was so whimsical that her parents told her she was “left by fairies.” Now, living alone in Dublin, she finds herself without a friend in the world. So, she decides it’s time to change her life: She begins by advertising for a friend. Not just any friend. She wants one named Penelope. Meanwhile, Vivian roams the city, mapping out a new neighborhood every day, seeking her escape route to a better world, the other world her parents told her she came from. And then one day someone named Penelope answers her ad for a friend. And from that moment on, Vivian's life begins to change. Debut author Caitriona Lally offers readers an exhilaratingly fresh take on the Irish love for lyricism, humor, and inventive wordplay in a book that is, in itself, deeply charming, and deeply moving.

Drawing on newly declassified government files, this is the dramatic story of how a forbidden book in the Soviet Union became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West. In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to a village just outside Moscow to visit Russia’s greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the original manuscript of Pasternak’s first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: “This is Doctor Zhivago. May it make its way around the world.” Pasternak believed his novel was unlikely ever to be published in the Soviet Union, where the authorities regarded it as an irredeemable assault on the 1917 Revolution. But he thought it stood a chance in the West and, indeed, beginning in Italy, Doctor Zhivago was widely published in translation throughout the world. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA, which recognized that the Cold War was above all an ideological battle, published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed surreptitiously from friend to friend. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands of admirers who defied their government to bid him farewell. The example he set launched the great tradition of the writer-dissident in the Soviet Union. In The Zhivago Affair, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée bring us intimately close to this charming, passionate, and complex artist. First to obtain CIA files providing concrete proof of the agency’s involvement, the authors give us a literary thriller that takes us back to a fascinating period of the Cold War—to a time when literature had the power to stir the world. (With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)

This is the first book on Irish literature to focus on the theme of loss, and how it is represented in Irish writing. It focuses on how literature is ideally suited to expressions and understanding of the nature of loss, given its ability to access and express emotions, sensations, feelings, and the visceral and haptic areas of experience. Dealing with feelings and with sensations, poems, novels and drama can allow for cathartic expressions of these emotions, as well as for a fuller understanding of what is involved in loss across all situations. The main notion of loss being dealt with is that of death, but feelings of loss in the wake of immigration and of the loss of certainties that defined notions of identity are also analysed. This volume will be of interest to scholars, students and researchers in Irish Studies, loss, memory, trauma, death, and cultural studies.

The 525 notable works of 19th and 20th century American fiction in this reference book have many stage, movie, television, and video adaptations. Each literary work is described and then every adaptation is examined with a discussion of how accurate the version is and how well it succeeds in conveying the spirit of the original in a different medium. In addition to famous novels and short stories by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Willa Cather, many bestsellers, mysteries, children's books, young adult books, horror novels, science fiction, detective stories, and sensational potboilers from the past two centuries are examined.

With more than 100 new entries, from Amy Adams, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Cary Joji Fukunaga to Joaquin Phoenix, Mia Wasikowska, and Robin Wright, and completely updated, here from David Thomson—“The greatest living writer on the movies” (John Banville, New Statesman); “Our most argumentative and trustworthy historian of the screen” (Michael Ondaatje)—is the latest edition of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, which topped Sight & Sound’s poll of international critics and writers as THE BEST FILM BOOK EVER WRITTEN. 3/7

With a writing career spanning over half a century and encompassing media as diverse as conferences, radio, journalism, fiction, theatre, film, and television, Tom Stoppard is probably the most prolific and significant living British dramatist. The critical essays in this volume celebrating Stoppard’s 75th birthday address many facets of Stoppard’s work, both the well-known, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Shakespeare in Love, as well as the relatively critically neglected, including his novel Lord Malquist and Mr. Moon and his short stories, “The Story,” “Life, Times: Fragments,” and “Reunion.” The essays presented here analyze plays such as Arcadia, The Invention of Love, The Real Thing, and Jumpers, Stoppard’s film adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun, his television adaptation of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, and his stage adaptations of Chekhov’s plays Ivanov, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard, as well as his own theatrical trilogy on Russian history, The Coast of Utopia (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage). Also included is an interview with Tom Stoppard on the 16 November 1982 debut of his play The Real Thing at Strand Theatre, London, and a detailed account of the Stoppard holdings in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. From his fascination with Shakespeare and other historical figures (and time periods) to his exploration of the connection between poetic creativity and scholarship to his predilection for word play, verbal ambiguity and use of anachronism, Stoppard’s work is at once insightful and wry, thought-provoking and entertaining, earnest and facetious. The critical essays in this volume hope to do justice to the brilliant complexity that is Tom Stoppard’s body of work.

Africa has long gripped the American imagination. From the Edenic wilderness of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan novels to the 'black Zion' of Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement, all manner of Americans - whether white or black, male or female - have come to see Africa as an idealized stage on which they can fashion new, more authentic selves. In this remarkable, panoramic work, David Peterson del Mar explores the ways in which American fantasies of Africa have evolved over time, as well as the role of Africans themselves in subverting American attitudes to their continent. Spanning seven decades, from the post-war period to the present day, and encompassing sources ranging from literature, film and music to accounts by missionaries, aid workers and travel writers, African, American is a fascinating deconstruction of 'Africa' as it exists in the American mindset.