Suryastra
Founded in 2006, Suryastra is an integral media company, representing classic, mythical, enlightening works to be expressed globally across media.
View Rights PortalFounded in 2006, Suryastra is an integral media company, representing classic, mythical, enlightening works to be expressed globally across media.
View Rights PortalLucy and Mum's Shoes (written by Emily Child and illustrated by Warwick Kay) is the story a girl who hears the world a little differently. She is fascinated by the sounds around her, especially the sound of shoes. She dreams of a life where she is surrounded by high-heels. She dreams of being grown-up. Feeling brave one morning, Lucy sneaks into her mother’s cupboard and tries on her favourite pair of stilettos. An unusual and dreamlike day of high-heeled hope, happiness and hindrance follows, leaving Lucy a little less certain that she wants to feel grown-up after all… Lucy invites children (and adults) to be a part of her unique and quirky soundscape. Infused with a surreal eccentricity, this story uncovers what it means to “love the shoes you’re in”.
'Reading Walter Benjamin' explores the persistence of absolute in Benjamin's work by sketching-out the relationship between philosphy and theology apparent in his diverse writings, from the early youth-movement essays to the later books, essays and fragments. The book examines Benjamin from two main perspectives: a history-of-ideas approach situating Benjamin in relation to the new German-Jewish thinking at the turn of the twentieth-century, as well as the German youth movements, Surrealism and the 'Georgekreis'; and a conceptual approach examining more critical issues in relation to Benjamin and Kant, modern aesthetics and narrative order. Chapters cover: 'Kulturpessimismus' and the new thinking; metaphysics of youth: Wyneken and 'Rausch'; history: surreal Messianism; Goethe and the 'Georgekreis'; Kant's experience; casting the work of art; disrupting textual order; and exile and the time of crisis. The book uses new translations of Benjamin's essays, fragments and his 'Arcades Project', and makes substantial reference to previously untranslated material. Lane's text allows the non-specialist entry into complex areas of critical theory, simultaneously offering original readings of Benjamin and twentieth-century arts and literature. ;
Suffering from postpartum depression after the birth of her first child, a 42-year old musters up the courage to try for another baby. Struggling through two trimesters of nausea, exhaustion and recurrent, intense dreams, she hopes to hit the 20-week milestone and see light at the end of the tunnel, only to discover during the routine ultrasound scan, that her baby has passed away. She is hospitalised to induce labour, and give birth to her little 20-week old son. And so begins a surreal life on the other side of loss, where grief and ecstasy are often bedfellows, tears come from nowhere, other people’s babies become the objects of intense affection and where the baby that never came to be, shows up in stars, stones, seeds and her toddler’s imagination.
Doron Rabinovicis Prosadebüt Papirnik vereint zehn Geschichten, die ihre Herkunft nicht verleugnen, Papirnik, das sind Stories teils aus dem Wiener jüdischen Ambiente, zuweilen aus dem Kriminal, zuweilen surreal. Der junge Autor Doron Rabinovici, dessen ungewöhnliche erzählerische Begabung zu entdecken ist, schreibt vor dem Hintergrund der eigenen Biographie, die den Blick auf Gebürtigkeiten und mißklingende Gegenwärtigkeiten geschärft hat. Amüsant-leichtfüßig und in elegant-plauderndem Ton erzählt, verkehrt sich alle Harmlosigkeit dieser Geschichten sehr rasch, und bizarr Unerwartetes oder Abgründiges tut sich auf: ein Bankier wird zum Finanzier eines Banküberfalls, ein Liebesbrief enthält die Geständnisse eines Serienmörders, zwei Blinde führen sich durch den Nebel, Frauen verlassen ihre Männer oder Freunde betrügen einander. Mühelos und unverkrampft versteht es Rabinovici, in seinen Stories von Liebe und Zeitgeistigem genauso wie von Tod und Bedrohlichem zu erzählen.
Richard Lester is of the most significant yet misunderstood directors of the post-war era. Indelibly associated with the Beatles and the 'swinging Sixties' because of his direction of A Hard Day's Night and Help and his joyous sex comedy The Knack, Lester has tended to be categorised as a modish director whose heyday passed when that decade's optimism slid into disillusionment and violence. This book offers a critical appreciation and reappraisal of his work, arguing that it had much greater depth and variety than he has been given credit for. His versatility encompasses the Brechtian anti-heroics of How I Won the War; the surreal nuclear comedy of The Bed-Sitting Room and the swashbuckling adventure of The Musketeers films. He has even, in his instinctively iconoclastic manner, cut Superman down to size. The book should win new admirers for a director with a gift of making movies whose visual wit and imaginative imagery reveal an intelligent and enquiring scepticism about heroes and society. Including comments from Lester himself and illustrations from his own private collection, the book is a must for film scholars and enthusiasts alike. ;
Simulating the marvellous presents important new research on Surrealism and the culture from which it arose. Offering fresh interpretations of Surrealist art and literature based around the theme of simulation, the book shows, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that the notion of simulation arose in a number of discrete contexts, in relation to hysteria and war neuroses; more broadly it shadows the emergence of our concept of 'the unconscious'. Acknowledging simulation's relevance to Surrealism, this book argues, radically alters our understanding of the Surrealists' project and the terms in which one gauges its success or failure. It leads one to question the naïve assumption that automatic writing or drawing represent an authentic outpouring of the unconscious and gives renewed significance to a figure such as Salvador Dalí who embraced simulation and made it the basis of his art and aesthetic. Resonances are also explored with postmodern theory and art practice, around the themes of simulation and the simulacrum.It also points to one of the ways in which Surrealism chimes with a core preoccupation of contemporary art and theory. Written accessibly, and ranging across many of the core ideas of Surrealism, David Lomas balances coverage of both Surrealist art and literature, looking at such figures as Dalì, Eluard, Masson, Desnos, Brouillet, Picasso, Tanning and Janet, as well as Glenn Brown, Douglas Gordon and Sarah Lucas. The book will interest not only art historians and theorists, but also students and those with a general interest in Surrealism. ;
»Eleutheria« (Freiheit) ist das erste Theaterstück, das Samuel Beckett Ende 1940 geschrieben hat. Als er dem französischen Regisseur Roger Blin dieses und sein zweites Stück, »Warten auf Godot«, zur Aufführung anbot, entschied sich Blin für das zweite, weniger darstellerreiche Stück. Die Uraufführung 1953 war ein großer Erfolg, und Beckett zog daraufhin »Eleutheria« zurück; es wurde bis heute nicht aufgeführt. Victor, der Held der Geschichte und der unglückliche Sohn, hat seine bourgeoise Familie, Mutter und Vater Krap, verlassen. Dadurch aber, daß die beiden Schauplätze des Stückes, Victors Pension und der Krapsche Salon, nebeneinanderliegen, ineinander übergehen, gleichzeitig zu sehen sind, bleibt jederzeit ›gegenwärtig‹, was der verlorene Sohn tut, wie im Salon ›andererseits‹ recht merkwürdige Besucher vor sich hin und aneinander vorbei räsonieren. Im zweiten Akt in Victors Pension erfährt er durch seine Mutter und seine Verlobte vom Tode seines Vaters, und die Handlung wird nun immer absurder, um schließlich im dritten Akt einem verrückten Höhepunkt entgegenzusteuern. Zwar sind in dieser brillanten, bitterbösen Familienstudie Situationen, Figuren und Themen angelegt, die in den folgenden Werken ausgefeilt, ergänzt oder verkürzt wiederkehren, nicht aber derart jugendlich impulsiv und surreal wie in diesem ersten Theaterstück von Samuel Beckett."
Cerebro, a new collection of short prose by Andrii Bodnar, introduces readers to the strange world of small human adventures. Random meetings and everyday situations that can happen to anyone start you thinking, making decisions and acting. It is a peculiarity of these texts that some of them are copied from real life experience, while others, completely fictitious, are macabre and phantasmagorical. The collection is compiled to start with completely realistic texts, but with each subsequent text this realism is extinguishing or gains new features. There are biographical texts, and then the usual reality departs and the reality of parable appears. The book is a path from realism to phantasmagoria and the sphere of magic. Compositionally it is a path from the real to the unreal world, culminating in a parable about what awaits us at the end of life.
The Middle is a story of a journey within a journey. A voracious reader, Azma, whose mind is full of questions as she reads, finds that the more books she consumes, the more the whys and hows in them consume her. One night, a torn scrap of paper floats into her room, carrying an incomplete line within its crinkles. She desperately searches for any missing words to complete the lonely phrase but failing at each attempt, she finally turns to writing her own beginning and end. The pages of The Middle are filled with surreal creatures - formidable, terrifying, looming – and these represent the fears and doubts of a mind struggling to make sense of the worlds captured within those books that only partially satisfy her as a reader. Azma embarks on an incomplete journey, ready to create its origin and end, finally realising the answers to all her impossible questions can only come to her when she writes her own version of the story. It is only then that the haunting creatures begin to soften and harmlessly melt away into themselves. Richa Jha’s lyrical prose and Eva Sanchez Gomez’s breathtaking visual poetry come together to narrate a tale that is both stunning and thought-provoking. For all the restless creative souls out there, The Middle presents an all-familiar trajectory of creating something new.
Featuring new essays by established and emerging scholars, Intersections: Women artists/surrealism/modernism redefines conventional surrealist and modernist canons by focusing critical attention on women artists working in and with surrealism in the context of modernism. In doing so it redefines critical understanding of the complex relations between all three terms. The essays address work produced in a wide variety of international contexts and across several generations of surrealist production by women closely connected to the surrealist movement or more marginally influenced by it. Intersections explores work in a wide range of media, from painting and sculpture to film and fashion, by artists including Susan Hiller, Maya Deren, Birgit Jurgenssen, Aube Elléouët, Dorothea Tanning, Claude Cahun, Elsa Schiaparelli, Joyce Mansour, Leonor Fini, Mimi Parent, Lee Miller, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun and Eileen Agar.
In his previous book City Gorged with Dreams (2002), Ian Walker challenged established ideas about Surrealist photography by emphasising the key role played by documentary photographs in Parisian Surrealism. Now Walker turns his attention to the arrival of Surrealism in England in 1936. Examining for the first time the surprising relationship between Surrealism and English documentary photography and film, the book shows that some of the most interesting work of the period was made in the ambiguous spaces between them. One of the key themes in this book is the relationship between the 'homely' and the 'exotic', in the innovative mix of poetry and ethnography in Mass-Observation for example, or the shadowed England constructed in the work of Bill Brandt. Based on extensive archival research, interviews and visits to sites where the photographs were made, this book is rich in detailed analysis yet written in an accessible and often witty style. ;
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. This volume approaches Carrington as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism. The book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works.
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was an English surrealist artist and writer who emigrated to Mexico after the Second World War. As the first comprehensive examination of Carrington's writing and art, this volume approaches her as a major international figure in modern and contemporary art, literature and thought. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary and artistic currents that animate her contribution to experimental art movements throughout the Western Hemisphere, including surrealism and magical realism. In addition to a substantive editorial introduction, the book contains nine chapters from scholars of modern literature and art, each focusing on a major feature in Carrington's career. It also features a visual essay drawn from the 2015 Tate Liverpool exhibition Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline, and two experimental essays by the novelist Chloe Aridjis and the scholar Gabriel Weisz, Carrington's son. This collection offers a resource for students, researchers and readers interested in Carrington's works, and contributes to her continued rise in global recognition.
Little Shilu loves to dance around naked. She wants to be like the animals; like Pirate, her cat. When her grandmother Nannu says she can’t because she is now a big girl, Shilu gets down to understanding why she can’t. Peppered with Nannu’s loving chiding, intimate grandma-granddaughter bonding over conversations, and a heart-to-heart between the mother and this little inquisitive daughter, this book is a reflection of the wild and free nature of childhood. Rhuchi Mhasane’s soft evocative illustrations rendered in pencil with watercolour, and put together digitally, create a dreamlike charm. Richa Jha’s gentle, affectionate and lyrical text takes the reader into the mind of the little girl who can’t wait to get the answers to her ‘Why can’t I?’
In "Wo ist meine Schwester?" begibt sich ein junger Mäusejunge auf die Suche nach seiner verschwundenen Schwester. Gemeinsam mit seinem Großvater macht er sich in einem Birnenballon auf eine fantastische Reise durch surreale Traumwelten, die von Sven Nordqvist meisterhaft in detailreichen Bildern dargestellt werden. Auf jeder Seite gibt es unzählige kleine Geschichten und Bilder zu entdecken, die Leser*innen jeden Alters in ihren Bann ziehen. Die Suche nach der Schwester verbindet die einzelnen Zeichnungen zu einer bezaubernden Geschichte, die zum Staunen und Entdecken einlädt. Nordqvists Kunstwerk fasziniert nicht nur Kinder, sondern auch Erwachsene und lädt dazu ein, immer wieder in diese magische Welt einzutauchen. Traumhafte Illustrationen: Die opulenten und fantasievollen Bilder von Sven Nordqvist entführen die Leser in eine faszinierende Welt voller Details und surrealer Elemente. Stundenlanger Entdeckungsspaß: Auf jeder Seite gibt es unzählige Geschichten und Bilder zu entdecken, die zum immer wieder anschauen und staunen einladen. Für Jung und Alt: Das Buch begeistert Kinder ab fünf Jahren sowie Erwachsene gleichermaßen und bietet eine gemeinsame Entdeckungsreise für die ganze Familie. Kreative Handlung: Die Suche nach der verschwundenen Schwester verbindet die einzelnen Bilder zu einer fesselnden Geschichte, die die Fantasie anregt und zum Mitfiebern einlädt. Kunstvoller Bildband: "Wo ist meine Schwester?" ist nicht nur ein Kinderbuch, sondern auch ein Kunstwerk, das mit dem renommierten August-Strindberg-Preis ausgezeichnet wurde. Stimulierung der Vorstellungskraft: Die surrealen Traumwelten regen die Vorstellungskraft an und bieten Raum für eigene Geschichten und Interpretationen. Ideales Geschenk: Das Buch eignet sich hervorragend als Geschenk für Kindergeburtstage, Weihnachten oder andere Anlässe und bereitet lange Freude. Weitere Bilderbuch-Kunstwerke von Sven Nordqvist: Spaziergang mit Hund Der Weg nach Hause