“There is poetry, and there are poets, that never disappear. They circulate through new channels, at times hibernate, and with a certain persistence they are laid bare, until someone revives them.”
In his novel, The Autumn of Innocence, prominent Lebanese poet and novelist Abbas Beydoun artfully weaves a tragic story of a father-son relationship that ends disastrously with the son's violent death. This story unfolds along with the Arab Spring movement and explores the motivations behind religious extremism and questions cultural constructs of masculinity. The novel opens with a letter from Ghassan to his cousin, describing how his father Massoud strangled his mother to death when Ghassan was just three years old. Afterward, Massoud flees the village in southern Lebanon. For 18 years, no one hears from him, and Ghassan grows up stigmatized by his father's violent crime. In time, Ghassan's aunt Bushra-Massoud's sister-makes a confession: She encouraged Massoud to kill his wife, believing that his wife's low socioeconomic status would bring embarrassment to their wealthy family. Bushra also reveals that Massoud was driven to kill his wife because he feared that she would tell someone that he was impotent, undermining his sense of manhood and social status. Meanwhile, Massoud has moved to southern Syria, where he remarried and had two more sons. During the Arab Spring, the militant groups fighting the Syrian regime transform him into a religious extremist. In the second half of the novel, Massoud return to the village in southern Lebanon. He brings with him a group of men. Together they seize control of the village and terrorize its inhabitants. After killing the dogs, they begin murdering the villagers in the name of religion. One of Ghassan's friends is among the victims, and Massoud also threatens his family. Ghassan decides that he must kill his father, avenging the death of his friend and the deaths of the other villagers. In the end, he fails and is beheaded by Bushra's son, his cousin, who is has joined Massoud's thugs. Beydoun captures the shifting points of view in a family shattered by the tyranny of normative masculinity and the resulting violence. The victims are women, of course, but also the men like Ghassan who reject these social and cultural expectations. The novel also portrays the rise of religious extremism and the terrorism it can inspire, which wreaks havoc on the lives of ordinary people. Beydoun's engaging language imbues the characters and the places they inhabit with a vibrancy and vitality that transcends the difficult subject matter.
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This novel depicts the image of a controversial and dubious “coward”. The refined, gentle and frail-looking Wang Wenqi is in fact an enduring and staunch person. During the mop-up operation of the Japanese invaders in the village, in order to save the life of a rash villager, he exposes his true identity. He thus finds himself trapped between mixing with the Japanese invaders against his will and incurring the hatred of the local villagers … He shows submission and even ingratiation towards the Japanese, never daring to defy them openly, but in his inner world he is full of hatred towards the Japanese. He eventually beheads the local Japanese chief officer. Such an action of fighting against tyranny with submissiveness and such a show of power behind apparent weakness bear witness to an honest and truly kind “coward” who struggles for a living between the cruelty of the enemy and the indignation of the nation.
Raymond DeCapite’s second published novel, A Lost King, has been described by Kirkus Reviews as a “small masterpiece, so unique in spirit and style.” If the mood of The Coming of Fabrizze is joyous, that of A Lost King is somber. Each of DeCapite’s novels is original in its own way, perhaps inspired by different moods. Writing in the New York Times in 1961, Orville Prescott described Fabrizze as “an engaging modern folk tale so full of love and laughter and the joy of life that it charmed critics and numerous readers and was generally considered one of the most promising first novels of 1960.” He found DeCapite’s second novel, A Lost King, was a different sort of book than Fabrizze: “Fabrizze is an apologia for heroes; A Lost King is an apologia for dreamers. A more mature book, it deals with a more serious theme—the relationship of a father and son…a pathetic and perhaps tragic conflict of personalities.”“A rapturous combination of hard-earned wisdom and musical wit.” —from the Foreword“If truth be told, ethnic novels resurrected in the spirit of multicultural rediscovery seldom transcend their value as sociology or group uplift. One exception is the work of Raymond DeCapite, whose name keeps popping up on bibliographies of forgotten Italian-American fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews“A Lost King resolves no existential dilemmas, but it is a warm and winning novel which says ‘yes’ to life. It should give delight to many readers.” —The New York Times“DeCapite’s Cleveland is utterly his own, far away from Algren’s Chicago and he brings a Joycean ebullience to his stark, authentic depictions. Though they unfold slowly, in a sidewise fashion, in the end each novel packs quite a punch. With his brawny, playful dialogue, his sparse scenic descriptions and his brisk yet deep characterizations, DeCapite succeeds in doing what others only aim for: he has constructed a world that feels real.” —Publishers Weekly
First published in 1960, The Coming of Fabrizze has been called by the New York Herald Tribune a “comic folklore festival about an Italian American colony in Cleveland, Ohio, back in the 1920s when all the land was a little slaphappy—and no one more so than these transplanted countrymen of the Medicis, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Christopher Columbus… and others whose hearts have belonged to Italia.” More a myth or a legend than a realistic novel or sociological novel, Fabrizze is a celebration of the working class and a heroic tale of an immigrant who succeeds by virtue of hard work and honesty. Author Raymond DeCapite’s characterizations of Italian Americans in Cleveland have been compared to the depictions of Armenian Americans in the early writing of William Saroyan, and Ann Ross of the New York Herald Tribune said that DeCapite’s “greatest achievement is his ability to achieve tenderness without sentimentality.”“A modern folk tale filled with love, laughter and the joy of life.… Reading these merry pages is something like eating a dinner of the very best spaghetti and meat sauce with plenty of Chianti and a string orchestra nearby playing ‘Santa Lucia.’” —The New York Times“This absolute gem of a novel remains fresh. The story of a community of Italian immigrants who settle on the South Side of Cleveland during the 1920s and put their hands to work laying track for the mighty railroad heading west, DeCapite’s debut novel is a book for the ear, a joyous celebration of voices, a sweet American hymn.”—from the Foreword“The truth is, Fabrizze is the boss of everything and everybody in this beguiling haven of song, drink, food and perpetual talk that sounds like poetry.… Fabrizze of the golden hair and the big smile, is larger than life, and in general handsomer. ”—New York Herald Tribune
This beautiful area in southern Sumatra was known by European adventurers in the nineteenth century as a "wild" land, the home of heroes who did not hesitate to behead, warriors that not even the Dutch colonial government could conquer. But Elio Modigliani, a young explorer from Italy, set foot there and went in and out of one village to another and came home intact. Accompanied by four hired hunters from Java, Modigliani not only succeeded in documenting various aspects of Nias life and culture, but also secretly brought home 26 human skulls which he donated to the National Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography in Florence for their research. The big question is, why wasn't Modigliani killed, even though the other adventurers had to save themselves? Now Vanni Puccioni, the grandson of the museum director who exhibited the results of Modigliani's expedition, decided to follow in his footsteps and retrace the places the explorer had visited. The goal is one: to discover how Modigliani could survive among these warriors.
John Denton lands in famed Shanghai in 1903, a young customs officer newly assigned. A "griffin," green and inexperienced, he struggles to adapt to the roiling city. Tailors live and sleep on the floor of their employers' shops, and onlookers dip money in the blood of freshly beheaded pirates to make the bills lucky. The life teeming in the city's narrow streets and grand boulevards is beyond exotic. Shanghai's fascinations are of another world. Denton, the expatriate, thrives in China and remains, acquiring wealth and power, children, a mistress. Shanghai claims him, body and soul. This epic novel spans the most volatile decades of China's existence and reveals to us its amazingly cosmopolitan heart. Shanghai was an international bestseller and is available again for the first time in a decade.
Absurdism is a philosophical school that states that man’s attempt to find meaning ultimately fails. That is because the net amount of information and the very wide range of unknowns make certainty impossible; and yet some nihilists believe that despite such a fact, one must accept absurdity but also continue to search to find some meaning. As a philosophy, nihilism examines the fundamental nature of absurdity and how people should react after encountering “absurdity”. Absurdism holds that human endeavors to find intrinsic meaning ultimately fail, hence they are absurd since there is no meaning in terms of existence, at least concerning the individual. It is the absurdity that human beings struggle with, and many people commit suicide or euthanasia to give meaning to their lives because they think it is the only way out. The play The Blind Guitar depicts many people meeting on Poplar Street. While the atmosphere of the play contrasts Absurdism with optimism, there are strawberries as a symbol in the text of the play and by picking them from a tree in a nursing home, it tells the people who have hit the wall, and “So there is still hope that they see strawberries as a remedy for their sufferings.” Sufferings that are intertwined with the tragedy of life. In Absurd Theater, words are repeated over and over again, and the writers of this writing style try to portray the useless and machine-like relationship of people in a dramatic way and constantly emphasize these absurd themes. The book The Blind Guitar is a play in Absurdism style and tells the story of a blind man named Victor who plays musical menos on Poplar Street. In this play, everyone in turn bears problems and sufferings, sufferings that have afflicted the human body and its roots, and on the other hand, one wants to pursue a hope that has come out of the context of life. With all his disabilities, Victor wants to be friends with others. He is a dignified and noble human being who is rarely found in any society. In the play, The Blind Guitar, Victor, after years of blindness and abundant suffering, is still eager to reach his beloved and the power and greatness of his love have been preserved. A love that is not perceptible to everyone and they do not understand its meaning. Finally, in the game of life, one goes, one dies, one wanders, one lives but does not want to, one is born, one falls in love, one loses his love, one waits . . . The themes in the play The Blind Guitar include: escaping from a mental asylum, beheading in the middle of the city, seabirds committing suicide, discovering cancer medicine, lions dying in cages, waiting for newspaper news, and death. In the play, The Blind Guitar the author challenges wealth and poverty, in which rich people do not have an enriched and honest nature with all their possessions, and cultivate jealousy and depravity in them, and it raises a question in people’s minds as to why society’s only concern has become money. So what about human values? In a part of the book The Blind Guitar, we read: Henry: What’s this? Victor: Strawberries . . . Henry: What should I do with it? Ernest: This is a medicine for creating hope . . . Henry: I’ve nothing to do with hope. Victor: If you eat this, from now on you’ll become friends with hope, my friend . . . Henry closed his eyes quietly and put another strawberry in his mouth. Victor: How was it? Henry: I may not be well, I’m sick, but I’m still alive and I want to live. Ernest: What sound do you hear now? Henry: That the seagull didn’t kill itself . . . it killed life. Where do you find so many life berries?
The assassination of Caesar's chief astrologer explodes into revelations of a supersecret organization known as Dominium Dei—the "Rule of God"—and an imperial plot to establish the rule of Rome forever. DOMINIUM DEI. In his global blockbusters Raising Atlantis, The Atlantis Prophecy and The Atlantis Revelation, New York Times bestselling author Thomas Greanias masterfully blended ancient mysteries and modern conspiracies. In this spectacular new thriller set in Ancient Rome, Greanias reveals the master plan to shape our world’s reality and has crafted a timeless epic adventure. DOMINIUM DEI. Welcome to the New World Order. Welcome to Rome at the end of the first century. No one from slave to senator can escape the Reign of Terror under Emperor Domitian. Caesar has declared himself Lord and God of the Universe. Before him all must bow or die in the Games. Enter the innocent playwright Athanasius. Wrongly accused of treason by jealous rivals, he is condemned to the scripted "reality" of the arena. Death is guaranteed. Against all odds he escapes, alone with a secret that will shake the world. But Athanasius has unleashed the wrath of Rome. Now the empire will hunt him down to the ends of the earth, stopping at nothing to ensure that the secret of Dominium Dei—the "Rule of God"—dies with him.
A ghost hell-bent on destroying the descendants of a bloodline of soldiers that led his people to the slaughter. His lost-love drives his compassion to irradicate those with just one drop of blood from the bloodline. His powers are Super in nature. No other being stand a chance against him. He can even travel to other planets if need be, to dispose of his prey, that they may avoid death on this earth. He dismembers them with his Ax and scythe, with a speed that is unequaled before the eyes of man or spirit.
Childhood sweethearts, Joe and Joy are broke and bored. They’re also tired of smelling of fish.When offered the chance to escape from the dreary market stalls of England to run a bar on a sub-tropical island, they recklessly jump at the opportunity - despite their spectacular lack of experience.In Tenerife, dreams of a better life overseas are soon crushed by mini-mafias, East European prostitutes and biblical-grade cockroach infestations.Joe and Joy's foreign fantasy turns into a nightmare as they find themselves trapped with a failing bar in a foreign land, pandering to a bar full of oddball expats while trying to stop their relationship crashing into the rocks.Can they save their business, their dreams, and their relationship before it's too late..."If you've ever wondered if the grass really is greener on the other side, you need to read this hilarious and heartwarming memoir now!""A book full of humor, laughter and tears.""Loved the story, the humour, the characters - found it hard to put down.""Thank you for hours of true entertainment...""I've read a lot of travel-abroad memoirs and enjoyed many of them. This is my favorite... by a long way."
Did the Mad Butcher of Cleveland also strike in Pennsylvania?From 1934 to 1938, Cleveland, Ohio, was racked by a classic battle between good and evil. On one side was the city’s safety director, Eliot Ness. On the other was a nameless phantom dubbed the “Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run,” who littered the inner city with the remains of decapitated and dismembered corpses. Never caught or even officially identified, the Butcher simply faded into history, leaving behind a frightening legend that both haunts and fascinates Cleveland to this day. In 2001 the Kent State University Press published James Jessen Badal’s In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders, the first serious, book-length treatment of this dark chapter in true crime history. Though Murder Has No Tongue: The Lost Victim of Cleveland’s Mad Butcher—a detailed study of the arrest and mysterious death of Frank Dolezal, the only man ever charged in the killings—followed in 2010.Now Badal concludes his examination of the horrific cycle of murder-dismemberments with Hell’s Wasteland: The Pennsylvania Torso Murders. During the mid-1920s, a vast, swampy area just across the Ohio border near New Castle, Pennsylvania, revealed a series of decapitated and otherwise mutilated bodies. In 1940 railroad workers found the rotting remains of three naked and decapitated bodies in a string of derelict boxcars awaiting destruction in Pennsylvania’s Stowe Township. Were all of these terrible murders the work of Cleveland’s Mad Butcher? Many in Ohio and Pennsylvania law enforcement thought they were, and that assumption led to a massive, well-coordinated two-state investigation. In Hell’s Wasteland, Badal explores that nagging question in depth for the first time.Relying on police reports, unpublished memoirs, and the surviving autopsy protocols—as well as contemporary newspaper coverage— Badal provides a detailed examination of the murder-dismemberments and weighs the evidence that potentially links them to the Cleveland carnage. Hell’s Wasteland is the last piece in the gigantic torso murder puzzle that spanned three decades, covered two states, and involved law enforcement from as many as five different cities.
This report explains the conditions under which governments might promisingly negotiate with terrorist groups so as to end their violence. It is drawn from a larger United States Institute of Peace–supported multiyear research project on how terrorist campaigns meet their demise. Based on qualitative and quantitative research that explores the lessons of negotiations with terrorist groups and analyzes other potential pathways for a group’s decline, including decapitation, repression, reorientation, and implosion, the conclusions herein offer general guidance to policymakers who must decide whether to enter talks with a given terrorist group. The report applies those lessons specifically to the current debate over negotiating with “al-Qaeda” and “the Taliban.”
This part-demon teen vampire fighter and her faithful terrier hellhound are once again patrolling the dark city streets of San Antonio, Texas. Val's hunky human partner, Detective Dan Sullivan, is giving her the cold shoulder since she beheaded his vampire ex-fiancée. Vamp leader Alejandro is struggling to keep the peace between vamps, demons and humans. The mucho powerful Encyclopedia Magicka has been stolen, someone in the Demon Underground is poisoning vamps, and Val's inner lust demon, Lola, is getting very restless since Val's now partnered with sexy Shade, the shadow demon with the blond good looks of an angel. The second book in Parker Blue's Demon Underground urban fantasy series plunges readers deeper into a heady world of passion, friendship, intrigue and mystery.
Almost the first thing callow young Englishman John Denton sees when he steps ashore in Shanghai in 1903 is the public beheading of some pirates. Shocked and sickened though he is, he must adapt himself to the brutal but fascinating city of extremes, and he spends the rest of his life there, through all the vicissitudes of revolution, riot, lawlessness and war. He makes, loses, and regains a fortune, dangerously crosses a powerful triad leader, enters politics, is imprisoned by the Japanese and survives to see the communists march in to mete out their own brand of cruel justice. An intricate weaving of fact with fiction, Shanghai is the story of a man at the centre of one of history's most dangerous and crucial epochs. It is also the love story of Denton and his exquisite mistress, Su-mei, who eventually becomes his wife.
On September 5, 1934, Frank LaGassie made a gruesome discovery. Partially buried was the lower half of a woman’s torso, legs amputated at the knees. This “Lady of the Lake,” as she was dubbed by the police and the press, was the first in a terrifying series of decapitation murders that haunted Cleveland for the next few years.From 1934 to 1938, the “Torso Killer” left the corpses of a least twelve victims in and around the Kingsbury Run area of Cleveland. A frightened city turned to its safety director, the legendary Eliot Ness, who focused more energy and manpower on this investigation that any previous police action in Cleveland. But the killer was never arrested, or even officially identified.In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders is the first detailed, book-length examination of these horrific crimes. This compelling account is based on police reports, autopsy protocols, personal interviews with the descendants of victims and investigators, and unpublished manuscripts.Illustrated with maps, rare crime scene and morgue photographs, and newspaper photos, this carefully researched true crime study offers a detailed account of one of the most sensational unsolved murder cases in the nation’s history.
The incredible story of the origins and operations of a wartime special forces unit that defied the odds. Z Special Unit, one of the most intrepid but arguably the most unsung of Allied Special Forces of the Second World War waged a guerrilla war against Japan for two years in the south-west Pacific. On some of their 81 operations Z Special Unit slipped into enemy harbours in canoes and silently mined ships before vanishing into the night; on others they parachuted into the dense Borneo jungle to fight with headhunters against the Japanese and on one occasion they landed on an Indonesian island and smuggled out the pro-Allied sultan from under Japanese noses. The Japanese weren't the only adversary that Z Special Unit encountered in the brutal terrain of the Pacific. In the mango swamps of Borneo and the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea they were faced with venomous snakes, man-eating crocodiles and deadly diseases. But it was the enemy soldiers who proved the most ruthless foe, beheading those Z Special Unit commandos who fell into their hands. Drawing on veteran interviews as well as operational reports and recently declassified SOE files, Gavin Mortimer explores the incredible history of this remarkable special forces unit and the band of commandoes that defied the odds.
In 2001 The Kent State University Press published James Jessen Badal’s In the Wake of the Butcher: Cleveland’s Torso Murders—the first book to examine the horrific series of unsolved dismemberment murders that terrorized the Kingsbury Run neighborhood from 1934 to 1938. Through his access to a wealth of previously unavailable material, Badal was able to present a far more detailed and accurate picture of the battle between Cleveland safety director Eliot Ness and the unidentified killer who avoided both detection and apprehension.In his groundbreaking historical study, Badal established beyond any doubt the truth of the legend that Ness had a secret suspect whom he had subjected to a series of interrogation sessions, complete with lie detector tests, in a secluded room in a downtown hotel. Badal also disclosed recently unearthed evidence that identified exactly who that mysterious suspect was. But was he the infamous Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run? Badal presented all the evidence available at the time and invited readers to draw their own conclusions.Now, armed with conclusive new information, Badal returns to the absorbing tale of those terrible murders in an expanded edition of In the Wake of the Butcher. For the very first time in the history of research into the Kingsbury Run murders, he presents compelling evidence that establishes exactly where the killer incapacitated his victims, as well as the location of the long-fabled “secret laboratory” where he committed murder and performed both dismemberment and decapitation.Was Eliot Ness’s secret suspect the Mad Butcher? Thanks to this new information, Badal is finally able to answer that question with certainty.
Along with a deeper descent into New Orleans’ menacing underworld, this NINTH installment in Tony Dunbar’s humorous, hard-boiled Tubby Dubonnet mystery series brings new restaurants to try, a new assortment of colorful characters, beguiling courtroom scenes, and – yes! steamy shower sex. Ex-con Angelo Spooner is trying to start a legit business, but he just can’t catch a break. Just as his healing Holy Water, “Angelo’s Elixir” is about to go upscale, the sticky strands of the Big Sleazy’s tangled web of crime and corruption reach out to ensnare him. What’s a law-abiding parolee to do? He can’t get caught with a gun, but maybe that axe in his shed could help him extricate himself. But when low-level creep Frenchy Dufour’s henchman turns up nearly beheaded, Angelo’s fate rests in the capable hands of laid-back lawyer Tubby Dubonnet. Tubby’s been trying hard to lay low, too. As those closest to him are targeted by frightening attacks, he suspects his dealings with the clandestine society of Cuban exiles who’ve plagued him lately are far from over. Tubby would love to have nothing further to do with “that crazy band of geriatric lunatics”. But the old Cuban revolutionaries have taught their sons well. Now their grandchildren, heirs to a substantial cache of weapons and money, burn with a dangerous zeal to prove themselves. Meanwhile … a man’s got to eat! The epicurean counselor does his best thinking when he’s well-fed. Our good luck! –as we vicariously sample our way across New Orleans’ culinary panorama on the hunt for an axe murderer. But sleuth does not live by bread alone—even in a Tony Dunbar legal thriller. Ignoring his own advice to his client to “keep your head on your shoulders”, Tubby’s lost his to the lovely Peggy O’Flarity. It’s about time Tubby had some steamy sex – and maybe a little happiness? But fortune teller Sister Soulace has her doubts. “KEEP YOUR HEAD ON YOUR SHOULDERS,” the lawyer counseled his client… the axe murderer. “The literary equivalent of a film noir –fast, tough, tense, and darkly funny” -Los Angeles Times Book Review
Just back from suspension chief inspector Thomas Harder is faced with the case of a serial killer haunting Berlin. The killer beheads young women and stages occult ceremonies with their corpses. Together with his new colleague, Claudia Vogt, Harder has to find the murderer before they kill even more women. However the cooperation between the two detectives is everything but smooth. Claudia Vogt is the textbook example of a hardworking perfectionist, whereas Harder tends to go with the flow and bends the rules more than freely.
