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      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2022

        Critical theory and dystopia

        by Patricia McManus, Darrow Schecter

        Critical theory and dystopia offers a uniquely rich study of dystopian fiction, drawing on the insights of critical theory. Asking what ideological work these dark imaginings perform, the book reconstructs the historical emergence, consolidation and transformation of the genre across the twentieth century and into our own, ranging from Yevgeny Zamayatin's We (1924) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) to Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange (1963) and Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series (2000s and 2010s). In doing so, it reveals the political logics opened up or neutered by the successive moments of this dystopian history.

      • Trusted Partner
        Children's & YA
        August 2020

        Cryptos

        by Poznanski, Ursula

        Where do we go when Nowhere is the only destination left?   Kerrybrook is Jana‘s favourite virtual escape. An idyllic fishing village with beautiful nature and, every now and then, a breeze of fresh air from the nearby sea. Jana, is this world‘s designer and person in power, she’s satisfied with her masterpiece. Best job so far. Until one day, a dead body is found, in both, ’Virtual Reality‘ and the real world. In times of climate change, VR is the only safe place for humankind. That‘s why Jana needs to solve the crime, she’s responsible for stopping the destruction.   • CliFi Thriller (Climate Fiction): Climate change & virtual reality • For fans of Black Mirror (Netflix) • All age readers • Strong, female protagonist • Highly relevant topic   WHITE RAVENS recommendation (2021):   "In the not too distant future, the world is an inhospitable place: droughts, storms, floods. That’s why world designers construct »alternative realities«, such as landscapes populated by dinosaurs, life at court in the Middle Ages, and surfing and chilling out on a beach. People can switch between these worlds at will and, when they die there, they are not truly dead; instead, they merely return to the »real world« – same as at night when they sleep. Then they are reunited with their body, which is lying inside a capsule.   In »Cryptos«, Ursula Poznanski pulls out all the stops of storytelling: She embeds numerous references to human and intellectual history in an action-packed and extremely suspenseful thriller plot. In the process, she raises central existential and ontological questions that result from the interplay between the real and the virtual worlds. This complex dystopian novel is narrated in such an enjoyable way that readers will hardly notice their brains going into overdrive as they devour it."

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        October 2023

        Crafting crime fiction

        by Henry Sutton

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2012

        Narration in nineteenth-century French short fiction

        Prosper Mérimée to Marcel Schwob

        by Peter Cogman

        The short fiction that flourished in nineteenth-century France has attracted relatively little critical attention compared with the novel. This study focuses on some key stories by major authors of contes and nouvelles from the late 1820s to the 1890s, taking as a starting-point, aspects of narrative technique as a way of exploring not just characteristic strategies of short fiction, but also the ends to which they were put: recurrent themes, and the vision of mankind. Each chapter looks in some detail at three or four stories, referring briefly to other tales for illustration. The underlying point that emerges from this study is that the interest of a tale lies in the telling, not the events. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        July 1995

        Der Glasmensch und andere Science-fiction-Geschichten

        by Marcus Hammerschmitt, Franz Rottensteiner, Marcus Hammerschmitt

        Marcus Hammerschmitt schreibt Science-fiction-Erzählungen, die technologische Phantasie, psychologische Einsicht, Lust am gedanklichen Experiment und poetische Erfindungskraft vereinen. Wie Herbert W. Franke oder Peter Schattschneider basiert er seine Geschichten auf einer soliden Grundlage, entwickelt seine Szenarios und Fabeln spielerisch, verknüpft sie aber dramatisch mit den größeren Problemen von Ökologie einerseits und den Zweifeln und inneren Konflikten des einzelnen andererseits.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Terry Gilliam

        by Peter Marks

        Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2023

        The politics of male friendship in contemporary American fiction

        by Michael Kalisch

        How might our friendships shape our politics? This book examines how contemporary American fiction has rediscovered the concept of civic friendship and revived a long tradition of imagining male friendship as interlinked with the promises and paradoxes of democracy in the United States. Bringing into dialogue the work of a wide range of authors - including Philip Roth, Paul Auster, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dinaw Mengestu, and Teju Cole - this innovative study advances a compelling new account of the political and intellectual fabric of the American novel today.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2017

        Hei Wa

        by Mu Ling

        A fine collection of science fiction by children’s literature writer Mu Ling. Mu Ling’s science fictions pursue a scientific basis of “organic imagination”, has a positive outlook and good spirit of seeking truth. This series collects Mu Ling’s three masterpieces full of fantasy and humanistic concern: Dream Machine, Hei Wa, Yu Wang Bei Mi, which are rare sci-fi theme in children’s literature works of China. This series will lead children step by step to “hard science fiction” which is full of intellectual challenges through “light science fiction” and “soft science fiction”.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2017

        Dream Machine

        by Mu Ling

        A fine collection of science fiction by children’s literature writer Mu Ling. Mu Ling’s science fictions pursue a scientific basis of “organic imagination”, has a positive outlook and good spirit of seeking truth. This series collects Mu Ling’s three masterpieces full of fantasy and humanistic concern: Dream Machine, Hei Wa, Yu Wang Bei Mi, which are rare sci-fi theme in children’s literature works of China. This series will lead children step by step to “hard science fiction” which is full of intellectual challenges through “light science fiction” and “soft science fiction”.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2017

        Yu Wang Bei Mi

        by Mu Ling

        A fine collection of science fiction by children’s literature writer Mu Ling. Mu Ling’s science fictions pursue a scientific basis of “organic imagination”, has a positive outlook and good spirit of seeking truth. This series collects Mu Ling’s three masterpieces full of fantasy and humanistic concern: Dream Machine, Hei Wa, Yu Wang Bei Mi, which are rare sci-fi theme in children’s literature works of China. This series will lead children step by step to “hard science fiction” which is full of intellectual challenges through “light science fiction” and “soft science fiction”.

      • Trusted Partner
        August 2016

        The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

        by Luo Guan Zhong

        First of the five great works of traditional prose fiction, this master narrative transforms history into epic and has thereby educated and entertained readers of five centuries with unforgettable exemplars of martial and civic virtue, of personal fidelity and political treachery. "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." Echoing the rhythms of Chinese history itself, the monumental tale Three Kingdoms begins. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this fourteenth-century masterpiece continues to be loved and read throughout China today. Three Kingdoms portrays a fateful moment at the end of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) when the future of the Chinese empire lay in the balance.

      • Trusted Partner
        December 2018

        UFO Invasion

        by Yang Peng

        Yang Peng's alien series original science fiction works. The book continues Yang Peng's consistent style of creation—incredible imagination, extraordinary exaggeration, unrepeatable comedy, bizarre plots, sci-fi elements, relaxing, humorous, and thrilling fun. At the same time, courage, integrity, kindness, unity, patriotism, and environmental protection are integrated into the delightful storytelling. The theme is positive, setting a good example for the children. Aliens have invaded Earth! This is a group of aliens from the ghost planet who cannot be killed. How to do? In this critical situation, the brave primary school student Dididi, the intelligent Dr. Guima, the wise Witch Gurit, the Hiroshima atomic bomb victim Shuiyunjingzi gathered together to form the "Save the Earth Four" group. A fierce battle with the aliens started ...

      • Trusted Partner
        December 2018

        Super Space Battleship

        by Yang Peng

        Yang Peng's alien series original science fiction works. The book continues Yang Peng's consistent style of creation—incredible imagination, extraordinary exaggeration, unrepeatable comedy, bizarre plots, sci-fi elements, relaxing, humorous, and thrilling fun. At the same time, courage, integrity, kindness, unity, patriotism, and environmental protection are integrated into the delightful storytelling. The theme is positive, setting a good example for the children. The "Dragon" super space warship crossed the universe wormhole. It took only a few minutes to reach the distant space of 1400 light years from the earth. A series of challenges are waiting for the "Dragon" teenagers, steel planet, cosmic disease, cosmic whales, elf kingdom, thunder kingdom, lightning country, illusion planet, nebula storm... Can they pass over all these challenges one after the one other?

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2021

        Sara Paretsky

        Detective fiction as trauma literature

        by Cynthia Hamilton

        Sara Paretsky is known for her influential V.I. Warshawski series, which transformed the masculine hard-boiled detective formula into a vehicle for feminist values. But Paretsky does more than this. Her novels also illustrate the extent to which detective fiction acts as a literature of trauma, allowing Paretsky to address the politics of agency in ways that go beyond the personal, for trauma always has a social and a political dimension. Paretsky's work also exploits the way detective fiction mirrors the writing of history. Here, Paretsky uses the form to expose the partiality of historical accounts - whether they be personal, institutional, or national - that authorise 'forgetting' of a particularly insidious kind. Significantly, all these issues are explored within the framework of the traditional hard-boiled detective novel. As a result, Paretsky's achievement forces us to acknowledge the deeply subversive potential of detective fiction.

      • Family & home stories (Children's/YA)
        February 1905

        Little Women

        by Louise May Alcott

        Little Women "has been read as a romance or as a quest, or both. It has been read as a family drama that validates virtue over wealth", but also "as a means of escaping that life by women who knew its gender constraints only too well".[6]:34 According to Sarah Elbert, Alcott created a new form of literature, one that took elements from Romantic children's fiction and combined it with others from sentimental novels, resulting in a totally new format. Elbert argued that within Little Women can be found the first vision of the "All-American girl" and that her multiple aspects are embodied in the differing March sisters.

      • Trusted Partner
        December 2018

        Defensing the Earth

        by Yang Peng

        Yang Peng's alien series original science fiction works. The book continues Yang Peng's consistent style of creation—incredible imagination, extraordinary exaggeration, unrepeatable comedy, bizarre plots, sci-fi elements, relaxing, humorous, and thrilling fun. At the same time, courage, integrity, kindness, unity, patriotism, and environmental protection are integrated into the delightful storytelling. The theme is positive, setting a good example for the children. A hundred years later, a massive earthquake broke the box of the imprisoned aliens, and the aliens escaped! They raided the Antarctic research station and ransacked the Golden State to worship the Golden City, making a large number of vicious incidents. Their next goal is the country that the children have built—the brave city of the capital of Papa, and a new battle is about to start. Can the young heroes of Papa State resist the invasion of aliens and save the earth?

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