The Birch Grove and Other Stories

The Birch Grove and Other Stories PDF Author: Jaros?aw Iwaszkiewicz
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639241459
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980) was a significant Polish novelist and poet. Besides his literary work, he fulfilled various social roles during his long life. He studied law in Kiev, worked as a civil servant at the newly created Polish parliament (Sejm) after WW1, served at embassies in Copenhagen and Brussels, joined anti-nazi resistance during WW2, became member of parliament after the war, was president of the writers' union, received Lenin Prize for peace movement acitivities etc. His books are considered classics and even today they still sell well in Poland; some have been adapted into internationally successful films.

The Birch Grove and Other Stories

The Birch Grove and Other Stories PDF Author: Jaros?aw Iwaszkiewicz
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9789639241459
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz (1894-1980) was a significant Polish novelist and poet. Besides his literary work, he fulfilled various social roles during his long life. He studied law in Kiev, worked as a civil servant at the newly created Polish parliament (Sejm) after WW1, served at embassies in Copenhagen and Brussels, joined anti-nazi resistance during WW2, became member of parliament after the war, was president of the writers' union, received Lenin Prize for peace movement acitivities etc. His books are considered classics and even today they still sell well in Poland; some have been adapted into internationally successful films.

The Birch Grove and Other Stories

The Birch Grove and Other Stories PDF Author: Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633864976
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz's work is familiar to every Polish reader, yet remains unknown to the outside world. The stories in this selection were all written in the 1930s, and provide an extraordinary evocation of Poland's first brief era of independence between the wars. They are also timeless sonatas of love and loss. In 'A New Love', Iwaszkiewicz uses masterful brevity to take a wry, comical look at the illusion of romance from the viewpoint of a jaded, cynical lover. One of his best-known works, 'The Wilko Girls', tells of a middle-aged man's quest to recover his lost youth in the aftermath of the First World War, which has left him psychologically scarred. He travels to the scene of his pre-war summer holidays in the eastern borderlands, where he renews his friendship with the fascinating sisters whom he knew when they were girls. But no one is the same and nothing can be as it was. 'The Birch Grove' is the moving story of a woodsman who, spiritually destroyed by the death of his wife, has buried himself away in an isolated forest. When his lively younger brother unexpectedly comes to stay, his self-centred peace is disrupted. But his brother has come home to die. The lives of two young men, one a deeply religious poet, the other a sceptical, worldly estate owner, are touchingly contrasted in 'The Mill on the River Utrata'. Confirming these stories' central place in Polish cultural history, 'The Wilko Girls' and 'The Birch Grove' were made into classic films by Andrzej Wajda, Poland's leading director.

Being Poland

Being Poland PDF Author: Tamara Trojanowska
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442622520
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 853

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Book Description
Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland’s return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland’s cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland’s modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.

Dark Companion

Dark Companion PDF Author: Marta Acosta
Publisher: Tor Teen
ISBN: 1429988290
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Jane Eyre meets Twilight in Dark Companion, a lush and romantic YA gothic tale about an orphaned girl who attends an exclusive private school and finds herself torn between the headmistress's two sons. Orphaned at the age of six, Jane Williams has grown up in a series of foster homes, learning to survive in the shadows of life. Through hard work and determination, she manages to win a scholarship to the exclusive Birch Grove Academy. There, for the first time, Jane finds herself accepted by a group of friends. She even starts tutoring the headmistress's gorgeous son, Lucien. Things seem too good to be true. They are. The more she learns about Birch Grove's recent past, the more Jane comes to suspect that there is something sinister going on. Why did the wife of a popular teacher kill herself? What happened to the former scholarship student, whose place Jane took? Why does Lucien's brother, Jack, seem to dislike her so much? As Jane begins to piece together the answers to the puzzle, she must find out why she was brought to Birch Grove—and what she would risk to stay there.... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Lady of Expectations and Other Stories

A Lady of Expectations and Other Stories PDF Author: Stephanie Laurens
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1459244478
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
A Lady of Expectations Jack Lester seeks the perfect bride—one who is attractive and kind, but who also loves him in spite of his wealth. Which is why he keeps this trifling detail hidden. But when Sophie Winterton enters his life, believing he must marry into wealth to run his family's estate, how will he convince her that she is the woman he desires—and that he can be the husband she deserves? Secrets of a Courtesan Eve Nightingale thought she had put her past as mistress to the Duke of Welburn behind her. But when the handsome duke strolls into her small village, she finds it hard to keep her secrets concealed…and to keep her heart from stirring for him once again. How to Woo a Spinster Still unmarried at twenty-eight, Lady Emmaline Daughtry has resigned herself to spinsterhood. Then Captain John Alistair arrives at her door—the very image of the perfect lover of her most private dreams. But can a man with a secret and a woman who's never known love find happiness together?

Avala Is Falling

Avala Is Falling PDF Author: Biljana Jovanović
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863589
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
In Avala Is Falling, Jovanović’s breakout success in 1978, a young woman challenges the expectations that teachers, parents, bus drivers, and doctors have for her. The “Avala” of the title refers to a mountain south of Belgrade which is home to some of Serbia’s most important nationalist monuments and shrines; it is also the site of the main mental hospital for the region, and its “falling” is the unexpected fulfillment of a prophecy from a traditional Serbian folk song. Jovanović’s use of stream of consciousness in her characters’ thinking and speaking, as well as of intertextuality in description and plot advancement heralded the arrival of an innovative new writer who was determined to break with the of traditional concerns of earlier women writers. This book is now recognized as much more than “jeans prose,” although the fame the book achieved under that characterization eventually pushed it to cult status. Jovanović is now considered a major avant-garde writer, whose stylistic innovations were as challenging as her women-centered themes.

The Visoko Chronicle

The Visoko Chronicle PDF Author: Ivan Tavčar
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633864348
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This historical novel—Visoška kronika in the Slovene original—is about two generations of the owners of the Visoko estate in the Duchy of Carniola, a predominantly Slovene province of the Habsburg Empire, in the seventeenth century. The events of the estate and the fate of its owners are affected by witchcraft persecutions, the mistreatment of Protestants, and the Thirty Years’ War. These themes are key to the construction of a Slovene national identity, which was going through a decisive phase as Tavčar was writing. By the time the novel was released in 1919, his nation had left the Habsburg Crown for the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The work is both romantic and realistic. The deeply romantic motive of crime, repentance, and punishment intertwines the lives of father and son. The very acquisition of the estate is connected to a murder, which casts a long shadow over the next generation. Tavčar insists on the principle of man’s full responsibility for his acts, which can be repaired with action and determination. The author’s bleak realistic description of the farm life at Visoko reflects his polemical view of the Slovene farmer of his time.

The Prose of the Mountains

The Prose of the Mountains PDF Author: Aleksandre Quazbegi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155053529
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The Prose of the Mountains contains three tales of the Caucasus by Aleksandre Qazbegi, one of the most prescient and gifted chroniclers of the Georgian encounter with colonial modernity. His stories offer an invaluable counterpoint to the predominantly Russian narratives that have hitherto shaped scholarly accounts of the nineteenth-century Caucasus. ?Memoirs of a Shepherd? poignantly chronicles the young author?s decision to pass seven years of his life as a shepherd with Georgian mountaineers. ?Eliso? (the name of a Chechen girl) offers one of the most searing accounts on record of the forced migration of this people from their homeland to Ottoman lands. Set in the sixteenth century, ?Khevis Beri Gocha? (the name of a Georgian village chief) classically chronicles a tragic misunderstanding between a severe father and his loving son.

A Tale of Two Worlds

A Tale of Two Worlds PDF Author: Vjenceslav Novak
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 6155225834
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
In this novel, written by the esteemed novelist in 1901, a provincial composer and organist from Croatia struggles to find his way along the perilous frontier between the worlds of artistic vocation and humdrum family life. The local kapellmeister—-a Czech, in good Habsburg tradition, and a confidant of Gaj and Palacky, influential politicians of the time—-recognizes young Amadej Zlatanic as a prodigy and persuades the stingy mayor and stubborn parish priest to pack the teenager off to the conservatory in Prague. After several years of sordid student purgatory, Amadej returns to Croatia—-ready for love and ready to make great art.The world of Central Europe in the 1860s flows past, and Amadej tries to keep abreast of political change. At the same time he ducks and dodges predatory relatives and townspeople in his native district, to which he has returned for the sake of employment. Despite his marriage to the impressionable and vulnerable local beauty, Adelka, and his devotion to their daughter Veruska, Amadej is sorely troubled by the political corruption and isolation of Croatia. His wife takes ill and his family is poor. Yet ultimately it is the vulgar, populist notion of Croatian "identity"—-symbolized by the worship of the tamburica, a local musical instrument—-that crushes Amadej's career. As it does so, he contemplates the two worlds of national greatness, amidst the Croatian national awakening, and international fame. Finally, frustrated beyond relief by unsuccessful affairs both amorous and professional, and tortured by the philistinism surrounding him, Amadej leaves the world of sanity for a mind-blowing descent into the maniacal and inescapable world of hallucination, paganism, and paranoia.

The House of a Thousand Floors

The House of a Thousand Floors PDF Author: Jan Weiss
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633860717
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The House of a Thousand Floors is one of the earliest science-fiction novels in European literature, published first in 1929. Besides being a pioneer in its genre, the book is highly regarded for its general merits as psychological literature. The novel tells the story of a dream in fever of a soldier wounded in World War I. He finds himself in the stairway of a gigantic (and kafkaesque) tower-like building, which is a metaphor for modern society. He learns that his task is to rescue Princess Tamara from Muller, the lord of the edifice. After a number of surrealistic encounters in the building, during which he is hailed as a liberator by many and is hunted by the cruel security guards, the main character finds Tamara and faces the cruel lord of Mullerdom. The novel makes fine use of a range of experimental styles and techniques. At times, linear storytelling gives way to a collage of incongruous elements: excerpts from fictitious books, encyclopedia articles, radio broadcast transcripts are used as a shortcut to describe places or events; other narrative ingredients include fanciful advertisements, ludicrous administrative documents or political slogans which highlight the idiosyncrasies of this decadent world.