Literature

Felisberto Hernández

A giant of Latin American letters and precursor to the magic realist writers is well served by this absorbing translation of some of his most acclaimed works. Once a pianist who accompanied silent films, Felisberto Hernández crafts luminous works that reflect the guileless drama and visual intensity of silent films. His characters, all pianists of one level or other, are constantly reliving a past recital or pondering their next performance. Music is the subtext for narratives that plumb aspects of memory and thought, without a definable plot. Hernández revels in images that are simple and repetitive: arms, light and shadow, the houses of the wealthy and their odd contents. The stories acquire a luxurious sheen from the ease with which they navigate memories, taking pleasure in recounting them with no intention other than tracking the mind's twists and turns.

Dick Francis

Dick Francis was a British jockey and crime writer, many of whose novels centre around horse racing.

Rimes De La Mere Oie

Rimes De La Mere Oie is a book of French translations of Mother Goose nursery rhymes.

A Humument

In the mid-1960s, Tom Phillips took a forgotten nineteenth-century novel, W. H. Mallock's A Human Document, and began cutting and pasting the extant text to create something new. The artist writes, 'I plundered, mined and undermined its text to make it yield the ghosts of other possible stories, scenes, poems, erotic incidents and surrealist catastrophes which seemed to lurk within its wall of words. As I worked on it, I replaced the text I'd stripped away with visual images of all kinds. I began to tell and depict, among other memories, dreams and reflections, the sad story of Bill Toge, one of love's casualties.' After its first publication in book form in 1980, A Humument rapidly became a cult classic.

Paul Morand

A globetrotter, diplomat, and bohemian, Morand specialized in short stories and travel essays and was one of the best-known French writers during the era between the two World Wars. His work evoked the cosmopolitan atmosphere and energetic social life of the postwar period while creating psychological portraits of hedonistic, often disillusioned characters. His witty, fast-paced descriptive prose is rich in imagery and has led some critics to categorize him as a French modernist and imagist.

Swallows and Amazons

Swallows and Amazons is a series of children's books by English author Arthur Ransome, named after the title of the first book in the series. The 12 books involve adventures by groups of children almost all during the school holidays and mostly in England and Scotland, between the two World Wars. The stories revolve around outdoor activities, especially sailing. The series remains popular today for its idyllic, yet often realistic, depiction of childhood and the interplay between youthful imagination and reality. It is part of the basis for a large tourist industry in the Lake District and Norfolk Broads areas of England, where many of the books are set

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E magazine

The magazine most often referenced as the breeding ground for the group of writers who became known as the Language poets.

Christian Bök

Christian Bök is a sound poet and conceptual artist who has produced numerous artist’s books, including books made entirely of Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks. Additionally, he has invented languages for the science-fiction television shows Earth: Final Conflict and Amazon.

Novalis

Novalis is best known in history as the poet of early German Romanticism. In , Novalis Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia, he reflects on numerous aspects of human culture, including philosophy, poetry, the natural sciences, the fine arts, mathematics, mineralogy, history, and religion, and brings them all together into what he calls a "Romantic Encyclopaedia" or "Scientific Bible."

Ring Lardner

Ring Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.

Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime