La Compagnie du canal de Suez

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William Boyd

"What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? During the long, hot summer of 1976, Ruth Gilmartin discovers that her very English mother Sally is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigree and one-time spy." "In 1939 Eva is a beautiful 28-year-old living in Paris. As war breaks out, she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious, patrician Englishman. Under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one. Even those she loves most." "Since then Eva has carefully rebuilt her life - but once a spy, always a spy. And now she must complete one final assignment. This time, though, Eva can't do it alone: she needs her daughter's help."--BOOK JACKET.

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Karen O'Brien

Is there a common European identity? If so, what kinds of history does it possess? Narratives of Enlightenment examines the literary and historical achievements of major figures such as Voltaire, David Hume, William Robertson, Edward Gibbon and the American historian David Ramsay in the light of eighteenth-century political and national debates in France, Scotland, England and America. Undertaking a comparative reappraisal of these writers, Karen O'Brien investigates the degree and nature of their intellectual investments in the idea of a common European civilisation. This original and incisive study intervenes from the perspective of literary criticism in contemporary debates about Enlightenments past and present, the political uses for narrative, and the European contexts of national awareness.

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Alex Hughes and Keith Reader

The international team of contributors and consultants have provided over 700 entries offering wide-ranging coverage and crossing the traditional boundaries between disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. French culture is defined in its broadest sense and areas covered include: economy, education, film, food and wine, gender and sexuality, intellectual life, language and identity, literature, media, music, performing arts, politics, religion, society, and visual arts. Entries range from shorter, factual contributions to longer overview essays, and provide an essential context for anyone studying French, readers with an interest in critical theory and anyone pursuing comparative studies in European culture.

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M.J. Morgan

Drawing on research from a variety of academic fields, such as archaeology, history, botany, ecology, and physical science, M. J. Morgan explores the intersection of people and the environment in early eighteenth-century Illinois Country?a stretch of fecund, alluvial river plain along the Mississippi river. Arguing against the traditional narrative that describes Illinois as an untouched wilderness until the influx of American settlers, Morgan illustrates how the story began much earlier. She focuses her study on early French and Indian communities, and later on the British, nestled within the tripartite environment of floodplain, riverine cliffs and bluffs, and open, upland till plain/prairie and examines the impact of these diverse groups of people on the ecological landscape. By placing human lives within the natural setting of the period?the abundant streams and creeks, the prairies, plants and wildlife?she traces the environmental change that unfolded across almost a century.^ She describes how it was a land in motion; how the occupying peoples used, extracted, and extirpated its resources while simultaneously introducing new species; and how the flux and flow of life mirrored the movement of the rivers. Morgan emphasizes the importance of population sequences, the relationship between the aboriginals and the Europeans, the shared use of resources, and the effects of each on the habitat. Land of Big Rivers is a unique, many-themed account of the big-picture ecological change that occurred during the early history of the Illinois Country. It is the first book to consider the environmental aspects of the Illinois Indian experience and to reconsider the role of the French and British in environmental change in the mid-Mississippi Valley.^ It engagingly recreates presettlement Illinois with a remarkable interdisciplinary approach and provides new details that will encourage understanding of the interaction between physical geography and the plants, animals, and people in the Illinois Country. Furthermore, it exhibits the importance of looking at the past in the context of environmental transformation, which is especially relevant in light of today?s global climate change.