La Nuit du Titanic

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R. M. Ballantyne

A nineteenth century adventure story of three teenaged boys shipwrecked on a Pacific island. At first they lead an idyllic life but this is soon interrupted by the arrival on the island of rival Polynesian war parties and then pirates. After various adventures the boys find themselves in possession of the pirate’s ship and can sail for home.

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Zoé Valdés

"I Gave You All I Had introduces Cuca Martinez - a.k.a. Cuquita, Cuchita, the Girl - the youngest child in a brood of five, born in prerevolutionary Cuba to a flighty would-be actress and a Chinese enthusiast of New World riches upon whom fortune has consistently failed to smile. At sixteen, she heads for Havana in search of work."--BOOK JACKET. "There, a pair of strumpets named La Mechanga and La Puchanga introduce her to the sweet mischief of nighttime Havana, in which she meets Juan, the love of her life - only to see him disappear for eight years. When Juan resurfaces on the eve of the Revolution, Cuca believes her dreams are finally to be realized, but the political climate and Juan's shady dealings force him into hasty exile in America."--BOOK JACKET. "And so Cuca, like Cuba itself, waits. She waits for the promised dreams - of happiness, of plenty, of joy, of love - to arrive, and watches her country slide into a barren, repressive slumber. And while she waits, Cuca and her friends struggle, in the midst of those shattered dreams, to survive: they improvise, they scavenge, they make love, they remember, and above all, they talk."--BOOK JACKET.

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Lydia H. Liu

This study - bridging contemporary theory, Chinese history, comparative literature, and culture studies - analyzes the historical interactions among China, Japan, and the West in terms of "translingual practice." By this term, the author refers to the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arose, circulated, and acquired legitimacy in early modern China as it contacted/collided with European/Japanese languages and literatures. In reexamining the rise of modern Chinese literature in this context, the book asks three central questions: How did "modernity" and "the West" become legitimized in May Fourth literary discourse? What happened to native agency in this complex process of legitimation? How did the Chinese national culture imagine and interpret its own moment of unfolding? . After the first chapter, which deals with the theoretical issues, ensuing chapters treat particular instances of translingual practice such as national character, individualism, stylistic innovations, first-person narration, and canon formation.

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Michael Axworthy

"Empire of the Mind tells the story of Iranian history from the earliest times up to the present day, from before the Achaemenids through to the Islamic Republic. It highlights the uniqueness of Iranian identity as one of the oldest continuing civilisations in the world. In doing so, as well as describing political events and covering military and dynastic matters, it emphasises the role of cultural, literary, religious and intellectual movements in Iran, and the leading personalities and ideas that shaped them, in order to demonstrate the way Iran has had an influence in the Middle East and Asia (and beyond) through the power of Persianate culture rather than through conventional political and military means - an Empire of the Mind at least as much as an Empire of the Sword. The book explains the origin of some of the paradoxes of Iran, that derive from Iran's complex history of Empires (Parthian, Sassanid, Abbasid, Safavid), foreign invasions (Alexandrian, Arab, Mongol) and religious revolutions, giving due attention to minorities like the Jews (who have been present in Iran since before the beginning of the earliest human empire), Kurds, Zoroastrians, Armenians and Azeris."--Jacket.