Uphill against water

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selected, edited, and translated by John Bátki

"Gyula Krudy is one of the towering figures of twentieth century Hungarian literature. In addition to a stunning array of fiction - over eighty novels and stories - Krudy's non-fiction output is considerable, about eighteen hundred items of journalistic writing. These writings constitute a colourful and closely observed 'chronicle' of Hungary in the first decades of the twentieth century.". "Written during the 1910s, 20s and 30s, these articles offer a wistful and nostalgic image of the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, with portraits of the Habsburgs, culminating in first-hand reports in 1916, from Vienna on the funeral of Emperor Francis Joseph I, and from Budapest on the coronation of Charles IV, the last king of Hungary. Krudy's reports follow the bloodless democratic revolution of 1918, the Karolyi government and the short-lived Soviet Republic, and present cameos of the leading political figures of the day such as Ferenc Kossuth, Mihaly Karolyi and Bela Kun."--BOOK JACKET.

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Justin D. Edwards and Douglas Ivison

"Downtown Canada is a collection of essays that addresses Canada as an urban place. The contributors focus their attention on the writing of Canada's cities - including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax - and call attention to the centrality of the city in Canadian literature. They examine how characters are affected by the urban experience in works by authors as diverse as the country itself: Hugh MacLennan, Jovette Marchessault, Michael Ondaatje, Austin Clarke, and Gerald Lynch, to name just a few. Editors Justin D. Edwards and Douglas Ivison have brought together an esteemed group of international Canadian literary scholars. Together they have created a book that is timely and unique, questioning conventional assumptions about Canadian literature, and Canadian culture more generally."--Jacket.

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Bruce Michelson

"Trained as a printer while still a boy, and thrilled throughout his life by the automation of printing and the headlong expansion of American publishing, Mark Twain wrote about the consequences of this technological revolution for culture and personal identity. Printer's Devil is the first book to explore these themes in some of Twain's best-known literary works and in his most daring speculations on American society, the modern condition, and the nature of the self. Playfully and anxiously, Twain often thought about typeset words and published images as powerful forces for political and moral change, personal riches and ruin, and epistemological turmoil. In his later years, Twain wrote about the printing press as a center of meta-physical power, a force that could alter the fabric of reality. Studying these themes in Mark Twain's writings, Bruce Michelson also provides a fascinating overview of the technological changes that transformed the American printing and publishing industries during Twain's lifetime, changes that opened new possibilities for content, for speed of production, for the size and diversity of a potential audience, and for international fame. The story of Twain's life and art amid this media revolution is a story with powerful implications for our own time, as we ride another wave of radical change for printed texts, authors, truth, and consciousness."--Jacket.

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Ben Kane

"Tarquinius is an Etruscan, a warrior and soothsayer, born enemy of Rome, but doomed to fight for the Republic in the Forgotten Legion." "Brennus is a Gaul; the Romans killed his entire family. He rises to become one of the most famous and feared gladiators of his day - and mentor to the boy slave, Romulus, who dreams night and day of escape and revenge." "Romulus and Fabiola are twins, born into slavery after their mother is raped by a drunken nobleman. At thirteen years old they are sold: Romulus to gladiator school, Fabiola into prostitution, where she will catch the eye of one of the most powerful men in Rome." "The lives of these four characters are bound and interwoven in this marvellous story, which begins in a Rome riven by corruption, violence and political enmities, but ends far away, at the very border of the known world, where Romulus, Brennus and Tarquinius find themselves fighting against the Parthians and impossible odds."--Jacket.