Necklace and Calabash


Book Description

Brought back into print in the 1990s to wide acclaim, re-designed new editions of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee Mysteries are now available. Written by a Dutch diplomat and scholar during the 1950s and 1960s, these lively and historically accurate mysteries have entertained a devoted following for decades. Set during the T'ang dynasty, they feature Judge Dee, a brilliant and cultured Confucian magistrate disdainful of personal luxury and corruption, who cleverly selects allies to help him navigate the royal courts, politics, and ethnic tensions in imperial China. Robert van Gulik modeled Judge Dee on a magistrate of that name who lived in the seventh century, and he drew on stories and literary conventions of Chinese mystery writing dating back to the Sung dynasty to construct his ingenious plots. Necklace and Calabash finds Judge Dee returning to his district of Poo-yang, where the peaceful town of Riverton promises a few days' fishing and relaxation. Yet a chance meeting with a Taoist recluse, a gruesome body fished out of the river, strange guests at the Kingfisher Inn, and a princess in distress thrust the judge into one of the most intricate and baffling mysteries of his career. An expert on the art and erotica as well as the literature, religion, and politics of China, van Gulik also provides charming illustrations to accompany his engaging and entertaining mysteries.







The Judge Dee Novels of R.H. van Gulik


Book Description

From 1949 to 1968 author Robert van Gulick wrote 15 novels, two novellas and eight short stories featuring Judge Dee, a Chinese magistrate and detective from the Tang dynasty. In addition to providing the setting for riveting mysteries, Dee's world highlighted aspects of traditional Chinese culture through his personal relationships with his wives, his lieutenants and the citizens he served with dedication on the emperor's behalf. This book gives a synopsis of each Judge Dee story, along with commentary on plots, characters, themes and historical details. Exploring van Gulik's influence on Chinese and Western detective fiction and on the image of China in popular 20th century American literature, this study brings to light a significant contributor to the development of detective fiction.




The Haunted Monastery and The Chinese Maze Murders


Book Description

In 'The Haunted Monastery', Judge Dee and his wives seek refuge from a violent mountain storm and are plunged into a bizarre series of interrelated crimes. Three women have been murdered in the monastery; Dee has seen something impossible, perhaps supernatural, and inexplicable events flash forth in the dark tangle of corridors and the Taoist Hell - a hall filled with statuary showing realistically the torments of Hell.




A Necklace of Springbok Ears


Book Description

Where once there were twenty-nine San Bushman languages and/or dialects in Southern Africa, few now remain. The loss of these languages results in the loss of their stored oral culture and indigenous knowledge. All that remains are archaeological evidence and rock art, or slim archives recorded by individuals, such as Wilhelm Bleek, Lucy Lloyd and GR von Wielligh, who heard the encroaching language and cultural death knell before it was too late. The contents of this study hang together as in a "e;necklace of springbok ears"e;. The last dancing rattle and necklace has long since crumbled to dust. Yet the binding string serves as a useful metaphor for the literary texts discussed here and their relation to the culture of the First People. The cosmology embedded in the /Xam myths as recorded by Von Wielligh between the Cederberg and the Gariep (or Orange) River seems to share much with contemporary consciousness: in order to survive, humankind needs to recognise the interdependence of all life.




Sex and the Empire That Is No More


Book Description

J. Lorand Matory researches the trans-Atlantic comings and goings of Yoruba religion, as well as ethnic diversity in Black North America. With the support of the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education's Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, he has conducted extensive field research in Brazil, Nigeria, and the United States. Dr. Matory is also the author of Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton University Press). He is currently researching a book on the history and experience of Nigerians, Trinidadians, Ethiopians, black Indians, Louisiana Creoles and other ethnic groups that make up black North American society. It focuses on the creative coexistence of these groups at the United States' leading "historically Black university"—Howard University




The Chinese Nail Murders


Book Description

Judge Dee and his helpers investigate a series of murders despite pressure to solve them quickly.




Poets and Murder


Book Description

Master detective Judge Dee sets out to solve a puzzling double murder and discovers that complicated passions lurk beneath the seemingly tranquil landscape of academic life. A student has been murdered; a beautiful poetess is accused of whipping her maidservant to death; and further mysteries lie in the shadows of the Shrine of the Black Fox.




Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya


Book Description

The Samburu of northern Kenya struggle to maintain their pastoral way of life as drought and the side effects of globalization threaten both their livestock and their livelihood. Mirroring this divide between survival and ruin are the lines between the self and the other, the living and the dead, "this side" and inia bata, "that side." Cultural anthropologist Bilinda Straight, who has lived with the Samburu for extended periods since the 1990s, bears witness to Samburu life and death in Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya. Written mostly in the field, Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya is the first book-length ethnography completely devoted to Samburu divinity and belief. Here, child prophets recount their travels to heaven and back. Others report transformations between persons and inanimate objects. Spirit turns into action and back again. The miraculous is interwoven with the mundane as the Samburu continue their day-to-day twenty-first-century existence. Straight describes these fantastic movements inside the cultural logic that makes them possible; thus she calls into question how we experience, how we feel, and how anthropologists and their readers can best engage with the improbable. In her detailed and precise accounts, Straight writes beyond traditional ethnography, exploring the limits of science and her own limits as a human being, to convey the significance of her time with the Samburu as they recount their fantastic yet authentic experiences in the physical and metaphysical spaces of their culture.




The Chinese Lake Murders


Book Description

In the third installment of Robert Van Gulik's classic ancient Chinese mystery series based on historical court records, magistrate, lawyer, and detective Judge Dee has his work cut out for him. Set in 666 A.D., in the hidden city of Han-yuan, sixty miles from the imperial capital of ancient China, Dee is sent to investigate a case of embezzlement of government funds. But things are about to get more complicated for the great detective. Just before he is about to take leave of Han-yuan, the popular courtesan Almond Blossom disappears, and then a bride who dies on her wedding night also disappears from her coffin -- her body replaced with that of a murdered man. To make matters worse, Judge Dee is confronted with the dangerous sect called the White Lotus.