Restless Memories


Book Description




The Memory Monster


Book Description

The controversial English-language debut of celebrated Israeli novelist Yishai Sarid is a harrowing, ironic parable of how we reckon with human horror, in which a young, present-day historian becomes consumed by the memory of the Holocaust. Written as a report to the chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, our unnamed narrator recounts his own undoing. Hired as a promising young historian, he soon becomes a leading expert on Nazi methods of extermination at concentration camps in Poland during World War II and guides tours through the sites for students and visiting dignitaries. He hungrily devours every detail of life and death in the camps and takes pride in being able to recreate for his audience the excruciating last moments of the victims’ lives. The job becomes a mission, and then an obsession. Spending so much time immersed in death, his connections with the living begin to deteriorate. He resents the students lost in their iPhones, singing sentimental songs, not expressing sufficient outrage at the genocide committed by the Nazis. In fact, he even begins to detect, in the students as well as himself, a hint of admiration for the murderers—their efficiency, audacity, and determination. Force is the only way to resist force, he comes to think, and one must be prepared to kill. With the perspicuity of Kafka’s The Trial and the obsessions of Delillo’s White Noise, The Memory Monster confronts difficult questions that are all too relevant to Israel and the world today: How do we process human brutality? What makes us choose sides in conflict? And how do we honor the memory of horror without becoming consumed by it? Praise for The Memory Monster: “Award-winning Israeli novelist Sarid’s latest work is a slim but powerful novel, rendered beautifully in English by translator Greenspan…. Propelled by the narrator’s distinctive voice, the novel is an original variation on one of the most essential themes of post-Holocaust literature: While countless writers have asked the question of where, or if, humanity can be found within the profoundly inhumane, Sarid incisively shows how preoccupation and obsession with the inhumane can take a toll on one’s own humanity…. it is, if not an indictment of Holocaust memorialization, a nuanced and trenchant consideration of its layered politics. Ultimately, Sarid both refuses to apologize for Jewish rage and condemns the nefarious forms it sometimes takes. A bold, masterful exploration of the banality of evil and the nature of revenge, controversial no matter how it is read.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review “[A] record of a breakdown, an impassioned consideration of memory and its risks, and a critique of Israel’s use of the Holocaust to shape national identity…. Sarid’s unrelenting examination of how narratives of the Holocaust are shaped makes for much more than the average confessional tale.” —Publishers Weekly “Reading The Memory Monster, which is written as a report to the director of Yad Vashem, felt like both an extremely intimate experience and an eerily clinical Holocaust history lesson. Perfectly treading the fine line between these two approaches, Sarid creates a haunting exploration of collective memory and an important commentary on humanity. How do we remember the Holocaust? What tolls do we pay to carry on memory? This book hit me viscerally, emotionally, and personally. The Memory Monster is brief, but in its short account Sarid manages to lay bare the tensions between memory and morals, history and nationalism, humanity and victimhood. An absolute must-read.” —Julia DeVarti, Literati Bookstore (Ann Arbor, MI) “In Yishai Sarid’s dark, thoughtful novel The Memory Monster, a Holocaust historian struggles with the weight of his profession…. The Memory Monster is a novel that pulls no punches in its exploration of the responsibility—and the cost—of holding vigil over the past.” —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews




Haunted Serbia


Book Description

Haunting is what happens when the past is disturbed and the victims of previous violence, who are thought to be buried and forgotten, are brought back to the present and made to live again. Serbian fiction writers of the 1980s exhume the ghosts of the past, re-remembering the cruelty of the twentieth century, reinterpreting the heroic role of the Partisans and the extraordinary measures taken to defend Yugoslavia’s recently won independence and socialist revolution. Their uncanny and ghostly imagery challenges the assumptions of the master discourse promoted by the country’s orthodox communist authorities and questions the historical roots of social and cultural identities. The instability of this period of transition is deepened during the wars of the 1990s, when authors turn from the memory of past violence to face the ferocious brutality of new conflicts. The haunting evocations in their work continue to articulate fresh uncertainties as the trappings of modern civilization are stripped away and replaced by the destructive logic of civil war. The past returns once more with renewed energy in the struggle to make sense of a vastly changed world.




The Complete Stories


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New York Times Notable Book of the Year Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1997 With an Introduction by Robert Giroux, The Complete Stories of Bernard Malamud is "an essential American book," Richard Stern declared in the Chicago Tribune when the collection was published in hardcover. His praise was echoed by other reviewers and by readers, who embraced the book as they might a displaced person in one of Malamud's stories, now returned to us, complete and fulfilled and recognized at last. The volume gathers together fifty-five stories, from "Armistice" (1940) to "Alma Redeemed" (1984), and including the immortal stories from The Magic Barrel and the vivid depictions of the unforgettable Fidelman. It is a varied and generous collection of great examples of the modern short story, which Malamud perfected, and an ideal introduction to the work of this great American writer.




Never Die Today


Book Description

As they careened to the left, to his surprise the wounded Iroquois was not in a spin. Though the pilot was dead, the co-pilot was flying. Once the olive green bird slapped the ground and the twin rotor-blades were still, maybe there was just enough room for the escort gunship to land and get them out if the blades were rotated. Unfortunately while he turned the blades no one would be shooting at Charlie.




Touch


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Touch is an electrifying thriller by the author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and 84K. He tried to take my life. Instead, I took his. It was a long time ago. I remember it was dark, and I didn't see my killer until it was too late. As I died, my hand touched his. That's when the first switch took place. Suddenly, I was looking through the eyes of my killer, and I was watching myself die. Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone. Some people touch lives. Others take them. I do both. More by Claire North:The Gameshouse84KThe End of the DayThe Sudden Appearance of HopeTouchThe First Fifteen Lives of Harry August




Poetry by Dino


Book Description

The art of Poetry I have been writing poetry for only a few years, and as such, can I really consider myself a poet?. The answer to this question is Yes. To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. Each individual who takes on the quest of writing poetry, places upon his, or her self not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion. Poetry is, not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. As a painter uses color, and the lack of color, light and shade, the poet uses language as his canvas, A poet uses the written word to express his "pictures" to the world. And if the poet is successful in what he is trying to say to the reader, it becomes the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out, perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. At times, I may get a thought, and have a clear idea what I want to say, and before the poem is finished, I have gone in a totally different direction, as the lines and ideas flow in and out of my mind until the next one comes along to leave the finished poem in no way resembling the original idea that I started with. This is true of the Painter as well, seeing things not as they are, but as the Painter imagines they are. Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. The poet doesn't invent. He listens. The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. I find as I read through the hard copies of poems that I have written, there are many changed lines, or thoughts, crossed out and rearranged in an attempt to get the thoughts just as i imagine them in my mind, and that is a very difficult thing to accomplish. Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. It enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician in sounds. All are on the same plane in my opinion, and all express to the audience in attendance, the thoughts of the artist. An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have. Although people enjoy the art of the poet, the painter, the musician, these are not things that we need to survive, only things that help us enjoy, in a small way that survival. Dean Evans




The Face


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A revelatory short memoir from the author and Zen Buddhist priest Ruth Ozeki about how her face has shaped and been shaped by her life




Poems


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Under the Spell, Book 5 of the Incognito Series


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Alex Lynch has spent a lifetime working hard toward the goal of owning the Triple Aces Ranch in Fever, TX. His dream has finally come true when Gina CalhounÑa girl heÕd loved all his life, despite her penchant for looking for trouble and his penchant for bailing her outÑdrops back into his life, seemingly out of nowhere. Network Communications and Systems Analyst Justine Fielding, the former Gina Calhoun, is all grown up, more beautiful than ever...and even more restless. Little does Alex know that the woman heÕs falling under the spell of all over again is there on a mission to uncover and stop the dangerous men who killed her fatherÑAlex being her chief suspect. This time, Gina may be the only one who can bail him out of the trouble about to come down on him.




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