Bøger udgivet af Seagull Books London Ltd

An engaging exploration of romance focusing on disparate ages of lovers. Sunday evening, Tegel Airport, Berlin: A woman strikes up a conversation with a man, Robert Sturm, who is thirty-six years old and eighteen years her junior. He is on his way to Siberia and will return the following Saturday. She cannot wait . . . In 1981 she came to West Berlin as an eighteen-year-old to study medicine and met Viktor, who was twice her age. Though he opened the world up to her, he remained closed himself. At the turn of the millennium and thirty-six, she meets Johann. He is thirty-six too. They try to make a life together, but their jobs aren't the only things that are precarious. Saturday morning, Tegel Airport again: For six days, her everyday life and her memories have become entwined. Why are the men in her life always thirty-six? Is she still the person she remembers? Or, being someone who knows their way around the mind, is she in fact what she has forgotten?

A captivating and wide-ranging interpretation of accidental dismounting.   In Pascal Quignard's writing, philology hunts for wild game in a dark forest. The Unsaddled, which features horses as its central figure, is no exception. Taking off from puns, multifarious imagery, and metaphorical meanings-"to be baffled," "to be thrown"-that the book's title provides, Quignard focuses on life-changing moments. We meet George Sand (whose father died after being thrown from his horse), Saint Paul, Abelard, Agrippa d'Aubigné, and countless other writers, philosophers, theologians, or kings who fell off their horses-not to forget Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was knocked over by a dog. Being "unsaddled" can also be associated, as Quignard shows in regard to Nietzsche, with an "overturning" of values. Scenes of war, hunting, "fleeing" or sexuality-"When lovers have a horse ride, they gallop in another world"-come before our eyes, each time from those unsettling vantage points that Quignard knows how to find. As ever, he ranges far and wide in his intense quest, taking examples from across human history, from the neolithic age to his own childhood memories of postwar Le Havre in northern France.

Dramatic sketches full of surprising, unpredictable twists and turns from a major twentieth-century German-language author.   A member of the Gruppe 47 writers' group which sought to renew German-language literature after World War II, Ilse Aichinger (1921-2016) achieved great acclaim as a writer of fiction, poetry, prose, and radio drama. The vignettes in At No Time each begin in recognizable situations, often set in Vienna or other Austrian cities, but immediately swerve into bizarre encounters, supernatural or fantastical situations. Precisely drawn yet disturbingly skewed, they are both naturalistic and disjointed, like the finest surrealist paintings. Created to be experienced on the page or on the radio rather than the stage, they echo the magic realism of her short stories. Even though they frequently take a dark turn, they remain full of humor, agility, and poetic freedom.

Poetic prose meditations translated superbly into English.   Austrian poet Friederike Mayröcker is widely considered one of the most important European poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The last book of hers to be published during her lifetime, as mornings and moosgreen I. Step to the window is an elliptical and, if at times cryptic, deeply personal, playful, and highly poetic collection of experiences, memories, dreams, desires, fears, visions, observations, and peregrinations through landscapes both real and imagined. The volume bears witness to her unique late lyrical style of pyrotechnical cut-up. Among many others, her beloved Derrida, Duchamp, Hölderlin, and Jean-Paul all appear, almost like guides, as Mayröcker bravely makes her way through infirmity, old age, and loneliness, prolonging her time as a prolific writer as much as possible.

A richly illustrated analysis from one of Europe's greatest living philosophers.   In Pinocchio, Giorgio Agamben turns his keen philosopher's eye to the famous nineteenth-century novel by Carlo Collodi. To Agamben, Pinocchio's adventures are a kind of initiation into life itself. Like us, the mischievous puppet is caught between two worlds. He is faced with the alternatives of submitting to authority or of carrying on, stubbornly indulging his way of being. From Agamben's virtuoso interpretation of this classic story, we learn that we can harbor the mystery of existence only if we are not aware of it, only if we manage to cohabit with an area of non-knowledge, immemorial and very near. Richly illustrated with images from three early editions of Collodi's novel, this new volume will delight enthusiasts of both literature and philosophy.

A fresh translation of the second volume of Max Frisch‿s diaries. By the time Swiss author Max Frisch published the second volume of his diaries or sketchbooks, he had achieved international recognition as a writer and dramatist. In this volume, he develops his version of the literary diary as a mosaic of musings on architecture and writing, travelogue, autobiography, and political insight. He considers Cold War tensions as well as the civil rights and anti‿Vietnam War movements in the United States. Now middle-aged himself, he looks squarely at men‿s evolving attitude to life, love, sex, women, and status. And for all the idyllic descriptions of his new home in Berzona, Frisch becomes increasingly critical of his native Switzerland, in particular the crackdowns on left-wingers and protestors, and receives abuse for his stance. Based on the second German edition that reinstated material that had been removed from the original 1972 version, this fresh and definitive translation brings an important mid-twentieth-century European classic back to life. Â

With clear, conversational prose, this is the first book dedicated entirely to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's writings on translation. Through his many critically acclaimed novels, stories, essays, plays, and memoirs, Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o has been at the forefront of world literature for decades. He has also been, in his own words, "a language warrior," fighting for indigenous African languages to find their rightful place in the literary world. Having begun his writing career in English, Ngũgĩ shifted to writing in his native language Gikũyũ in 1977, a stance both creatively and politically significant. For decades now, Ngũgĩ has been translating his Gikũyũ works into English himself, and he has used many platforms to champion the practice and cause of literary translations, which he calls "the language of languages." This volume brings together for the first time Ngũgĩ's essays and lectures about translation, written and delivered over the past two decades. Here we find Ngũgĩ discussing translation as a conversation between cultures; proposing that dialogue among African languages is the way to unify African peoples; reflecting on the complexities of auto-translation or translating one's own work; exploring the essential task translation performed in the history of the propagation of thought; and pleading for the hierarchy of languages to be torn down. He also shares his many experiences of writing across languages, including his story The Upright Revolution, which has been translated into more than a hundred languages around the globe and is the most widely translated text written by an African author. At a time when dialogues between cultures and peoples are more essential than ever, The Language of Languages makes an outspoken case for the value of literature without borders.

"First published in English translation by Seagull Books, 2023"-- t.p. verso.

A meditation on the work of Italian artist Giorgio Morandi and its power to evoke a complexity of emotions and astonishment. In The Pilgrim's Bowl, Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet examines Giorgio Morandi's ascetic still lifes, contrasting his artistic approach to the life philosophies of two authors whom he cherished, Pascal and Leopardi, and reflecting on the few known autobiographical details we know about Morandi. In this small and erudite tome, Jaccottet draws us into the very heart of the artist's calm and strangely haunting oeuvre. In his literary criticism, Jaccottet is known for deeply engaging with the work of his fellow poets and tenaciously seeking the essence of their poetics. In this, his only book-length essay devoted to an artist, his critical prose likewise blends empathy, subtle discernment, and a determination to pinpoint, or at least glimpse, the elusive underlying qualities of Morandi's deceptively simple, dull-toned yet mysteriously luminous paintings. The Pilgrim's Bowl is a remarkably elucidating study based on a profound admiration for and a dialogue with Morandi's oeuvre.

A heart-wrenching story about love, loss, sex, the friendship between women, and the universal struggle to come to terms with death. Just before the outbreak of the July 2006 war in Lebanon, a middle-aged woman named Nahla has gone missing. Distraught, besieged, and without any leads, Nahla's dearest friends--Suad, Azizeh, Hoda, Nadine, and the narrator Alawiya--band together to console one another. They reminisce about the better days of their youth, lifetimes of romantic turmoil, the trouble with love, and their inescapable confrontation with death. Unsure whether Nahla has been killed in the fighting, fled the country, or disappeared into the oblivion of Alzheimer's, Alawiya pieces together Nahla's intimate past, simultaneously illuminating the jagged history of modern Lebanon. Through searching discussions with Nahla's closest confidante Suad, tenacious investigation, and an imaginative effort to reconstruct the life of another, Alawiya might just find a way to bring Nahla back. In This Thing Called Love, celebrated Lebanese novelist Alawiya Sobh takes the war between Israel and Hizballah as the backdrop for a heart-wrenching story about love, loss, sex, the friendship between women, and the universal struggle to come to terms with mortality.