- Reading Tao Yuanming
- Tao Yuanming (365?–427), although dismissed as a poet following his death, is now considered one of China’s greatest writers. This study of the posthumous reputation of a central figure in Chinese literary history, the mechanisms at work in the reception of his works, and the canonization of Tao himself and of particular readings of his works sheds light on the transformation of literature and culture in premodern China.
- Hardcover October 2008
- Loneliness as a Way of Life
- “What does it mean to be lonely?” Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. This book challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way.
- Hardcover September 2008
- Samuel Johnson
- Benefiting from recent critical scholarship that has explored new attitudes toward Johnson, Martin’s biography gives us a human and sympathetic portrait of Dr. Johnson. The Johnson that emerges from this biography is still the foremost figure of his age but a more rebellious, unpredictable, flawed, and sympathetic figure than has been previously known.
- Hardcover September 2008
- City Between Worlds
- Hong Kong is perched on the fault line between China and the West, a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. Lee offers an insider’s view of Hong Kong, capturing the history and culture that make his densely packed home city so different from its generic neighbors.
- Hardcover April 2008
- Out of the Alleyway
- In this critical study of Nakagami's life and oeuvre, Zimmerman delves into the writer's literary world, exploring the genres, forms, and themes with which Nakagami worked and experimented. These chapters trace the biographical thread running through his works while foregrounding such diverse facets of his writing as his interest in the modern possibilities of traditional myths and forms of storytelling, his deployment of shocking tropes and images, and his crafting of a unique poetic language.
- Hardcover January 2008
- Flaubert
- Brown brings his subject remarkably and fully to life, illuminating not only the novelist but also his milieu--the Paris and Normandy of the revolution of 1848 and of the Second Empire--with arresting clarity and a deepening sense of Flaubert's time and place. Flaubert is a sophisticated, thorough, and utterly absorbing re-creation of the life and times of the man who is arguably the architect of the modern novel.
- Paperback November 2007
See also: All Books in BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY.