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Beatrice And Virgil
''Beatrice and Virgil'' is Canadian writer Yann Martel's third novel. First published in April 2010, it contains an allegorical tale about representations of the Holocaust. It tells the story of Henry, a novelist, who receives the manuscript of a play in a letter from a reader. Intrigued, Henry traces the letter to a taxidermist, who introduces him to the play's protagonists, two taxidermy animals— Beatrice, a donkey, and Virgil, a monkey.Barber, JohnMartel's post-modern Holocaust allegory fetches $3-million advance ''The Globe and Mail'', April 6, 2010. ''The Globe and Mail'' reported that Martel received a $2 million advance from Random House for U.S. rights alone, and that the total advance for worldwide rights was around $3 million, probably the highest ever advance for a single Canadian novel. Martel's earlier novel, ''Life of Pi'', won the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and sold seven million copies worldwide.Flood, AlisonYann Martel takes break from lobbying PM to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yann Martel
Yann Martel, (born 25 June 1963) is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel ''Life of Pi'', an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the ''New York Times'' and ''The Globe and Mail'', among many other best-selling lists. ''Life of Pi'' was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. Martel is also the author of the novels ''The High Mountains of Portugal'',Knopf Canada: The High Mountains of Portugal Penguin Random House site. Retrieved 24 March 2016.Charles, Ron (21 January 2016 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Spiegelman
Art Spiegelman (; born Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman on February 15, 1948) is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazines ''Arcade (comics magazine), Arcade'' and ''Raw (magazine), Raw'' has been influential, and from 1992 he spent a decade as contributing artist for ''The New Yorker''. He is married to designer and editor Françoise Mouly, and is the father of writer Nadja Spiegelman. In September 2022, the National Book Foundation announced that he would receive the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Spiegelman began his career with Topps (a bubblegum and trading card company) in the mid-1960s, which was his main financial support for two decades; there he co-created parodic series such as ''Wacky Packages'' in the 1960s and ''Garbage Pail Kids'' in the 1980s. He gained prominence in the underground comix scene in the 1970s with short, experimental, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques The Fatalist
''Jacques the Fatalist and his Master'' (french: Jacques le fataliste et son maître) is a novel by Denis Diderot, written during the period 1765–1780. The first French edition was published posthumously in 1796, but it was known earlier in Germany, thanks to Schiller's partial translation, which appeared in 1785 and was retranslated into French in 1793, as well as Mylius's complete German version of 1792. Plot The main subject of the book is the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master, who is never named. The two are traveling to a destination the narrator leaves vague, and to dispel the boredom of the journey Jacques is compelled by his master to recount the story of his loves. However, Jacques's story is continually interrupted by other characters and various comic mishaps. Other characters in the book tell their own stories and they, too, are continually interrupted. There is even a "reader" who periodically interrupts the narrator with questions, objections, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Tales (Flaubert)
''Three Tales'' (french: Trois contes) is a work by Gustave Flaubert that was originally published in French in 1877. It consists of the short stories: "A Simple Heart", "Saint Julian the Hospitalier", and "Hérodias". "A Simple Heart" "A Simple Heart", or in French, is a story about a servant girl named Felicité. After her one and only love Théodore purportedly marries a well-to-do woman to avoid conscription, Felicité quits the farm where she works and heads for Pont-l'Évêque, Calvados, Pont-l'Évèque, where she picks up work in a widow's house as a servant. She is very loyal and easily lends her affections to the two children of her mistress, Mme Aubain. She gives entirely to others; although many take advantage of her, she is unaffected. She has no husband, no children, and no property, and is reliant on her mistress to keep her; she is uneducated; her death is virtually unnoticed. Despite her life being seemingly pointless, she has within her the power to love, whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert ( , , ; 12 December 1821 – 8 May 1880) was a French novelist. Highly influential, he has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel ''Madame Bovary'' (1857), his ''Correspondence'', and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert. Life Early life and education Flaubert was born in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot; 1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen. He began writi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guernica (painting)
''Guernica'' (; ) is a large 1937 oil painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso.Richardson (2016)Picasso, Pablo. Guernica.' Museo Reina Sofía. ''(Retrieved 2017-09-07.)'' It is one of his best-known works, regarded by many art critics as the most moving and powerful anti-war painting in history. It is exhibited in the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. The grey, black, and white painting, on a canvas tall and across, portrays the suffering wrought by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, screaming women, a dead baby, a dismembered soldier, and flames. Picasso painted ''Guernica'' at his home in Paris in response to the 26 April 1937 bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country town in northern Spain that was bombed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, ''Guernica'' was exhibited at the Spanish display at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, and then at other venues around the world. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of Assemblage (art), constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the Proto-Cubism, proto-Cubist ''Les Demoiselles d'Avignon'' (1907), and the anti-war painting ''Guernica (Picasso), Guernica'' (1937), Guernica (Picasso)#Composition, a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Plague (novel)
''The Plague'' (french: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus. Published in 1947, it tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive Absurdism, absurdist point of view. Camus used as source material the 1846–1860 cholera pandemic, cholera epidemic that killed a large proportion of Oran's population in 1849, but situated the novel in the 1940s. Oran and its surroundings were struck by disease several times before Camus published his novel. According to an academic study, Oran was decimated by the bubonic plague in 1556 and 1678, but all later outbreaks (in 1921: 185 cases; 1931: 76 cases; and 1944: 95 cases) were very far from the scale of the epidemic described in the novel. ''The Plague'' is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' obj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include '' The Stranger'', '' The Plague'', ''The Myth of Sisyphus'', '' The Fall'', and '' The Rebel''. Camus was born in French Algeria to '' Pieds Noirs'' parents. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at '' Combat'', an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union because of their totali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animal Farm
''Animal Farm'' is a beast fable, in the form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon. According to Orwell, ''Animal Farm'' reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. Orwell, a democratic socialist, was a critic of Joseph Stalin and hostile to Moscow-directed Stalinism, an attitude that was critically shaped by his experiences during the May Days conflicts between the POUM and Stalinist forces during the Spanish Civil War. In a letter to Yvonne Davet, Orwell described ''Animal Farm'' as a satirical tale against Stalin ("'"), and in his essay "Why I W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman in Burma, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Time's Arrow (novel)
''Time's Arrow: or The Nature of the Offence'' (1991) is a novel by Martin Amis. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1991. It is notable partly because the events occur in a reverse chronology, with time passing in reverse and the main character becoming younger and younger during the novel. Plot summary The novel recounts the life of a German Holocaust doctor in reverse chronology. The narrator, together with the reader, experiences time passing in reverse. The narrator is not exactly the protagonist himself but a secondary consciousness apparently living within him, feeling his feelings but with no access to his thoughts and no control over events. Some passages may be interpreted as hinting that this narrator may in some way be the conscience, but this is not clear. The narrator may alternatively be considered merely a necessary device to narrate a reverse chronology. Amis engages in several forms of reverse discourse including reverse dialogue, reverse narrative, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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