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The Secret Knowledge
''The Secret Knowledge'' (2013) is the seventh novel by Scottish writer Andrew Crumey. It was his first since returning to his original UK publisher Dedalus Books, and was awarded a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Acknowledgement in book. Part of the writing was done while the author was visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study. It was longlisted for the Guardian's "Not the Booker" prize. Synopsis In 1913, composer Pierre Klauer envisages marriage to his sweetheart and fame for his new work, The Secret Knowledge. Then tragedy strikes. A century later, concert pianist David Conroy hopes the rediscovered score might revive his own flagging career. Music, history, politics and philosophy become intertwined in a multi-layered story that spans a century. Revolutionary agitators, Holocaust refugees and sixties’ student protesters are counterpointed with artists and entrepreneurs in our own age of austerity. All play their part in revealing the shocking ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Crumey
Andrew Crumey (born 1961) is a novelist and former literary editor of the Edinburgh newspaper ''Scotland on Sunday''. Life and career Crumey was born in Kirkintilloch, north of Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated with First Class Honours from the University of St Andrews and holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Imperial College, London. In 2000 Crumey's fourth novel ''Mr Mee'' was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2006, Crumey became the fifth recipient of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award. He now lectures part-time on creative writing at Northumbria University. He has an interest in astronomy and has published on the subject of astronomic visibility and Ricco's law.Crumey, A. (2014)Human contrast threshold and astronomical visibility.MNRAS 442, 2600–2619. Works *''Music in a Foreign Language'' (1994) *'' Pfitz'' (1995) *''D’Alembert’s Principle'' (1996) *''Mr Mee'' (2000) *'' Mobius Dick'' (2004) *'' Sputnik Caledonia'' (2008) *'' The Secret Knowledge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asja Lācis
Anna "Asja" Lācis (née Liepiņa; russian: Анна 'Ася' Эрнестовна Лацис, ; german: Asja Lazis; October 19, 1891 – November 21, 1979) was a Latvian actress and theatre director. Biography A Bolshevik, in the twenties she became famous for her proletarian theatre troupes for children and agitprop in Soviet Russia and Latvia. She believed that children's theater could be used as the cornerstone for the children's general education, which was especially important with poor, proletarian children who often had little or no other educational opportunities. In 1922 she moved to Germany where she got to know Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator, to whom she introduced the ideas of Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vladimir Mayakovsky. In 1924 she met the German philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin in Capri, and the duo would have an intermittent affair for the next several years as he visited her in Moscow and Riga. She has been cited as a factor in Benjamin's embracing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foucault's Pendulum
''Foucault's Pendulum'' (original title: ''Il pendolo di Foucault'' ) is a novel by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco. It was first published in 1988, and an English translation by William Weaver appeared a year later. ''Foucault's Pendulum'' is divided into ten segments represented by the ten Sefiroth. The satirical novel is full of esoteric references to Kabbalah, alchemy, and conspiracy theory—so many that critic and novelist Anthony Burgess suggested that it needed an index. The pendulum of the title refers to an actual pendulum designed by French physicist Léon Foucault to demonstrate Earth's rotation, which has symbolic significance within the novel. Some believe that it refers to Michel Foucault, noting Eco's friendship with the French philosopher, but the author "specifically rejects any intentional reference to Michel Foucault"—this is regarded as one of his subtle literary jokes. Plot summary The book opens with a man named Casaubon hiding in the M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Atlas (novel)
''Cloud Atlas'' is the third novel by British author David Mitchell. Published in 2004, it won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award. It was short-listed for the Booker Prize, Nebula Award for Best Novel, and Arthur C. Clarke Award, among other accolades. Unusually, it received awards from both the general literary community and the speculative fiction community. A film adaptation directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, and featuring an ensemble cast, was released in 2012. The book combines metafiction, historical fiction, contemporary fiction and science fiction, with interconnected nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the 19th century to the island of Hawai'i in a distant post-apocalyptic future. Its title was inspired by the piece of music of the same name by Japanese composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. The author has said that the book is about reincarnation and the universality of human n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sunday Herald
The ''Sunday Herald'' was a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published between 7 February 1999 and 2 September 2018. Originally a broadsheet, it was published in compact format from 20 November 2005. The paper was known for having combined a centre-left stance with support for Scottish devolution, and later Scottish independence. The last edition of the newspaper was published on 2 September 2018 and it was replaced with Sunday editions of ''The Herald'' and ''The National''''. Circulation In July 2012, the newspapers' publishers classified the ''Sunday Herald'' as a regional instead of a national title. Between July and December 2013, the ''Sunday Herald'' sold an average of 23,907 copies, down 7.5% on the 12 months previous. After declaring support for Scottish independence, The ''Sunday Herald'' received a huge increase in sales, with circulation in September 2014 up 111% year on year. By 2017 circulation had fallen to 18,387 and in August 2018 staff were told they would now ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Novel Society
The Historical Novel Society (HNS) is a nonprofit international literary society devoted to promotion of and advocacy for the genre of historical fiction. Definition of historical fiction There are varying definitions as to what types of literature fall within the scope of historical fiction. One of the broadest definitions of the genre is "fiction that is set in the past, before the author's lifetime and experience." The HNS has adopted this broader definition, accepting as historical fiction any novel written at least fifty years after the events described, or by an individual who was not alive at the time of those events, and thus approaches them from a research perspective. Alternate histories, time-slip novels, historical fantasies, and multiple-period novels (including novels where one of the time periods is contemporary) are all accepted by the HNS as historical fiction. History Founded in 1997 in the United Kingdom by bookseller, editor, and historical novel enthusiast Richa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Publishers Weekly
''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of Book Publishing and Bookselling". With 51 issues a year, the emphasis today is on book reviews. The magazine was founded by bibliographer Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ... Frederick Leypoldt in the late 1860s, and had various titles until Leypoldt settled on the name ''The Publishers' Weekly'' (with an apostrophe) in 1872. The publication was a compilation of information about newly published books, collected from publishers and from other sources by Leypoldt, for an audience of booksellers. By 1876, ''The Publishers' Weekly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Great Chain Of Unbeing
''The Great Chain of Unbeing'' is the eighth fiction book by Andrew Crumey, published by Dedalus Books in 2018. It was shortlisted for Scotland's National Book Awards (the Saltire Society Literary Awards) and nominated for the British Science Fiction Awards. The title alludes to the great chain of being and the book consists of stories that range widely in theme and style but are subtly linked. The book has been variously interpreted as a short story collection or novel. Some of the pieces were previously published in different versions. The opening story, "The Unbeginning", first appeared as "Livacy" in the anthology ''NW15'', published in 2007. Nicholas Royle commented then, "Andrew Crumey's unique blend of impenetrable physics and penetrating imagery, in 'Livacy', is as subtle and affecting as the best of his work." Another piece, "The Last Midgie on Earth" (a cli-fi set in a globally-warmed Scotland) first appeared in ''Headshook'', published in 2009. Milena Kalicanin com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mobius Dick
''Mobius Dick'' (2004) is a novel by Andrew Crumey. It features an alternate world in which Nazi Germany has invaded Great Britain and Erwin Schrödinger failed to find the wave equation that bears his name. This world becomes connected to our world due to experiments with quantum computers. The science-fiction plot centres on a mysterious mountain hospital in the Scottish highlands. Interweaving tales re-write the historical stories of Robert Schumann's stay in a similar clinic in Endenich and Schrödinger's visit to the Alpine sanatorium of Arosa, both of which echo the situation in Thomas Mann's ''The Magic Mountain''. Connections are drawn from the tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann, particularly ''The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr ''The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper'' is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quantum Suicide
Quantum suicide is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics and the philosophy of physics. Purportedly, it can falsify any interpretation of quantum mechanics other than the Everett many-worlds interpretation by means of a variation of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment, from the cat's point of view. Quantum immortality refers to the subjective experience of surviving quantum suicide. This concept is sometimes conjectured to be applicable to real-world causes of death as well. As a thought experiment, quantum suicide is an intellectual exercise in which an abstract setup is followed through to its logical consequences merely to prove a theoretical point. Virtually all physicists and philosophers of science who have described it, especially in popularized treatments, underscore that it relies on contrived, idealized circumstances that may be impossible or exceedingly difficult to realize in real life, and that its theoretical premises are controversial even among supporter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiverse
The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called "parallel universes", "other universes", "alternate universes", or "many worlds". History of the concept According to some, the idea of infinite worlds was first suggested by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaximander in the sixth century BCE. However, there is debate as to whether he believed in multiple worlds, and if he did, whether those worlds were co-existent or successive. The first to whom we can definitively attribute the concept of innumerable worlds are the Ancient Greek Atomists, beginning with Leucippus and Democritus in the 5th century BCE, followed by Epicurus (341-270 BCE) and Lucretius (1st century BCE). In the third century BCE, the philosopher Chrysippus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portbou
Portbou () is a town in the Alt Empordà Comarques of Catalonia, county, in the Province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It has a population of people (). Portbou is located near the France, French France–Spain border, border in the Costa Brava region, and frequently serves as a dropping off point for SNCF trains coming from Cerbère in France. Portbou was a small but important point for the Second Spanish Republic, Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, as it was one of the few places from where they could get supplies from abroad. Portbou is also where German philosophy, German philosopher Walter Benjamin committed suicide and was buried in 1940. There is a monument in his honor, by Dani Karavan. Transport The Portbou railway station is a break-of-gauge station. It contains a major rail freight transfer facility, and a large passenger station built to support customs and immigration. The customs and immigration facilities are no longer required as both France and Spain are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
