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The Laughing Monsters
''The Laughing Monsters'' is a spy novel by Denis Johnson published in 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ''The Laughing Monsters'' is set largely in the African countries of Sierra Leone, Congo and Uganda in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s, conflicts which Johnson witnessed and reported on as a journalist. The title of the novel is a reference to the Happy Mountains of the Congo, where the novel's climax takes place. The mountain range was dubbed the Laughing Monsters by the 19th Century missionary James Hannington. The title also characterizes the two chief protagonists of the novel. Plot Part One Roland Nair, of Danish-American descent, arrives in Freetown, Sierra Leone from Amsterdam after a 10-year absence. He is 38 years-of-age. A NATO employee and CIA fiber-optic specialist, he trafficks high-value intelligence. He returns to Africa to renew his friendship with his former confederate Michael Adriko. Michael, a 36-year-old Ugandan of Arab-Africa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Johnson
Denis Hale Johnson (July 1, 1949 – May 24, 2017) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and poet. He is perhaps best known for his debut short story collection, '' Jesus' Son'' (1992). His most successful novel, ''Tree of Smoke'' (2007), won the National Book Award for Fiction. His other novels include ''Angels'' (1983), ''Fiskadoro'' (1985), '' The Stars at Noon'' (1986), '' Resuscitation of a Hanged Man'' (1991), '' Already Dead: A California Gothic'' (1997), ''The Name of the World'' (2000), '' Nobody Move'' (2009), ''Train Dreams'' (2011), and '' The Laughing Monsters'' (2014). Johnson was twice shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His final work, a book of short stories titled ''The Largesse of the Sea Maiden'', was published posthumously in 2018. Johnson also wrote plays, journalism, and nonfiction. Early years Denis Johnson was born on July 1, 1949, in Munich, West Germany. Growing up, he also lived in the Philippines, Japan, and the suburbs of Washing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Narration
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to storytelling, convey a narrative, story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the Plot (narrative), plot (the series of events). Narration is a required element of all written stories (novels, short story, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.), with the function of conveying the story in its entirety. However, narration is merely optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows, and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action. The narrative mode encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story develops their narrator and narration: * ''Narrative point of view, perspective,'' or ''voice'': the choice of grammatical person used by the narr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ryszard Kapuściński
Ryszard Kapuściński (; 4 March 1932 – 23 January 2007) was a Polish journalist, photographer, poet and author. He received many awards and was considered a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kapuściński's personal journals in book form attracted both controversy and admiration for blurring the conventions of reportage with the allegory and magical realism of literature. He was the Communist-era Polish Press Agency's only correspondent in Africa during decolonization, and also worked in South America and Asia. Between 1956 and 1981 he reported on 27 revolutions and coups, until he was fired because of his support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement in his native country. He was celebrated by other practitioners of the genre. The acclaimed Italian reportage-writer Tiziano Terzani, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, and Chilean writer Luis Sepúlveda accorded him the title "Maestro". Notable works include ''Jeszcze dzień życia'' (1976; '' Another Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. He was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivien Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, at age 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery. Early years (1904–1922) Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in St John's House, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the short story "The Metamorphosis" and novels ''The Trial'' and '' The Castle''. The term ''Kafkaesque'' has entered English to describe absurd situations, like those depicted in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-ti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catch-22
''Catch-22'' is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from the points of view of different characters. The separate storylines are out of sequence so the timeline develops along with the plot. The novel is set during World War II, from 1942 to 1944. It mainly follows the life of antihero Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur while the fictional 256th US Army Air Squadron is based on the island of Pianosa, in the Mediterranean Sea west of Italy, although it also covers episodes from basic training at Lowry Field in Colorado and Air Corps training at Santa Ana Army Air Base in California. The novel examines the absurdity of war and military life through the experienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stav Sherez
Stav Sherez (born 1970) is a British novelist whose first novel, ''The Devil's Playground'', was published in 2004 by Penguin Books and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger. In July 2018 he won the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award for his fifth novel, ''The Intrusions'', the third outing for his detectives Jack Carrigan and Geneva Miller.Lea, Richar"Stav Sherez wins crime novel of the year for 'moving the genre forward'"''The Guardian'', 19 July 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2018. Biography Born in 1970, Sherez grew up in London and attended Latymer Upper School and the University of Leeds. Sherez's second novel, ''The Black Monastery'', was published by Faber & Faber in April 2009. From 1999 to 2004 he was a main contributor to the music magazine ''Comes with a Smile''. From December 2006 he has been literary editor of the ''Catholic Herald''. Bibliography Novels *''The Devil's Playground'' 2004 (Penguin) – Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Bes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eileen Battersby
Eileen Battersby ( Whiston; 4 June 1956 – 23 December 2018) was the chief literary critic of ''The Irish Times''. She sometimes divided opinion, having been described by John Banville as "the finest fiction critic we have", while attracting the ire of Eugene McCabe after she gave Dermot Healy an unfavourable review in 2011. Her first novel, ''Teethmarks on My Tongue,'' was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2016. Biography Battersby was born in Los Angeles County, California. After moving with her family to Ireland, she attended secondary school at Loreto in Bray, County Wicklow."Eileen Battersby obituary: A literary critic with many great passions" ''Irish Times'', 29 December 2018. She ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Heart Of The Matter
''The Heart of the Matter'' (1948) is a novel by English author Graham Greene. The book details a life-changing moral crisis for Henry Scobie. Greene, a former Secret Intelligence Service, British intelligence officer in Freetown, British Sierra Leone, drew on his experience there. Although Freetown is not mentioned in the novel, Greene confirms the location in his 1980 memoir, ''Ways of Escape''. ''The Heart of the Matter'' was enormously popular, selling more than 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom upon its release. It won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''The Heart of the Matter'' 40th on its list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. In 2012, it was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. The book's titl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Lawson
Mark Gerard Lawson is an English journalist, broadcaster and author. Specialising in culture and the arts, he is best known for presenting the flagship BBC Radio 4 arts programme ''Front Row (radio programme), Front Row'' between 1998 and 2014.Padraic Flanaga"Mark Lawson to leave BBC show 'for personal reasons'" ''The Daily Telegraph'', 5 March 2014 He is also a ''The Guardian, Guardian'' columnist, and presented ''Mark Lawson Talks To...'' on BBC Four from 2006 to 2015. Life and career Born in Hendon, north London,"Mark Lawson to leave BBC's Front Row" BBC News, 5 March 2014 Lawson was raised in Leeds, where his father was a marketing director for the Civil Service (United Kingdom), Civil Service and British Telecom. Both of his parents originated from the northeast of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Le Carré
David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. " neof the greatest novelists of the postwar era", during the 1950s and 1960s he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He is considered to have been a "sophisticated, morally ambiguous writer". Le Carré's third novel, '' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'' (1963), became an international best-seller, was adapted as an award-winning film and remains one of his best-known works. This success allowed him to leave MI6 to become a full-time author. His novels which have been adapted for film or television include ''The Looking Glass War'' (1965), ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' (1974), ''Smiley's People'' (1979), '' The Little Drummer Girl'' (1983), ''The Night Manager'' (1993), ''The Tailor of P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Stone (novelist)
Robert Anthony Stone (August 21, 1937 – January 10, 2015) was an American novelist. He was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and once for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Stone was five times a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, which he did receive in 1975 for his novel ''Dog Soldiers''. ''Time'' magazine included this novel in its list ''TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005''. ''Dog Soldiers'' was adapted into the film ''Who'll Stop the Rain'' (1978) starring Nick Nolte, from a script that Stone co-wrote. During his lifetime Stone received material support and recognition including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, the five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Stone also offered his own support and recognition of writers during his lifetime, serving as Chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
