I recently went on a cruise on the Mississippi River, sailing south and ending in New Orleans. Friends had suggested that i take along Mark Twain's book, Life on the Mississippi (1883), which I did, and I thereby became, after many years, a fan of Twain's writing all over again. Happily rediscovering his brilliant and original mind, his wit, his knack for storytelling , and his progressive thinking, I decided to read, or re-read, as much of him as possible. Presently I picked up A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). All I knew about this novel was that the hero, a nineteenth-century American, was somehow transported back in time to sixth-century England, where, among other things, he amazed the kings and peasants alike by his correct prediction of an eclipse of the sun. The book offers many amusing and unexpected twists, not to mention social satire, as the hero sets about remaking early English society.
In this classic satiric novel, published in 1889, Hank Morgan, a supervisor in a Connecticut gun factory, falls unconscious after being whacked on the head. When he wakes up he finds himself in Britain in 528 — where he is immediately captured, hauled back to Camelot to be exhibited before the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, and sentenced to death. Things are not looking good. But Hank is a quick-witted and enterprising fellow, and in the process of saving his life he turns himself into a celebrity of the highest magnitude. His Yankee ingenuity and knowledge of the world…
Unlike the case of Mark Twain and his work, I knew nothing of this Danish author or her novels when I first picked up her book to read. I had chanced upon a review of this strangely-titled novel and was happy to find what a delightful read it was. Soon I bought more copies for xmas gifts. The novel relates the experiences of a young Danish woman, a new mother, who moves with her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, a region of Denmark that, in Danish stereotype at least, exhibits a reserved and understated style of speech and behavior--like the laconic Spartans of ancient Greece, who did not believe in wasting words--, whence the "short sentences" of the title. Pilgaard humorously explores the challenges the newcomer faces in negotiating new and unfamiliar cultural territory. Among the protagonist's solutions is to become an advice columnist, and an unusual one at that.
A young mother follows her partner to a rural community in West Jutland, Denmark, where he teaches at the local school for adult education. Isolated, she is forced to find her way in a bewildering community and in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population.
A young woman relocates to an outlying community in West Jutland, Denmark, and is forced to find her way, not only in the bewildering environment of the residential Folk High School, where her partner has been hired to teach, but also in the inscrutable conversational forms of the local population. And on top of…
This is a political history of the indigenous people of Palestine during the last 100 years, before and after the establishment of Israel. It is related by a member of a prominent and cultured Palestinian family, Rashid Khalidi, who is a distinguished academic, being the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. Khalidi presents the recent history of Palestine from a Palestinian viewpoint. It is painful but illuminating reading.
'Riveting and original ... a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict ' Noam Chomsky
The twentieth century for Palestine and the Palestinians has been a century of denial: denial of statehood, denial of nationhood and denial of history. The Hundred Years War on Palestine is Rashid Khalidi's powerful response. Drawing on his family archives, he reclaims the fundamental right of any people: to narrate their history on their own…
Since Greece and Rome were mostly oral societies, their repertoire of living stories was far richer than ours. The ancient Greeks and Romans told all the kinds of tales known to us, even ghost stories and urban legends, but they also related kinds of stories that rarely circulate in live tradition in our day, such as myths and fairytales. While human beings are in the foreground, the world in which they move includes gods and nature spirits (satyrs, centaurs, nymphs), shape-changers (lamias, werewolves), the quasi-dead (ghosts, revenants), talking animals, and other strange beings. My collection, The Book of Greek and Roman Folktales, Legends, and Myths, features nearly 400 of the most memorable stories from classical antiquity, from the earliest attested fairytale (Cupid and Psyche) to the myth of the first woman (Pandora) to accounts of bizarre delusion (the woman who thinks she supports the world on her finger), not to mention witty jokes, tall tales, and entertaining fables. I myself write as a classical scholar--primarily a mythologist--and professional folklorist, as one who has devoted his career to the study and appreciation of the best stories that antiquity has to offer.
