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Книги Constantine H.
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Berlin Tales is a collection of seventeen translated stories associated with Berlin. The book provides a unique insight into the mind of this fascinating city through the eyes of its story-tellers. Nearly twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the stories collected here reflect on the city's fascinating recent history, setting out with the early twentieth-century Berlin of Siegfried Kracauer and Alfred Döblin and culminating in an excellent selection of stories from the best of the new voices in the current boom in German fiction. They are chosen for their conscious exploration of the city's image, meaning, and attraction to immigrants and tourists as well as Berliners from both sides of the Wall. These stories also depict Berlin's distinct districts, not just the differences between East and West but also iconic sites such as Alexanderplatz, individual neighbourhoods (Jewish Mitte, Turkish Kreuzberg) and individual streets. There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of Further Reading. Each story is illustrated with a striking photograph and there is a map of Berlin and its transport system (a frequent motif). There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of Further Reading. The book will appeal to people who love travelling or are armchair travellers, as much as to those who love Berlin. |
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French Tales is a collection of twenty-two translated stories associated with the twenty-two regions of France. The book, which includes both well-known and little-known writers, for example Prosper Mérimée in the nineteenth century and Anne-Marie Garat in the twenty-first, affords readers a panoramic view of French society and culture, reflecting, as it does, its variety and diversity from Brittany to Corsica. Writers include among others Maupassant, Zola, Annie Saumont, Marcel Aymé, Didier Daeninckx and Stephane Émond. The subject-matter ranges from stories about marriage, the First World War and homelessness to house-buying, childhood and honour-killing. Following the model of Paris Tales, also translated by Helen Constantine, each story is illustrated with a striking photograph and there is a map indicating the position of the French regions. There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of Further Reading. The book will appeal to people who love travelling or are armchair travellers, as much as to those who love France and things French. |
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The buzzing life of bars, warm evenings by the Manzanares river, the subterranean terrors of the Metro, icy winters and hot, empty summers, student days in the sixties, the ruthless underworld of the city's mafia — this captivating anthology reflects the character of Madrid and the lives of the madrilenos, as its inhabitants are called, in all their splendid variety. Some stories are bizarre, some funny, some serious, and as you read you'll travel through the city. The famous streets and monuments of Madrid — Cibeles, Calle de Alcalá, Plaza Mayor, and the Royal Palace — as well as the poor, working-class barrios unfrequented by sightseers will pass before your eyes like a moving picture. Some stories, like the Galdós story and Carmen Martín Gaite's 'A clear conscience' depict a journey across Madrid, while in Javier Marías' sinister tale, 'Fallen from fortune', a couple are unaware that their guide to all the usual tourist highlights is leading them to their death. In 'Through the wall' and 'Personality disorders', the characters barely leave their apartments, and the city lurks outside the windows. A rich assortment of characters — adolescent boys obsessed with sex; maids up from the country; provincial girls who slide into prostitution; a small boy excited at the prospect of going downtown with his grandfather; vain, self-absorbed thirty-somethings with too much money; immigrant families far from home; mafia types; diligent office-workers struggling to bring up a family — come alive in the tales. Few of these stories have previously been translated into English. Some names, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, Javier Marías, Juan José Millás, and Carmen Martín Gaite, will be more familiar than others but all deserve to be better known. There is a map at the back of the book to indicate the places mentioned in the stories and photographs complement and accompany each story. The reader will also find there biographical notes on the authors and suggestions for further reading. |
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Following on from Helen Constantine's hugely successful Paris Tales, the twenty-two short stories included in More Metro Tales take the reader on an fascinating journey around Paris by metro. The journey begins at the Gare du Nord, stops at twenty underground stations along the way, and ends at Lamarck-Caulaincourt. Some of these stories actually take place in the metro itself, but most are to be found when you emerge above ground. They range from the 15th-century account of the miraculous Saint Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, through tales by favourite writers such as Zola, Simenon, and Maupassant, to Martine Delerm's evocation of the last hours of Modigliani's mistress, Jeanne Hébuterne. Gérard de Nerval evokes the thriving, bustling market in Les Halles in the 1850s; Colette recounts her involvement in a traffic accident near the Opéra; Boulanger describes a blackly funny experience in Père Lachaise. Each story is illustrated with a black-and-white photograph and there is a map and suggested itinerary round the metro system. Readers will find familiar and unfamiliar writers here, but all are masterly writers of the short story and each evokes a different aspect of this endlessly intriguing and much-loved city, whether the traveller is on the metro or at home sitting in an armchair. |
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In ways no guide book can achieve, these twenty absorbing tales by Italian authors ranging from Boccaccio in the Middle Ages to Giacomo Casanova in the eighteenth century, to Pier-Paolo Pasolini in the twentieth and contemporary new writers such as Melania Mazzucco and Igiaba Scego, offer the delight of discovering and exploring one of the world's most unique cities thorough a wide variety of individual lives and epochs. The tales span seven hundred years but rather than being ordered chronologically, old and new appear alongside one another, reflecting the dual identity of Rome — thriving, modern metropolis and ancient city centre that is one of the wonders of the world. The tales are wonderfully varied in style, tone, and subject matter. Casanova sets about seducing the hotelier's daughter only minutes after his arrival, a notorious Spanish prostitute in Renaissance Rome endures a public hiding without flinching, a Danish tourist in her sixties finds an unusual lover, Pope John Paul II uncovers a vast conspiracy against him, a medieval revolutionary demagogue suffers almost the same fate as Mussolini. Each story is illustrated with a black-and-white photograph and there is a map of Rome to help readers locate the important sites which feature in the text. A deep sense of timelessness, of separate destinies entwined across a gulf of centuries, is the cumulative effect of this vivid mosaic of dramatic, comic, and tragic stories set in the Eternal City. |
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