Search Results: Titles starting with N from Zeno's

New York. 1991. Viking Press. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0670837040. 474 pages. hardcover. . keywords: American Indian History America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In a series of powerful and moving documents, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history of Native American and white relations as seen through Indian eyes and told through Indian voices: a record spanning more than five hundred years of interchange between the two peoples. Drawing from a wide range of sources - traditional narratives, Indian autobiographies, government transcripts, firsthand interviews, and more - Nabokov has assembled a remarkably rich and vivid collection, representing nothing less than an alternative history of North America. 'Beginning with the Indian's first encounters with the earliest explorers, traders, missionaries, settlers, and soldiers and continuing to the present, Native American Testimony presents an authentic, challenging picture of an important, tragic, and frequently misunderstood aspect… Read More

New York. 1968. March 1968. Pocket Books. 1st Pocket Books Paperback Edition. Good in Slightly Worn Wrappers. . 178 pages. paperback. 75258. . keywords: Literature Russia America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - An electrifying novel by the author John Updike has called ‘. . the best writer of English prose at present holding American Citizenship,' DESPAIR is the sardonic story of a man who undertakes the perfect crime-his own murder. DESPAIR'S protagonist, Hermann, is another masterly portrait in the fascinating gallery of living characters Vladimir Nabokov has given to world literature. In his pseudo worldliness, his odd genius, Hermann is one with such other heteroclitic neurotic Nabokovian creations as Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote. Rapt in his own reality, incapable of escaping or explicating it, he is as solitary in his abyss as Luzhin or Charlotte Haze of Lolita. Illuminated throughout by the virtuosity and cunning wit that are Vladimir Nabokov's hallmarks, bearing abundant evidence… Read More

New York. 1971. Penguin Books. Reprinted Penguin Paperback Edition. Good in Wrappers. 0140014934. 176 pages. paperback. Cover design by John Gorham. keywords: Penguin Classic Paperback Literature America Russia. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Thirteen stories in which the author of LOLITA peoples the unique world he has created in Russia, Europe and the United States. Includes the stories - FIRST LOVE, SIGNS & SYMBLOS, ‘THAT IN ALEPPO ONCE. . ', SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF A DOUBLE, MONSTER, and nine other brightly-coloured inventions, reminiscences and sallies from the fertile mind of the twentieth-century's most elegant stylist. inventory #29182 ISBN: 0140014934.

New York. 2009. November 2009. Knopf. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780307271891. 279 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. keywords: Literature Russia America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov's wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband's last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five--the Russian novelist's only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books--has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father's wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative--dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality--affords us one last… Read More

New York. 1974. Schocken Books. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn and Scuffed Dustjacket With Some Tears. 0805235558. 246 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Translated Spain Literary Criticism. FROM THE PUBLISHER - The mystery of Lorca's ‘lost' unpublished drama THE PUBLIC is here disclosed by Rafael Martinez Nadal, the poet's close friend and the owner of what would seem to be the first draft of the play. Nadal, who awaits the necessary permission to publish the full text, gives here the exact details of the manuscript, a scene-by-scene synopsis of the play, and a detailed analysis. Thus, a new and unified view of Lorca's work becomes possible. The play is at once the most difficult and the most comprehensive of Lorca's writings, employing themes, images, and techniques that pervade the poems and dramatic work. Nadal shows that the surrealist quality of the scenes grew out of Lorca's efforts to bring the most intimate problems to the stage, in… Read More

New York. 2007. July 2007. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket . 0374299641. Translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein. 400 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph - 'Self-portrait with Lamp' by Peter Nadas. Jacket design by Susan Mitchell. keywords: Literature Hungary Translated. FROM THE PUBLISHER - The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, an artist whom critics easily compared to Robert Musil, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, we discover other aspects of Peter Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed his country and all of Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree, as a moralist with a discerning eye for the crippling effects of deception and hypocrisy upon us all. In addition, Fire and… Read More

New York. 1998. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374148325. Translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein. 245 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: ‘Seated Nude’ by Zoran Music. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde. keywords: Literature Translated Hungary Eastern Europe . FROM THE PUBLISHER - It is the 1950s, in Hungary, when Stalinist repression has reduced the populace to silence and deception. The narrator, a young boy, lives alone with his grandparents. His rebellious, talkative grandfather, refusing to submit to the implacable realities, flees to his memories of the past, in which he believes he can still find redemption, and for his grandson, he weaves a fantastic tapestry of stories of family sagas. His myths and legends depict the luxuriant history of a family with both Christian and Jewish roots, and of a people who, having denied the Messiah, must legitimate their faith and expiate their sins over thousands of years. And, as he talks, he teaches the boy… Read More

New York. 1997. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374115435. Translated from the Hungarian by Ivan Sanders With Imre Goldstein. 706 pages. hardcover. Jacket art courtesy of the author. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde. keywords: Literature Translated Hungary Eastern Europe . FROM THE PUBLISHER - This extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel in the grand manner, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Peter Nadas has given us a superb contemporary psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses, and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past. A Book of Memories is made up of three first-person narratives: the first that of a young Hungarian writer and his fated love for a German poet; we also learn of the narrator's adolescence in Budapest, when he experiences the downfall of his once-upper-class but now pro-Communist family and of his beloved but repudiated father,… Read More

New York. 2011. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780374229764. Translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein. 1133 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Nayon Cho. Jacket photograph: Andre Kertesz, ‘Distortion #51.’. keywords: Literature Hungary Europe Translated. FROM THE PUBLISHER - A New York Times Notable Book for 2011. A once-in-a-generation literary event: the monumental masterwork being hailed as a ‘twenty-first-century WAR AND PEACE' (Magyar Nemzet). In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans - Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies - across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century. Three unusual men are at the heart of PARALLEL STORIES: Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi… Read More

New York. 2006. St Martin's. Reprinted Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0312341830. 484 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Language History France. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Why does everything sound better if it's said in French? That fascination is at the heart of The Story of French, the first history of one of the most beautiful languages in the world that was, at one time, the pre-eminent language of literature, science and diplomacy. Nadeau and Barlow chart the history of a language spoken as a native tongue by 130 million people around the globe. The first document written in the French was signed by the sons of Charlemagne in 832. After this, Latin was purged from the courts of France by Francois 1st, giving root to French speakers' 21st century obsession with language protection. The obsession progressed as Cardinal Richelieu established the French Academy, a group entrusted with the responsibility of keeping the language pure and eloquent. As French circled the globe, the international… Read More

Princeton. 2011. September 2011. Princeton University Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780691139890. 1 halftone. 6 x 9. 296 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Phliosophy History. FROM THE PUBLISHER - THE VIVID STORY OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT - AND INCENDIARY - BOOKS IN WESTERN HISTORY. ‘This an excellent book. Steven Nadler's wonderfully elegant and fluid writing style makes difficult ideas accessible and exciting without watering them down. A prime virtue of the book is that it provides just enough biographical and historical background to make the philosophy come alive and to reveal what a dramatic work Spinoza's treatise is.' - Michael Della Rocca, Yale University. When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological- Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published - 'godless,' ‘full of abominations,' ‘a book forged in hell . . by the devil himself.' Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat… Read More

New York. 2003. Random House. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0375504907. 351 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph : AP/Wide World Photos. Jacket design by Allison Saltzman. keywords: Literature Iran Persia Women Memoir Autobiography Literary Criticism. FROM THE PUBLISHER - We all have dreams - things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were… Read More

Boston. 2017. April 2017. David Godine/Black Sparrow Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 9781574232288. 132 pages. paperback. . keywords: Fiction. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In this debut novel by Rachel Nagelberg, conceptual artist Sheila B. Ackerman heeds a mysterious urge to return to her estranged family home and arrives at the exact moment of her mother's suicide. In an attempt to cope with and understand her own self destructive tendencies, Sheila plants a camera on the lawn outside the house to film 24/7 while workers deconstruct the physical object that encases so many of her memories. Meanwhile, she finds herself hunting a robot drone through the San Francisco MOMA with a baseball bat, part of a provocative, technological show, The Last Art, experiencing more and more frequent blackouts, and resuming an affair with her college professor. With a backdrop of post-9/11 San Francisco, Sheila navigates the social-media-obsessed, draught-ridden landscape of her life, exploring the… Read More

New York. 1999. Harcourt Brace. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0151003882. 376 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Iran Women. FROM THE PUBLISHER - One star-studded night, five-year-old Lili witnesses her mother, Roxanna the Angel, sprout wings and vanish into the sky, undisturbed by the rules of gravity. Roxanna leaves no farewell, no word of explanation, no trace of her existence. Lili's subsequent search for her mother-spurred by the tireless efforts of her aunt Miriam the Moon-is at the heart of this mesmerizing epic tale that follows Roxanna, born as a bad-luck child in the harsh Jewish ghetto of Tehran, through the opulent world of Iran's aristocracy, to the whorehouses of Turkey and beyond, to present-day Los Angeles. At stake are Roxanna's hopes for happiness, for escaping the bonds of Old World tradition and finding forgiveness for that most egregious of sins-desire. Weaving together strands of Persian and Jewish culture, Gina Nahai brings to life a courageous… Read More

Princeton. 2008. Princeton University Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780691126982. 276 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Mathematics Probability. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Some probability problems are so difficult that they stump the smartest mathematicians. But even the hardest of these problems can often be solved with a computer and a Monte Carlo simulation, in which a random-number generator simulates a physical process, such as a million rolls of a pair of dice. This is what Digital Dice is all about: how to get numerical answers to difficult probability problems without having to solve complicated mathematical equations. Popular-math writer Paul Nahin challenges readers to solve twenty-one difficult but fun problems, from determining the odds of coin-flipping games to figuring out the behavior of elevators. Problems build from relatively easy (deciding whether a dishwasher who breaks most of the dishes at a restaurant during a given week is clumsy or just the victim of… Read More

New York. 1959. Vanguard. 1st American Edition. Very Good. No Dustjacket. . 215 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Caribbean Trinidad England India. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Here is the astringent wit of an Aubrey Mennen turned loose in the rich landscape of a Caribbean isle. V. S. Naipaul is an extraordinary storyteller - a voice from Trinidad of today, as contemporary and exciting as Calypso - and in THE MYSTIC MASSEUR he has created one of the most amusing and fascinating characters in contemporary fiction, Ganesh Rasumair. If Ganesh had not been so unappreciated as a schoolteacher, he would never have become a masseur. If he had not lacked talent as an ordinary masseur, he would never have blossomed into a mystic one; and, of course, if he had not lived in Trinidad, at first an obscure member and finally an ornament of the Hindu community there, none of the things that happened to him would have happened in quite that way, for Trinidad, seen with the eye of humor, is a most surprising place.… Read More

New York. 1985. March 1985. Viking Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket.Remainder Marking. 0670803928. 424 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ann Winslow . keywords: Literature Caribbean Essays England India Trinidad. FROM THE PUBLISHER - From the highly praised Shiva Naipaul (‘A novelist of rare gifts and great authority,' Newsweek; ‘A masterful writer,' The New York Times Book Review; ‘A modern George Orwell,' the London Sunday Times) comes a brilliant collection of pieces-many never before published In America-bringing together autobiography, short fiction, and essays. In 1964, at the age of eighteen, Shiva Naipaul left Trinidad for England. Ahead lay Oxford and his beginnings as a writer. He describes that leavetaking In the opening piece of this book with the clarity and keenness of vision provided by his perspective of twenty years. Here too are stories filled with compassion, humor, and sadness, and a stunning array of essays in which the… Read More

New York. 1987. March 1987. Viking Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0670813680. 136 pages. hardcover. Cover: Robert Silverman. keywords: Literature England Caribbean Trinidad India. FROM THE PUBLISHER - AN UNFINISHED JOURNEY is a posthumous collection of essays by Shiva Naipaul, published by Hamish and Hamilton in 1986. The foreword is written by the author's father-in-law, Douglas Stuart, who creates a short biographical sketch of the author, describing Shiva as a writer who gained in discipline but was painfully slow, even at times spending an entire afternoon trying to finish a sentence. He also asked Naipaul why he had lost the comic tone in his writing, and wrote that Naipaul attributed it to the arresting horror of witnessing the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre, part of his research for the book BLACK & WHITE. The essays in the collection are in part autobiographical, such as those on Shiva's relationship with his brother V. S. Naipaul, and his experiences in… Read More

New York. 1981. Simon & Schuster. 1st Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0671424718. 336 pages. hardcover. . keywords: Literature Caribbean Trinidad England India . FROM THE PUBLISHER - BLACK & WHITE is a non-fiction book written by Shiva Naipaul and published by Hamish Hamilton in the U.K. in 1980. It was published with the title JOURNEY TO NOWHERE: A NEW WORLD TRAGEDY in the U.S. The book is based on Naipaul's trip to Guyana in the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre, and his subsequent trip to the United States, in which he explored links between the People's Temple and other groups and individuals. Naipaul attempted to connect Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple, with disparate parts of California's counterculture, and Guyanese and other Third World governments and the revolutionary ideologies which supported them. Naipaul was highly critical of these and other movements, including the U.S. Civil Rights movement, black liberation, and the nascent New Age movement,… Read More

New York. 2000. Knopf. Advance Uncorrected Proof. Small Tear Mark On Bottom Front Cover Near The Middle, Otherwise Very Good in Wrappers. 0375407308. 297 pages. paperback. . keywords: Literature Caribbean England India Trinidad. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In 1950, after winning a scholarship from the government of Trinidad, V. S. Naipaul, aged seventeen, left home for the first time. Following a two-week journey by steamer, he arrived in Oxford, England, a world utterly removed from the one he had longed to escape and to which he would never really return. This extraordinary collection of letters gives us, as nothing published previously has, an intimate view of Naipaul's formative years. It is a story of family members oceans apart, clinging to one another against the sadness of dislocation and isolation: The young Naipaul, desperate not for a degree but to become a writer and make his way in the world. His beloved sister Kamla, anxious and bewildered, away at school in India. And his melancholy but… Read More