Catalogue of a Private Life

Catalogue of a Private Life

Author: Najwa Bin Shatwan

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2020-01-01

Total Pages: 65

ISBN-13: 1912868881

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'The stories are funny, satirical, absurd, serious and surrealistic, but they make they make their point both about the repression in a strict Muslim society but, more particularly, about the horrors of the political situation in Libya where civilians are the main victim. The book is short so it won’t take you long to read and it will be well worth it.' John Alvey in The Modern Review 'Each story in Catalogue of a Private Life by Libyan author Najwa Bin Shatwan navigates a topic that feels resonant with our modern, more intimate understanding of worldwide worries. Strong images abound, stirring up questions: what can we as individuals do to help the collective good? Passing, almost trivial statements stick in the mind – the first story (of eight) in Catalogue Of A Private Life includes the gem, “White socks were naturally a great measure at how fashionable a man was or how noble.” The dinkus is used to denote transitions through time, much like a film shifting through events. Another story, The Irresponsible Director, speaks volumes about the role food has in narratives: everyday observations that will likely strike a chord with us in their minutiae. In Catalogue of a Private Life, Bin Shatwan writes complex characters into stories that create a unique space to explore the rich tapestry of human behaviour, of lives from a place that a Westerner such as myself may find difficult to fully comprehend. An air of religious sobriety underlines almost surreal scenarios – here, fictional elements are believable if you hold them within a heightened world built on truth.' Billie Ingram Sofkleous in Buzz Magazine


A Very Private Life

A Very Private Life

Author: Michael Frayn

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2015-11-12

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 0571329861

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'Easily the most original thing Frayn has done . . . written with elegant simplicity.' New Statesman Uncumber lives at a time in the distant future when all humanity is divided in two - the Insiders and the Outsiders. The Insiders are privileged, with their every need catered to by somatic drugs, three-dimensional holovision and a prolonged life. Uncumber lives in this luxurious world and is told that she must never go out into the dust and disease of the real world. Uncumber, however, is haunted by a restless and inquisitive spirit. When she falls in love with an Outsider, she decides to go exploring ... 'A fairy tale of the future.' Guardian


The Private Lives of the Impressionists

The Private Lives of the Impressionists

Author: Sue Roe

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2008-12-13

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0061978965

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The New York Times–bestselling biography of Manet, Cezanne, Degas, and others—a “revealing group portrait . . . lively, required reading” (People). Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, their paintings are now revered around the world. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well do we know the Impressionists as people? The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Morisot, and Cassatt. Sue Roe’s Private Lives of the Impressionists, follows an extraordinary group of artists into their Paris studios, down the rural lanes of Montmartre, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental change. Vivid and deeply researched, it casts a brilliant light on this unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty years—and transformed the art world with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life.


The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Vincent Starrett

Publisher: Gasogene Books

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780938501473

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"This enhanced 75th Anniversary Edition adds scholarly commentary and appreciation to a complete facsimile of the rare, 1933 original edition."--Jacket copy.


The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books

Author: Edward Wilson-Lee

Publisher: Scribner

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1982111402

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This impeccably researched and “adventure-packed” (The Washington Post) account of the obsessive quest by Christopher Columbus’s son to create the greatest library in the world is “the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters” (NPR) and offers a vivid picture of Europe on the verge of becoming modern. At the peak of the Age of Exploration, Hernando Colón sailed with his father Christopher Columbus on his final voyage to the New World, a journey that ended in disaster, bloody mutiny, and shipwreck. After Columbus’s death in 1506, eighteen-year-old Hernando sought to continue—and surpass—his father’s campaign to explore the boundaries of the known world by building a library that would collect everything ever printed: a vast holding organized by summaries and catalogues; really, the first ever database for the exploding diversity of written matter as the printing press proliferated across Europe. Hernando traveled extensively and obsessively amassed his collection based on the groundbreaking conviction that a library of universal knowledge should include “all books, in all languages and on all subjects,” even material often dismissed: ballads, erotica, news pamphlets, almanacs, popular images, romances, fables. The loss of part of his collection to another maritime disaster in 1522, set off the final scramble to complete this sublime project, a race against time to realize a vision of near-impossible perfection. “Magnificent…a thrill on almost every page” (The New York Times Book Review), The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books is a window into sixteenth-century Europe’s information revolution, and a reflection of the passion and intrigues that lie beneath our own insatiable desires to bring order to the world today.