Clown of the City
Clown of the City

Author: Stephan de Beer

Publisher: African Sun Media

Published: 2020-11-25

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1928480845

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At opening this book, everything one has learned or thought about “urban ministry” is challenged, and changed. Stephan de Beer offers a fresh, exciting and thoroughly engaging approach. The title is enticing and playful, but the book is a serious grappling with the daunting realities of a shadowed, marginalised, urban life. It does not theorise or pontificate about a concept. The author is not a distant, neutral observer. He is an engaged minister to the people, a struggler in their struggles, prophet to the powerful. This book invites the reader to join the people of the cities under siege by failed policies, empty promises, and disastrous politics, in their struggles for meaningful life, and it makes a powerful, persuasive case. Stephan de Beer has offered us a great gift and a wonderful opportunity to think and hope anew, and differently, about the life, reality, and future of the city.

City of Clowns
City of Clowns

Author: Daniel Alarcón

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-11-03

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 0399184805

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A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns. From the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is drawn into their haunting, fantastical world. This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story. With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.

Clown Girl
Clown Girl

Author: Monica Drake

Publisher: Hawthorne Books

Published: 2010-08-24

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0979018889

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Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.

The Clown
The Clown

Author: Heinrich Boll

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2010-12-15

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1935554859

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Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schneir collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation” afterwards. Heinrich Böll’s gripping consideration of how to overcome guilt and live up to idealism—how to find something to believe in—gives stirring evidence of why he was such an unwelcome presence in post-War German consciousness . . . and why he was such a necessary one.

Jingle the Christmas Clown
Jingle the Christmas Clown

Author: Tomie dePaola

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-10-05

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 1534466568

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Staying behind when their circus moves on, a young clown and a troupe of baby animals put on a special Christmas Eve show for an Italian village too poor to celebrate the holiday.

Shalimar the Clown
Shalimar the Clown

Author: Salman Rushdie

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2009-02-24

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 0307371182

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Shalimar the Clown is a masterpiece from one of our greatest writers, a dazzling novel that brings together the fiercest passions of the heart and the gravest conflicts of our time into an astonishingly powerful, all-encompassing story. Max Ophuls’ memorable life ends violently in Los Angeles in 1993 when he is murdered by his Muslim driver Noman Sher Noman, also known as Shalimar the Clown. At first the crime seems to be politically motivated—Ophuls was previously ambassador to India, and later US counterterrorism chief—but it is much more. Ophuls is a giant, an architect of the modern world: a Resistance hero and best-selling author, brilliant economist and clandestine US intelligence official. But it is as Ambassador to India that the seeds of his demise are planted, thanks to another of his great roles—irresistible lover. Visiting the Kashmiri village of Pachigam, Ophuls lures an impossibly beautiful dancer, the ambitious (and willing) Boonyi Kaul, away from her husband, and installs her as his mistress in Delhi. But their affair cannot be kept secret, and when Boonyi returns home, disgraced and obese, it seems that all she has waiting for her is the inevitable revenge of her husband: Noman Sher Noman, Shalimar the Clown. He was an acrobat and tightrope walker in their village’s traditional theatrical troupe; but soon Shalimar is trained as a militant in Kashmir’s increasingly brutal insurrection, and eventually becomes a terrorist with a global remit and a deeply personal mission of vengeance. In this stunningly rich book everything is connected, and everyone is a part of everyone else. A powerful love story, intensely political and historically informed, Shalimar the Clown is also profoundly human, an involving story of people’s lives, desires and crises, as well as—in typical Rushdie fashion—a magical tale where the dead speak and the future can be foreseen.

Clown Town
Clown Town

Author: Lou Macaluso

Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing

Published: 2008-05

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 159858670X

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Clown Town is true story/social Chicago history of a baby boomer's struggle with death phobia filtered through a child's perspective. The title refers to an imaginary world created by the young protagonist, Pudgie, to pacify his younger friend's curiosity about the real world of school. Pudgie's real world, however, is a horrific world of indignity, humiliation, anger, and fear. Clown Town is a utopian world of fantasy for young boys growing up in a Chicago suburb during the 1950s. The Prologue establishes the adult first-person narrator in the present tense. He is forced to reminisce about his youth when the eminent death of his mother rekindles old fears and personality quirks that had haunted his life. His journey backward leads the reader to the death of a neighborhood man, the death of Pudgie's grandfather, and the death of a schoolmate in a historic Chicago school fire of 1958. Pudgie also struggles with a volatile temper when teased about his crossed left eye. The temper threatens his existence in a "normal" school. Along the way, the narrative treats the reader to a nostalgic look at the 1950s (the music, the cars, the TV shows, the movies, the mores), a naive child's interpretation of sex, and an adult perspective of childhood adventures such as smoking, competing in sports, and participating in petty crime.

Touch of the Clown
Touch of the Clown

Author: Glen Huser

Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd

Published: 1999-04-01

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1554980623

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Cosmo the clown is the first bit of light to come into Barbara's life in a long time. At home, she takes care of her abusive father, her grandmother, and Livvy, her sick sister. Cosmo encourages Barbara to join a teen clown workshop he is leading, and there she finds true friends for the first time. But she is soon in desperate need of his gentle guidance, when her family situation implodes, and her own resilience and resourcefulness are put to their greatest test.