The classic novel of the London Blitz, DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR captures the chaos, absurdity and ultimately the tragedy of life during the bombardment. Featured on BACKLISTED podcast Bill Sarratt is a civil servant working on the war effort. Thwarted at every turn by bureaucracy and the vested interests of big business, the seemingly unflappable Bill is also on the verge of losing his wife Marcia to a literary poseur named Stephen. As the bombs continue to fall, Bill must decide whether he his willing to compromise his principles and prevent his life from crumbling before his very eyes.
When Darkness Falls, the third book in The Obsidian Trilogy from Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory Despite a great working of Wild Magic and High Magic that struck at the heart of the Demon Queen's evil plots, Knight-Mage Kellen and his Elven allies are still seen as enemies by the human Mage Council. The Elves and their allies must find a way to shatter the Demons' hold on the human Mages, for without their High Magic, the forces of Light will be destroyed by the forces of Darkness. The Commander of the Armies of Light decides to turn an Elven mine into a refuge for those driven from their homes by the war. Kellen is put in command of the force of engineers and warriors who will fortify the mine and does not learn until it is nearly too late that the caverns are full of Shadowed Elves. Vestakia, the half-human, half-Demon healer, finds that she has begun to be able to read the mind of her Demon father, Crown Prince Zyperis. The Demon Queen, Savilla, is preparing a great sacrifice that will summon He Who Is back to the world and make her the ultimate ruler forever. When Wild Mage Idalia learns of Savilla's plans, she knows there is only one way to prevent the coming of He Who Is. A very different sort of sacrifice must be made. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Includes the unabridged text of Joyce's classic novel plus a complete study guide that features chapter-by-chapter summaries, explanations and discussions of the plot, question-and-answer sections, author biography, historical background, and more.
Follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist's life.
Primer of influential and innovative works features A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in its entirety, excerpts from Ulysses, the short story collection Dubliners, the play Exiles, and Chamber Music, an early book of poems.
Reading London in Wartime: Blitz, the People and Propaganda in 1940s Literature presents an expansive variety of writers and genres, including non-fiction and film approaches, to build a comprehensive social picture of the atmosphere during wartime London. From blitz and austerity to the nagging insistency of propaganda, this volume examines the representation of London in wartime and early post-war literature through each writer’s unique perspective on the pressures of 1940s city life. Exploring the use of London imagery, this book considers how literature redirects attention to individual, subjective experience at a time of enforced co-operation, uniformity and community. Unlike government information films and news broadcasts, which often used London to prop up prevailing clichés and stereotypes, and encouraged patriotic support for the war, literature had the freedom to express more recalcitrant truths. London writing of the 1940s was not a literature of opposition or dissent, but in offering more nuanced depictions of the period, it was a counterweight to propaganda and the general war temperament. In writing, the city becomes a more complex place, no longer the easy symbol of defiance and stoicism, of the shared sacrifice of ration book and war work.
The first novel by Irish writer, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a coming-of-age tale about the religious and intellectual awakening of the protagonist. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Joyce examines what distinguishes the individual from the social, religious and cultural, by mapping the ever-changing landscape of the mind. Written in a modernist style, the novel traces the journey of young Stephen Dedalus, a fictitious alter ego of Joyce, with an allusion to the skilful craftsman and artist of Greek mythology. Stephen rebels against the Catholic and Irish mores that govern his upbringing, culminating in his self-imposed exile from Ireland to Europe. American modernist poet Ezra Pound had the novel serialised in the English literary magazine The Egotist in 1914 and 1915. Published as a book in 1916 by B.W. Huebsch of New York, Joyce’s debut novel earned him his place as a frontrunner of literary modernism.
This new study rereads the literary response to a decade of trauma and transformation. Instead of separating the 1940s into before and after the war, it focuses on the entire decade and the themes which emerged from writers' involvement in and resistance
The Irish author James Joyce was a prominent figure of the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. His masterpiece ‘Ulysses’ is a landmark modernist work, in which the episodes of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, including stream of consciousness. Other important works are the seminal short story collection ‘Dubliners’ and the novel ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, noted for their experimental use of language and exploration of pioneering literary techniques. This eBook presents Joyce’s collected works, with numerous illustrations, rare texts appearing in digital print for the first time, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 7) Please note: due to US copyright restrictions, post-1925 works cannot appear in this edition. When new texts become available, they will be added to the eBook as a free update. CONTENTS The Novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Ulysses The Short Stories Dubliners Other Prose Works Epiphanies The Play Exiles The Poetry Collections Early Poetry Chamber Music Pomes Penyeach The Poetry List of Poems in Chronological Order List of Poems in Alphabetical Order
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first novel, published after the previous success of his short story collection Dubliners. The novel is written in a modernist style, with dialog and narration blending together in a kind of stream-of-consciousness meant to invoke the blurriness of memory. Joyce originally planned writing a realist autobiographical novel of 63 chapters titled Stephen Hero. He abandoned the attempt halfway through, and refocused his efforts on Portrait, a shorter, sharper work in the modernist style. His alter-ego remained Stephen Dedalus, named after Daedalus, the mythological Greek craftsman and father of Icarus. Portrait was written while he was waiting for Dubliners to be published, a process that took eight years and so frustrated Joyce that he once threw the manuscript of Portrait into a fire, causing his family to run to save it. The novel closely traces Joyce’s early years. Like his alter-ego Stephen, Joyce was born into a middle-class family and lived in Dublin as they descended into poverty; he rebelled against his Irish Catholic upbringing to become a star student at Dublin University, and put aside thoughts of priesthood or medicine, the other careers offered him, to become a writer. Joyce doesn’t shy away from sensitive topics, presenting the discoveries of youth in all of their physical detail, including Stephen’s teenage visits to prostitutes (which also mirror Joyce’s youth, and were how he probably contracted the suspected syphilis that plagued his vision and tortured his health for the rest of his life), and the homosexual explorations of children at a Jesuit school. The writing is in the free indirect style, allowing the narrator to both focus on Stephen and present characters and events through his eyes, until the last chapter, where Stephen’s first-person diary entries suggest he’s finally found his voice. As the novel progresses, the syntax and vocabulary also grow in complexity, reflecting Stephen’s own development. Of Joyce’s three novels, Portrait is the most straightforward and accessible. But it remains just as rich and complex as any masterpiece, with critics across generations hailing it as work of unique beauty and perception. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.
