Life isn't easy in a cut-throat city ruled by guilds, especially for a freelance thief who refuses to swear fealty to the local thieves' guild. Beset by thieves and threatened by assassins, Gaspar is forced into a madcap hunt for a magical artefact. Confronted by danger at every turn, he and his friend, Hubris the Spellbroker, become entangled in a bizarre web of intrigue, politics and outlandish fashion. They soon realise that they are just pawns in a greater game, but who is their real adversary and how can they disentangle themselves without ending up seriously dead? This humorous fantasy novella (28,500 words) is a prequel to the novel, Gaspar The Thief (126,000 words), also by David A. Lindsay.
Follow the adventures of Gaspar, a freelance thief who stubbornly refuses to swear fealty to the Thieves' Guild. Cursed with a special affinity for calamity and mishap, and a talent for snatching defeat from the brink of victory, our hero blunders from one misfortune to the next, yet somehow always manages to survive to tell the tale. Accompanied by his long-suffering companions - Hubris, a spellbroker who refuses to pay his dues to Wizards' Hall; Marna, a feisty thiefess with a quick tongue and a quicker temper; and Drune, a mischievous wight with an unusual magical ability - our unlikely hero encounters looming retribution and imminent catastrophe at every step. Whether raiding a sinister funeral ship, foiling a scheming seductress, solving a puzzling murder, or confronting a gang of villainous ship-wreckers, Gaspar always somehow manages to narrowly side step disaster. But there's seemingly no end to the troubles he can find, and he soon finds himself an unwitting player in the siege of an ancient border fortress by a goblin army. Told with an appealing mixture of seriousness and humour, this is an exciting, fast-paced romp based in a fantasy world where anything can, and usually does, happen!
Follow the adventures of Gaspar, a freelance thief who stubbornly refuses to swear fealty to the Thieves' Guild. Cursed with a special affinity for calamity and mishap, and a talent for snatching defeat from the brink of victory, our hero blunders from one misfortune to the next, yet somehow always manages to survive to tell the tale. Accompanied by his long-suffering companions - Hubris, a spellbroker who refuses to pay his dues to Wizards' Hall; Marna, a feisty thiefess with a quick tongue and a quicker temper; and Drune, a mischievous wight with an unusual magical ability - our unlikely hero encounters looming retribution and imminent catastrophe at every step. Whether raiding a sinister funeral ship, foiling a scheming seductress, solving a puzzling murder, or confronting a gang of villainous ship-wreckers, Gaspar always somehow manages to narrowly side step disaster. But there's seemingly no end to the troubles he can find, and he soon finds himself an unwitting player in the siege of an ancient border fortress by a goblin army. Told with an appealing mixture of seriousness and humour, this is an exciting, fast-paced romp based in a fantasy world where anything can, and usually does, happen! This paperback edition now includes the prequel novella, Gaspar And The Fantastical Hats, available separately as a Kindle e-book.
Follow the misadventures of Gaspar, a freelance thief who stubbornly refuses to swear fealty to the Thieves' Guild.Cursed with a special affinity for calamity and mishap, and a talent for snatching defeat from the brink of victory, our hero blunders from one misfortune to the next, yet somehow always manages to survive to tell the tale.Accompanied by his long-suffering companions - Hubris, a spellbroker who refuses to pay his dues to Wizards' Hall; Marna, a feisty thiefess with a quick tongue and a quicker temper; and Drune, a mischievous wight with an unusual magical ability - our unlikely hero encounters looming retribution and imminent catastrophe at every step.Whether raiding a sinister funeral ship, foiling a scheming seductress, solving a puzzling murder, or confronting a gang of villainous ship-wreckers, Gaspar somehow always manages to narrowly side step disaster. But there's seemingly no end to the troubles he can find, and he soon finds himself an unwitting player in the siege of an ancient border fortress by a goblin army.Told with an appealing mixture of seriousness and humour, this is an exciting, fast-paced romp based in a fantasy world where anything can, and usually does, happen!This omnibus edition includes the prequel novella: Gaspar And The Fantastical Hats.
Like Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, Richard Zenith’s Pessoa immortalizes the life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do “more in dreams than Napoleon,” yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or “heteronyms,” under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this “most multifarious of writers” (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match. Relatively unknown in his lifetime, Pessoa was all but destined for literary oblivion when the arc of his afterlife bent, suddenly and improbably, toward greatness, with the discovery of some 25,000 unpublished papers left in a large, wooden trunk. Drawing on this vast archive of sources as well as on unpublished family letters, and skillfully setting the poet’s life against the nationalist currents of twentieth-century European history, Zenith at last reveals the true depths of Pessoa’s teeming imagination and literary genius. Much as Nobel laureate José Saramago brought a single heteronym to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa’s imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. A solitary man who had only one, ultimately platonic love affair, Pessoa used his and his heteronyms’ writings to explore questions of sexuality, to obsessively search after spiritual truth, and to try to chart a way forward for a benighted and politically agitated Portugal. Although he preferred the world of his mind, Pessoa was nonetheless a man of the places he inhabited, including not only Lisbon but also turn-of-the-century Durban, South Africa, where he spent nine years as a child. Zenith re-creates the drama of Pessoa’s adolescence—when the first heteronyms emerged—and his bumbling attempts to survive as a translator and publisher. Zenith introduces us, too, to Pessoa’s bohemian circle of friends, and to Ophelia Quieroz, with whom he exchanged numerous love letters. Pessoa reveals in equal force the poet’s unwavering commitment to defending homosexual writers whose books had been banned, as well as his courageous opposition to Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, toward the end of his life. In stunning, magisterial prose, Zenith contextualizes Pessoa’s posthumous literary achievements—especially his most renowned work, The Book of Disquiet. A modern literary masterpiece, Pessoa simultaneously immortalizes the life of a literary maestro and confirms the enduring power of Pessoa’s work to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of our modern world.
Forget cute fairies in pretty dresses. In the world of Aluvia, most fairies are more like irritable, moody insects. Almost everyone in the world of Aluvia views the fairy keeper mark as a gift, but not fourteen-year-old Sierra. She hates being a fairy keeper, but the birthmark is right there on the back of her neck. It shows everyone she was born with the natural ability to communicate, attract, and even control the tiny fairies whose nectar is amazingly powerful. Fairy nectar can heal people, but it is also a key ingredient in synthesizing Flight, an illegal elixir that produces dreaminess, apathy and hallucinations. She's forced to care for a whole hive of the bee-like beasties by her Flight-dealing, dark alchemist father.Then one day, Sierra discovers the fairies of her hatch are mysteriously dead. The fairy queen is missing. Her father's Flight operation is halted, and he plans to make up for the lost income by trading her little sister to be an elixir runner for another dark alchemist, a dangerous thug. Desperate to protect her sister, Sierra convinces her father she can retrieve the lost queen and get his operation up and running.The problem? Sierra's queen wasn't the only queen to disappear. They're all gone, every single one, and getting them back will be deadly dangerous.Sierra journeys with her best friend and her worst enemy -- assigned by her father to dog her every step -- to find the missing queens. Along the way, they learn that more than just her sister's life is at stake if they fail. There are secrets in the Skyclad Mountains where the last wild fairies were seen. The magic Sierra finds there has the power to transform their world, but only if she can first embrace her calling as a fairy keeper.
Study describes in chronological order how the various trade ornaments (material culture) were used from initial contact to circa 1900 by representative tribes of the seven major native groups of Canada. Based on extensive search of published and manuscript sources, supplemented by examination of historical paintings, photographs and ethnographical specimens.
Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major formulation of the theory of postmodernism. In this challenging collection of fifteen essays, most of which originally appeared in October, she explores the ways in which the break in style that produced postmodernism has forced a change in our various understandings of twentieth-century art, beginning with the almost mythic idea of the avant-garde. Krauss uses the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism, and poststructuralism to reveal new meanings in the visual arts and to critique the way other prominent practitioners of art and literary history write about art. In two sections, "Modernist Myths" and "Toward Postmodernism," her essays range from the problem of the grid in painting and the unity of Giacometti's sculpture to the works of Jackson Pollock, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra, and observations about major trends in contemporary literary criticism.
This book represents the first multidisciplinary scientific work on a deep volcanic maar lake in comparison with other similar temperate lakes. The syntheses of the main characteristics of Lake Pavin are, for the first time, set in a firmer footing comparative approach, encompassing regional, national, European and international aquatic science contexts. It is a unique lake because of its permanently anoxic monimolimnion, and furthermore, because of its small surface area, its substantially low human influence, and by the fact that it does not have a river inflow. The book reflects the scientific research done on the general limnology, history, origin, volcanology and geological environment as well as on the geochemistry and biogeochemical cycles. Other chapters focus on the biology and microbial ecology whereas the sedimentology and paleolimnology are also given attention. This volume will be of special interest to researchers and advanced students, primarily in the fields of limnology, biogeochemistry, and aquatic ecology.
Contemporary French cinema is an essential introduction to popular French film of the last 35 years. It charts recent developments in all genres of French cinema with analyses of over 120 movies, from Les Valseuses to Caché. Reflecting the diversity of French film production since the New Wave, this clear and perceptive study includes chapters on the heritage film, the thriller and the war movie, alongside the 'cinéma du look', representations of sexuality, comedies, the work of women film makers and le jeune cinéma. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of relevant films. Confirmed as a major contribution to both Film Studies and French Studies, this book is a fascinating volume for students and fans of French film alike.
