Super serious Asahi Suzumura and laidback, easygoing Mitsuki Sayama might seem like an odd couple, but they made a deal; they'll vacation around the world and when they get back to Japan, they'll get married. As they travel from country to country, the different people, cultures and cuisine they encounter begin to bring them closer together. After all they're not just learning about the world, but about themselves too.
What if we responded to death... by throwing a party? By the time Erica Buist’s father-in-law Chris was discovered, upstairs in his bed, his book resting on his chest, he had been dead for over a week. She searched for answers (the artery-clogging cheeses in his fridge?) and tried to reason with herself (does daughter-in-law even feature in the grief hierarchy?) and eventually landed on an inevitable, uncomfortable truth: everybody dies. While her husband maintained a semblance of grace and poise, Erica found herself consumed by her grief, descending into a bout of pyjama-clad agoraphobia, stalking friends online to ascertain whether any of them had also dropped dead without warning, unable to extract herself from the spiral of death anxiety... until one day she decided to reclaim control. With Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities as a starting point, Erica decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world – one for every day they didn’t find Chris. From Mexico to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia – with a stopover in New Orleans, where the dead outnumber the living ten to one – Erica searched for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety. This Party’s Deadis the account of her journey to understand how other cultures deal with mortal terror, how they move past the knowledge that they’re going to die in order to live happily day-to-day, how they celebrate rather than shy away from the topic of death – and how when this openness and acceptance are passed down through the generations, death suddenly doesn’t seem so scary after all.
In Hydrocephalic Ward, the new collection from Nathan Tyree, you will find robots for pedophiles, a man burning himself with cigarettes, a hospital where they keep you alive as long as you can pay, an abusive husband's grief, group sex and its effects, a suicidal philosopher, Cinderella, Quetzalcoatl, a breast feeding corpse, zombies, Elvis having a very bad day, a poker player in over his head, cannibal children, Junkies, John the Baptist, bees, drinkers and people on the edge.These are stories that both shock and move the reader."Wow! I'm still erect" - Mitch Cullin (Tideland)"Crams more malevolent nastiness and thought-provoking misanthropy into its every word and deed that your average Bret Easton Ellis."-Peter Wild, Editor of Noise and The Flash
It is the summer of 2004. But over five decades of independence, and a decade of economic liberalization does not mean much to the cotton farmers of Vidharbh in India, which has witnessed a spate of farmer suicides that continue to rise with every passing day. Yet; Ramwadi, a village in Vidhrabh, reeling in the clutches of a despotic headman and greedy moneylender, has ducked the trend. Then a jeep arrives in Ramwadi, carrying GM cottonseeds, which transform the simple lives of a few families in Ramwadi. Vasu, a small indebted farmer dreams of living a life of dignity, and chooses to drill a tube well to tap water for his six acres of dry land. The journey of his dream, through a series of ironic circumstances affects many people, encompassing their conflicts, which transcend the boundaries of Ramwadi, leading to Capitol Hill in Washington, the forests of Siberia and jungles of Gadchiroli. At the same time, it raises many profound and disturbing questions about democracy, agrarian policies, Kyoto Protocol and the environment, International politics, tiger conservation and human-animal conflicts, tribal unrest and revolutionary movements. Ironically, to live his small dream, Vasu and his family must survive these complex glocal conflicts.
There is a floating island in the sea where no explorer has set foot, or, setting foot, has returned to tell of what he saw. Lying at our very doors, in the direct path of every steamer from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe, it is less known than is the frozen pole. Encyclopedias pass over it lightly; atlases dismiss it with but a slight mention; maps do not attempt to portray its ever-shifting outlines; even the Sunday newspapers, so keen to grasp everything of interest, ignore it. But on the decks of great ships in the long watches of the night, when the trade-wind snores through the rigging and the waves purr about the bows, the sailor tells strange tales of the spot where ruined ships, raked derelict from all the square miles of ocean, form a great island, ever changing, ever wasting, yet ever lasting; where, in the ballroom of the Atlantic, draped round with encircling weed, they drone away their lives, balancing slowly in a mighty tourbillion to the rhythm of the Gulf Stream. Fanciful? Sailors tales? Stories fit only for the marines? Perhaps! Yet be not too sure! Jack Tar, slow of speech, fearful of ridicule, knows more of the sea than he will tell to the newspapers. Perhaps more than one has drifted to the isle of dead ships, and escaped only to be disbelieved in the maelstroms that await him in all the seaports of the world. Facts are facts, none the less because passed on only by word of mouth, and this tale, based on matter gleaned beneath the tropic stars, may be truer than men are wont to think. Remember Longfellow's words: "Wouldst thou," thus the steersman answered, "Learn the secret of the sea? Only those that brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery."
1940's India. During this volatile and transitional time in the country's fight for independence, Layla is astrologically doomed never to marry. Manik's career and arranged marriage were charted for success. But by cleverly manipulating the hand fortune has dealt her, Layla has found love with Manik. Layla's life as a newly married woman takes her away from home and into the jungles of Assam, where the world's finest tea thrives on plantations run by native labor and British efficiency. Fascinated by this culture of whiskey-soaked expats who seem fazed by neither earthquakes nor man-eating leopards, she struggles to find her place among the prickly English wives with whom she is expected to socialize, and the peculiar servants she now finds under her charge.
The "Critical Performance" series pairs a performance artist or playwright with a critical theorist in a dialogue aimed to elucidate both disciplines. This volume focuses on Deb Margolin, one of the three founding members of the American performance troupe Split Britches.
After Paul Lucas murders and inherits the wealth of an elderly woman entrusted to his care, he is badly injured when a commercial airliner crashes into the Maryland countryside. Following extensive reconstructive surgery, he is unable to remember his past. Later, while on a Carribean cruise, Lucas falls in love and proposes to a spellbinding woman. But Paul Lucas' troubles are far from over. A retired police detective, hired by the murdered woman's brother is closing in on him. Meanwhile, the demented brother of a woman Lucas raped twenty years earlier has been released from prison. Having killed twice while in prison, the brother, Sean Dougherty, has grown to love the high he gets when he takes a human life. Vowing to revenge the rape and subsequent suicide of his twin sister, Sean Dougherty begins his violent campaign to restore honor to the Dougherty family name.
