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A Professional Review "In this kind of fractured reality, the clever idea is that we never know what is real." Stella Westhoff, A dream invasion adventure epic, Richard Sole swims into the swirly sea of the subconscious shifting logic with fractured reality of dreams. "A Ritual of the Monkey" is surely an ambitious psychological thriller, brilliantly conceived and superbly written. It tells the story of Ezra Cantrell adrift in time and experience, in reality within dreams; dreams without reality as he enters in a world where dreams and reality are indecipherable. What is real and what is not becomes a mind-bending, time-twisting odyssey. Ezra Cantrell is a Foreign Service employee who meets and marries Sacha, an Indonesian woman. The all-important establishment of the book's premise is made meticulously and at great length as Ezra travels on assignments. Ultimately, it is the experience of the book that toys with the reader's mind on a massive scale. As Sacha's emotional pain and the symptoms of her disease become apparent, she is betrayed with frightening delusions. She descends into madness and then regains the ability to function in her world or is it? Alternating between what is real and what is not, Richard Sole hypnotizes us with elegant dreamscapes within cityscapes and as a tour guide, takes the reader to distant lands and introduce them to its culture and mores. Like any traditional narrative, the book starts at point A and ends at point B. It just goes backward through the alphabet to get there. A slippery, cerebral drama that slaloms from illusion to reality and back again leaving the reader bewitched and bothered. It is the story of good and evil, a narrative of America's imperial character versus radical Islamic Jihad, it is the tangle of relationships that goes against the grain and challenges eternal truths. A well crafted and enthralling brain teaser, "A Ritual of the Monkey" is either a great, mind-bending book or one big swindle. Let's go with the former. Stella Westhoff Atlanta, Georgia About The Book Spurred by a desire to travel the world, Ezra Cantrell joined the Foreign Service and saw it all- Thousand islands of Indonesia, soaring minarets in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistans bulbous blue domes, and many pleasant tree-filled streets around the world. His journeys traversed the continents casting a spell on any travelers imagination. Along with Sacha his Indonesian spouse, their magical journey is a measure for adventure,... or misadventure. Then the ragged wounds of life strike Sacha with an emotional disorder and strip her of a fulfilling life experience. Her obsessive ritual is matched only by the lecherous fetish of a French diplomat who falls in love with her nineteen-year-old daughter. The mishmash adds a disquieting twist to an already sick family dynamic. Lost in the shuffle, Sacha struggles as she trails her husband on international assignments. With each move she starts again in a different city. Adrift in real time and dream time, Ezra finds solace from the family turmoil, as he escapes on assignments and soon experiments with his sexual curiosity. Tormented by his secret desires, he struggles to stave off the gremlins. Along comes a sociopath brimming with wicked desires who spews a disturbing shroud over an American university campus. A delusional love affair sprouts, a bruised ego ruptures and a sick obsession with a sadistic bent is unleashed with dreadful outcomes. What appears to be isolated slayings soon turn into the handiwork of a demented mind setting off an intercontinental jealous rage that chills the mind in this dream invasion epic.
This tripartite study of the monkey metaphor, the monkey performance, and the 'special status' people traces changes in Japanese culture from the eighth century to the present. During early periods of Japanese history the monkey's nearness to the human-animal boundary made it a revered mediator or an animal deity closest to humans. Later it became a scapegoat mocked for its vain efforts to behave in a human fashion. Modern Japanese have begun to see a new meaning in the monkey--a clown who turns itself into an object of laughter while challenging the basic assumptions of Japanese culture and society.
The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery. Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.
Yoruba peoples of southwestern Nigeria conceive of rituals as journeys -- sometimes actual, sometimes virtual. Performed as a parade or a procession, a pilgrimage, a masking display, or possession trance, the journey evokes the reflexive, progressive, transformative experience of ritual participation. Yoruba Ritual is an original and provocative study of these practices. Using a performance paradigm, Margaret Thompson Drewal forges a new theoretical and methodological approach to the study of ritual that is thoroughly grounded in close analysis of the thoughts and actions of the participants. Challenging traditional notions of ritual as rigid, stereotypic, and invariant, Drewal reveals ritual to be progressive, transformative, generative, and reflexive and replete with simultaneity, multifocality, contingency, indeterminacy, and intertextuality. Throughout the book prominence is given to the intentionality of actors as knowledgeable agents who transform ritual itself through play and improvisation. Integral to the narrative are interpolations about performances and their meanings by Kolawole Ositola, a scholar of Yoruba oral tradition, ritual practitioner, diviner, and master performer. Rich descriptions of rituals relating to birth, death, reincarnation, divination, and constructions of gender are rendered all the more vivid by a generous selection of field photos of actual performances.
How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans.
Using the concept of theatricality to study Water Margin and Journey to the West, this study illustrates how writing and reading in early modern China became fused with a theatrical imagination in response to destabilizing social and political forces.
Two experts on the unexplained and paranormal team up to bring you the definitive guide to zombies! The apocalypse of the rapacious, infectious living dead is more probable than ever—at least, if movies, books, and television are to be believed. But long before exotic viruses, biological warfare, and sinister military experiments brought the dead back to life in our cinemas and on our television screens, there were the dark spells and incantations of the ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Babylonians. Blending the historical with the modern, the biographical with the literary, the plants and animals with bacteria and viruses, the mythological with the horrifying true tales, The Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead is a comprehensive resource for understanding, combating, and avoiding all things zombie. More than 250 entries cover everything about the ignominious role in folklore and mythology to today's pop culture, including … Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Mad Cow Disease The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 The Centers for Disease Control and FEMA’s Zombie Preparedness plans The MacArthur Causeway Face-eating Zombie Nazi Experiments to Resurrect the Dead Night of the Living Dead and much, much more. Blending historical review and a lot of pop-culture fun with chilling tales of ravenous end-of-times horrors, The Zombie Book is perfect for browsing or for a thorough reading by fans of the macabre. An extensive bibliography and index make this the perfect start to anyone’s quest for preparing for a zombie cataclysm.
Afrocentric Theatre updates the Molettes' groundbreaking book, Black Theatre: Premise and Presentation, that has been required reading in many Black theatre courses for over twenty-fi ve years. Afrocentric theatre is a culturally-based art form, not a race-based one. Culture and values shape perceptions of such phenomena as time, space, heroism, reality, truth, and beauty. These culturally variable social constructions determine standards for evaluating and analyzing art and govern the way people perceive theatrical presentations as well as fi lm and video drama. A play is not Afrocentric simply because it is by a Black playwright, or has Black characters, or addresses a Black theme or issue. Afrocentric Theatre describes the nature of an art form that embraces and disseminates African American culture and values. Further, it suggests a framework for interpreting andevaluating that art form and assesses the endeavors of dramatists who work from an Afrocentric perspective.
While dragons and Chinese astrology are well embedded in popular culture, many other fascinating Chinese myths remain little-known. In this fascinating and readable new edition, author Te Lin explores the world of Chinese mythology, both telling us the timeless stories, and providing an explanation of what they may mean. A must-read for anyone interested in either Chinese culture, or mythology generally.