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Meeting a friend after many years' separation, the narrator wonders whether the events they both lived through in Lebanon really took place. Time and distance give a sense of unreality but when the narrator and Ali meet at Heathrow Airport, after seventeen years, the past slowly begins to unfold.Like so many other Palestinians who were born in the Lebanon, they had to leave in the mid-1980s, when it became a battlefield for different militias and armies – Lebanese, Palestinian, Israeli and Syrian. Ali leaves for America and, two years later, the narrator leaves for London.Their memories are concentrated on one fatal night when they and two other friends are together for the last time, before tragedy strikes. But for the narrator, a personal tragedy had struck much earlier, one which he would never forget and could not share.
I could no longer resign myself to the idea that the past was unreal. The nameless narrator of this startling novella believed himself to be under no illuson: a Palestinian refugee, he had escaped the deadly tumult of Lebanon--the roving militias and endlessly complicated religious violence--by having long ago fled to London. He knew he could never go back. But then one day an old friend who had also escaped calls him and asks to meet at the airport on a stop-over on his way back to Lebanon. For the narrator, it summons up everything he thought he had suppressed, both the yearning to go home and the secret reason he can't. Thus the reunion with his old friend becomes, for the narrator, a disturbing confrnotation. And as they plunge into diverging memories--his friend's frighteningly unreal, his own even more frighteningly too real--The Illusion of Return becomes a revealing and moving study of extremism and its brutalizing effect not only on nations but on the intimate lives of the individuals it touches. The Contemporary Art of the Novella series is designed to highlight work by major authors from around the world. In most instances, as with Imre Kertész, it showcases work never before published; in others, books are reprised that should never have gone out of print. It is intended that the series feature many well-known authors and some exciting new discoveries. And as with the original series, The Art of the Novella, each book is a beautifully packaged and inexpensive volume meant to celebrate the form and its practitioners.
"In a dry Kansas riverbed, a troop of Girl Scouts finds a human hand. This discovery leads Billy Spire, the tough and broken sheriff of Ewing County, to confront the depths of his community. The racism, the dying economy, the lies and truths of friendship, and his own injured marriage. But like any town where people still breathe, there is also love and hope and the possibility of redemption. To flyover people, Ewing County appears nothing more than a handful of empty streets amid crop circles and the meandering, depleted Arkansas River. But the truth of this place - the interwoven lives and stories - is anything but simple"--
A kaleidoscopic tale inspired by a legend from the medieval Persian epic "Book of Kings" follows the coming-of-age of a feral Middle Eastern youth in New York City on the eve of the September 11 attacks. By the award-winning author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects. 25,000 first printing.
A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.
The Nobel Prize-winning author distills his wide experience of countries and peoples into a moving account of the rites of passage endured by all people and all communities undergoing change or decay. • "Naipaul's finest work." —Chicago Tribune "A subtly incisive self-reckoning." —The Washington Post Book World The story of a writer’s singular journey – from one place to another, and from one state of mind to another. At the midpoint of the century, the narrator leaves the British colony of Trinidad and comes to the ancient countryside of England. And from within the story of this journey – of departure and arrival, alienation and familiarity, home and homelessness – the writer reveals how, cut off from his “first” life in Trinidad, he enters a “second childhood of seeing and learning.” Clearly autobiographical, yet woven through with remarkable invention, The Enigma of Arrival is as rich and complex as any novel we have had from this exceptional writer. "The conclusion is both heart-breaking and bracing: the only antidote to destruction—of dreams, of reality—is remembering. As eloquently as anyone now writing, Naipaul remembers." —Time "Far and away the most curious novel I've read in a long time, and maybe the most hypnotic book I've ever read." —St. Petersburg Times
Examines the attraction between abuser and victim which results in disorders and dangerous attractions on both sides, considering the typical personalities involved in patterns of neglect.
Presents a study of political theater in the English Renaissance, discussing the differences between a public playhouse and a private, or court theater, and looking at masques and the role of king in the Renaissance court.
“The uncanny beauty of Van Booy’s prose, and his ability to knife straight to the depths of a character’s heart, fill a reader with wonder.” — San Francisco Chronicle Award-winning author Simon Van Booy tells a harrowing and enchanting story of how one man’s act of mercy during World War II changed the lives of strangers, and how they each discover the astonishing truth of their connection. The characters in Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness discover at their darkest moments of fear and isolation that they are not alone, that they were never alone, that every human being is a link in a chain we cannot see. This gripping novel—inspired by true events—tells the interwoven stories of a deformed German infantryman; a lonely British film director; a young, blind museum curator; two Jewish American newlyweds separated by war; and a caretaker at a retirement home for actors in Santa Monica. They move through the same world but fail to perceive their connections until, through seemingly random acts of selflessness, a veil is lifted to reveal the vital parts they have played in one another's lives, and the illusion of their separateness.
Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.