Book Reviews Photo by Aideal Hwa / Unsplash If reading Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg’s Robot (Penguin Classics, 2021), translated by Tomasz Mirkowicz, makes you think about Stanislaw Lem’s work, you’re not alone. Indeed, both Robot and Lem’s His Master’s Voice (published in Polish just a few years apart) take up the fascinating but insoluble problem of whether or not we’re alone in the universe. One might even call Robot surrealist science fiction and liken it to Kafka’s work, or even Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, since the main character spends most of his time wandering around the halls of an underground shelter, unsure of his own identity and his place in the community that has formed following an apocalyptic event on the surface. His identity confusion derives from his “birth” on an assembly line under a kind of bell jar. Given instructions by a mysterious Mechanism to study the people living in the shelter, the protagonist proceeds as if he is a living machine given a modicum of free will (as explained by the Mechanism). Much of the novel focuses on the protagonist figuring out why those around him are living underground and why many of them believe that he is a physicist named Poreyra. Encountering strange “statues” that weigh several tons in one of the shelter’s rooms, he eventually moves through a mirror there into a replica of the stricken city, where time moves at a fraction of the speed experienced in the shelter.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-11-10 20:14:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 09/06/2011 - 15:14 Quercus has acquired an authorised biography of WBA world heavyweight boxing champion David Haye. Non-fiction publishing director Richard Milner bought world rights in Making Haye: The David Haye Story by sports writer... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Thu, 09/06/2011 - 08:00 Angry Robot is to publish its first "quadrilogy", with publishing director Marc Gascoigne acquiring two further books in Mike Shevdon's Courts of the Feyre series. Gascoigne bought world rights through Jennifer Jackson at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-06-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Tue, 24/05/2011 - 08:38 Annie Mauger, chief executive of CILIP, is to call on the Women's Institute to campaign for public libraries when she addresses the organisation's annual general meeting in Liverpool on 8th June. The WI, which has a 210,000... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Mon, 23/05/2011 - 09:20 Angry Robot has bought two "supernatural urban fantasies" by author Chris Holm. Publishing director Marc Gascoigne bought world rights across all formats from Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Agency in New York. read more Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Lisa Campbell Publication Date: Wed, 18/05/2011 - 09:33 Dominic Myers has called on the book industry to collaborate in creating more nation-wide events like World Book Night in order to enhance the dialogue around books. The Waterstone's m.d told the Book Industry Conference forum... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Mon, 16/05/2011 - 09:03 Faber has acquired a non-fiction title by novelist Rachel Cusk, about contemporary mid-life femininity. Publishing director Hannah Griffiths bought UK and Commonwealth rights from Tracy Bohan at the Wylie Agency. The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Tue, 10/05/2011 - 16:07 Publishers should avoid locking themselves into any long term strategy, technology or partnerships in their digital publishing because they cannot accurately predict the next two years' developments, today's World eReading... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-05-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Bookseller Staff Publication Date: Thu, 28/04/2011 - 07:32 Lauren Beukes's Zoo City has been honoured with the Arthur C Clarke Award for science fiction novel of the year, being tipped to bring "a whole new readership" to the genre. Zoo City's publisher Angry Robot Books has also... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Graeme Neill Publication Date: Thu, 07/04/2011 - 09:01 Angry Robot has made two fantasy fiction acquisitions, one a swashbuckling adventure and the other set in Elizabethan England. Both deals were signed by publishing director Marc Gascoigne for world English rights for physical,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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In 1919, the young E.B. White, future New Yorker writer and author of Charlotte's Web, took a class at Cornell University with a drill sergeant of an English professor named William Strunk Jr. Strunk assigned his self-published manual on composition titled "The Elements of Style," a 43-page list... Continue reading at Slate
[ Slate | 2011-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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