Simon Leys

Author : Philippe Paquet
Publisher : La Trobe University Press
Page : 720 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2017-09-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781925435566

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Simon Leys by Philippe Paquet Pdf

An award-winning biography of one of the greats. Simon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. He taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University and was Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney from 1987 to 1993. He died in 2014. Writing in three languages – French, Chinese and English – he played an important political role in revealing the true nature of the Cultural Revolution. His writing on China and on varied literary and cultural topics appeared regularly in the New York Review of Books, Le Monde, Le Figaro Littéraire, Quadrant and the Monthly, and his books include The Hall of Uselessness, The Death of Napoleon, Other People’s Thoughts and The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper. In 1996 he delivered the ABC’s Boyer Lectures. His many awards include the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca, the Prix Guizot and the Christina Stead Prize for fiction. This substantial biography – recently published by Gallimard in France to wide acclaim and winning an award from the Académie Francaise – draws on extensive correspondence with Ryckmans, as well as his unpublished writings. It has been translated by an internationally renowned French translator Julie Rose (based in Sydney).

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Penguin Group
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1978
Category : History
ISBN : 0140047875

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Chinese Shadows by Simon Leys Pdf

Author : Simone Weil
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 97 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2014-09-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781590177907

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On the Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil Pdf

An NYRB Classics Original Simone Weil—philosopher, activist, mystic—is one of the most uncompromising of modern spiritual masters. In “On the Abolition of All Political Parties” she challenges the foundation of the modern liberal political order, making an argument that has particular resonance today, when the apathy and anger of the people and the self-serving partisanship of the political class present a threat to democracies all over the world. Dissecting the dynamic of power and propaganda caused by party spirit, the increasing disregard for truth in favor of opinion, and the consequent corruption of education, journalism, and art, Weil forcefully makes the case that a true politics can only begin where party spirit ends. This volume also includes an admiring portrait of Weil by the great poet Czeslaw Milosz and an essay about Weil’s friendship with Albert Camus by the translator Simon Leys.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Black Inc.
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2014-12-12
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9781921870842

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The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys Pdf

Simon Leys' cultural and political commentary has long been legendary for its profundity and acerbic wit. In The Hall of Uselessness his most significant essays are finally gathered together, on subjects ranging from China to Orwell, from Quixotism to the sea. Leys feuds with Christopher Hitchens, ponders the popularity of Victor Hugo and analyses whether Nabokov's unfinished novel should ever have been published. He dissects Mao's Cultural Revolution and the Khmer Rouge, and discusses Waugh, Simenon and Confucius. He considers Chinese art, culture and politics, the joys and difficulties of lit.

Author : Simon Leys,Pierre Ryckmans
Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan
Page : 261 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1977
Category : History
ISBN : 031212791X

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The Chairman's New Clothes by Simon Leys,Pierre Ryckmans Pdf

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Black Inc.
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2007-10-01
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9781921866630

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Other People's Thoughts by Simon Leys Pdf

ʻA book is a mirror; if an ape looks into it, an apostle is hardly likely to look out.’ –G. C. Lichtenberg ‘The desire to go into politics is usually indicative of some sort of personality disorder, and it is precisely those who want power most that should be kept furthest from it.’ –Arthur Koestler ‘Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.’ –Thoreau In this wonderfully entertaining collection of quotations, Simon Leys gathers insights and bons mots from a motley group of great artists, wits and thinkers. Topics range from ambition and adventure to youth, sex, time, toads, wine, faith and friendship. Wise, witty and delightfully unpredictable, Other People’s Thoughts is for anyone who has ever rifled through a friend’s bookshelves or snuck a peak over a reading stranger’s shoulder. In this wide-ranging miscellany, we are given free rein to explore the nooks and crannies of one man’s mental library. By turns profound, whimsical and subversive, the result is a book-lover’s delight.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Black Inc.
Page : 101 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9781921870088

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The Wreck of the Batavia & Prosper by Simon Leys Pdf

In 1629, the Batavia was wrecked on a coral archipelago fifty miles from the Australian continent. Most of the people on board survived, only to become victims of a visionary psychopath who, with the help of a dozen followers, organised a methodical massacre of the hapless community. Following the wreck's discovery some forty years ago, Simon Leys travelled to the site. This is his riveting account of the shipwreck and its brutal aftermath. As well as a narrative of the disaster, it is also a subtle consideration of the nature of totalitarianism and our susceptibility to its visionary ideologues. This book also includes Leys' elegiac essay, Prosper, recalling a summer when he joined the crew of a tuna-fishing boat from Brittany, one of the last boats still working under sail. This remarkable piece vividly evokes the traditions, hardships and dangers of the oldest and finest form of seamanship. 'The Wreck of the Batavia is a dazzling tale told by a master: brief, direct, essential – and monstrous.' —Philippe Sollers, Le Monde

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : New York Review of Books
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2015-05-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781590178430

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The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys Pdf

As he bore a vague resemblance to the Emperor, the sailors on board the Hermann-Augustus Stoeffer had nicknamed him Napoleon. And so, for convenience, that is what we shall call him. Besides, he was Napoleon. . . . Napoleon has escaped from St. Helena, leaving a double behind him. Now disguised as the cabin hand Eugène Lenormand and enduring the mockery of the crew (Na­po­leon, they laughingly nickname the pudgy, hopelessly clumsy little man), he is on his way back to Europe, ready to make contact with the huge secret organization that will return him to power. But then the ship on which he sails is rerouted from Bordeaux to Antwerp. When Napoleon disembarks, he is on his own. He revisits the battlefield of Waterloo, now a tourist destination. He makes his way to Paris. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps conduct our puzzled hero deeper and deeper into the mystery of Napoleon.

Author : Confucius
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 277 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2014-06-17
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780393522907

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The Analects (Norton Critical Editions) by Confucius Pdf

“Leys has made Confucius speak English more persuasively than any translator to date. His achievement is one of simplicity. . . . Leys sees his task as making the Confucius of the Analects fully persuasive again. He does this brilliantly.” —Stephen Owen, The New Republic The Norton Critical Edition aims to situate the historical figure of Kongzi, the legendary figure of Confucius, and the Analects (or Lunyu), the single most influential book ascribed to the Master's circle of disciples, within their evolving ethical, cultural, and political contexts. Simon Leys’s acclaimed translation and notes are accompanied by Michael Nylan’s insightful introduction. Eleven essays by leading experts in the field of Chinese studies discuss a broad range of issues relating to the Analects, from the origins of the classicists (Ru) and the formation of the Analects text to the use (and abuse) of the Master’s iconic image in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Asian, diasporic, and Western settings. Collectively, these readings suggest that the Confucius we thought we knew is not the Kongzi of record and that this Kongzi is a protean figure given to rapid change and continual reevaluation. Contributors include Henry Rosemont Jr., Nicolas Zufferey, Robert Eno, Thomas Wilson, Sébastien Billioud and Vincent Goossaert, Julia K. Murray, Mark Csikszentmihalyi and Tae Hyun Kim, Eric L. Hutton, Luke Habberstad, He Yuming, and Sam Ho.

Author : Ruoxi Chen
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2004-07-21
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0253216907

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The Execution of Mayor Yin and Other Stories from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Revised Edition by Ruoxi Chen Pdf

Annotation A classic of modern world literature, this collection of stories provides a vivid eyewitness view of everyday life in China during the Cultural Revolution. For this edition, the text has been thoroughly revised and updated to Pinyin romanization. A new introduction reflects on the book's significance in the post-Tianamen era.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : China
ISBN : 0586086307

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The Burning Forest by Simon Leys Pdf

Author : Eduardo Lalo
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2017-10-11
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780226207650

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Uselessness by Eduardo Lalo Pdf

A Puerto Rican student at a Paris university grapples with heartbreak and isolation in this compelling novel by the author of Simone. The streets of Paris at night are pathways coursing with light and shadow, channels along which identity may be formed and lost, where the grand inflow of history, art, language, and thought—and of love—can both inspire and enfeeble. For the narrator of Eduardo Lalo’s Uselessness, it is a world long desired. But as this young aspiring writer discovers upon leaving his home in San Juan to study—to live and be reborn—in the city of his dreams, Paris’s twinned influences can rip you apart. Lalo’s first novel, Uselessness is something of a bildungsroman of his own student days in Paris. But more than this, it is a literary précis of his oeuvre—of themes that obsess him still. Told in two parts, Uselessness first follows our narrator through his romantic and intellectual awakenings in Paris, where he elevates his adopted home over the moribund one he has left behind. But as he falls in and out of love he comes to realize that as a Puerto Rican, he will always be apart. Ending the greatest romance of his life—that with the city of Paris itself—he returns to San Juan. And in this new era of his life, he is forced to confront choices made, ambitions lost or unmet—to look upon lives not lived. A tale of the travails of youthful romance and adult acceptance, of foreignness and isolation both at home and abroad, and of the stultifying power of the desire to belong—and to be moved—Uselessness is here rendered into English by the masterful translator Suzanne Jill Levine. For anyone who has been touched by the disquieting passion of Paris, Uselessness is a stirring saga. Praise for Uselessness “In this dreamy and succinct novel, Lalo takes readers on an intimate journey of companionship abroad. . . . This book is an important exploration of the Latin American experience in Europe. . . . Uselessness is a novel of modern plight that’s brimming with hope and wisdom.” —Booklist “Exploring the themes of love, isolation, and intellectual maturation, Uselessness will resonate with anyone who has fallen in love with Paris and its extravagant promises of romance and fulfillment.” —Rachel Cordasco, BookRiot “What a powerful, bleak, and moving novel. It dwells on things—human insignificance, disappointment, compromise, failure—that most books only gesture at.” —Ross Posnock, Columbia University

Author : Helen DeWitt
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2016-05-31
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780811225519

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The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt Pdf

Called “remarkable” (The Wall Street Journal) and “an ambitious, colossal debut novel” (Publishers Weekly), Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is back in print at last Helen DeWitt’s 2000 debut, The Last Samurai, was “destined to become a cult classic” (Miramax). The enterprising publisher sold the rights in twenty countries, so “Why not just, ‘destined to become a classic?’” (Garth Risk Hallberg) And why must cultists tell the uninitiated it has nothing to do with Tom Cruise? Sibylla, an American-at-Oxford turned loose on London, finds herself trapped as a single mother after a misguided one-night stand. High-minded principles of child-rearing work disastrously well. J. S. Mill (taught Greek at three) and Yo Yo Ma (Bach at two) claimed the methods would work with any child; when these succeed with the boy Ludo, he causes havoc at school and is home again in a month. (Is he a prodigy, a genius? Readers looking over Ludo’s shoulder find themselves easily reading Greek and more.) Lacking male role models for a fatherless boy, Sibylla turns to endless replays of Kurosawa’s masterpiece Seven Samurai. But Ludo is obsessed with the one thing he wants and doesn’t know: his father’s name. At eleven, inspired by his own take on the classic film, he sets out on a secret quest for the father he never knew. He’ll be punched, sliced, and threatened with retribution. He may not live to see twelve. Or he may find a real samurai and save a mother who thinks boredom a fate worse than death.

Author : Simon Leys
Publisher : ReadHowYouWant.com
Page : 94 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2010-11-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781459602526

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With Stendhal (Large Print 16pt) by Simon Leys Pdf

With Stendhal is a delightful portrait of the nineteenth century French novelist Henri Beyle' better known to us as Stendhal. Two linked texts' introduced' annotated and translated into English for the first time by multi - award - winning author Simon Leys' illuminate the life and mind of the great writer. The first piece is a set of impression...

Author : Christopher Hitchens
Publisher : Signal
Page : 79 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-04-24
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780771039195

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The Missionary Position by Christopher Hitchens Pdf

Among his many books, perhaps none have sparked more outrage than The Missionary Position, Christopher Hitchens's meticulous and searing study of the life and deeds of Mother Teresa--and it is now available as a Signal deluxe paperback. A Nobel Peace Prize recipient canonized by the Catholic Church in 2003, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was celebrated by heads of state and adored by millions for her work on behalf of the poor. In his measured critique, Hitchens asks only that Mother Teresa's reputation be judged by her actions--not the other way around. With characteristic elan and rhetorical dexterity, Hitchens eviscerates the fawning cult of Teresa, recasting the Albanian missionary in a light she has never before been seen in.