Eleven stories. Each like a matchstick struck to illuminate the darkness. Evocations of place ranging from a Bangla jungle to the deep, blue Danube to a winter beach in Melbourne excite and seduce. But what truly draws the reader in are the unexpected landscapes of people's lives, explored with rare sensitivity, grace and a fearless truthfulness. A lonely St Kilda chef invites a beautiful busker to use his spare room. A father sings a lullaby to comfort his young daughter who has woken from a nightmare. A taxi driver picks up an old-world gentleman who is reluctant to disclose his destination. A young immigrant boy growing up in the western suburbs of Melbourne daydreams of infinite possibility. Death, loneliness, passion and belief: Patrić takes on the big questions in life and writes about the small people of the world with stylistic verve and deep humanity. This collection of stories reveals the author, best known for his award-winning novels, as a true master of the short story form. ‘One of the most interesting and valuable writers working in Australia today.’ — The Australian

"Refreshing..." -- African Sudies Review "The entries are knowledgeable, thorough, and clearly written.... Highly recommended... " --Choice "...an ambitious reference guide to works on African literature." - African Studies Review "This comprehensive compendium will be a handy companion for anyone working on African literatures. The entries are authoritative and up-to-date, providing reliable information on the hundreds of authors and texts that have contributed to a whole continent's literary flowering." --Bernth Lindfors A comprehensive introduction and guide to African-authored works, with over 1,000 cross-referenced entries covering classics in African writing, literary genres and movements, biographical details of authors, and wider themes linking African, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American literatures.

" ... selected not only African oral and written stories but also tales from around the world ..."--Pref., p. 11.

June 17, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This publication provided the impetus for the foundation of the African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as the editorial adviser. Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature captures the energy of literary publishing in a new and undefined field. Portraits of the leading characters and the many consultants and readers providing reports and advice to new and established writers make Africa Writes Back a stand-out book. James Currey’s voice and insights are an added bonus. CONTENTS Publishing and selling the African Writers Series The African Writers Series Portfolio & George Hallett’s covers Main dates for the African Writers Series INTRODUCTION: The establishment of African Literature Publishing Chinua Achebe 1. WRITERS FROM WEST AFRICA Nigeria: The country where so much started Negritude from Senegal to Cameroun Magic & realism from Ghana, The Gambia & Sierra Leone 2. WRITERS FROM EASTERN AFRICA Towards the oral & the popular in Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania Publishing Ngugi 3. WRITERS FROM THE HORN & NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA Emperors in Ethiopia Publishing Nuruddin Farah Arab authors in Egypt & Sudan 4. WRITERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA Resistance in South Africa Publishing Alex la Guma Publishing Dennis Brutus Publishing Bessie Head Publishing Masizi Kunene 5. WRITERS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICAN Guns & Guerrillas in Mozambique &Angola Zambia Shall be Free Death & detention in Malawi The struggle to become Zimbabwe Publishing Dambudzo Marechera CONCLUSION: Is there still a role for the African Writers Series?

The Solly Trilogy is a tale of three generations, from a boy’s enlistment as cabin boy on a Yankee packet ship, the Delaware Belle, plying between Plymouth and New York in the early nineteenth century, through the drought, conflict and financial strife of the 1890’s in Australia to the impact on ordinary folk of the great war and its aftermath. The story is based around the lives of ordinary people of three generations surviving a world that was changing faster than at any time before. It was an era in which the world was shrinking and the affairs of men of diverse nations began to break down centuries-old barriers of class and inherited wealth. We denizens of the 21st century can easily forget that the accomplishments of every generation are built upon those of generations that came before them. Similarly, the values we hold dear were first learned at the knees of our parents. The Solly Trilogy is about a time not just before aircraft, the computer and the internet, but before labour-saving devices we take for granted today had been invented. How did people live in times such as these? These were resourceful people, adaptable people in times that required a surfeit of both of these admirable qualities. Solly’s Trilogy is designed to be read in any order, but it is suggested that you begin with ‘Solly’s Way’, the story of Solly’s arrival at Wallangulla as an old man and his impact on a struggling Australian outback family. ‘Solly’s Legacy’ tells of the legacy of caring, respect and ingenuity the old man left for the next generation. Finally, ‘Solly’s Journey’ completes the loop by telling the story of a cabin boy whose travels under sail, as he grows to manhood, lead him to cross great oceans of the world. After travelling the American west, a shipwreck brings him to a land down under where he finds a wide brown land worth exploring. The Solly Trilogy is set in a period when events in a more remote Europe changed life in Australia. Today, events before the Great War seem like some far-off good old days when life in the Australian outback was simple and wholesome. I’m grateful to my grandfather and his mates who loved a yarn about the old days and could no doubt spin a few tall ones to a gullible lad. They helped me gain many valuable insights into how it really was back then and became the inspiration behind the Solly Trilogy.

This book is a critical study of South African literature, from colonial and pre-colonial times onwards. Christopher Heywood discusses selected poems, plays and prose works in five literary traditions: Khoisan, Nguni-Sotho, Afrikaans, English, and Indian. The discussion includes over 100 authors and selected works, including poets from Mqhayi, Marais and Campbell to Butler, Serote and Krog, theatre writers from Boniface and Black to Fugard and Mda, and fiction writers from Schreiner and Plaatje to Bessie Head and the Nobel prizewinners Gordimer and Coetzee. The literature is explored in the setting of crises leading to the formation of modern South Africa, notably the rise and fall of the Emperor Shaka's Zulu kingdom, the Colenso crisis, industrialisation, the colonial and post-colonial wars of 1899, 1914, and 1939, and the dissolution of apartheid society. In Heywood's study, South African literature emerges as among the great literatures of the modern world.

Butcher Bird, an early protoype for dark urban fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of Sandman Slim, is reissued in a special tenth anniversary edition. Spyder Lee is a happy man. He lives in San Francisco and owns a tattoo shop. He has his favorite drinking buddy, Lulu Garou, and other friends all over town. One night a pissed-off demon tries to bite his head off and he's saved by a stranger?a small, blind woman with a sword as wicked as her smile. After that, Spyder’s life is turned upside down. The demon infected Spyder with something awful?the truth. He can suddenly see the world as it really is: full of angels and demons and monsters and monster-hunters; a world full of black magic and mysteries. These are the Dominions, parallel worlds full of wonder, beauty and horror, of which Spyder’s is only one. Each Dominion is home to another race of creatures from human myth. If you’re clever or lucky, you can pass from one Dominion to another, but the Dominions themselves never touch. At least, they’re not supposed to. The Black Clerks, infinitely old and infinitely powerful beings whose job it is to keep the Dominions in balance, seem to have new interests and a whole new agenda. Dropped into the middle of a conflict between the Black Clerks and other forces he doesn't fully understand, Spyder searches for a magic book with the blind swordswoman who saved him. Their journey will take them from deserts to lush palaces, to underground caverns, to the heart of Hell itself.

How decolonization and the cold war influenced literature from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In The Aesthetic Cold War, Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers. In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean—such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Wole Soyinka—carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work. Kalliney looks at how the United States and the Soviet Union, in an effort to court writers, funded international conferences, arts centers, book and magazine publishing, literary prizes, and radio programming. International spy networks, however, subjected these same writers to surveillance and intimidation by tracking their movements, tapping their phones, reading their mail, and censoring or banning their work. Writers from the global south also suffered travel restrictions, deportations, imprisonment, and even death at the hands of government agents. Although conventional wisdom suggests that cold war pressures stunted the development of postcolonial literature, Kalliney's extensive archival research shows that evenly balanced superpower competition allowed savvy writers to accept patronage without pledging loyalty to specific political blocs. Likewise, writers exploited rivalries and the emerging discourse of human rights to contest the attentions of the political police. A revisionist account of superpower involvement in literature, The Aesthetic Cold War considers how politics shaped literary production in the twentieth century.

Book 2 in the gripping Oswald de Lacy series, , which can be read as a standalone, from 'the medieval CJ Sansom' (Jeffery Deaver) The Black Death killed his father and brothers , making Oswald de Lacy Lord of Somershill Manor. It also killed many of his villagers, leaving fewer people to do more work. So Oswald tries to use logic and patience to manage a struggling estate, a socially ambitious mother, an overbearing sister and a mutinous workforce. Then a baby is found impaled on a thorn bush and people say they have seen a huge creature in the skies. The Butcher Bird. And now there is no room for common sense, no time for patience. If Oswald is to survive, he must find the truth behind a series of ever more brutal events. From the plague-ruined villages of Kent to the luxurious bedchambers of London, it is a journey full of danger, darkness and shocking revelations. 'The whodunnit aspect is neatly done, the family secrets and waspish relationships are intriguing, and humour and originality are abundant' Daily Mail

Joan Martin was born in the country town of Morawa, Western Australia, in 1941. She was a proud Widi woman whose traditional territory extended from Geraldton eastwards into the salt-lake area. Joan led an exciting and adventurous life, from life in the bush to school in Perth, and back again. But it was a life with great challenges, including efforts to avoid Native Welfare, so as not to be shipped off to a mission, and her later very public battle with Homeswest for the right to live in peace in her own home. Her legacy includes her work on native title, and her art.