PETER OWEN

(P/B) WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Weights and Measures was the third Roth novel to be translated into English and one of the last he wrote, as he drank himself to death in unhappy exile in France. It is a fable about the disintegration of a good man. At the insistence of his wife, Eibenschutz leaves his job as an artilleryman in the Austro-Hungarian army for a civilian job as the Inspector of Weights and Measures in a remote territory near the Russian border. Attempting to exercise some proper rectitude in his trade duties he is at a loss in a world of smugglers, profiteer...
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(P/B) THE OBLIVION SEEKERS
Isabelle Eberhardt's life was one of the most extraordinary of any writer's of the last 150 years. Daughter of a Russian Nihilist who forbade her any contact with society, dressed her as a man and insisted her education consisted of hard physical labour, she, perhaps unsurprisingly, ran away to North Africa in 1897, aged twenty. There she travelled through the Sahara and became one of the few white women ever to have been initiated into Sufism. She also produced a small but exceptional body of writing. The Oblivion Seekers is a selection o...
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(P/B) THE SAMURAI
In 1613, four low-ranking Japanese Samurai, accompanied by a Spanish priest, set sail for Mexico on an unprecedented mission: to bargain for a Catholic crusade through Japan in exchange for trading rights with the West. Among the first Japanese ever to set foot in Europe, they travel to Rome and gain an audience with the Pope. All are baptized, hoping to curry favour with their European hosts. But upon returning to Japan, they discover that the Shoguns no longer wish to forge links with the West, nor will they tolerate the Christian religi...
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(P/B) FLIGHT WITHOUT END

(P/B) IN THE SHADOW OF THE DREAMCHILD
"In the Shadow of the Dreamchild" uses new research to show that the long-standing image of the life of Charles Dodgson, better known to millions of fans around the world as Lewis Carroll, as exclusively child-centred and unworldly, his pre-occupation with Alice Liddell and his supposedly unnatural sexuality are all in fact nothing more than myths: that they belong to an invented persona, created around the name "Carroll", and have almost nothing to do with Dodgson's real but overshadowed life. Meticulously researched, the book traces the ...
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(P/B) FOREIGN STUDIES
In the early 1950s Shusaku Endo spent several years as an exchange student studying in Paris. Around him existentialism, Sartre and Beckett were making the city the literary and philosophical capital of the world. But for Endo the experience was deeply alienating and he came away infected with tuberculosis, his studies incomplete and convinced that there could be no cultural commerce between East and West. Foreign Studies consists of three linked narratives exploring this theme. The first part, 'A Summer in Rouen', concerns Kudo, a Japanes...
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(H/B) LORCA: LIVING IN THE THEATRE

(P/B) THE IMPOSTOR
Thomas the Impostor is set at the outbreak of the First World War. It is not, however, your typical WW1 narrative but a fascinating example of war writing from a quintessentially artistic imagination: Guillaume Thomas is a boy too young to join the army but determined to get to the front at any cost. He is aided by the magnificent Princesse de Borme, who uses her energy, influence and allure to put together a chaotic ambulance convoy to help wounded soldiers. Together they travel all over France until Guillaume finally gets his wish and jo...
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UP ABOVE THE WORLD

(CASE) CONFUCIAN ANALECTS

(P/B) LES ONZE MILLE VERGES OR THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES OF PRINCE MONY VIBESCU
In 1907 Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the most original and influential poets of the twentieth century, turned his hand to the nove. He produced two books for the clandestine market. The finer of these was Les Onze Mille Verges. One of the most masterful and hilarious erotic novels of all time, it was once owlishly pronounced by Picasso to be Apollinaire's masterpiece. (. . .) (ΑΠΟ ΤΗΝ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΣΤΟ ΟΠΙΣΘΟΦΥΛΛΟ ΤΟΥ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΥ)...
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THEIR HEADS ARE GREEN

(P/B) EROTICA: DRAWINGS

PLAIN PLEASURES

(H/B) INCEST

(P/B) URIEN'S VOYAGE

(H/B) ORIENTAL THEATRE (STAGE BY STAGE)

(P/B) PLEASURES AND REGRETS

(P/B) THE JOURNEY TO THE EAST

(P/B) OPIUM: THE ILLUSTRATED DIARY OF HIS CURE
In this classic study Cocteau vividly describes his extraordinary experiences while taking opium, the drug to which he owed his 'perfect hours' but which, inevitably, extracted its price. Opium also contains reminiscences of some of Cocteau's closest friends, including Nijinsky and Marcel Proust, and provides revealing insights into the creation of such masterpieces as Orphee and Les Enfants terribles. The book is illustrated with Cocteau's own disturbing and powerful drawings. (From the publisher)...
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