Novelist Zakes Mda has made a name for himself as a key chronicler of the new, post-apartheid South Africa, casting a satirical eye on its claims of political unity, its rising black middle class, and
A poet, philosopher, essayist, playwright, actor, and director, Antonin Artaud was a visionary writer and a major influence within and beyond the French avant-garde. A key text for understanding his t
In this novel by the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Mo Yan, a benign old monk listens to a prospective novice’s tale of depravity, violence, and carnivorous excess while a nice little family drama
One night in the middle of winter, as deep snow covers the mountains and forests, a doctor is crossing the ridge in Austria from Traich to Föding to see a patient. He stumbles over a body in the
As recent films like Slumdog Millionaire attest, India on film is quickly growing beyond the images of Bollywood that used to come to mind. In the 1980s the idea of film theory arrived in the Indian
For the last fifteen years, performance artist and writer Guillermo Gómez-Peña has led a series of ongoing conversations with cultural luminaries from both North and South America.
In this volume of sixteen essays, D. R. Nagaraj, the foremost non-Brahmin intellectual to emerge from India’s non-English-speaking world, presents his vision of the Indian caste system in relation to
Remembered Rhythms explores the role of music and cultural memory in shaping and creating diasporic identities. With contributions from leading scholars in the fields of ethnomusicology, cultural stud
Tzvetan Todorov explores the complex relations between art, politics and ethics in the two essays that make up The Limits of Art. In the first essay, `Artists and Dictators', he traces the intimate re
Hans Magnus Enzensberger has mastered poetry, novels, and the intricate balance between history and fiction, but he’s never done anything quite like this before. For the writing of Unlikely Progeny, E
In 1965 Indonesia had the largest communist movement in the world outside of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Indonesian President Sukarno supported the movement and was edging Ind
The essays collected in Incidents, originally published in French shortly after Barthes' death, provide unique insight into the author's life, his personal struggles and his delights. Though Barthes q
In First Light, novelist Ralf Rothmann paints a delicate portrait of a twelve-year-old boy named Julian growing up in a mining community in 1960s Germany. The book covers only a few summer weeks, f
Brahmins named Iftikar, Buddhist rites in Hindu Shiva temples, Indian maidens dressed like Arabian harem girls - right from the birth of cinema, international movies have been wildly inventive in thei
In Rebels, Wives, Saints, acclaimed scholar Tanika Sarkar continues her revolutionary scholarship on women, religion, and nationhood in colonial Bengal. The colonial universe Sarkar describes in Rebel
Indian nationalists have a great project in hand. Their work-in-progress is the recovery of India's proud past and it's rightful place at the centre of human civilization. In pursuit of this, history
Part of an ongoing series published in cooperation with the Index on Censorship that deals with religion and free expression, The Jewish Case is distinctive in several ways. To begin with, even callin
In the aftermath of 9/11, the United States government came to apply a practice outlawed in Europe in the eighteenth century and prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and by the United Nations Conventi
After Independence, in 1947, in their efforts to create an "Indian" theatre that was different from the Westernized, colonial theatre, Indian theatre practitioners began returning to their &
The relationship between cinema and modernity in the Indian context is both complex and multifaceted. In this volume, some of the leading names in film and cultural studies explore its many dimensions
Nations need identities. These are created from perceptions of how societies have evolved. In this, history plays a central role. Insisting on reliable history is therefore crucial to more than just a
In The Glance of the Medusa, Lászó F. Földényi offers a mesmerizing examination of the rich history of European culture through the lens of mythology and philosophy. Embracin
In Everything: And Other Performance Texts from Germany, Matt Cornish gathers texts drawn from performances by five of the most renowned theater collectives working today: andcompany&Co., Gob Squa
Over the past three decades, theater studies has undergone a radical worldwide development and renewal. This happened through two different yet complementary paths: the first (North American in origin
Dangerous Outcast traces prostitution in Bengal from precolonial times through the arrival of the British, examining how the profession was reordered to suit British desires. Drawing on nineteenth-cen
Northern Spain is the only part of Western Europe where anarchism played a significant role in political life of the twentieth century. Enjoying wide-ranging support among both the urban and rural wor
Like stars in the sky, pixels may seem like tiny, individual points. But, when viewed from a distance, they can create elaborate images. Each pixel contributes to this array, but no individual point c
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu’s poetry dwells in spaces of paradox, seeking out the words, metaphors, and images that capture both the peaceful stillness of snow and the desperate cry of human exper
Norway. The 1800s. Endre must to take over the family farm from his father—his father, who swings the sickle and sharpens the scythe, and says this is the only way in which rocks and stones and
Somewhere deep in the European forest they meet. Frontier workers, smugglers, refugees, workers, asylum seekers, inspectors, artists, musicians, actors, journalists, scholarship holders, logisticians,
“Not writing is always a relief and sometimes a pleasure. Writing about what cannot be written, by contrast, is the devil’s own job.”In this unusual text, a blend of essay, fiction,
Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Few can be said to have had as broad an impact on European art in the twentieth century as these two cultural giants. Pablo Picasso, a pioneering visual artist, creat
In the timeless kingdom of Mapungubwe, the royal sculptor had two sons, Chata and Rendani. As they grew, so grew their rivalry—and their extraordinary talents. But while Rendani became a master carver
Writing in 2007, French social philosopher André Gorz was remarkably prophetic, foretelling the international economic meltdown of 2008: “The real economy is becoming an appendage of
Citizens of Tokyo is the first collection in English of plays by one of Japan’s most important contemporary playwrights, Oriza Hirata, whose works have been performed all over the world. The fir
From 1974 to 1994, Ron Vawter was a staple of New York’s downtown theater scene, first with the Performance Group and later as a founding member of the Wooster Group. Ron Vawter’s Life in Performance
This unique book is a graphic novel and performance poem, a mixed-media musical cartoon, an animated feature film come to life. Lee Breuer’s La Divina Caricatura is in the pataphysical tradition
The list of subjects that Giorgio Agamben has tackled in his career is dizzying—from the dangers of our current political moment to the traces of the distant past that inflect the culture around
Iraqi poet Salah Al Hamdani has lived a remarkable life. The author of some forty books in French and Arabic, he began life as a child laborer, with little or no education. As a political prisoner und
Thousands upon thousands of books have been written about Immanuel Kant since his death. None, let’s be clear, have been quite like what we have here. In Party Fun with Kant, Nicolas Mahler tell
