![]() ![]() ![]() In A Peace to End All Peace, David Fromkin reveals how and why the Allies drew lines on an empty map that remade the geography and politics of the Middle East. ![]() All of these conflicts - including the hostilities between Arabs and Israelis and the violent challenges posed by Iraq's competing sects - are rooted in the region's political inheritance: the arrangements, unities, and divisions imposed by the Allies after the First World War. The Middle East has long been a region of rival religions, ideologies, nationalisms, and ambitions. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() ‘Dracula‘ was written at a time when stories about the supernatural flourished in Britain. Stoker was influenced by the popular Vampire stories of his time, but the novel also reflected his attitude towards or awareness of contemporary issues occupying Victorian England. The combination of old-fashioned romance with its penchant for the mysterious and supernatural with the realistic portrayal of events that defined English literature in the 18th and 19th centuries created the Gothic genre within which backdrop Stoker conceived ‘ Dracula.’ ‘ Dracula‘ was published to favorable reviews but only rose to public consciousness and high cultural sensation after Bram Stoker’s death and with its drama and film adaptations.īram Stoker’s ‘Dracula‘ belongs firmly within the 19th-century Gothic fiction’s flourishing in Western Europe. It also reflects the sensibilities of the Victorian era in which Stoker lived. ![]() The book was built from earlier fictional works about vampires and also incorporated extended research into Scandinavian superstitions. ![]() ![]() No fewer than fifty-nine specific mules die in the book, plus dozens more that are alluded to in groups and bunches. ![]() The novel Blood Meridian (1985) establishes Cormac McCarthy as unchallenged king of literary mule carnage. What else? here is plaintive, existential, but also human, relatable. ![]() ![]() It’s a verbal tic not unlike the plentiful instances of They rode on to be found in Blood Meridian, and like that phrase, it serves as a linguistic placeholder that both moves the action of the novel and also advances one of its central philosophical themes. Versions of the phrase What else repeat throughout The Passenger, sometimes at the beginning of a sentence but more often than not as a two-word statement or question. ![]() ![]() He’s an alien, after all! But not to worry-Taelen has other physical characteristics that mark him as otherworldly. ![]() It’s not a spoiler to share that the hero, Taelen, is as generously endowed as his forebears in this regard. All of the above came to the fore of my mind while reading TRUE BELIEVERS by Maria Zannini. While the stories are vastly different, the demon lovers share unique physical attributes in that their penises can stimulate a woman’s body in all sorts of unusual ways (to put it mildly). Years later, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a similar concept in Emma Holly’s erotic paranormal romance PRINCE OF ICE: A Tale of the Demon World. It’s loaded with not only tentacle sex, but also kinky penile appendages galore. Urotsukidōji is a mix of erotica, humor, and supernatural horror. ![]() My first encounter with exotic-and erotic-penile appendages was in the 1989 anime Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend (based on the 1986 manga). ![]() ![]() ![]() These hideous men aren't the collection's only monsters of isolation. In the "interviews," that make up the title story, one man after another-speaking to a woman whose voice we never hear-reveals the pathetic creepiness of his romantic conquests and fantasies. Like his recent essays, these stories (many of which have been serialized in Harper's, Esquire and the Paris Review) are largely an attack on the sexual heroics of mainstream postwar fiction, an almost religious attempt to rescue (when not exposing as a fraud) the idea of romantic love. ![]() The rest of the stories fall between perplexing and brilliant, but what is most striking about this volume as a whole are the gloomy moral obsessions at the heart of Wallace's new work. ![]() Some of the 23 stories in Wallace's bold, uneven, bitterly satirical second collection seem bound for best-of-the-year anthologies a few others will leave even devoted Wallace fans befuddled. ![]() ![]() ![]() It will be necessary to see how they evolve in future sequels, if there are any, to know if it has been something innovative or if it will remain in an attempt to copy other known formulas. ![]() Somehow, Beddor manages to make them work enough to draw attention to them, using a mix of humor and unexpected camaraderie that isn't always effective but here has worked well However, although I have liked a lot these new characters for the most part, I'm not particularly excited about this Suicide Squad-style team, perhaps because these types of characters have become common lately. In this sequel, the course of the plot changes to introduce several new characters, a group of renegades who are forced to work for the queen of Wonderland for various reasons. ![]() ![]() “But interest in Dante has never waned in the 700 years since he died,” Alfie says. “When you have an actor like Tom Hanks starring in a movie adapted from best-selling novelist Dan Brown, you’re bound to get more questions about Dante than usual,” says Fabian Alfie, a professor in the University of Arizona department of French and Italian. ![]() ![]() Most recently, Dante’s work was adapted for the crime and mystery film Inferno, starring Tom Hanks. Medieval manuscript illuminators and artists, including Sandro Botticelli and Salvador Dalí, have produced paintings mirroring stories Dante told. (Credit: Getty Images)ĭante’s work has influenced or inspired music, novels, films, mobile apps, and even video games. “La commedia illumina Firenze” by Domenico di Michelino (1465). Yet, Dante’s nearly 700-year-old, three-part epic poem, the Divine Comedy-of which “Inferno” is the initial part-remains an influential piece of literature in exploring the origins of evil. ![]() The 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri couldn’t have foreseen contemporary forms of hideous, malicious behavior-the Holocaust, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, genocide committed by ISIS. ![]() ![]() ![]() But that technically makes him the commander of the mercian "army", a distinction that gives him status. He shows up, surprising all since he is a mercian not a west Saxon, leading a handful of men. This is near the end of the 2nd book: the Pale Horseman. After Uhtred and Brida journey to Wessex we don't see Aethelred again until just before the battle of Ethendun, when Alred emerges from his exile in the swamps to re-take Wessex. ![]() Uhtred and aethelred's mutual dislike increases when aethelred attempts unsuccessfully to rape Brida and is humiliated by her rejection of him and her successful counter-attack. They tolerate eachother while Uhtred is forced to stay with his uncle, aethelred's father after the murder of Ragnar the fearless, Uhtred's adopted father, before Uhtred goes to wessex. ![]() ![]() They are close in age but there is an instant mutual dislike between them. This is what occurs in the book series: In the 1st book of saxon series: the last kingdom, aethelred is introduced as Uhtred's Mercian cousin on his mother's side. The following description is NOT based on the events in the saxon stories but rather on the events in its television equivilent: the last kingdom. ![]() ![]() ![]() Along the way, Ned picks up a tree sidekick, a wizard versed in the ludicrous art of pun magic, and a healthy respect for both princesses and dragons alike.Ĭan he make the world outside of the reservation safe for the princesses? Will he uncover the true threat to the maidens' well-being? Can he find his father before he must face off against the nefarious black dragon, Rackeesus, who dogs his trail every step of the way?įind out Ned's fate in this rousing tale that blends fantasy with mystery and heaping helpings of wit. ![]() With the help of three motivated princesses and one who's rather a hindrance, he sets out to uncover his missing memories and reveal the truth of his family's dealings with the dragons of the Eight Kingdoms. When Ned wakes up from a coma, he finds key memories relating to his rescue missions and missing-in-action father erased by magic. At least that's what their brochure would have you believe. After dispatching the unruly lizards, this father/son team brings back the fair maidens to live on their magically protected princess reservation. The Firebreaks are a family of dragonslayers. ![]() ![]() ![]() By no means politically correct, ' these principles touch the base emotions and desires of politics and everyday life. Machiavelli's principles, conveyed through The Prince, are timeless they address a side of human nature not often stated explicitly. ![]() Equally applicable to political science and business alike, this book is highly recommended for all readers. People the world over continue to show an enduring fascination for Machiavelli, some five hundred years after his death. ![]() |