Archive for the 'Biography' Category

The Womb in Which I Lay

Published on May 22, 2013 in Bereavement and Biography. 0 Comments Tags: .
The Womb in Which I Lay

The Womb in Which I Lay
Pauline Perry

978 0 285 63666 8
Format HB / PB
£16.99

Mothers and daughters have a relationship that in its intensity is unlike any other. Pauline Perry explores the love, grief and guilt that form the relationships between mothers and daughters. This is a book for all women; a moving, intelligent and understanding exploration of the bond daughters have with their mothers in their lives and that they continue to share even after their mother’s death.

The Womb in Which I Lay draws on the author’s painful experiences following the death of her own mother. The response to a television documentary made about her process of grief demonstrated the deep need many women have to understand the meaning of the mother-daughter bond, and the way in which loss can change that bond. In mourning the death of their mother many women have found her in a new way, funding a peace in their own feminine identity as never before.

Drawing on the movingly frank stories of ten remarkable and successful women to depict the triumph of love over guilt and grief within the relationship. It is also a story of how far women have come since the 1950s, as the first generation of women to be career-oriented and sexually free often found that the freedoms and opportunities they enjoyed but which had been denied to their mother’s generation could cause a major gulf in the relationship.

Pauline Perry is a leading educationalist, a former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and has been a life beer since 1991 as the Baroness Perry of Southwark.

“Drawing on literature, the author’s own grief on the death of her mother, and conversations with successful career women, this book explores the love and guilt, the search for identity and growth, and that step beyond grief and mourning when the daughter re-finds the mother she has lost.”
‘Choice’

“The book is a beautiful record of what Pauline feels for her dead mother and for her daughter… this wonderful feeling that like Russian dolls, we’re all inside each other: inside us are our mothers, our grandmothers, our greatgrandmothers, all these generations of women who came before us, and there shall be a little bit of us in all the generations which come ahead.”
‘South West’

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A Language Older than Words

Published on May 22, 2013 in Biography. 0 Comments Tags: .
A Language Older than Words

A Language Older than Words
Derrick Jensen

978 0 285 63624 8
Format PB
£16.00

Derrick Jensen describes his abusive childhood within the context of our abuse of the planet. This is an evocative memoir of growing up in an abusive home, a statement of environmental activism, a moving portrayal of his relationship with the natural world and a startlingly original work of philosophy challenging conventional wisdom and accepted opinion.

Jensen strives to save his own spirit, in a way that can also prevent the destruction of the planet. It is a story about hope and of finding your own voice to stand against the culture of denial. It describes the way in which our culture silences that it wishes to exploit – women, children, indigenous peoples, other species, our consciences and experiences: silence that is not only economic and social but also personal. It deals with Jensen’s own process of reconnection to humanity and the world around him. In the place of the destructiveness of the dominant culture Jensen offers alternatives that are human, humane and sane.

“Jensen’s book accomplishes the rare feat of both breaking and mending the reader’s heart.”
‘Publisher’s Weekly’

“(This is) what Franz Kafka said a book should be – an axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Daniel Quinn, author of ‘Ishmael’

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Outwitting History

Published on May 22, 2013 in Biography and Literature. 0 Comments Tags: .
Outwitting History

Outwitting History
Aaron Lansky

978 0 285 63724 5
Format HB / PB
£20.00

How a Young Man Rescued a Million Books and Saved a Vanishing Civilisation.

In 1980, an entire body of Jewish literature – the physical remnant of Yiddish culture – was on the verge of extinction. Precious volumes that had survived Hitler and Stalin were being passed down from older generations of Jewish immigrants to their non-Yiddish speaking children only to be discarded or destroyed. A twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late.

Outwitting History is an adventure tale filled with unforgettable characters and told with the exhuberence of a man whose passion led him from house to house, country to country, collecting treasured books and heartfelt, often hilarious stories of the vibrant intellectual world these older Jews inhabited. Lansky and a team of young volunteers shlepped books from various attics and basements, demolition sites and dumpsters, while schmoozing with their owners, who insisted on feeding them a little nosh – gefilte fish, kasha, blintzes, latkes, kigel – before handing over, one book at a time, their beloved literary heritage.

When Lansky started out, experts believed that fewer than 70,000 Yiddish-language books still existed, he has now saved over 1.5 million books. As he takes us along on his groundbreaking journey, Lansky explores the roots of the Yiddish language and introduces us to the brilliant Yiddish writers – from Mendele to Sholem Aleichem to Issac Bashevis Singer – whose lasting cultural relevance is evident on every page.

Aaron Lansky shares the humour, tenacity and love for the written word that unites Jewish immigrants with everyone who cares about the future of great literature. And he enables us to see how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future.

“But now and again a quite unexpected book draws me in. The latest to trap me is ‘Outwitting History’ by Aaron Lansky… The book is the story of how he travelled the country saving a vast and rich culture which was about to be swallowed up… His visit to a Borscht belt hotel in the Catskills is worth the price alone. It’s very funny, very rewarding, and you don’t need to be Jewish to enjoy it.”
Simon Hoggart, ‘The Guardian’

“Outwitting History is the charming and compelling epic about how Lansky and a few volunteers saved Yiddish books from extinction. Lansky recounts his adventures on the road… Outwitting History inspires longing for an era that valued books over bookshelf space.”
‘The Times’

“There’s just one word to describe the feat at the heart of Aaron Lansky’s enchanting book Outwitting History… chutzpah… His account of saving 1.5 million books (and counting) is an adventure story to delight bibliophiles.”
‘Daily Mail’

“Aaron Lansky’s book is an adventure story about the survival of Yiddish… fast-moving, funny account of his 25-year mission… a very exciting read… Lansky, horrified that the People of the Book are discarding theirs, becomes a missionary for a lost culture… A whistle-stop journey to the end of the Jewish world.”
‘The Independent’

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Out of the Shadows

Published on May 22, 2013 in Biography. 0 Comments Tags: .
Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows: A Life of Gerda Taro
François Maspero

978 0 285 63825 9
Format HB
£12.00

“The first woman known to photograph a battle from the front lines and to die covering a war.” – New York Times

In 1936 two young photographers who had escaped from the Nazis to Paris re-invented themselves, and in doing so created the myth of the war photographer. Andre Friedmann took the name of Robert Capa while Gerta Pohorylle became Gerda Taro, and they began to photograph the Spanish Civil War together (the photos being credited to “Robert Capa”). Capa would become the most acclaimed war photographer of the twentieth century, but within a year Gerda Taro (his lover, manager and muse) would be killed while photographing the battle of Brunete.

Gerda Taro was the first female photojournalist known to have covered a war from the frontline, and was the first to die in battle. In recent years Gerda Taro has been rediscovered as a significant feminist figure, as well as a remarkable photographer in her own right. A selection of her photos from the Spanish Civil War illustrate this book.

This is the first English-language biography of one of the most extraordinary women of the twentieth century, an émigré who resisted the Nazis and a photographer who believed that her art would serve to free the people she photographed. Her own life was an assertion of liberty – political, sexual and personal – that would be taken on by women in the generation after her. In Out of the Shadows François Maspero creates a personal portrait of Taro, while capturing the personality and romanticism that fascinated her generation.

François Maspero is one of France’s major literary figures. Variously a bookseller, editor and publisher, he is also a novelist and the translator into French of writers ranging from Gabriel Garcia Marquesz to Arturo Perez-Reverte. As a teenager he fought in the French Resistance, and as a publisher he brought out the work of Franz Fanon, Che Guevara and Louis Althusser.

“Known, if at all, as the first female photojournalist killed in action (aged 26, at Brunete, in the Spanish Civil War), the German-Jewish Taro had a talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Included in this habit was her relationship with Robert Capa… Francois Maspero… sets this history straight.”
‘Independent on Sunday’

“Maspero is at his best when placing Taro in context of place and time, in characterising her as a free spirit, achingly glamorous in the midst of the dust and detritus of war. It is in the details that his book succeeds.”
‘Jewish Quarterly’

“Deeply personal portrait… Now she is out of the shadow of her famous lover her images show not only the devastation of the Spanish Civil War but what a formidable talent was lost to that war.”
‘Jewish Renaissance’

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Farewell, Babylon

Published on May 22, 2013 in Biography, History & Politics and Religion. 0 Comments Tags: .
Farewell, Babylon

Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad
Naim Kattan

978 0 285 63780 1
Format HB / PB
£12.99

“A wonderful memoir… It belongs on that small shelf of books which bear witness and, by doing so, become part of the literature of our times.” – Brian Moore

Farewell, Babylon is a memoir of a lost world, Baghdad, the magical city in which Iraq’s Kurds, Bedouins, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in a rough sort of harmony. The Iraqi Jewish community dates back 2500 years to Biblical Babylon, but by Kattan’s childhood in the 1940’s anti-semitism was on the rise and Nazi-sympathisers were threatening Baghdad’s Jewish community.

Naim Kattan takes readers into the heart of Baghdad’s then-teeming Jewish community. His Baghdad is a hot, quarrelsome city beset in equal parts by fear and desire. Its politics are frantic, its street life a mystery. Kattan evokes the colonial, Muslim-dominated society of his childhood and leaves an unforgettable portrait of Baghdad’s exoticism, and the political forces that shape it today.

Naim Kattan was born in Baghdad in 1928 and has published over 30 books. He has been awarded numerous international honours, including France’s Legion d’Honneur.

“Iraq’s most distinguished Jewish writer-in-exile… The plight of Jewry is recorded in Farewell, Babylon in spare, elegiac tones… A vital book.”
‘Sunday Times’

“Naim Kattan… tells of the last years in Baghdad, when Jews awaited the possibility – and the permits – to leave Iraq… also gives a poignant account of a young man seeking insight into the mysteries – and joys – of life in an inhibitory society.”
‘The Independent’

“Kattan… brings a first-hand immediacy to his Baghdad memoir which marks it out as a minor masterpiece of the genre… Shot through with an artless ardour which lingers long in the reader’s mind.”
‘Sunday Telegraph’

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Beyond All Pity

Published on May 22, 2013 in Biography. 0 Comments Tags: .
Beyond All Pity

Beyond All Pity
Carolina Maria de Jesus

978 0 285 63698 9
Format PB
£9.99

“One of the very few books that there have ever been written about the lowest and the poorest, les miserables, by one of themselves. Her book contains the seldom-told truth which inspires in some compassion, in some revulsion, and in others revolution.” – ‘Horizon’

On its first publication in 1960, Beyond All Pity was a sensation and at the time was the bestselling Brazilian book in history making Carolina Maria de Jesus a spokeswoman for the poor, the dispossessed and the illiterate. This is a diary of her life in a Brazilian favela, the slums that are cities of crime and poverty, where she lived in a wooden shack roofed with flattened tin cans. She and her three children survived by foraging for waste paper and metal to sell and at night she wrote this diary on scraps of paper that made her internationally famous.

Beyond All Pity focussed attention on the plight of slum dwellers in Brazil’s favelas by its shocking description of the hungry and the poor in their daily struggle to survive. Carolina Maria de Jesus became one of the most famous figures in Brazil, and around the world, as millions identified with her strength of character and inspiring refusal to accept the world’s injustices.

Beyond All Pity is the unforgettable expression of an individual speaking against the evils of poverty and Carolina Maria de Jesus is an inspirational example of human endurance and courage under the most extreme suffering.

“One of the most astonishing documents of the lower depths ever printed.”
‘Newsweek’

“Beyond All Pity… remains a key document for understanding life on the origins of a society which continues to be among the most unequal in the world.”
‘Times Literary Supplement’

“A powerful voice for Brazil’s poor and exploited… compared in its social influence to works by Orwell and Zola.”
‘The Times’

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People Who Say Goodbye

Published on May 9, 2013 in Biography and Independent Voices. 0 Comments Tags: , .
People Who Say Goodbye cover

People Who Say Goodbye
P.Y. Betts

978 0285 64212 6
Format PB
£9.99

“The most amusing book of childhood memories I can remember reading.” – Graham Greene

Eighty years ago, when Wandsworth Common was till a countrified suburb, the author of this enchanting book was growing up there, observing with absolute clarity the behaviour and conversation of the adults around her. She did not always understand the implications of what she saw and heard, but she remembered it and here recreates it with startling immediacy. There were summer holidays at places that always seemed to begin with ‘B’, dark smoggy winters when she lay in bed wheezing and was dosed by an old fool of a doctor with either brown medicine or red tonic, dreaded Christmases with Grandfather and joyous schooldays with Mrs Stroud whose teaching consisted largely of dictation from the ‘Daily Mail’.

Phyliss was five when the First World War broke out and she was left with the abiding belief that people who say goodbye did not come back again. Written with the keen eye for humour that pervades all her work and with the candour of childhood, this delightful and refreshing book captivates all who read it.

P.Y. Betts was born in 1909 in London and published her first article in Punch at the age of eighteen, afterwards she contributed short stories and satire to various magazines. She travelled widely in Europe and the United States before spending part of the Second World War doing farm labour in East Anglia. After the war she moved, with an ark of animals, to a small farm in Wales where she lived in seclusion for the rest of her life.

“A read for sheer pleasure and intense delight… Haunting, unforgettable… nudges memory wonderfully, sadly, with great hilarity.”
Dirk Bogarde

“Sharply focused, coolly observant, very funny… an entrancing, ruthlessly authentic and immensely entertaining memoir.”
‘The Listener’

“One of the warmest and funniest autobiographies on the shelves.”
‘Daily Telegraph’

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The Song of Leonard Cohen

Published on April 30, 2013 in Biography and Music. 0 Comments Tags: .
The Song of Leonard Cohen

The Song of Leonard Cohen
Harry Rasky

978 0285 63865 5
Format PB
£10.00

With previously unpublished songs and poems by Leonard Cohen

“This unique portrait captures Cohen’s personality, the constant creativity in which he lived and his path towards becoming a musician… Intimate and moving.”
‘The Crack’

In 1979 Leonard Cohen set off on his Field Commander Cohen world tour. Accompanying him was young filmmaker Harry Rasky, and it would be the wildest years of his life.

From soaking in a jacuzzi with Cohen, drinking wine and discussing the meaning of life, to the pair running away from armed police in Germany suspected of being Bader-Meinhof terrorists, this is the full story of that world tour and a rare insight into Leonard Cohen the poet, musician and man.

Harry Rasky created the acclaimed documentary The Song of Leonard Cohen and he has now delved into his personal archives and diaries to write this intimate and moving portrait of Cohen. Including previously unseen photos, as well as Cohen’s own commentary on his writing and his development as a writer, no other book gets so close to Cohen the poet and writer.

Also containing a special bonus chapter The Dylan Diaries, based on Harry Rasky’s notes from an abandoned 1966 documentary project with Bob Dylan that captures Dylan’s chaotic creativity at the time.

“Rasky’s Leonard Cohen is clever, poetically inspired, a superb performer…(Rasky) is anxious to track Cohen to his lair – in lyrics, in history, in his personal life.”
Jan Morris, ‘Times Literary Supplement’

“Cohen in depth, and in his own words… Students of Cohen’s work will find this intricate portrait an illuminating rumination on the nature of creativity and the religious, sociological and geographical pressures that mould the way in which a poet sees the wider world.”
‘Record Collector’

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Child Soldier

Published on April 29, 2013 in Biography. 0 Comments Tags: .
Child Soldier

Child Soldier
China Keitetsi

978 0285 63690 3
Format HB
£18.99

China’s story of her life as a child conscript in the Ugandan National Resistance Army starts at age 8 and continues for ten years of terror, humiliation and sexual assault.

“The harrowing story of a child who was kidnapped and forced to fight in a civil war.”
‘BBC Breakfast News’

Rejected by her father for being a girl. China was cruelly mistreated by her grandmother and stepmother. At the age of eight she was on the run from her family when she fell into the hands of Y.K Museveni’s ill-disciplined and vengeful National Resistance Army which was ravaging the countryside, and was involuntarily recruited.

Though tiny, she learned how to survive by becoming a ruthless guerrilla fighter. She was forced to participate in atrocious carnage and forced marches, with little food, and saw many of her small comrades slain in fierce fighting. Worse still, when already exhausted by the rigours of the day, she, like all the other girl soldiers, was nightly abused by senior officers.

In the bloody civil war, Museveni succeeded in overthrowing Obote and became President of Uganda, and China rose to the position of chief escort to the Minister of Records, Ahmad Kashilingi. However, when he was imprisoned, she was once more on the run. Amid all this insecurity and desolation, she briefly found love and gave birth to a baby boy, but when she finally escaped to South Africa, she had to leave him behind.

She now has a new life in Denmark, and travels the world campaigning against the misuse of children as child soldiers. She has spoken at United Nations conferences to Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela amongst others and her personal story is being translated around the world. There are 300,000 child soldiers in the world and this is the unique, haunting, story of one of them; a story of courage, indomitable spirit and the heart-rending brutalisation of innocence.

“Describes in harrowing detail the many battles she has fought and the feelings she has kept inside until she escaped and found her voice.”
‘The Scotsman’

“A highly compelling true account of one girl’s experience as a young soldier in Uganda… a story that will stay with you long after you’ve finished the final page.”
‘The Big Issue’

“Having read her haunting memoir, I am almost lost for words”
Judith Woods ‘Daily Telegraph’

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The Third Sex

Published on April 16, 2013 in Biography and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: .
Third Sex cover

The Third Sex
Richard Totman

978 0285 63668 2
Format HB
£16.99

Why are there so many ladyboys in Thailand and so few in the Western world?

The ladyboy cabarets of Thailand are a leading tourist attraction but the glamorous and attractive men who are now women are a modern expression of an archaic tradition. The kathoey, the Thai term for ladyboys, have long been part of the cultural landscape of Thailand.

Who are the ladyboys? Richard Totman introduces us to three individuals who started life as boys but while at school decided to become kathoey. We follow their rites-of-passage as they become fully fledged kathoey and their divergent adult lives are witness to attitudes towards trans-gender in Thailand and in the Western world. This perceptive, accessible guide to the cultural, historical, religious, biological and psychological aspects of trans-gender places these lives in context.

The description of the kathoey is part of a wider discussion on trans-gender. ‘Third sex’ groups form part of many ancient communities, originating in beliefs that pre-date doctrinaire religions. Some religions, such as Buddhism, embrace trans-gendered individuals but the role of other religions has led to persecution and repression. Many communities accept a ‘third sex’, from Thailand and Samoa to American Indians and the Phillippines. Only in the West has savage repression occurred.

Dr Richard Totman was a Fellow of Oxford University, a theatre Director and taught in Thailand. Souvenir Press have previously published his Social Causes of Illness and Mind, Stress and Health.

“The three personal stories he tells, each moving in its own way… which Totman tells with sensitivity and insight… He is nothing if not thorough. Personally, I found some of the historical and cultural references more revealing… alternately entertaining and poignant.”
‘Literary Review’

“examines kathoey through biology, sociology, sexuality, culture, religion, economics and their own gossipy anecdotes, and puts them in the context of other Animist cultures.”
‘Time Out’

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