Adamastor is a freshly divorced, frustrated bureaucrat trying to reinvent his life. Richie is a young, struggling actor. Together with Ernesto, a rakish, expat Argentine showman, they create Eden-Brazil, an ecotourism destination in a stunning swath of coastal rainforest. Inspired to provide visitors with the ultimate return to nature, they decide to stage the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, complete with Adam, Eve, snake, apple, the works. But recreating an earthly paradise as something more than another roadside attraction is no easy feat. In this charming, tragicomic tale, Moacyr Scliar employs his signature humor and talent for crisp storytelling, weaving together a playfully serious parable of environmentalist ideals clashing with the realities of local politics, global consumer culture, and competing visions of authentic nature., reviewing a previous edition or volume

A milestone in feminist literature, this marvelous European romance, narrated by a woman, is considered the first psychological novel in a modern language and a precursor of stream-of-consciousness fiction. Written by Giovanni Boccaccio between 1343 and 1345, The Elegy has never before been available in a complete or accurate English translation.

Lady Fiammetta, the first-person narrator and protagonist, recounts how, although a married woman, she falls in love with a handsome young foreigner named Panfilo and, driven by irresistible passion, becomes his lover. Panfilo subsequently abandons Fiammetta and returns to his native land, where his elderly father is said to be dying. When he fails to keep his promise to return, Fiammetta, in what is the heart of the narrative, describes her longings, her anguish, and her despair. A host of contradictory sentiments drive her to desperation and to an unsuccessful suicide attempt. After a time, Fiammetta resumes her futile wait for Panfilo. She finally resolves to seek him out in his native land. Disguising her true intent from her husband, she secures his promise to help her in this undertaking. Addressing an exclusively female audience, Fiammetta warns them about the vicious ways of men. Her whole narrative, in fact, adds up to an indictment of men as both readers and lovers. Eliciting a remarkably wide range of responses from readers and critics, Fiammetta has been variously described as a pathetic victim of male cruelty; an irresponsible fool of a girl; a sophisticated, cunning, and wholly disingenuous female; and, finally, a genuinely modern woman. Whatever judgment we make of her, Fiammetta stands out among medieval women as an ardent and outspoken feminist.

Winner of the 1999 Greek State Prize for Best Novel

Rather than consent to spinsterhood at age twenty-seven, Eleni Altamura sets sail with her seafaring father to Italy, where she is to study painting at the famed School of the Nazarenes. Once in Naples, Eleni flees her female identity and, disguised as a young man, walks with her father to Rome. Along the way she falls in love with her would-be husband while learning to navigate life in a man's world--as a man. But when love reveals her femininity, Eleni marries the father of her children, the first of the many tragedies she will have to endure. She continues to question her identity as her life choices spark rumors she may be a powerful, mad magician, or just another crazy old woman.

Environment at the Margins brings literary and environmental studies into a robust interdisciplinary dialogue, challenging dominant ideas about nature, conservation, and development in Africa and exploring alternative narratives offered by writers and environmental thinkers. The essays bring together scholarship in geography, anthropology, and environmental history with the study of African and colonial literatures and with literary modes of analysis. Contributors analyze writings by colonial administrators and literary authors, as well as by such prominent African activists and writers as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mia Couto, Nadine Gordimer, Wangari Maathai, J. M. Coetzee, Zakes Mda, and Ben Okri. These postcolonial ecocritical readings focus on dialogue not only among disciplines but also among different visions of African environments. In the process, Environment at the Margins posits the possibility of an ecocriticism that will challenge and move beyond marginalizing, limiting visions of an imaginary Africa.

Contributors:
Jane Carruthers
Mara Goldman
Amanda Hammar
Jonathan Highfield
David McDermott Hughes
Roderick P. Neumann
Rob Nixon
Anthony Vital
Laura Wright

A fragmentary work that stands as a testament to Wolf's skill as a thinker, storyteller, and memorializer of humanity’s greatest struggles.

Christa Wolf tried for years to find a way to write about her childhood in Nazi Germany. In her 1976 book Patterns of Childhood, she explained why it was so difficult: “Gradually, over a period of months, the dilemma has emerged: to remain speechless or to live in the third person, these seem to be the options. One is impossible, the other sinister.” During 1971 and 1972 she made thirty-three attempts to start the novel, abandoning each manuscript only pages in. Eulogy for the Living, written over the course of four weeks, is the longest of those fragments. In its pages, Wolf recalls with crystalline precision the everyday details of her life as a middle-class grocer’s daughter, and the struggles within the family—struggles common to most families, but exacerbated by the rise of Nazism. And as Nazism fell, the Wolfs fled west, trying to stay ahead of the rampaging Red Army.