Now in paperback, A Cage in Search of a Bird is the gripping story of two women caught in the vise of a terrible delusion.

Laura Wilmote is a television journalist living in Paris. Her life couldn’t be better—a stimulating job, a loving boyfriend, interesting friends—until her phone rings in the middle of one night. It is C., an old school friend whom Laura recently helped find a job at the same television station: “My phone rang. I knew right away it was you.”

Thus begins the story of C.’s unrelenting, obsessive, incurable love/hatred of Laura. She is convinced that Laura shares her love, but cannot—or will not—admit it. C. begins to dress as Laura, to make her friends and family her own, and even succeeds in working alongside Laura on the unique program that is Laura’s signature achievement. The obsession escalates, yet is artfully hidden. It is Laura who is perceived as the aggressor at work, Laura who appears unwell, Laura who is losing it. Even Laura’s adoring boyfriend begins to question her. Laura seeks the counsel of a psychiatrist who diagnoses C. with De Clérambault syndrome—she is convinced that Laura is in love with her. And worse, the syndrome can only end in one of two ways: the death of the patient, or that of the object of the obsession.

A Cage in Search of a Bird is the gripping story of two women caught in the vise of a terrible delusion. Florence Noiville brilliantly narrates this story of obsession and one woman’s attempts to escape the irrational love of another—an inescapable, never-ending love, a love that can only end badly.

Haiku at its best is an art in which the poet takes a natural, most ordinary event, and without fuss, ornament or inflated words makes of it a rare moment — sparely rendered, crystallized into a microcosm which reveals transcendent unity. Small wonder haiku has a growing audience throughout the world.

In all arts — music, painting, dance, theatre — change has come with that startling moment of dissatisfaction when the artist upends complacency, shocks the old to its foundations, and emerges with clear vision. He has had the courage to rescue his art from dullness. Two of Japan’s “Great Four” of haiku, Basho (1644-94) and Shiki (1862-1902), were such revolutionaries, albeit two hundred years apart. Before Basho, haiku was but a pleasant occupation for the idle. He set about transforming it with such success that experts to this day agree that his were the first true haiku.

Shiki, who lived into the 20th century, was passionate in his attempt to salvage haiku from its past, sending out shock waves by dismissing virtually all earlier work, including most of Basho’s. He saw it as his mission to make a difference — to let nothing, not even the most revered, stand in the way. He proclaimed, “A poem has no meaning. It is feeling alone.” And he practiced what he preached.

Autumn wind:
gods, Buddha—
lies, lies, lies.

These modern Japanese poets, many of whom are translated here into English for the first time, learned as much from Basho as from Shiki, and from Buson (1715-83) and Issa (1763-1827), the “Great Four.” Yet in a sense they are followers of Shiki, in spite of the harshness of his views and the impossibly high standards he demanded. They were forced to reckon with him, became willing participants in a heated dialogue with him. They had to: his spirit dominated the age. Stryk captures that spirit here, in this Cage of Fireflies.

The debut poetry collection of Charles Kell, Cage of Lit Glass engages themes of death, incarceration, and family through a range of physical, emotional, and philosophical spaces. In startling images of beauty and violence, Kell creates a haunting world that mirrors our individual and cultural fears. Boldly engaging with the absurdity, strain, and horrors of life, Kell’s poems expand upon the lineage of writers such as Kafka, Beckett, and Rimbaud.
 
Cage of Lit Glass follows multiple individuals and points of view, all haunted by various states of unease and struggle that follow them like specters as they navigate their world. Kell’s poems form blurred narratives and playful experiments from our attempts to build lives from despair. A tense and insightful collection, these works will follow the reader long after the book is finished.
 

The debut poetry collection of Charles Kell, Cage of Lit Glass engages themes of death, incarceration, and family through a range of physical, emotional, and philosophical spaces. In startling images of beauty and violence, Kell creates a haunting world that mirrors our individual and cultural fears. Boldly engaging with the absurdity, strain, and horrors of life, Kell’s poems expand upon the lineage of writers such as Kafka, Beckett, and Rimbaud.
 
Cage of Lit Glass follows multiple individuals and points of view, all haunted by various states of unease and struggle that follow them like specters as they navigate their world. Kell’s poems form blurred narratives and playful experiments from our attempts to build lives from despair. A tense and insightful collection, these works will follow the reader long after the book is finished.
 

This volume presents the works of three distinguished contemporary Hungarian playwrights which together mirror and elucidate the calamitous history of East Central Europe from World War II to the 1970s. Genre 3: