Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting

Kundera whirls through comedy and tragedy towards his central question: how does a person, any person, live today? In constructing his answer, he writes of politics, sex, literature, modern man's alienation - and of their antidotes: laughter and forgetting

Rich in its stories, characters, and imaginative range, "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" is the novel that brought Milan Kundera his first big international success in the late 1970s. Like all his work, it is valuable for far more than its historical implications. In seven wonderfully integrated parts, different aspects of human existence are magnified and reduced, reorder...(展开全部)

In this groundbreaking work, Richard L. Velkley examines the complex philosophical relationship between Martin Heidegger and Leo Strauss. Velkley argues that both thinkers provide searching analyses of the philosophical tradition’s origins in radical questioning. For Heidegger and Strauss, the recovery of the original premises of philosophy cannot be separated from rethinking t...(展开全部)

When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of genius-illuminating and exciting and compelling', and Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live and learned intellige...(展开全部)

"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick Following the collection "The Broken Estate"--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation--"The Irresponsible Self" confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contem...(展开全部)

"James Wood has been called our best young critic. This is not true. He is our best critic; he thinks with a sublime ferocity."--Cynthia Ozick Following the collection "The Broken Estate"--which established James Wood as the leading critic of his generation--"The Irresponsible Self" confirms Wood's preeminence, not only as a discerning judge but also as an appreciator of contem...(展开全部)

When James Wood's first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999, the reviewers hailed a master critic. John Banville described Wood as a 'a close reader of genius-illuminating and exciting and compelling', and Malcolm Bradbury described him as 'a true critic: an urgent, impassioned reader of literature, a tireless interpreter, a live and learned intellige...(展开全部)

French philosopher Luce Irigaray has become one of the twentieth century's most influential feminist thinkers. Among her many writings are three books (with a projected fourth) in which she challenges the Western tradition's construals of human beings' relations to the four elements--earth, air, fire, and water--and to nature. In answer to Heidegger's undoing of Western metaphy...(展开全部)