Böcker av Johanna Skibsrud

Combining personal narrative, interviews, and literary analysis, Fool elaborates the potential for fool figures from throughout literary history to reconfigure subject-object relations and point toward new possibilities in creative and critical thought.

Combining personal narrative, interviews, and literary analysis, Fool elaborates the potential for fool figures from throughout literary history to reconfigure subject-object relations and point towards new possibilities in creative and critical thought. Drawing on Johanna Skibsrud's experience in clown classes in France and the US, Fool challenges and extends the correlation Theodor Adorno suggests between thinking and clowning. It considers a diverse range of literary and theoretical sources from Richard Wagner's Parsifal to Karen Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway. The book also refers to a varied cast of literary and historical clowns and fools, including the early Shakespearean actor Richard Tarlton, Alban Berg's Wozzeck, and Cirque du Soleil's Shannan Calcutt.Skibsrud elaborates on the role of the 'fool' and 'foolishness' in literature, not as an element of a particular work's content, plot, or style but instead as a creative mode of thought activated through the reading and writing of literary texts. This innovative book charts new ground in literature, philosophy, and performance studies, and is an invaluable resource for specialists in all three fields.

From award-winning writer Johanna Skibsrud, Mediumshares the lives and perspectives of women who--in their roles as biological, physical, or spiritual mediums--have helped to shape the course of history.Helen of Troy, Anne Boleyn, Shakuntala Devi, Hypatia of Alexandria, Marie Curie: Medium interprets the voices of women vilified over time, silenced by famous husbands, forced into sex work, or wrongly accused. Reckoning with the dominant historical narratives of each woman's era, Skibsrud underscores the power of poetry to bring about new formulations for understanding the relationship between past and present, self and other.These deeply resonant and performative poems use language as a bridge across experience, sensibility, and time. Each exploration begins with a brief vignette inspired by the "vidas" that once began manuscripts of the troubadours. Both vidas and poems provide lyrical reinterpretations of real and imagined elements in the lives of scholars, scientists, computer engineers, mystics, entrepreneurs, artists, nurses, and other leaders.

The year is 1932, and America is roiling with unrest. Angry World War One veterans, embittered by the ruinous poverty inflicted by the Great Depression, join forces and, calling themselves the Bonus Army, march on Washington to demand payment of the wartime bonus promised them for their service during the war.

Giller Prize winning author Johanna Skibsrud spins a masterful tale about memory and war."

A collection that features the following stories: A young maid at a hotel in France encounters a man who asks to paint her portrait, only later discovering that he is someone other than who we think he is; and, more.

Haunted by the horrific events he witnessed during the Vietnam War, Napoleon Haskell is exhausted from years spent battling his memories. It is to Casablanca, on the shores of a man-made lake beneath which lie the remains of the former town, that Napoleon's youngest daughter also retreats when her own life comes unhinged.