The tiny, fictional island of Outermark sits thirty miles off the coast in the waters between Maine and Nova Scotia. When Corson Wills, one of the last people to have lived on the island, is asked to recount its history, he begins by describing it as "a rock in the ocean where no one lives anymore." Corson's tale, and those of his ancestors who also lived there, ferry the reader between the 1980s, when lobster fishing is the only remaining industry, and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, days of great sailing ships to the East Indies but also of conflicts between the earliest Native residents and newly arrived colonial settlers.
"This book is a manifestation of Perry Link's deep love for the Chinese people, their humor, struggles, and courage. Anaconda in the Chandelier is packed with a deep understanding of China, astute observations of Chinese society, and unrelenting criticism of the Communist Party, all stemming from Link's devotion to one thing: truth. If you want to understand why the West got China wrong and how to get it right in the ongoing rivalry between democracy and autocracy, you need to read it."--Li Yuan, The New York Times"The Anaconda in the Chandelier is a work of well-crafted essays that go down easy on first reading, then beguile us into protracted contemplation of the deep structure of contemporary China and the modern world."--Modern Chinese Literature & CultureThese acerbic essays, collected from Perry Link's decades-long career as a noted Sinologist, reveal the depth of his attachment to China and his willingness to squarely face unpleasant truths about the many ways in which ordinary Chinese people have suffered from the self-serving, erratic, and often disastrous "leadership" of the Communist Party of China.Link's essays touch on politics, society, economy, literature, and art, but their primary focus is on the thoughts, feelings, and values of Chinese people. He lays out his values as he explains how, like many of his Chinese friends, he began with a naïve attraction to socialist ideals only to eventually feel disgust at the cynical betrayal of not only those ideals but even garden-variety ethics. His writing probes the ways "comrades" in the ruling regime have ruthlessly clung to and pursued the one value whose pre-eminence has never been in question: political power.The Anaconda in the Chandelier includes essays on Link's "day job" interests in Chinese literature, popular culture, and language teaching at Princeton University. He also offers intellectual tribute to his teachers--both classroom teachers and several whose writing taught him how to see beneath the surfaces of things.
"A granular, meditative, and beautiful portrait of a fascinating life."--Booklist"Put this beautiful book on your shelf between Frank Conroy's Stop-Time and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life."--William Giraldi, author of The Hero's Body"Of all the memoirs and autobiographies I've ever read--literary or otherwise--Dark-Land is among the very best . . . [A] genuinely astonishing achievement."--John Wilson, The Washington ExaminerNamed BOOK OF THE YEAR by First Things magazineThis powerful memoir from poet Kevin Hart traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, a disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another.Dark-Land is Kevin Hart's searing, yet at times hilarious, narrative of his first thirteen years. It is a story of survival and transformation, of deception and recovery, and it passes from a frightening childhood in the East-End of London to a new and bewildering life in sub-tropical Australia. Throughout, Hart draws on John Bunyan's evocation of "Dark-Land" in Pilgrim's Progress, the place Valiant-for-Truth leaves in order to seek the Celestial City. But Dark-Land is no allegory. We see Hart's hidden inner life, his family's penchant for keeping secrets, and their illusions about the nature of their shared past. We see Hart grow from being the despair of his teachers in a rough primary school to experiencing a "conversion" in a math class in Brisbane, Australia, which turned him into a Christian, a poet, and an academic.Written in elegant, lucid prose, without a trace of sentimentality, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity.
"Drawing on the remarkable events of her own life, ... author and Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck tells the story of Ditke, a young Jewish girl living in Hungary during World War II"--Page 4 of cover.
"At the heart of every essay in Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's lively and luminous collection is a question: how does one grow up without losing oneself? McKetta braids the deceptively simple stories of her own life with the rich undercurrent of familiar childhood tales to reveal something both personal and universal, and as close to the truth as possible. Whether she is spending sleepless nights watching the sumo wrestler Asashoryu with her also-awake father or settling into a new life in a fishing hamlet in Cornwall, struggling with a beloved and ultimately untrainable corgi named Goblin or trying to resist her mother's gifts and with them the implications of who she should be, McKetta's essays sparkle with life and twist round and about: funny and insightful and compelling"--
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