`I pray people will read this richly detailed & absorbing book, with its vivid renaissance of a matter most of us English seem to have wished into oblivion. ' John Fowles Meticulously kept by Walter Prideaux, the log of the Daniel & Henry provides an astonishing record of a trading venture in the year 1700. Two years earlier, the Guinea trade had been prised loose by an Act of Parliament from the monopoly of the Royal African Company, & respectable burghers in a dozen small provincial ports seized what they saw as an opportunity for quick rewards from the slave trade. Few of these merchants knew anything of trading in Africa, nor of the unscrupulous tribalchiefs who readily offered men, women & children in hard bargaining for beads, alcohol, weapons & gunpowder. In the second part of this book, Tattersfield went in search of long-forgotten documents to chart how small provincial ports fared both economically & morally in the early years of slave trading. ...

The Forgotten Waltz is a memory of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into ...

The Forgotten Waltz is a memory of desire: a recollection of the bewildering speed of attraction, the irreparable slip into ...

From the barren farms of Italy to the cramped tenements of New York, the immigrant families struggle with an adopted life
- none
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Grace Hammer lives a sweet enough life with her four children in London's dank & dirty East End, dipping the pockets of wealthy strangers foolish enough to venture there. She keeps a clean house & a tight hold on her magpie nature, restricting her interests to wallets & pocket watches
- at night she dreams of shiny things. Unbeknown to Grace, her most audacious crime will soon return to haunt her & old enemies come knocking.

Out in the dark countryside Mr Blunt rocks in his chair, grinding his teeth, vowing furious retribution. He has never forgotten his scarlet treasure, or the harlot that stole it from him. At night he dreams of slitting her lily-white throat...


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In books lauded as brilliant, exhilarating & profound, Roberto Calasso has revealed the unexpected intersections of ancient & modern through topics ranging from Greek & Indian mythology to what a legendary African kingdom can tell us about the French Revolution. In this first translation of his most important essays, Calasso brings his powerful intellect & elegant prose style to bear on the essential thinkers of our time, providing a sweeping analysis of the current state of Western culture.' Forty-nine steps' refers to the Talmudic doctrine that there are forty-nine steps to meaning in every passage of the Torah. Employing this interpretative approach, Calasso offers a 'secret history' of European literature & philosophy in the wake of Nietzsche, Marx & Freud. Calasso analyses how figures ranging from Gustav Flaubert, Gottfried Benn, Karl Kraus & Martin Heidegger to Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht & Theodor Adorno have contributed to, or been emblematic of, the current state of Western thought. This book's theme, writ large, is the power of the fable
- specifically, its persistence in art & literature despite its exclusion from orthodox philosophy. In its breadth & the nature of its concerns, The Forty-nine Steps is a philosophical & literary twin to the widely praised Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony. Combining erudition with engaging prose & original insights, Calasso contributes a daring new interpretation of some of the most challenging writers of the past 150 years.
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A new translation by Robert & Elizabeth Chandler & Olga Meerson.

Platonov's dystopian novel describes the lives of a group

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