Eclectic List of Literary Obscurities
Explore a curated eclectic list of literary obscurities, from Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel to Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
Book
The Good Soldier Ĺ vejk and His Fortunes in the World War
by Jaroslav Hašek
"Good-natured and garrulous, Ĺ vejk becomes the Austrian army's most loyal Czech soldier when he is called up on the outbreak of the First World War - although his bumbling attempts to get to the front serve only to prevent him from reaching it. Playing cards, getting drunk and becoming a general nuisance, the resourceful Ĺ vejk uses all his natural cunning and genial subterfuge to deal with the doctors, police, clergy and officers who chivvy him towards battle. The story of a 'little man' caught in a vast bureaucratic machine, The Good Soldier Ĺ vejk combines dazzling wordplay and piercing satire to create a hilariously subversive depiction of the futility of war"--P. [4] of cover.
Book
The Emigrants
by Winfried Georg Sebald
Four narratives weave history and fiction together as refugees from the Holocaust remember their experiences.
Book
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
by Italo Calvino
Introduction by Peter Washington; Translation by William Weaver Italo Calvino’s masterpiece combines a love story and a detective story into an exhilarating allegory of reading, in which the reader of the book becomes the book’s central character. Based on a witty analogy between the reader’s desire to finish the story and the lover’s desire to consummate his or her passion, IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER is the tale of two bemused readers whose attempts to reach the end of the same book—IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER, by Italo Calvino, of course—are constantly and comically frustrated. In between chasing missing chapters of the book, the hapless readers tangle with an international conspiracy, a rogue translator, an elusive novelist, a disintegrating publishing house, and several oppressive governments. The result is a literary labyrinth of storylines that interrupt one another—an Arabian Nights of the postmodern age.
Book
Gargantua and Pantagruel
by Francois Rabelais
A masterly new translation of Rabelais’s robust scatalogical comedy Parodying everyone from classic authors to his own contemporaries, the dazzling and exuberant stories of Rabelais expose human follies with mischievous and often obscene humor. Gargantua depicts a young giant who becomes a cultured Christian knight. Pantagruel portrays Gargantua’s bookish son who becomes a Renaissance Socrates, divinely guided by wisdom and by his idiotic, self-loving companion, Panurge.
