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'During the Tang dynasty, the Chinese artist Wu Tao-tzu was one day standing looking at a mural he had just completed. Suddenly, he clapped his hands and the temple gate opened. He went into his work and the gates closed behind him.' Thus begins Sven Lindqvist's profound meditation on art and its relationship with life, first published in 1967, and a classic in his home country - it has never been out of print. As a young man, Sven Lindqvist was fascinated by the myth of Wu Tao-tzu, and by the possibility of entering a work of art and making it a way of life. He was drawn to artists and writers who shared this vision, especially Hermann Hesse, in his novel Glass Bead Game. Partly inspired by...
An unconventional history of aerial bombing and the profound and terrible effects of its aftermath on the modern world.
In the late 1980s, Sven Lindqvist fell into conversation with an evangelical bodybuilder while relaxing in the sauna after his weekly swim. The conversation challenged Lindqvist's view of the sport as macho and vain and individualistic and led to his first attendance at the local gym. In Bench Press, Lindqvist takes us through his own journey in the gym, but also tells us the entertaining and bizarre history of bodybuilding and meditates on what its increased popularity tells us about contemporary society.
Over twenty years ago, Sven Lindqvist, one of the great pioneers of a new kind of experiential history writing, set out across Central Africa. Obsessed with a single line from Conrad's The Heart of Darkness - Kurtz's injunction to 'Exterminate All the Brutes' - he braided an account of his experiences with a profound historical investigation, revealing to the reader with immediacy and cauterizing force precisely what Europe's imperial powers had exacted on Africa's peoples over the course of the preceding two centuries. Shocking, humane, crackling with imaginative energies and moral purpose, Exterminate All the Brutes stands as an impassioned, timeless classic. It is essential reading for anybody ready to come to terms with the brutal, racist history on which Europe built its wealth.
On a winter trip home to the island of Domarö, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse at Gåvasten. And Maja disappears. Leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to Domarö to confront his despair. He slowly realises that Maja's disappearance is not the first inexplicable tragedy to strike the islanders. Nor is everyone telling him all they know; even his own grandmother, it seems, is keeping secrets. And what is it about the sea? There's something very bad happening on Domarö. Something that involves the sea itself. John Ajvide Lindqvist serves up a masterful cocktail of suspense laced with bizarre humour and a narrative that barely pauses for breath. Harbour is also a heartbreaking study of loss and guilt: a novel whose epic climax pits the infinite force of nature against the implacable love of a father for his child.
Niklas, a weapons expert, has returned home after years as a mercenary. His world has no laws. His life has made him a violence fanatic and an adrenaline junkie. He is haunted by traumatic childhood memories. One night his mother calls, hysterical. Someone has been murdered in her apartment building. Thomas is a demoralized cop. He’s working the night shift when the call about the murder comes in. The victim has been badly beaten, and his arms have been pockmarked by syringes. But someone wants the case silenced - why? Mahmud is just out of jail, and keen to live the high life. He has debts to someone he used to deal for. In a game of russian roulette, his life is spared – but at what cost? He has to look for a man whom he later wishes he’d never found. And his search takes him to a side of Stockholm he wishes he’d never seen. No matter how hard they try, the power is not theirs. It belongs to Radovan who rules over the dark parts of the city where everything is for sale. But the price is much too high.
An Introduction to Chinese Culture through the Family covers a central element of Chinese culture, the idea of family, or jia. Written for both beginners and specialists, this book considers the role of family—literally, metaphorically, and as an organizing principle—in the creation of the Chinese worldview. Individual chapters explore philosophy, art, language, music, folk literature, fiction, architecture, film, and women and gender.
Saluting the Yellow Emperor tells the fascinating story of a group of Swedish scholars who rediscovered the pronunciation of the Chinese classics, buried Silk Road cities, and a Chinese Stone Age, while spiriting antiquities out of Asia.
With the same raw energy and verve he displayed in Easy Money, Jens Lapidus delivers an electrifying tale of Stockholm's vicious underworld. Mahmud is fresh out of jail, but he's forced to work for a brutal mob boss to pay off his debts to a drug lord. Niklas, a mercenary and weapons expert with an appetite for vigilante justice, is back in Sweden and plans to keep a low profile. But the discovery of a murdered man in his mother's building severely threatens those plans. Thomas, the volatile detective on the case, finding his efforts suspiciously stymied and the evidence tampered with, goes off the grid in search of the truth. But as the paths of these three men intertwine and the identity of the murdered man is revealed, crimes and secrets bigger, deeper, and darker than a mere murder will come to light.
The bestselling Red Princess thrillers aren’t just riveting crime stories; they’re novels of emotional depth and savvy insight into modern China. At the heart of Lisa See’s dynamic, suspenseful trilogy is the relationship between detective Liu Hulan and American attorney David Stark, two characters caught in the crush of international affairs. Now the entire series is available in one handy eBook bundle: FLOWER NET “See brings a cool, knowing eye to Chinese-American relations while crafting a nifty tale of suspense.”—Chicago Tribune In the waning days of Deng Xiaoping’s reign, the U.S. ambassador’s son is found entombed in a frozen lake. Off the coast of California, Assistant...