Yan Lianke's most powerful novel yet. Reminiscent of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Darkness at Noon, Yan's mythical tale portrays the grotesque persecution during the Great Leap Forward. In the ninety-ninth district of a labour camp, the Author, Musician, Scholar, Theologian and Technician undergo re-education, to restore their revolutionary zeal. In charge of this process is the Child, who delights in enforcing draconian rules. The Four Books tells the story of one of China's most controversial periods. It also reveals the power of camaraderie, love and faith against oppression in the darkest possible times. Yan Lianke was born in 1958 in Henan Province, China. Text has published his novels Serve the People!, Lenin’s Kisses and Dream of Ding Village, which was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Yan Lianke won the Hua Zhong World Chinese Literature Prize in 2013. He has also won two of China's most prestigious literary awards: the Lu Xan Prize and the Lao She Award. In 2014, he won the Franz Kafka Prize. He lives in Bejing. 'Author Yan's deft satire, comic touches and his endless compassion bring smiles and tears through a journey that swings effortlessly back and forward between the absurd, the real and moments of magic. It is an epic tale of how grand, event if well-meant, plans can be tarnished by greed and unhappiness. It cautions against being consumed by power. Here is a splendid storyteller in the tradition of Jonathan Swift. Yan's writing is masterful, his imagination and his satire soars above the common.' Courier Mail 'Yan's postmodern cartoon of the Communist dream caving to run-amok capitalism is fiendishly clever, in parodying the conventions of fables and historical scholarship. The ghost of another famous dead Russian, Nikolai Gogol, hovers over the proceedings in spirit, if not in economy of means.' New York Times 'Yan at the peak of his absurdist powers. He writes in the spirit of the dissident writer Vladimir Voinovich, who observed that “reality and satire are the same".' New Yorker 'Whimsical and horrifying by turns...a no-holds-barred satirical allegory of recent Chinese history.' Listener, NZ ‘Yan Lianke weaves a passionate satire of today’s China, a marvellous circus where the one-eyed-man is king...Brutal. And wickedly funny.' L'Express ‘Set Rabelais down in the mountains of, say, Xinjiang, mix in some Günter Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Gabriel García Márquez, and you’re in the approximate territory of Lianke’s latest exercise in épatering the powers that be...A satirical masterpiece.’ Kirkus ‘Both a blistering satire and a bruising saga, this epic novel examines the grinding forces of communism and capitalism, and the volatile zone where the two intersect...A heartbreaking story of greed, corruption, and the dangers of utopia.’ Publishers Weekly ‘This epic tragicomedy deftly satirises the exploitation of the Chinese people by greedy, power-hungry and inept officials. Yan Lianke showcases many talents of his own, including brilliant absurdist humour and self-censorship.’ North and South, NZ ‘For once, the hype doesn’t go far enough...a devastating, brilliant slice of history.’ Times ‘Woven together, these “texts” reflect the catastrophe of the times and meditate on the meaning of integrity, truth, love and ethics when confronted with horror...[Lianke] has produced an extraordinary novel.’ Guardian ‘A compelling account of the absurdities of the tragedy that killed an estimated 30 million people.’ North and South

In this engaging volume, Daniel Gardner explains the way in which the Four Books--Great Learning, Analects, Mencius, and Maintaining Perfect Balance--have been read and understood by the Chinese since the twelfth century. Selected passages in translation are accompanied by Gardner's comments, which incorporate selections from the commentary and interpretation of the renowned Neo-Confucian thinker, Zhu Xi (1130-1200). This study provides an ideal introduction to the basic texts in the Confucian tradition from the twelfth through the twentieth centuries. It guides the reader through Zhu Xi's influential interpretation of the Four Books, showing how Zhu, through the genre of commentary, gave new coherence and meaning to these foundational texts. Since the Four Books with Zhu Xi's commentary served as the basic textbook for Chinese schooling and the civil service examinations for more than seven hundred years, this book illustrates as well the nature of the standard Chinese educational curriculum.

This volume presents the first English translation of the Confucian classics, Four Books for Women, with extensive commentary by the compiler, Wang Xiang, and introductions and annotations by translator Ann A. Pang-White. Written by women for women's education, the Confucian Four Books for Women spanned the 1st to the 16th centuries, and encompass Ban Zhao's Lessons for Women, Song Ruoxin's and Song Ruozhao's Analects for Women, Empress Renxiaowen's Teachings for the Inner Court, and Madame Liu's (Chaste Widow Wang's) Short Records of Models for Women. A female counterpart to the famous Sishu (Four Books) compiled by Zhu Xi, Wang Xiang's Nü sishu provides an invaluable look at the long-standing history and evolution of Chinese women's writing, education, identity, and philosophical discourse, along with their struggles and triumphs, across the millennia and numerous Chinese dynasties. Pang-White's new translation brings the authors of the Four Books for Women to life as real, living people, and illustrates why they wrote and how their work empowered women.

"In 1591, Giovanni Paolo Gallucci published his Della simmetria dei corpi humani, an Italian translation of Albrecht Dürer's Four Books on Human Proportion. While Dürer's treatise had been translated earlier in the sixteenth-century into French and Latin, it was Gallucci's Italian translation that endured in popularity as the most cited version of the text in later Baroque treatises, covering topics that were seen as central to arts education, connoisseurship, patronage, and the wider appreciation of the studia humanitatis in general. The text centres on the relationships between beauty and proportion, macrocosm and microcosm: relationships that were not only essential to the visual arts in the early modern era, but that cut across a range of disciplines - music, physiognomics and humoral readings, astronomy, astrology and cosmology, theology and philosophy, even mnemonics and poetry. In his version of the text, Gallucci expanded the educational potential of the treatise by adding a Preface, a Life of Dürer, and a Fifth Book providing a philosophical framework within which to interpret Dürer's previous sections. This translation is the first to make these original contributions by Gallucci accessible to an English-speaking audience. Gallucci's contributions illuminate the significance of symmetry and proportion in the contemporary education of the early modern era, informing our understanding of the intellectual history of this period, and the development of art theory and criticism. This is a valuable resource to early modern scholars and students alike, especially those specialising in history of art, philosophy, history of science, and poetry."--Publisher's website.

Reintroduces the out-of-print works of one of this century's greatest American poets.

This novel is a work of extraordinary imagination and wide range. Its playful narrative techniques convey a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

Centered on the theme of regaining a voice, the collection manifests poetry's power to distill meaning from the chaos of trauma

"A writer traces his history-brushes with violence, responses to threat, poetic and political solidarity-in poems of lyric and narrative urgency. John Murillo's second book is a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against African Americans and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father's fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker "to become something unbreakable." The presence of these and poetic forbears-Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa-provide a context for strength in the face of danger and anger. At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice. "Maybe memory is the only home / you get," Murillo writes, "and rage, where you/first learn how fragile the axis/upon which everything tilts.""--