Among the most popular writers of the early Soviet period was the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, whose career spanned nearly four decades and who was as beloved by ordinary people as he was admired by the elite. His most popular pieces, often appearing in newspapers, were "short-short stories" written in a slangy, colloquial style. Typical targets of his satire are the Soviet bureaucracy, crowded conditions in communal apartments, marital infidelities and the rapid turnover in marriage partners, and what a disdainful Soviet judge in one of the sketches dismisses as "the petty-bourgeois mode of life, with its adulterous episodes, lying, and similar nonsense." Farcical complications, satiric understatement, humorous anachronisms, and an ironic contrast between high-flown sentiments and the down-to-earth reality of mercenary instincts were his favorite devices. Zoshchenko had an uncanny knack for eluding Soviet censorship (one of the sketches even touches humorously on the dangerous topic of party purges) and his work as a result offers us a marvelous window on life in Russia during the twenties and thirties.

Includes Part 1, Number 2: Books and Pamphlets, Including Serials and Contributions to Periodicals July - December)

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. Look for Hanya Yanagihara’s latest bestselling novel, To Paradise.

This collection of satirical sketches takes readers on a sometimes cynical, sometimes hilarious trip through many of the issues that face democratic South Africa The seed of this collection was sown in 2007 when South Africa won the right to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The debate about huge amounts of public funds being spent on a 'vanity project' instead of being used to improve the lives of the majority of the country’s citizens inspired Mike van Graan, one of South Africa's leading contemporary political playwrights, to use sport as an entry point for satirical commentary. Van Graan follows this with piercing attention towards matters of the state. With themes ranging from the World Cup to the political football of land, from the violent abuse of women to state capture, this selection of satirical sketches takes readers on a rollercoaster trip through many of the issues that face democratic South Africa. The sketches come from six one-person revues, Bafana Republic (2007), Bafana Republic: Extra Time (2008), Bafana Republic: Penalty Shootout (2009), Pay Back the Curry (2016), State Fracture (2017) and Land Acts (2018). Van Graan uses a potent mix of comedy, poetry and drama to make points that hit hard at core issues which 21st-century South Africans are struggling with. Readers will laugh and cringe and sometimes cry, but one thing they will not be able to do is remain unaffected.

A Menippean – Cynic – satire is a device for producing a specific kind of effect on the reader. Menippean satire is an active form, not a passive one: any work that produces the effect of a Menippean satire is a Menippean satire. It is the embodiment of a Cynic – of a Diogenes or a Menippus or a Lucian or a Rabelais. For centuries, it has frustrated the best efforts of critics to define it. Descriptive criteria (such as “a mixture of verse and prose”) invariably fail because the form is determinedly fluid and polymorphous, and playful: it shifts its mode of attack with every change in culture or perception. Menippists plagiarize with abandon, from anyone and any period and culture. McLuhan has found a new and potent method of coming to grips with the satires by examining their interaction with the audience: the satire does what a Cynic would, were he or she physically present. This approach accounts for every shift in technique, from the most ancient (Homer composed one, the Margites) to tomorrow afternoon, and also opens the discussion of Menippism in any and all media other than literature – TV, digital, film, radio, et al. The book ends with a litmus test for detecting Menippean satires. It is also lavishly illustrated with title pages of some of the most notorious examples in the tradition, and is ideal as a textbook for undergraduates.

An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humor, Rallery, Satire, and Ridicule is about the history and the highest form of wit and satire. Corbyn Morris uses the examples of John Dryden, John Locke, Joseph Addison, and more to evaluate wit. Morris discusses Congreve, John Falstaff, and Shakespeare in his introspection on humor. Excerpt: "The Sentiments of these eminent Writers upon Wit, having thus been exhibited, I come next to the Subject of Humour. This has been defined by some, in the following Manner, with great Perspicuity.-- Humor is the genuine Wit of Comedies,--which has afforded vast Satisfaction to many Connoisseurs in the Belles Lettres; especially as Wit has been supposed to be incapable of any Definition."