In 1991 Mariusz Wilk, a Polish journalist long fascinated by the mysteries of the Russian soul, decided to take up residence in the Solovki islands, a lonely archipelago lost amid the far northern reaches of Russia's White Sea. For Wilk these islands represented the quintessence of Russia: a place of exile and a microcosm of the crumbling Soviet empire. On the one hand, they were a cradle of the Orthodox faith and home to an important monastery; on the other, it was here that the first experimental gulag was built after the 1917 revolution. Over the course of years Wilk came to know every single one of the islands' 1000 or so residents. From his remote home, from which he sent regular despatches to the Paris-based Polish newspaper Kultura, he attempted to observe and come to terms with the complexities and contradictions of Russian history, its glorious past and the cruelty of Soviet Communism. In the process, he has written a most unusual travel book, a beautifully descriptive work that belongs in the best tradition of writers such as Norman Lewis, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Claudio Magris.

A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title More than a decade ago, Sara Wheeler traveled to Antarctica to understand a continent nearly lost to myth and lore. In the widely acclaimed, bestselling Terra Incognita, she chronicled her quest to find a hidden history buried in Antarctica's extreme surroundings. Now, Wheeler journeys to the opposite pole to create a definitive picture of life on the fringes. In The Magnetic North, she takes full measure of the Arctic: at once the most pristine place on earth and the locus of global warming. Inspired by the spiraling shape of a reindeer-horn bangle, she travels counterclockwise around the North Pole through the territories belonging to Russia, the United States, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, marking the transformations of what once seemed an unchangeable landscape. As she witnesses the mounting pollution concentrated at the pole, Wheeler reckons with the illness of the whole organism of the earth. Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, shadowing the endless Trans-Alaska Pipeline with a tough Idaho-born outdoorswoman, herding reindeer with the Lapps, and visiting the haunting, deceptively peaceful lands of the Gulag, Wheeler brings the Arctic's many contradictions to life. The Magnetic North is an urgent, beautiful book, rich in dramatic description and vivid reporting. It is a singular, deeply personal portrait of a region growing daily in global importance.

The Routledge World Companion to Polish Literature offers an introduction to Polish literature through thirty-three case studies, covering works from the Middle Ages up to the present day. Each chapter draws on a text or body of work, examining its historical context, as well as its international reception and position within world literature. The book presents a dual perspective on Polish literature, combining original readings of key texts with discussions of their two-way connections with other literatures across the globe. With a detailed introduction offering a narrative overview, the book is divided into six sections offering a chronological pathway through the material. Contributors from around the world examine the various cultural exchanges at play, with each chapter including: Definitions of key terms and brief overviews of historical and political events, literary eras, trends, movements, groups, and institutions for those new to the area Analysis and notes on translations, including their hidden dimensions and potential Textual focus on poetics, such as strategies of composition, style, and genre A range of historical, sociological, political, and economic contexts From medieval song through to the contemporary novel, this book offers an interpretive history of Polish literature, while also positioning its significance within world literature. The detailed introductions make it accessible to beginners in the area, while the original analysis and focused case studies will also be of interest to researchers.

This 100th Anniversary Edition presents the timeless tale of Humphrey Van Weyden, pressed into service aboard the seal-hunting Ghost, led by the brutal, enigmatic captain Wolf Larsen. This volume also includes four of London's acclaimed short stories.

While a compass might tell us which direction we are going, there is really only one direction to which it ever points: north. North is the ultimate point of orientation, but it is also a celebrated destination for the adventurous, the curious, the solitary, and the foolhardy. In this fascinating book—updated in this accessible, pocket edition—Peter Davidson explores the concept of “north” through its many manifestations in painting, legend, and literature. Arctic bound, Davidson takes the reader on a journey from the heart of society to the most far-flung outposts of human geography, packing in our rucksacks a treasure trove of stories and artworks, from the Icelandic Sagas to Nabokov’s snowy kingdom of Zembla, from Hans Christian Andersen’s forbidding Snow Queen to the works of artists such as Eric Ravilious, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Andy Goldsworthy. He celebrates the different ways our artists and writers have illuminated our relationship with the earth’s most dangerous and austere terrain. Through Davidson’s astonishing but inviting erudition, we ultimately come to see north as a permanent goal, frozen forever on a horizon we never seem to quite reach.

This book demonstrates how the political economy of mercantilism was not simply a Western invention by various cities and kingdoms during the Renaissance, but was the natural by-product of perpetually limited growth rates and rulers’ relentless pursuits of bullion. It contributes to discussions of the economic history surrounding the so-called “Great Divergence” between East and West, which would consequently lend context and credence to differences of economic thought in the world today. Additionally, it seeks to explain present economic thought as tacitly derived from implicit antique paradigms. This book advances fields of research from numismatics and sigillography to historical materialism and historical political economy. Divided into three parts, Orthodox Mercantilism first examines the political theology (the sovereignty) of the œcumene from the early 11th century. Second, it analyzes its peripheral legislation from the customary laws of newly Christianized dynasties up to the Kormčaja Kniga’s adoption (the Nomokanon) by 13th-century Orthodox dynasties across Eastern Europe. Third, it explores how these dynasties (and their own satellite dynasties) hoarded finite bullion to pay for defense, resulting in the 11–14th-century coinless period across Eastern Europe and Western Eurasia. Appealing to students and scholars alike, this book will be of interest to those studying and researching economic and mercantile history, particularly in the context of Byzantine and Eastern European societies.

The stimulating program featured clinical, artistic, historical and other interests and concerns of Jungian Psychology today, with wide-ranging presentations and events. From the Contents: Cultural Complexes in the Group and the Individual Psyche by Thomas Singer, Sam Kimbles Descent and Emergence Symbolized in Four Alchemical Paintings by Dyane Sherwood An Archetypal Approach to Drugs and AIDS: A Brazilian Perspective by Dartiu Xavier da Silveira Frida Kahlo by Mathy Hemsari Cassab Images from ARAS: Healing our Sense of Exile from Nature by Ami Ronnberg Trauma and Individuation by Ursula Wirtz Human Being Human: Subjectivity and the Individuation of Culture by Christopher Hauke Studies of Analytical Long-Term Therapy by Wolfram Keller, Rainer Dilg & Seth Isaiah Rubin Analysis in the Shadow of Terror by Henry Abramovitch Ethics in the IAAP – A New Resource by Luigi Zoja, Liliana Wahba & Hester Solomon Hope Abandoned and Recovered in the Psychoanalytic Situation by Donald Kalsched In the Footsteps of Eranos by P. Kugler, H. Kawai, D. Miller, G. Quispel & R. Hinshaw The Self, the Symbolic and Synchronicity by George Hogenson Memory and Emergence by John Dourley Bild, Metapher & Symbol: An der Grenze der kommunizierbaren Erfahrung by M. Krapp Broken Vessels – Living in two Worlds: Some Aspects of Working with Clients with a Physical Disability by Kathrin Asper & Elizabeth Martigny

The stimulating program featured clinical, artistic, historical and other interests and concerns of Jungian Psychology today, with wide-ranging presentations and events. From the Contents: Cultural Complexes in the Group and the Individual Psyche by Thomas Singer, Sam Kimbles Descent and Emergence Symbolized in Four Alchemical Paintings by Dyane Sherwood An Archetypal Approach to Drugs and AIDS: A Brazilian Perspective by Dartiu Xavier da Silveira Frida Kahlo by Mathy Hemsari Cassab Images from ARAS: Healing our Sense of Exile from Nature by Ami Ronnberg Trauma and Individuation by Ursula Wirtz Human Being Human: Subjectivity and the Individuation of Culture by Christopher Hauke Studies of Analytical Long-Term Therapy by Wolfram Keller, Rainer Dilg & Seth Isaiah Rubin Analysis in the Shadow of Terror by Henry Abramovitch Ethics in the IAAP – A New Resource by Luigi Zoja, Liliana Wahba & Hester Solomon Hope Abandoned and Recovered in the Psychoanalytic Situation by Donald Kalsched In the Footsteps of Eranos by P. Kugler, H. Kawai, D. Miller, G. Quispel & R. Hinshaw The Self, the Symbolic and Synchronicity by George Hogenson Memory and Emergence by John Dourley Bild, Metapher & Symbol: An der Grenze der kommunizierbaren Erfahrung by M. Krapp Broken Vessels – Living in two Worlds: Some Aspects of Working with Clients with a Physical Disability by Kathrin Asper & Elizabeth Martigny

Being Poland offers a unique analysis of the cultural developments that took place in Poland after World War One, a period marked by Poland’s return to independence. Conceived to address the lack of critical scholarship on Poland’s cultural restoration, Being Poland illuminates the continuities, paradoxes, and contradictions of Poland’s modern and contemporary cultural practices, and challenges the narrative typically prescribed to Polish literature and film. Reflecting the radical changes, rifts, and restorations that swept through Poland in this period, Polish literature and film reveal a multitude of perspectives. Addressing romantic perceptions of the Polish immigrant, the politics of post-war cinema, poetry, and mass media, Being Poland is a comprehensive reference work written with the intention of exposing an international audience to the explosion of Polish literature and film that emerged in the twentieth century.