Beatrice And Virgil May 10

When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey--named Beatrice and Virgil--and the epic journey they undertake together.

From the author of Life of Pi, comes an edgy, funny and devastating novel. Self is the fictional autobiography of a young writer at the heart of which is a startling twist. This extraordinary life meanders through a rich, complicated, bittersweet world. The discoveries of childhood give way to the thousand pangs of adolescence, culminating in the sudden shocking news of an accident abroad. And as adulthood begins, indecisively, boundaries are crossed between countries, languages and people . . .

The appearance of a young storyteller with a unique fictional voice is cause for celebration. Yann Martel's title story (described as "unforgettable...a truly stunning piece of fiction"), won the 1991 Journey Prize to universal acclaim. The intensely human tragedy that lies at its heart is told with a spare, careful elegance that resonates long after it has ended -- and is matched through all the stories by an immediacy an dazzling freshness.

From the mailbox of the Prime Minister's Office to your bookshelf, a list of more than 100 books that every Canadian should read. This largely one-sided correspondence from the "loneliest book club in the world" is a compendium for bibliophiles and those who follow the Canadian political scene. Smart, subversive, signed, sealed, and now available to you...even if your address is not 80 Wellington Street.

Originally published in 1977. This volume recovers the allegory in Dante's Divine Comedy and presumes that readers' deficient knowledge of or interest in allegory have led to misinterpretations of Dante's poem. None of the dozens of commentaries on the Comedy published in the first half of the twentieth century was concerned with allegory more than sporadically, says Singleton, and so these treatments directed readers' attention to the merest disjecta membra of that continuous dimension of the poem. From Singleton's perspective, the allegory of the Comedy is an imitation of Biblical allegory, which was acknowledged by thinkers in the Middle Ages but not by intellectuals during and following the Renaissance. Singleton attempts to restore the allegorical elements to the foreground of interpreting the Comedy.

“I know you’re very busy, Mr. Harper. We’re all busy. But every person has a space next to where they sleep, whether a patch of pavement or a fine bedside table. In that space, at night, a book can glow. And in those moments of docile wakefulness, when we begin to let go of the day, then is the perfect time to pick up a book and be someone else, somewhere else, for a few minutes, a few pages, before we fall asleep.” From the author of Life of Pi comes a literary correspondence—recommendations to Canada’s Prime Minister of great short books that will inspire and delight book lovers and book club readers across our nation. Every two weeks since April 16th, 2007, Yann Martel has mailed Stephen Harper a book along with a letter. These insightful, provocative letters detailing what he hopes the Prime Minister may take from the books—by such writers as Jane Austen, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Stephen Galloway—are collected here together. The one-sided correspondence (Mr. Harper’s office has only replied once) becomes a meditation on reading and writing and the necessity to allow ourselves to expand stillness in our lives, even if we’re not head of government.

Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before.

Winthrop Wetherbee's study of Dante's relationship to the classical Latin poets--Vergil, Ovid, Lucan, Statius--is a genuine tour-de-force.