Dictionary Of The Khazars M

A national bestseller, Dictionary of the Khazars was cited by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of the year. Written in two versions, male and female (both available in Vintage International), which are identical save for seventeen crucial lines, Dictionary is the imaginary book of knowledge of the Khazars, a people who flourished somewhere beyond Transylvania between the seventh and ninth centuries. Eschewing conventional narrative and plot, this lexicon novel combines the dictionaries of the world's three major religions with entries that leap between past and future, featuring three unruly wise men, a book printed in poison ink, suicide by mirrors, a chimerical princess, a sect of priests who can infiltrate one's dreams, romances between the living and the dead, and much more.

In recent years, scholarship on translation has moved well beyond the technicalities of converting one language into another and beyond conventional translation theory. With new technologies blurring distinctions between "the original" and its reproductions, and with globalization redefining national and cultural boundaries, "translation" is now emerging as a reformulated subject of lively, interdisciplinary debate. Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation enters the heart of this debate. It covers an exceptional range of topics, from simultaneous translation to legal theory, from the language of exile to the language of new nations, from the press to the cinema; and cultures and languages from contemporary Bengal to ancient Japan, from translations of Homer to the work of Don DeLillo. All twenty-two essays, by leading voices including Gayatri Spivak and the late Edward Said, are provocative and persuasive. The book's four sections--"Translation as Medium and across Media," "The Ethics of Translation," "Translation and Difference," and "Beyond the Nation"--together provide a comprehensive view of current thinking on nationality and translation, one that will be widely consulted for years to come. The contributors are Jonathan E. Abel, Emily Apter, Sandra Bermann, Vilashini Cooppan, Stanley Corngold, David Damrosch, Robert Eaglestone, Stathis Gourgouris, Pierre Legrand, Jacques Lezra, Françoise Lionnet, Sylvia Molloy, Yopie Prins, Edward Said, Azade Seyhan, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Henry Staten, Lawrence Venuti, Lynn Visson, Gauri Viswanathan, Samuel Weber, and Michael Wood.

By the author of the highly acclaimed literary bestseller Dictionary of the Khazars, this is a tale of a mysterious quest that is part modern Odyssey and part crossword puzzle. It begins with the story of a brilliant but failed architect in Belgrade and his search for his father, an officer who vanished in Greece during World War II. The truth about his fate—some of it set in motion 2,000 years ago and some of it by the Nazis—is raveled in the history and secrets of Mount Athos, the most ancient of all monasteries, perched atop its inaccessible mountain on the Aegean. “A hugely ambitious, playful, inventive, demanding, magical, linguistically sensuous reading experience.”—The Washington Post “A brilliantly playful and haunting novel.”—The New York Times Book Review

From the author of the international phenomenon Dictionary of the Khazars comes his most personal and intimate work to date. This novel parallels the myth of Hero and Leander, telling of two lovers in Belgrade, one from the turn of the 18th century, the other from early in the 20th, who reach out to each other across the gulf of time.

At a time when Charlemagne ruled, the Byzantines were encroaching upon Russia, and the faith of Allah was flourishing in Baghdad, there existed a kingdom with a tolerant, advanced civilization: somewhere between the Caucasus mountains and the Volga, the Khazar kingdom grew and flourished, and in one of the oddest choices ever made, converted itself to Judaism. A thousand years later, when the writer Marc Sofer is given an ancient Khazarian coin by a mysterious visitor, he is drawn into investigating the fascinating enigma of the Khazars. Why did these Steppe warriors decide to become Jews? Why, after centuries of power and prosperity, were they effaced from history? What is the connection between this ancient, vanished people, and the terrorist group calling themselves the New Khazars, who have begun attacking oil plants on the Caspian sea? Taking place both in the 10th century and the 21st, this absorbing, dramatic tale is part historical novel, part thriller. The story of the Khazars is interwoven with a contemporary political conspiracy in an unusual blend of reality and fiction that explores the ever important themes of history and identity.

In 1988 Milorad Pavic burst upon the literary scene with his critically acclaimed, international best seller, Dictionary of the Khazars. In it he asked his readers to experience his book in a new and exciting way, as he challenged their traditional concepts of the reading process. In his next two novels, Landscape Painted With Tea and The Inner Side of the Wind, he continued to challenge as he joined a modern Odyssey with a crossword puzzle, and then he told the same tale of two lovers from two perspectives -- male and female -- and asked us to read it from either front or back. His new novel, Last Love in Constantinople, does not disappoint, as Pavic once again demonstrates himself to be a master of narrative legerdemain.

Framed as a dialog between the king of the Khazars, a Central Asian kingdom, and a Rabbi, the Khazari is an exposition of late medieval Jewish philosophy. Legend has it that the king of the Khazars held a symposium to decide whether his people should convert to Judaism, Christianity or Islam. This book is an account of the Jewish side of this debate.

The Khazar Empire was one of the major states of medieval Eurasia. Drawing on a variety of disciplines (history, linguistics, archaeology, literary studies), the papers in this volume shed new light on many of the disputed topics in Khazar history.