In The Face Of Death We Are Equal

"Those who know me call me Old He, and they also know that I've worked in a crematorium for my entire life." Here begins Mu Cao's novel In the Face of Death We Are Equal, an unrelentingly realistic portrait of working-class gay men in the underbelly of Chinese society. He Donghai is days away from his sixtieth birthday and long-awaited retirement from his job as a corpse burner at a Beijing crematorium. As he approaches the momentous day, he reflects on his life and his relationship with a special group of young men who live and love on the margins of Chinese society. One of them is Ah Qing, a young migrant worker who leaves his village in Henan Province to earn a living in cities--and who has an unexpected personal connection to He. Through a disrupted and nonlinear narrative technique, and alternating between first, second, and third person, In the Face of Death We Are Equal tells the story of Ah and other young men like him. Sometimes enraging, often humorous, but always powerful, this novel explores the economic and sexual exploitation of young men and women from China's impoverished countryside who seek survival in the shadow of China's economic "miracle." Deftly translated by Scott E. Myers, it is the first title in Seagull's new Pride List, which showcases important queer writing from around the world. Written in Mu Cao's trademark earthy, sometimes graphic, idiom, In the Face of Death We Are Equal will be a valuable addition to queer and Chinese literature in translation.

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.

Death and Finitude offers an examination and defense of a pragmatic transcendental anthropology applicable to the concepts of limit, finitude, and mortality that are constitutive of human life as we know it. Sami Pihlström develops a special kind of philosophical anthropology —a pragmatic yet transcendental examination of the human condition—that interprets what is worth preserving in the tradition of transcendental philosophy in such a manner that this unusual combination will crucially enrich our understanding of a human problem we all share: mortality. In some sense, all serious philosophy inevitably reflects on the human condition and is thus philosophical anthropology, broadly conceived. There can hardly be any more serious problem concerning the human condition than the problem of death. Yet, mainstream analytic contributions to the philosophy of death usually addresses death in general, and it is far from obvious that such contributions are philosophically relevant in the sense of addressing the agony of an individual human being trying to understand their own mortal condition. “Continental” philosophy of death may be frustrating in a different sense, as it often fails to be conceptually as clear and argumentatively as rigorous as the analytic literature. Claiming to address my “being-toward-death”, such contributions may also fail to speak to the mortal individual if they end up in endless pseudo-philosophical jargon. It is against this background of frustration that Death and Finitude contributes to humanity’s on-going reflections on death, dying, and mortality—from a pragmatist yet transcendental perspective, seeking to accommodate these topics within a broader philosophical anthropology. The book is primarily intended for academic philosophers, but the potential readership includes not only scholars but also both graduate students and advanced undergraduates, as well as general educated readers. It is relevant to the concerns of philosophers specializing in transcendental philosophy, philosophical anthropology, pragmatism, Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of religion. As the book may be said to be an attempt to “philosophize historically,” it is in principle of interest to both systematically and historically oriented philosophers and students.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

This compelling book brings together physicians, artists, and scholars of film, literature, philosophy, art, and politics to discuss the representation of the corpse in Western culture. Spanning a timeline from the Renaissance to the present, these essays introduce readers to a modern autopsy, a public execution and dissection in seventeenth-century England, the genre of postmortem photography, the corpse as artist's model, images of dead women in such popular films as Copycat and The Silence of the Lambs, and post-mortem scenes in the works of Flaubert, Balzac, Andres Serrano, and others.

"The author explores the meaning of folklore and its usefulness in education and psychotherapy. The book aims for deepening the awareness of our ultimate human concerns, the meaning of authenticity, and the urgent need for radical, long-term commitments. Throughout the book there is both the hidden and the overt implication that simply liking, appreciating or agreeing with insightful ideas and suggestions presented by anyone are absolutely worthless, or may even be counterproductive if the readers do not translate into changes and actions the ideas that are most meaninful to them."

Mu Cao is a bold, pioneering Chinese novelist who dares to challenge the status quo--living openly gay in China and shedding a strong light on the plight of everyday Chinese. This is a humorous, magical realist novel that explores the exploitation of the young living in China's poor countryside. "Those who know me call me Old He, and they also know that I've worked in a crematorium for my entire life." Here begins Mu Cao's novel In the Face of Death We Are Equal, an unrelentingly realistic portrait of working-class gay men in the underbelly of Chinese society. He Donghai is days away from his sixtieth birthday and long-awaited retirement from his job as a corpse burner at a Beijing crematorium. As he approaches the momentous day, he reflects on his life and his relationship with a special group of young men who live and love on the margins of Chinese society. One of them is Ah Qing, a young migrant worker who leaves his village in Henan Province to earn a living in cities--and who has an unexpected personal connection to He. Through a disrupted and nonlinear narrative technique, and alternating between first, second, and third person, In the Face of Death We Are Equal tells the story of Ah and other young men like him. Sometimes enraging, often humorous, but always powerful, this novel explores the economic and sexual exploitation of young men and women from China's impoverished countryside who seek survival in the shadow of China's economic "miracle." Deftly translated by Scott E. Myers, it is the first title in Seagull's new Pride List, which showcases important queer writing from around the world. Written in Mu Cao's trademark earthy, sometimes graphic, idiom, In the Face of Death We Are Equal will be a valuable addition to queer and Chinese literature in translation.

This fast-paced, inspiring and original work proposes that, if religions fade, then secular law provides a much more comprehensive moral regime to govern our lives. Backed by potent and haunting images, it argues that the rule of law is the one universal framework that everyone believes in and that the law is now the most important ideology we have for our survival. The author explores the decline of religions and the huge growth of law and makes predictions for the future of law and lawyers. The book maintains that even though societies may decide they can do without religions, they cannot do without law. The book helpfully summarises both the teachings of all the main religions and the central tenets of the law – governing everything from human relationships to money, banks and corporations. It shows that, without these legal constructs, some of them arcane, our societies would grind to a halt. These innovative summaries make complex ideas seem simple and provide the keys to understanding both the law and religion globally. The book will appeal to both lawyers and the general reader. The book concludes with the author's personal code for a modern way of living to promote the survival of humankind into the future. Vividly written by one of the most important lawyers of our generation, this magisterial and exciting work offers a powerful vision of the role of law in centuries to come and its impact on how we stay alive.