In The Heat Of Shadows

South African poetry today is charged with restlessness, burstng with diversity. Gone is the intense inward focus required to deal with a situation of systematic oppression, the enclosing effort of concentration on a single predicament. While politics and identity continue to be central themes, the poetry since the late 1990s reveals a richer investigation of ancestors and history, alongside more experimentation with language and translation; and enduring concern with the touchstones of love, loss, memory, and acts of witnessing. In the Heat of Shadows: South African Poetry 1996-2013 presents work by 33 poets and includes some translations from Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho and Xitsonga. This collection follows on from Denis Hirson’s 1997 anthology The Lava of this Land: South African Poetry 1960-1996.

This anthology resonates with Africa 2020, a pan-African cultural season taking place in France from December 2020 to June 2021, and an invitation to see the world from an African perspective. The voices included in Yesterdays and Imagining Realities: An Anthology of South African Poetry have been selected following an invitation for young poets to submit work in any of South Africa's official languages, as part of our support to plurilingualism. Almost 400 poems have been shared with us, all carefully read by our experienced judges.

"Wonderful . . . J. V. Jones is a striking writer." So says Robert Jordan, the author of The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series. And Jones lives up to that praise in the highly charged epic adventure of Ash March and Raif Sevrance, two outcasts whose fate are entwined by ancient prophecies and need, in the cold, dark world that threatens to be torn asunder by a war to end all wars. Isolated by their birthrights, they are but two who fight the dreaded Endlords, and their strength and courage will be needed if the world is to be saved from darkness." Raif, wrongly accused and cut off from his clan by the treachery of their new headsman, has a talent for killing that is part of his curse and his burden. But he bears another burden of greater weight. Ash is a sacred warrior to the Sull, an ancient race whose numbers have declined. Raised as a foundling, never knowing her true history, she must learn to accept the terrible gifts of her heritage. But as Ash learns more of her greater fate, Raif's task looms dark and desperate, for he must journey through the nightmare realm of the Want, a place where even the Sull now fear to tread. For deep within the Want is the Fortress of Grey Ice, and there he must heal the breach in the Blindwall that already threatens the world. Should he fail, not even Ash's powers can save them. . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The daughter of an apothecary and the owner of a secret book of healing arts, Ursula is determined to become a great healer--but her ambition makes her an outsider in the Holy Roman Empire. When she is accused of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake, she is given one chance to save herself; she must march in the People's Crusade to the holy city of Jerusalem. Along with her father and her friend Bruno, Ursula joins thousands of other pilgrims on a harrowing journey that will expose the dark side of the "glorious" Crusades and change her life forever.

Every man walks with a shadow . . . but what happens when he acquires a second one? Just ask Brazos—a dead ringer for Jack Palance who’s a cold-blooded killer for hire with blood on his hands and a posse on his tail. Desperate for cash, Brazos accepts $200 to gun down a local man named Brant. He’ll earn every penny . . . but in the end there’ll be the devil to pay. Because to put a bullet in Brant means putting one in his partner as well—an eerie stranger schooled in the black art of witchcraft. This is one killing that brings with it a deadly curse—and a second shadow. As Brazos is about to discover, the Wild West doesn’t get any wilder than when a man is damned to live—and die—in the Shadows from Boot Hill. A note from L. Ron Hubbard, written many years ago, that could as well be addressed to you, today’s reader: “Dear Range Boss: Four million of my words have been published in fifty different magazines. . . . Just now I’m larruping fantasy fiction more than anything else, though I’ve been writing Westerns for some time, too. Hope your readers like Shadows from Boot Hill. The Old West was superstitious in the extreme and . . . reeks with more fantasy than The Arabian Nights.” Also includes the Western adventures The Gunner from GehennaGunman!, the story of an aging gunfighter turned lawman who shows his town what a real man is made of. “A minor masterpiece.” —author Will Murray

Fissures appear in the darkness. Shadows break, collapse, and crumble away to nothing, revealing that they are far more than the mere absence of light. Shadows are our friends. Shadows protect us. Because what lies behind the darkness is so much worse… The fourteen stories included in this collection: When God Opens a Door Zombie Dreams Portrait of a Horror Writer Waters Dark and Deep Met a Pilgrim Shadow Open House Extern ’Til Voices Drown Us Knock, Knock Outside the Lines Provider Broken Glass and Gasoline The Tongue is the Sweetest Meat Ghost in the Graveyard

In this original, wide-ranging, and endlessly thought-provoking work of popular nonfiction, a leading science writer uncovers the pervasive presence of shadows in our world. For Plato, shadows were the symbol of our limitations. For Galileo, they knocked the Earth from the center of the cosmos. They are a source of fear and a symbol of ignorance, and they loom large in art and design, mythology and folklore, physics and metaphysics, and architecture and urban planning. From shadows puppets and the psychology of shadows to the role of shadows in astronomy and the influence of shadows on the architectural profiles of our cities, Roberto Casati awakens our fascination in this tour-de-force of investigation and imagination.

What's in a shadow? Menace, seduction, or salvation? Immaterial but profound, shadows lurk everywhere in literature and the visual arts, signifying everything from the treachery of appearances to the unfathomable power of God. From Plato to Picasso, from Rembrandt to Welles and Warhol, from Lord of the Rings to the latest video game, shadows act as central players in the drama of Western culture. Yet because they work silently, artistic shadows often slip unnoticed past audiences and critics. Conceived as an accessible introduction to this elusive phenomenon, Grasping Shadows is the first book that offers a general theory of how all shadows function in texts and visual media. Arguing that shadow images take shape within a common cultural field where visual and verbal meanings overlap, William Sharpe ranges widely among classic and modern works, revealing the key motifs that link apparently disparate works such as those by Fra Angelico and James Joyce, Clementina Hawarden and Kara Walker, Charles Dickens and Kumi Yamashita. Showing how real-world shadows have shaped the meanings of shadow imagery, Grasping Shadows guides the reader through the techniques used by writers and artists to represent shadows from the Renaissance onward. The last chapter traces how shadows impact the art of the modern city, from Renoir and Zola to film noir and projection systems that capture the shadows of passers-by on streets around the globe. Extending his analysis to contemporary street art, popular songs, billboards, and shadow-theatre, Sharpe demonstrates a practical way to grasp the "dark side" that looms all around us.