Outlandish

Outlandish addresses geographical displacement as a lived experience in the twentieth century, as a predicament of writing, and as a problem for theory. It focuses on the work of three transnational writers from diverse backgrounds working in different genres: Joseph Conrad, the Ukrainian-born Polish novelist and storywriter living in Britain at the turn of the century; Theodor W. Adorno, the German-Jewish philosopher and sociologist transplanted to Los Angeles during the Second World War; and Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born British novelist and journalist, recently released from the peculiar conditions of his notorious houseless arrest. The author argues that Conrad, Adorno, and Rushdie emblematize significant shifts over the course of the century, from a modernist expression of almost universal deracination, to a post-Auschwitz disarticulation of home and subjectivity, to an emergent conceptualization of displacement in terms of migrancy, hybridity, and flow. He theorizes a mode of reading between exile and diaspora--two fundamentally different descriptions of displacement--and allows the "outlandish" writing of these three figures to complicate this seemingly continuous trajectory. Drawing on texts from literary theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, and geography, the author explores what he calls the "rhetoric of displacement"--the struggle to assert identity out of place. He reads this writing predicament against the backdrop of the century's salient economic and technological changes, political upheavals, and mass migrations. In doing so, he draws attention to those aspects of exile and diaspora that have remained insufficiently considered: their relation to nationalism and colonialism, to authority and institutionality, and, above all, to broader questions of subjectivity, "race," location, and language, as these concepts themselves subtly change over the course of the century.

Winner of the Harper Lee Award (2018) Fierce and sensual, the poems in Outlandish Blues merge everyday speech with a shimmering lyricism and burst from the page into song. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers sees the blues, what she terms the "shared 'blue notes,''' as an important intersection between the secular and the divine, and between the various African American vernacular traditions, from spirituals to jazz. Part Nina Simone, part Bessie Smith, her poems are filled with a sweaty honesty, moving from the personal to the collective experience. This movement is often accomplished through the use of personae, concentrated here in a stunning series of poems on the Biblical figures of Hagar and Sarah. Whether about a contemporary domestic scene, a slave ship, or Aretha Franklin, these are poems that speak to the soul of experience.

In Outlandish, acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland; the continent's largest surviving remnant of primeval forest in Poland and Belarus; Europe's only true desert in Spain; and the fathomless grassland steppes of Hungary. From snow-capped mountain range to dense green forest, desert ravines to threadbare, yellow open grassland, these anomalies transport us to faraway regions of the world. More like pockets of Africa, Asia, the Poles or North America, they make our own continent seem larger, stranger and more filled with secrets. Against the rapid climate breakdown of deserts, steppes and primeval jungles across the world, this book discovers the outlandish environments so much closer to home - along with their abundant wildlife: reindeer; bison; ibex; wolves and herds of wild horses. Blending sublime travel writing, nature writing and history - by way of Paleolithic cave art, reindeer nomads, desert wanderers, shamans, Slavic forest gods, European bison, Wild West fantasists, eco-activists, horseback archers, Big Grey Men and other unlikely spirits of place - these desolate and rich environments show us that the strange has always been near.

New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon has captured the hearts of millions with her critically acclaimed novels, Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn. From the moment Claire Randall accidentally steps through a magical stone that transports her back in time more than 200 years to 1743, and into the arms of Scottish soldier Jamie Fraser, readers have been enthralled with this epic saga of time travel, adventure, and love everlasting. Now Diana Gabaldon has written the ultimate companion guide to her bestselling series, the book only she could write -- a beautifully illustrated compendium of all things Outlandish. As a special bonus for those who are eagerly awaiting the next appearance of Jamie and Claire, she includes never-before-published excerpts from upcoming works in the series. And there's lots more in this lavish keepsake volume for the many devoted fans who yearn to learn the stories behind the stories: ¸ Full synopses of Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn ¸ A complete listing of the characters in all four novels, including extensively researched family trees and genealogical notes ¸ Professionally cast horoscopes for Jamie and Claire ¸ A comprehensive glossary and pronunciation guide to Gaelic terms and usage ¸ The fully explicated Gabaldon Theory of Time Travel ¸ Frequently asked questions to the author and her (sometimes surprising) answers ¸ An annotated bibliography ¸ Tips, personal stories -- even a recipe or two! ¸ Essays about medicine and magic in the eighteenth century, researching historical fiction, and more

Time travel, spiritual sci-fi, 18th Century escape, dreaming & invisible reality, science experiment gone wrong, Joker and the aliens - This is the gist of the exciting stories which you are going to read in this collection, which will test your intellect. Tighten up your seat belts and get ready to travel through different worlds via my sci-fi and thriller short stories - Ram KS, the Author.

Victorian domestic novels routinely detect a savage otherness lurking within the English state and subject. Outlandish English Subjects in the Victorian Domestic Novel charts the development of this irony within evangelical and anthropological discourses and studies its emergence in the major works of Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and George Meredith. Each of these writers disrupts the certitudes of imperial ideology by appropriating the language of ethnography and using it to describe the social domestic field. Providing fresh readings of both canonical and neglected novels, this original volume will be of interest to students and scholars of Nineteenth-Century literature and Postcolonial studies.

Not all collections of an author’s past works need be a dull revisitation of the best-forgotten. This book brings together Charles T. Goodsell’s works on public administration, some of which are of ancient vintage or go outside the field for inspiration, possibly earning the appellation ‘outlandish’. Such essays draw from fields including symbol analysis, theory of art, room phenomenology, and theories of public space. The book also deals with more orthodox topics, such as bureau culture, government contracting, and the early New Deal. The author’s methodological biases, placed in full view, will assure controversy. The book ends by encouraging young new scholars to have fun by picking unusual topics and treating them at a fresh angle.