Too Far Afield

The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature tells the story of two old men in Berlin -- one a former East German cultural functionary, the other a former mid-level spy -- observing life in the former German Democratic Republic after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Grass weaves a deeply human story laced with pain and humor in equal measure.

A compulsively readable novel of enormous charm swimming in the cuisine and culture of the Faroe Islands from the author of Girl, Interrupted. Jonathan Brand, a graduate student in anthropology, has decided to do his fieldwork in the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. But, despite his Harvard training, he can barely understand, let alone "study," the culture he encounters. From his struggles with the local cuisine to his affair with the Danish woman the locals want him to marry, Jonathan is both repelled by and drawn into the Faroese way of life. Wry and insightful, Far Afield reveals Susanna Kaysen's gifts of imagination, satire, and compassion.

An extraordinarily photographed culinary travel book featuring profiles of the stewards of the world's traditional foodways—farming, fishing, and herding methods—along with 40 recipes. James Beard Award-winning journalist Shane Mitchell and photographer James Fisher have traveled the world on assignment for food and travel publications such as Travel + Leisure and Saveur. Along the way, they have encountered the fascinating people who are keeping some of the world's oldest food traditions alive, such as taro farmers in Hawaii who have never left the islands, Maasai warriors in Kenya, and Icelandic shepherds who still use the techniques of their Viking ancestors. Full of compelling photography from far-flung locations, Far Afield profiles these people, sharing their unique and captivating stories along with forty recipes.

Anthropology has long had a vexed relationship with literature, and nowhere has this been more acutely felt than in France, where most ethnographers, upon returning from the field, write not one book, but two: a scientific monograph and a literary account. In Far Afield—brought to English-language readers here for the first time—Vincent Debaene puzzles out this phenomenon, tracing the contours of anthropology and literature’s mutual fascination and the ground upon which they meet in the works of thinkers from Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille to Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes. The relationship between anthropology and literature in France is one of careful curiosity. Literary writers are wary about anthropologists’ scientific austerity but intrigued by the objects they collect and the issues they raise, while anthropologists claim to be scientists but at the same time are deeply concerned with writing and representational practices. Debaene elucidates the richness that this curiosity fosters and the diverse range of writings it has produced, from Proustian memoirs to proto-surrealist diaries. In the end he offers a fascinating intellectual history, one that is itself located precisely where science and literature meet.

Jonas Lüscher, the author of Barbarian Spring—“a most humorous and convincing satire of the ridiculous excesses of those responsible for the financial crisis” (The New York Times Book Review)—returns to the topic of neoliberal arrogance in his Swiss Book Prize-winning, hilarious, and wicked novel about a man facing the ruins of his life, and his world. Richard Kraft, a German professor of rhetoric and aging Reaganite and Knight Rider fan, is unhappily married and badly in debt. He sees no way out of his rut until he is invited to participate in a competition to be held in California and sponsored by a Silicon Valley tycoon and “techno-optimist.” The contest is to answer a literal “million-dollar question”: each competitor must compose an eighteen-minute lecture on why our world is still, despite all evidence, the best of all possible worlds, and how we might improve it even further through technology. Entering into a surreal American landscape, Kraft soon finds what’s left of his life falling to pieces as he struggles to justify as “best” a planet in the hands of such blithe neoliberal cupidity as he encounters on his odyssey to California. Still, with the prize money in his pocket, perhaps Kraft could finally buy his way to a new life . . . But what contortions—physical and philosophical—will he have to subject himself to in order to claim it? Jonas Lüscher's second novel, Kraft, is a hilarious and wicked tale about a man facing the ruins of his life, and his world.

This book offers views of Aztec lives and their interactions in rituals, markets, courts, and on the battlefield.

Reproduction of the original: The Byzantine Empire by Charles William Chadwick Oman