Today I picked up several books...
The Letter Killers Club - Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky *Krzhizhanovsky who wrote the highly satirical and dark 'Memories of the Future' story collection (also published as part of the excellent NYRB classic series and one I did enjoy) now with this translation appears to be furthering his reputation as one of Russia's best writers of the 20th Century. Blurb: The Letter Killers Club is a secret society of self-described “conceivers” who, to preserve the purity of their conceptions, will commit nothing to paper. (What, after all, is your run-of-the-mill scribbler of stories if not an accomplished corruptor of conceptions?) The logic of the club is strict and uncompromising. Every Saturday, members meet in a firelit room filled with empty black bookshelves where they strive to top one another by developing ever unlikelier, ever more perfect conceptions: a rehearsal of Hamlet hijacked by an actor who vanishes with the role; the double life of a merry medieval cleric derailed by a costume change; a machine-run world that imprisons men’s minds while conscripting their bodies; a dead Roman scribe stranded this side of the River Acheron. But in this book set in an ominous Soviet Moscow of the 1920s, the members of the club are strangely mistrustful of one another, while all are under the spell of its despotic President, and there is no telling, in the end, just how lethal the purely conceptual—or, for that matter, letters—may be.
The Shooting Party - Anton Chekhov Penguin Black edn. *Interestingly enough this was Chekhov's only full-length novel, so I'm curious to see how it compares to his shorter and presumably more 'mature' fiction. Blurb: The Shooting Party wraps a story of concealed love and fatal jealousy into a classic murder mystery. When a young woman dies during a shooting party at the country estate of a dissolute count, a magistrate is called to investigate. But suspicion descends upon virtually everyone, for, as we soon learn, the victim was at the center of a tangled web of relationships with her elderly husband, with the lecherous count, and with the magistrate himself. One of Anton Chekhov's earliest experiments in fiction, this short, riveting novel prefigures the mature style he would develop in his magnificent stories and plays
Eugene Grandet & Cousin Bette - Honore de Balzac Penguin Black edn *Two more of the great French writer de Balzac's classic works forming part of his incredible Comidie humaine cycle of novels describing life in post-revolutionary France, probably only comparable with Old Goirot. Blurbs: Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: to whose destruction she dedicates herself to. This is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comidie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist. In a gloomy house in provincial Saumur lives the miser Grandet with his wife and daughter, Eugenie, whose lives are stifled and overshadowed by his obsession with gold. Guarding his piles of glittering treasures and his only child equally closely, he will let no one near them. But when the arrival of her handsome cousin, Charles, awakens Eugenie's own desires, her passion brings her into a violent collision with her father that results in tragedy for all.
Coinciding with a free exhibition of Persian Art & History at Melbourne's State Library I picked up...
Shahnameh Persian Book of Kings - Aboloqasem Ferdowsi *For those who may not be aware, this Persian EPIC is comparable in its impact to Homer or Shakespeare's body of work in the West or the Mahabharata in Indian culture. Precis: This is the national epic of Iran composed by the poet Ferdowsi between 980 and 1010 AD. It tells the story of ancient Persia, beginning in the mythic time of Creation and continuing forward to the Arab-Islamic invasion in the seventh century. Brilliantly translated into prose and verse (in the naqqali tradition) by the poet and Ferdowsi scholar Dick Davis and magnificently illustrated with miniatures from the greatest Shahnameh manuscripts of the 14th to 17th centuries (in museums and private collections around the world), these stories give English-language readers access to a world of vanished wonders.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam *A classic text I've only now acquired a copy of. Blurb: Revered in eleventh-century Persia as an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Omar Khayyam is now known first and foremost for his "Ruba'iyat". The short epigrammatic stanza form allowed poets of his day to express personal feelings, beliefs and doubts with wit and clarity, and Khayyam became one of its most accomplished masters with his touching meditations on the transience of human life and of the natural world. One of the supreme achievements of medieval literature, the reckless romanticism and the pragmatic fatalism in the face of death means these verses continue to hold the imagination of modern readers.
Shah of Shahs - Ryszard Kapuscinzki *Long regarded an important historical literary text on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran this a work I've been interested in acquiring a copy of for a little while now. Blurb: In Shah of Shahs Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most infamous of the United States' client-dictators, who resolved to transform his country into "a second America in a generation," only to be toppled virtually overnight. From his vantage point at the break-up of the old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanaticism, and revolution.
The Hand of Poetry - Khan & Barks *I own a copy of Rumi's spiritual verse, probably the best known of the Persian poets in the West but picked up this anthology of Persian poetry as it was a handy way to cross sample their best known poets. Precis: This anthology covers five of the most significant mystic poets of Persia ranging from Rumi, to Hafiz, to Sadi to Sanau to Attar with a highly informative lecture transcript preceding each poet's body of work that collectively represents an important contribution to world literature.
Last but not least...Penguin have just released their so-called Text Classics, numbering over 30 classic Australian titles. The following is the one I particularly wanted to get a hold of.
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab - Fergus Hume * I gather this was a mega hit in its day albeit a somewhat lightish read but with enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning the pages. A work that was since been superseded by its many more famous counterparts including the works of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Precis: The best selling crime book no less of the 19th Century worldwide selling over 3/4 of a million copies in Hume's lifetime, this classic whodunit is the original blockbuster crime novel. Set in marvelous Melbourne in the late nineteenth century, it tells an intriguing tale of a murder taking place in a Hansom cab where no-one but the driver can be a potential witness..
