# Matter (novel)
***Matter*** is a science fiction novel from Iain M. Banks set in his Culture universe. It was published on 25 January 2008.
*Matter* was a finalist for the 2009 Prometheus Award.
From an interview with *The Guardian* newspaper at the Hay Literary Festival on 25 May 2007:
Banks tells me that he has spent the past three months writing another Culture novel. It will be called Matter and is to be published next February. \"It\'s a real shelf-breaker,\" he says enthusiastically. \"It\'s 204,000 words long and the last 4,000 consist of appendices and glossaries. It\'s so complicated that even in its complexity it\'s complex. I\'m not sure the publishers will go for the appendices, but readers will need them. It\'s filled with neologisms and characters who disappear for 150 pages and come back, with lots of flashbacks and -forwards. And the story involves different civilizations at different stages of technological evolution. There\'s even one group who have disappeared up their own fundaments into non-matter-based societies\".
The working title of Banks\' earlier novel *The Steep Approach to Garbadale* was also *Matter*.
The book follows the experiences of three members of the royal household of the Sarl, a feudal, early-industrial humanoid race living on the eighth level of the Shellworld of Sursamen. Constructed for an unknown purpose by a long-dead race called the Veil, Shellworlds are ancient artificial planets consisting of nested concentric spheres internally lit by tiny thermonuclear \"stars\". The spheres are inhabited by various primitive races along with progressively more advanced mentoring species, up to the level of what the Sarl call \"Optimae.\" (The Optimae themselves, particularly the Culture, prefer the term \"Involved.\") Approximately 4,000 Shellworlds were built, but almost 2,000 were deliberately destroyed, for reasons unknown, by another presumed extinct race, the Iln. Like many Shellwords, the core of Sursamen is known to be inhabited by a mysterious creature called a Xinthian Tensile Aeranothaur, whom the Sarl worship as their \"WorldGod.\"


# Matter (novel)
Prince Ferbin, the self-centred heir to the Sarl throne, has to flee his home level on the Shellworld and the Shellworld itself after witnessing the murder of his father, King Hausk, by Mertis tyl Loesp, the King\'s second-in-command. Prince Oramen, Ferbin\'s studious younger brother, is unaware of the treachery and trusts tyl Loesp fully. After Ferbin\'s disappearance---and presumed death---tyl Loesp takes on the role of regent, ostensibly until Prince Regent Oramen comes of age and can be crowned king.
The Oct, the direct mentoring species over the human Sarl, meanwhile have been organizing the takeover of the ninth level of Sursamen (owned by the Deldeyn, another human nation of approximately equal level of development to the Sarl), using the Sarl royal court and military as their pawns. It becomes increasingly clear that they are searching for something hidden in the Nameless City, a metropolis buried under several hundred million years of sediment which is currently being stripped away by the giant Hyeng-zhar waterfalls. The ninth level was only recently re-colonised in a move by the Oct, which was retrospectively validated, with reluctance, by Sursamen\'s mentoring races, the Nariscene and the more senior Morthanveld. (The Culture itself has no jurisdiction over Sursamen, since the Morthanveld are - like the Culture - \"High Level Involved\", technically regarded as sort-of-equals in an uneasy although peaceful diplomatic relationship: although despite this, the human(oid) Sarl seem to have more affinity with the Culture although their hierarchy of patronage comes from the Morthanveld.) Opposed to the Oct at an approximately equal stage of development are another species, the Aultridia, who opposed the Oct\'s incursions into the ninth level, and there is a risk of Oct/Aultridia war breaking out - which may become worse if the intermediate-level Nariscene, themselves patrons of the Oct, are dragged into involvement, or worse still, the high-level Morthanveld themselves.


# Matter (novel)
Elsewhere, Djan Seriy Anaplian, another child of King Hausk, had left Sursamen fifteen years earlier to become a member of the Culture as part of a cultural exchange and later joined the Culture\'s covert Special Circumstances (SC) intelligence and intervention organisation. Anaplian decides to return to Sursamen, originally to pay her respects to her dead father and presumed-dead brother. (Initial reports from Sursamen only described the king and prince\'s causes of death as combat related.) Meanwhile, the fleeing Ferbin is seeking out his long-absent sister hoping that, with her powerful connections and SC access, she could help install him as rightful king of the Sarl.
Within the Culture, other channels of intelligence later validate suspicions that the Oct are planning something mysterious on Sursamen and SC contacts Anaplian en route via a humanoid avatar of the Culture ship *Liveware Problem*, Klatsli Quike. SC asks Anaplian to investigate, upgrading her bereavement travel to an official Culture mission - one which will be necessarily highly sensitive since Sursamen is not under Culture jurisdiction, nor are any of the species involved in the Morthanveld chain of patronage. Quike is soon replaced by another avatoid of *The Liveware Problem*, Pone Hippinse, as Anaplian\'s tactical partner in the mission. Her rather irritable combat drone, Turminder Xuss, had stowed away in her belongings at the beginning of her journey, disguised initially as a Knife Missile resembling a dildo; Anaplian has had most SC tactical enhancements to her mind and body disabled for her personal journey out of diplomatic considerations, but she restores most of them, and Xuss will prove critically useful. At this point, Anaplian is reunited with her fugitive brother, Ferbin, and his faithful (but increasingly independently minded) servant Choubris Holse.


# Matter (novel)
Arriving at Sursamen on board the *Liveware Problem*, the team (Anaplian, Hippinse, Ferbin, Holse and Xuss) successfully infiltrate their way down to the Shellworld\'s ninth level to confront tyl Loesp, and protect their brother, Prince Oramen, both of whom are overseeing the excavation of the Nameless City. By the time the team arrives, Oramen has survived assassination attempts by tyl Loesp, but has been killed by a mysterious and powerful entity long entombed in the ancient ruins. Oramen had discovered---too late---that the entity is a ruthless machine created by or belonging to the long-dead race known as the Iln.
The liberated Iln machine\'s nature is a horrible surprise to the Sarl humans and especially the Oct, who thought that they were excavating one of the \"Involucra\" (aka the Veil) who had originally built the shellworlds and from whom they claim to be descended. The Iln entity kills all nearby Sarl and Octs - including both Oramen and tyl Loesp - with a small thermonuclear explosion---after thanking them for their help---and heads towards the core of the Shellworld, planning to capture the Xinthian \"WorldGod\" and then destroy Sursamen by generating and detonating antimatter.


# Matter (novel)
With both tyl Loesp and their brother dead on the ninth level, Anaplian and Ferbin descend towards the Shellworld\'s core level with the rest of the team, equipped with intelligent SC-technology combat suits. The *Liveware Problem* itself speeds down a vast shaft into the Shellworld\'s interior to lead the team, but sustains substantial damage from Nariscene weapons during its descent to the core (it becoming increasingly apparent that all the various species involved have been getting their hands on technology from at least one level higher up the chain). The team is thus outgunned by the Iln device, which has taken over a Morthanveld guard ship and twelve other drones secretly emplaced in the core. Xuss is MIA. Hippinse\'s parent ship, the *Liveware Problem*, disposes of all but two of the Morthanveld drones then sacrifices itself in a suicide attack on the hijacked Morthanveld guard ship. Hippinse himself is killed eliminating one of the remaining drones; Anaplian accounts for the last one, but the Iln entity remains too strong for the remaining compatriots, whose resources are seriously depleted.
Ferbin sacrifices himself to the Iln machine and is killed outright, but satisfies the enemy that the humans are not dangerous and permits Anaplian a much closer approach. Despite her advanced armour, she is eviscerated beyond the point where a non-SC enhanced human would be dead, but she remains conscious enough to detonate the tiny grain of antimatter in her skull that provided power to her SC-enhanced body, destroying the Iln entity and saving the Shellworld.
In the epilogue, Holse, the lone survivor of the Iln encounter, rejoins his family after a long absence, accompanied by the surviving *Liveware Problem* avatoid, Quike. He declares his intention to become a political leader of a no-longer-monarchist Sarl, with the secret backing of the Culture.
An unused section of the first draft was published as the short story \'The Secret Courtyard\' in a booklet called \'The Spheres\', by the Birmingham Science Fiction group, in 2010, in a limited edition of 500, to mark Novacon 40.


# Davita's Harp
***Davita\'s Harp*** is a novel by Chaim Potok, published in 1985. It is the only one of Potok\'s full-length novels to feature a female protagonist.
Several elements in *Davita\'s Harp* come from the author\'s life. The harp in the title, for example, was inspired by an actual door harp that Potok and his wife came upon in a Vermont country store in the summer of 1983. Likewise, in her youth the author\'s wife Adena was also, like Ilana Davita, denied an academic prize due to her gender.


# Davita's Harp
In New York City of the 1930s, Ilana Davita Chandal is the child of a mixed marriage: a Polish Jewish immigrant mother and a Christian father from an old and wealthy New England family. Both of her parents are haunted by bitter and violent memories from their youths, and both have, in consequence, turned their backs on their pasts in order to become active members of the Communist Party. Ilana\'s early childhood is fraught with mystery and struggle as the neighbors eye the Chandal family with suspicion. When Michael Chandal, already wounded once in the Spanish Civil War, returns to Spain, Ilana begins to look for answers at the local synagogue and in friendship with observant Jews, including her neighbor Ruthie Helfman and her distant cousin, David Dinn. Michael Chandal is killed in Spain, at Guernica, and Ilana and her mother both struggle to cope with their grief. They are often at odds with each other as Ilana becomes more and more interested in traditional Judaism---even asserting her right to say *kaddish* for her non-Jewish father---while Anne Chandal devotes herself to the Party and becomes involved in a new relationship with a young Communist historian, Charles Carter. When Stalin signs a non-aggression pact with Hitler, Anne struggles with reconciling the communist cause with the geopolitical reality and leaves the Party. Soon after Carter breaks off their engagement. Ultimately Anne returns---though not with her daughter\'s fervor---to religious observance and marries her cousin Ezra Dinn, whom she had rejected many years before. Ilana becomes a star student at her Jewish day school. She is devastated when she is unjustly denied an academic award on account of her gender, but she remains determined to make her mark on the world.
A subplot involves the mystical European Jewish writer Jakob Daw, another former suitor of Anne Chandal. He is deported from the United States against his will--- in spite of the best efforts of his lawyer, Ezra Dinn---and dies in Europe soon afterwards. Anne Chandal, now Dinn, unconventionally decides to say *kaddish* for her old friend, even though she is a woman and women did not say *kaddish* in Orthodox synagogues in the 1940s.


# Davita's Harp
**Ilana Davita Chandal (later Dinn)** -- Main character, very intelligent for her age but is still frightened of many things. Avid reader who loves to use her imagination, later in the book becomes a great writer and semi-religious daughter of Anne and Michael Chandal.
**Anne \"Channah\" Chandal (later Dinn)** - Ilana\'s mother, a Communist who is devoted to serving her party, she is anti-religion but was once a devoted Jew, is married to Michael Chandal and has a dark past.
**Michael Chandal** - Ilana\'s father, a journalist and a Communist, he is a source of great happiness in the house, he goes overseas to Spain to write for his newspaper about the Spanish Civil War and is killed during a bomb raid while trying to save a nun, a fact that Ilana becomes infatuated with. Husband to Anne Chandal and biological father to Ilana Davita.
**Sarah Chandal** - Ilana\'s aunt, a Christian missionary and a nurse who sometimes works in war zones and is very upbeat. She helps both Ilana and her mother when they fall into depression. She is Michael Chandal\'s sister. Often on her visits she tries to teach Ilana her Christian practices, however is not around enough for her teachings to set in and only manages to cause Ilana trouble in her shul and with the Dinns.
**Jakob Daw** - a writer who is a close friend of Anne Chandal, insists on calling Ilana \'Ilana Davita\'. Writes stories in support of the communist party and was gassed in World War I. He was especially notable for his close relation to Ilana, who commonly referred to him as her \"uncle\" and who she \"loved.\"
**Ezra Dinn** - an immigration lawyer and devoted Jew who is a cousin of Anne Chandal, he helps Jakob Daw with his visa into the U.S. and later marries Anne Chandal after Michael Chandal\'s death in Spain.
**David Dinn** - Ezra Dinn\'s bookish son, who is the same age as Ilana. He is very smart for his age and goes to a private Jewish academy, he befriends Ilana and later becomes her stepbrother.


# Davita's Harp
**Ruthie Helfman** - a friend of Ilana\'s whose family helps Ilana when her mother is in her severely depressed state.
**Mr. Helfman** - Ruthie\'s father; headmaster and teacher at the Jewish school that Ilana later attends with David and Ruthie. He is forced to award Reuven with the Akiva award after the board refuses to allow a girl to win the award, which would ruin the schools accountability (turning it into a \"school for wives\").
**Reuven Malter** - An athletic, popular classmate of Ilana\'s and the runner up for the Akiva Award. Although the school offered him the Akiva award, he refused it saying \"I don\'t want anything I don\'t earn, Ilana \... It wasn\'t mine, it was yours. What they did wasn\'t right\".
**Charles Carter** - a Communist history professor who courts Anne Chandal.
In a public lecture, Chaim Potok stated that, \" *Davita\'s Harp* is a confrontation between two fundamentalisms. . . the secular fundamentalism represented by Marxism, Stalinism, and communism, and the religious fundamentalism of the extreme right in my own Jewish tradition, and how those two fundamentalisms deeply hurt individuals profoundly committed to them, and what those individuals do in the wake of that pain.\'\'
A major theme of *Davita\'s Harp* is the manner in which world events intersect with and shape individual lives. So, for example, Michael Chandal\'s experiences at Centralia change his life course and inspire him to become a Communist; Michael is killed while reporting on the Spanish Civil War, sending his wife and daughter into a tailspin; and Stalin\'s pact with Hitler ends Anne Chandal and Charles Carter\'s romance.
Reuven Malter, a character from Potok\'s first novel, *The Chosen,* makes an appearance in the book.


# Davita's Harp
Being Potok\'s sixth novel, *Davita\'s Harp* was reviewed by a number of major publications. Though critics were not uniformly glowing, the general consensus said that *Davita\'s Harp* was a high-quality book, though not the author\'s best. Cynthia Grenier (who reviewed the book for *The Wall Street Journal*) and an unnamed critic from *Kirkus Reviews* cited \"stiff dialogue and stilted characters\" and a \"\...somewhat YA-ish quality\" in the narration, respectively. With regards to plot, biographer Edward A. Abramson felt that as with his other novels, Potok\'s tendency to forego emphasis of a book\'s dramatic moments continues here, leading to a \"flattening effect\". Yet, despite these deficiencies in style, most critics were taken with Potok\'s depiction of Ilana Davita. An unnamed reviewer in *Booklist* wrote, \"Ilana\'s perceptions of the harsh world of her parents is a stunning one, especially as balanced against the yearnings and disappointments of her own life\" while Marcia R. Hoffman (reviewing for *Library Journal*) wrote, \"Potok\'s insight into the mind and heart of an adolescent girl\...will not be quickly forgotten\". In addition to the novel\'s protagonist, reviewers found much to like in Potok\'s treatment of what had become at that point standard themes for him. Quoting from the *Kirkus Reviews* article on the *Davita\'s Harp*: \"\...the ideas here are rich, provocative, thickly interesting: the soul\'s desire for sustainable faith, the tension between political, worldly justice and religious, spiritual justice.\"
Several reviewers and the author himself have alluded to a sequel or sequels to *Davita\'s Harp,* Though such a novel was never written, Ilana Dinn does reappear in the Potok\'s 2001 collection *Old Men at Midnight.*


# The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (novel)
***The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things*** is a novel-like book of ten related short stories written by Laura Albert under the name JT LeRoy, a persona that she has described as an \"avatar,\" asserting that it enabled her to write things that she was incapable of expressing as Laura Albert. These stories predate the 2000 JT LeRoy novel *Sarah* but were published in 2001, after *Sarah* was released. The title is taken from Jeremiah (King James Bible version).
The stories are narrated by the boy Jeremiah, who at the age of four is taken away from his foster parents, the only family he\'s known. He is reclaimed by his mother Sarah, who had given birth to him as an adolescent but was compelled to turn him over to foster care. Profoundly disturbed from her own life of abuse and poverty, Sarah takes him on the road with her, moving through aimless and dangerous encounters with a series of men, some of whom beat and rape Jeremiah. She frequently instructs her son to pretend to be her sibling---sometimes her brother, sometimes her sister. She is also abusive to him and abandons him repeatedly.
The child-welfare system sends Jeremiah to live with Sarah\'s parents: Bible- and child-beating fanatics who abuse him as relentlessly as they had abused his mother. Sarah finds him and takes him away with her, but her life continues to spiral out of control. She becomes a lot lizard (a prostitute who works the truck stops) and eventually slides into a paranoid breakdown from crystal-meth abuse. Jeremiah is last seen as a 15-year-old street hustler in San Francisco, paying for a gay S&M session where he relives the beatings he had submitted to as a child.


# The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (novel)
*The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things* employs narrative elements and characterizations that also occur in *Sarah*, although it avoids the picaresque and fable-like qualities of the latter novel. Its stories are more violent, their situations more disturbing; but in Jeremiah\'s attempts to comprehend and redefine his mistreatment, the book shares *SarahHarold\'s End* (2004), deal with themes of abandonment, betrayal, abuse, exploitation, and loss -- the loss of identity and gender, as well as material and emotional loss. They also utilize the narrative device of having one\'s hidden life revealed to the judgmentalness and violence of others: The young Jeremiah shoplifts (on instruction of his mother) and is caught and beaten by the storeowner -- a suffering and humiliation that recurs in his wanderings with Sarah as they struggle to feed themselves.
The book was adapted into the 2004 feature film of the same name by director/co-writer Asia Argento, who also starred as Sarah. Jeremiah was played by Jimmy Bennett and by Dylan and Cole Sprouse.
In 2021 Blackstone Audio released an audiobook of *The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things* along with eleven additional JT LeRoy stories. Filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig read his foreword to the book\'s 2016 reissue by HarperCollins, and the stories were read by Christelle de Castro, Donovan Leitch , Laura Desiree, Kerris Dorsey, Julie Mintz, Winsome Brown, Michael Imperioli, Libby Mintz, Joshua Caleb Johnson, Darnell Martin, Laura Albert (as JT LeRoy), Lawrence Rothman, Paul Mendez, Pamela Sneed, Shirley Manson, Laila Hayani, Soko, Alissa Bennett, Daniel Newman, and Robin Weigert.


# Dog Years (novel)
***Dog Years*** () is a novel by Günter Grass. It was first published in Germany in 1963. Its English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1965. It is the third and last volume of his *Danzig Trilogy*, the other two being *The Tin Drum* and *Cat and Mouse*. The novel consists of three different chronological parts, from the 1920s to the 1950s. The main characters are Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel.
Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel are friends. Eduard is half Jewish and at the young age of five is a genius at making scarecrows. The narrator in Book One, the mine owner Brauxel, tells of the friendship of Walter and Eduard when they are children in the Vistula estuary, which is a German-Polish borderland (the interwar Free City of Danzig) peopled by Mennonites, Catholics and Protestants. Eduard keeps a diary which he fills with drawings of ideas for scarecrows. The history of this country is told with cruel images of horror and violence from that past that echoes into the present, which becomes Hitler\'s Germany.
The story in the second part of the book is narrated by Harry Liebenau, and consists of letters from him addressed to his cousin Tulla. This part of the story occurs during the war period, when Amsel collects vast numbers of S.A. uniforms, and dresses his scarecrows in them. He also persuades his childhood friend Walter to become a member of the S.A., in order to help him obtain the uniforms. But since the confusion in this country has reached its maximum at this point in time, it is inevitable that the two friends end up on a collision course. At one point Walter denounces Amsel as a Jew, hits him in the face and knocks out all of his teeth.


# Dog Years (novel)
The last part of the novel is narrated by Walter and takes place after he has found his new friend Prinz. They leave on a journey in the postwar West Germany, where they systematically attack former Nazis who are now posing as respectable officials throughout the country.
Grass\'s style frequently parodies Martin Heidegger\'s arcane philosophical syntax in *Being and Time*, which one of the teenage protagonists likes to poke fun at. The years from the prewar to the postwar era are presented in *Dog Years* through the perspective of three different narrators, a team directed by Amsel --- alias Brauxel --- who makes scarecrows in man\'s image. The seemingly solid childhood friendship of Amsel and Matern evolves into the love-hate relationship between Jew and non-Jew under the impact of Nazi ideology. When the former friends from the region of the Vistula Delta finally meet again in the West, the ominous Alsatian dog (German shepherd) that followed Matern on his odyssey is left behind in Brauxel\'s subterranean world of scarecrows. While *Dog Years*, like *The Tin Drum*, again accounts for the past through the eyes of an artist, the artist is no longer a demonic tin-drummer in the guise of a child but the ingenious maker of a world of objects reflecting the break between the creations of nature and those of men. The narrator refers to Amsel\'s \"keen sense of reality in all its innumerable forms.\"


# The Pendragon Legend
***The Pendragon Legend*** is a 1934 novel by the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb.
The book is a philosophical thriller/comedy/murder-mystery/ghost story set first in London and then in Wales. A mystical element is diffused through an increasingly complex plot, as all threads converge in the final chapters.
The *Pendragon Legend* was first translated into English by Lili Halápy in 1963, and again by Len Rix in 2006.
First edition under *The Pendragon Legend* title
In 1974, the novel was turned into a film *The Pendragon Legend* directed by György Révész.
The novel contains many references to English and European mysticism:
- Rosicrucians
- Robert Fludd
- Count of St. Germain
- Paracelsus
- Philosopher\'s Stone
- Great Work


# Indiana (novel)
***Indiana*** is a novel about love and marriage written by Amantine Aurore Dupin; it was the first work she published under her pseudonym George Sand. Published in April 1832, the novel blends the conventions of romanticism, realism and idealism. As the novel is set partly in France and partly in the French colony of Réunion, Sand had to base her descriptions of the colony, where she had never been, on the travel writing of her friend Jules Néraud.
One edition illustrated by Maurice Toussaint
Indiana is the story\'s heroine, a young noblewoman descended from French colonial settlers from
Île Bourbon (now Réunion) and currently living in France. Indiana is married to an older ex-army officer named Colonel Delmare and suffers from a variety of unknown illnesses, presumably due to the lack of passion in her life. Indiana does not love Delmare and searches for someone who will love her passionately. She overlooks her cousin Ralph, who lives with her and the colonel. As it turns out, Ralph is in love with Indiana.
When their young, handsome, and well-spoken neighbor, Raymon de Ramiere, declares his interest to Indiana, she falls in love with him. Raymon has already seduced Indiana\'s maid, Noun, who is pregnant with his child. When Noun finds out what is going on, she drowns herself.
Indiana\'s husband decides that they will move to Île Bourbon. Indiana escapes the house to faithfully present herself in Raymon\'s apartments in the middle of the night, expecting him to accept her as his mistress in spite of society\'s inevitable condemnation. He at first attempts to seduce her but, on failing, rejects her once and for all. He cannot bear the thought that her will is stronger than his and writes her a letter intended to make her fall in love with him again, even though he has no intention of requiting this love.
Indiana has moved to the Island with the Colonel by the time she reads the letter. She resists the letter but finally returns to France on a perilous sea journey. When she arrives in Paris, the French Revolution of 1830 is taking place. In the meantime, Raymon has made an advantageous marriage and bought Indiana\'s house, where he and his wife live.


# Indiana (novel)
The stoic and remote Sir Ralph, whom Indiana has always seen as an \'égoiste\', suddenly comes to rescue her and tell her that Colonel Delmare has died from a fever. Indiana and Ralph decide to commit suicide together by jumping into a waterfall on the Île Bourbon. But on the way home, they fall in love. Just before the suicide, they declare their love for one another and pledge that they will be married in Heaven. At the end of the novel comes a conclusion, a young adventurer\'s account of finding a man and woman, Ralph and Indiana, living on an isolated farm on the Island.
The novel deals with many typical nineteenth-century novelistic themes. These include adultery, social constraint, and unfulfilled longing for romantic love. The novel is an exploration of nineteenth-century female desire complicated by class constraints and by social codes about infidelity. In another sense, the novel critiques the laws around women\'s equality in France. Indiana cannot leave her husband, Colonel Delmare, because she lacks the protection of the law: under the Napoleonic Code, women could not obtain property, claim ownership of their children, or divorce. Finally, the novel touches on the subordination of the colonies to the French Empire.
- Indiana Delmare - young, attractive noblewoman trapped in a loveless marriage of convenience
- Sir Ralph - Indiana's cousin and potential suitor
- Raymon de Ramiere - a handsome heartless young rake who ends up being a lover of Noun and Indiana, a practical seeker of wealth.
- Colonel Delmare - Indiana's husband
- Noun - lady\'s maid to Indiana, formerly grew up with her on the Ile de Reunion
- Madame de Ramiere - Raymon's mother, a social schemer who tries to find a way to marry Indiana and Raymon
- Madame de Carvajal - Indiana\'s wealthy and affluent aunt.


# Moeyo Ken
`is a novel by Japanese author Ryōtarō Shiba. It dramatizes the life of Hijikata Toshizō, a member of the Shinsengumi, active in Japan during the `*`bakumatsu`*` (the end of the Tokugawa shogunate).`
The novel was initially serialized from 1962 to 1964 in the Bungeishunjū weekly magazine *Shūkan Bunshun*. Shinchosha published the complete novel in two volumes. The action takes place in the Ōkunitama Shrine in Fuchū, along the Asa River in and near Hachiōji, in the Mibu area of Kyoto, and in Hokkaidō.
Shochiku released a 1966 film of the same title. Asahi Kurizuka played Hijikata. He repeated the role in the prime-time television *jidaigeki* on NET.

### Cast (1966 film)
- Asahi Kurizuka as Hijikata Toshizō
- Shun\'ya Wazaki as Kondō Isami
- Hidehiko Ishikura as Okita Sōji
- Tetsuko Kobayashi as Sae
- Keiji Takamiya as Niimi Nishiki

### Cast (1966 TV series)
- Ryōhei Uchida as Hijikata Toshizō
- Asao Koike as Kondō Isami
- Ryōtarō Sugi as Okita Sōji
- Reiko Hitomi as Osae

### Cast (1970 TV series)
- Asahi Kurizuka as Hijikata Toshizō
- Gen Funabashi as Kondō Isami
- Junshi Shimada as Okita Sōji
- Jūkei Fujioka as Endō
- Susumu Kurobe as Nagakura Shinpachi
- Ryō Nishida as Harada Sanosuke
- Seiya Nakano as Yamazaki Susumu
- Eizō Kitamura as Inoue Genzaburō

### Cast (1990 TV mini-series)
- Kōji Yakusho as Hijikata Toshizō
- Tomoko Ogawa as Oyuki
- Tetsuo Ishidate as Kondō Isami
- Terutake Tsuji as Okita Sōji
- Hisako Manda as Sae
- Masaomi Kondō as Itō Kashitarō


# Moeyo Ken
### Cast (2021 film)
- Junichi Okada as Hijikata Toshizō
- Ko Shibasaki as Oyuki
- Ryohei Suzuki as Kondō Isami
- Ryosuke Yamada as Okita Sōji
- Hideaki Itō as Serizawa Kamo
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- This article incorporates material from 燃えよ剣 (*Moeyo Ken*) in the Japanese Wikipedia, retrieved on March 15, 2008.


# A Girl Named Disaster
***A Girl Named Disaster*** is a 1996 novel by Nancy Farmer. The book explores the qualities needed to survive in a hostile environment (particularly by a woman), coming-of-age and the availability of spiritual guidance.
The book has been well-received. In 1997, it won the Newbery Honor for the novel, landed on the American Library Association\'s list of Top Ten Books for Young Adults, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People\'s Literature.
Nhamo is an 11-year-old girl living in a traditional Shona village located in Mozambique around 1981. She was raised with the knowledge and customs of her tribe. Nhamo means \"disaster\" in the Shona language. Nhamo was given this name because of the scandal and wrongful things continued to follow her and her mother. After experiencing trouble with a cholera epidemic, a leopard, and an arranged marriage proposed by a false witch doctor, she flees with her dying grandmother\'s blessings, some gold nuggets, and her meager survival skills. Nhamo steals a boat and supplies under her grandmother\'s instructions and uses the river as her road to Zimbabwe, where she faces the threat of hippos, crocodiles, and other animals trying to kill her, while dealing with the pressures of becoming a woman.
What should have been a two-day boat trip across the border to her father\'s family in Zimbabwe spans a year in which Nhamo faces starvation and the threat of hungry or aggressive animals. The girl finds her way to a lush, haunted island and lives alongside a troop of baboons. Daily conversations with spirits combat Nhamo\'s loneliness and provide her with sage and practical advice. She makes mistakes, loses heart, and nearly dies of starvation. Even after she arrives in Zimbabwe where she lives with scientists before meeting her father\'s family, Nhamo must learn how to live in a modern society (clothing, behavior, literacy), and is urged to let go of the \"evil\" spirits that \"possess\" her as prescribed by a Muvuki or witch finder.


# A Girl Named Disaster
- **Nhamo Jongwe**: The girl named \"Disaster\". She got her name due to the many disasters she faces during her life, even as a child. However, Nhamo is resourceful and clever, in spite of the bad luck she supposedly causes.
- **Aunt Chipo**: Nhamo\'s bad tempered aunt, who has resented Runako, Nhamo\'s deceased mother and Chipo\'s older sister, since they were children. She has hated Nhamo and her mother ever since she was born and forces her to do most of the work in the village, allowing her daughter, Masvita, to do the less strenuous tasks.
- **Masvita**: Nhamo\'s sweet tempered cousin, who behaves respectfully towards Nhamo, in spite of how mean-spirited her mother is.
- **Aunt Shuvai**: Nhamo\'s younger aunt. She is considerably more ambivalent to Nhamo.
- **Uncle Kufa**: Nhamo\'s uncle and Aunt Chipo\'s husband. He is a pragmatic man.
- **Ruva**: Aunt Chipo′s second daughter.
- **Ambuya**: Nhamo and Masvita\'s grandmother. She treats Nhamo with respect and loves her dearly, and is one of the few people to do so. Chipo resents her mother, believing that Ambuya favoured Runako (Nhamo\'s mother) for doing well in school and Shuvai, who was the youngest of Ambuya\'s three daughters.
- **Crocodile Guts**: A fisherman
- **Sister Gladys**: A nurse who takes care of Nhamo in the later part of the book.
- **Goré Mtoko**: Killed by Nhamo\'s father
- **Muvuki** : the witch finder
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- *The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm*


# Agent of Vega
***Agent of Vega*** is a science fiction novel by American writer James H. Schmitz, published in 1960. It is a collection of stories that originally appeared separately in magazines. It was republished in 2001 as *Agent of Vega & Other Stories*.
The tale began in 1949 as a longish short story published in the SF magazine *Astounding*. In 1960 it appeared as a book, along with three loosely related stories set in the same time and context: \"The Illusionists\", \"The Truth About Cushgar\" and \"The Second Night of Summer\".
In the far future, humans are building a \"Confederacy of Vega\" to replace the original fallen Empire of Earth. The new empire includes some mutated humans and also some non-humans. Enemies are also a mix of humans and aliens and it is very much space opera, featuring Vega\'s \'zone agents\'. Combat involves both physical weapons and telepathic attacks. It is similar to E. E. Smith\'s *Lensman* series.
Unlike the six Lensman books, the four stories are only loosely connected. Each features a completely different set of enemies. The non-human telepath Pagadan is the main connecting link, appearing a secondary character in the first story, the main character in \"The Illusionists\" and makes a brief appearance in \"The Truth About Cushgar\".
The book is currently available as *Agent of Vega & Other Stories*. This consists of the original four stories plus \"The Custodians\", \"Gone Fishing\", \"The Beacon to Elsewhere\", \"The End of the Line\", \"Watch the Sky\", \"Greenface\" and \"Rogue Psi\". None of these are set in the same universe as the Vega tales.
*Galaxy*\'s Floyd C. Gale rated the original edition 4.5 stars out of five, saying \"What places Schmitz\'s work above run-of-the-mill S.O. space opera is the quality as well as breadth of his imagination, but most all his touch for characterization.\"
-


# Netochka Nezvanova (novel)
***Netochka Nezvanova*** () is an unfinished novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was originally intended as a large scale work in the form of a \'confession\', but a background sketch of the eponymous heroine\'s childhood and adolescence is all that was completed and published. According to translator Jane Kentish, this first publication was intended as \"no more than a prologue to the novel\". Dostoevsky began work on the novel in 1848 and the first completed section was published at the end of 1849. Further work was prevented by the author\'s arrest and exile to a Siberian detention camp for his part in the activities of the Petrashevsky Circle. After his return in 1859, Dostoevsky never resumed work on *Netochka Nezvanova*, leaving this fragment forever incomplete.
The novel is in the style of a *Bildungsroman*, depicting experiences and emotions from Netochka\'s formative years, as recalled by her in maturity.
The plot unfolds in three distinct sections, corresponding to upheavals in the heroine\'s life.
Chapters 1--3 are predominantly concerned with Netochka\'s recollections of her childhood with her mother and stepfather in St. Petersburg, up until the time of their deaths. She begins with the background story of her stepfather, Efimov, a talented but self-obsessed violinist, whom she describes as \"the strangest and most extraordinary person I have ever known\" and a man whose powerful influence over her affected the rest of her life. Efimov\'s madness brings terrible poverty and discord to the family, and leaves the child with a premature and painful insight into the dark side of human emotions. This part of her life comes to an end when Efimov kills her mother, after which he himself becomes completely insane and dies.


# Netochka Nezvanova (novel)
Netochka is adopted by Prince X., an acquaintance of her stepfather, and chapters 4 and 5 are concerned with the orphaned girl\'s immersion in this unfamiliar aristocratic world, focusing particularly on her relationship with the Prince\'s daughter Katya. Netochka immediately falls in love with the beautiful Katya, but Katya is initially repelled by the strange newcomer, and is cruel and dismissive toward her. Over time, however, this apparent dislike transforms into an equally passionate reciprocation of Netochka\'s feelings. Their young, unashamed love leads to an intimacy that alarms Katya\'s mother, who eventually takes steps to ensure their separation. Katya\'s family move to Moscow, and Netochka is placed in the care of Katya\'s elder half-sister, Alexandra Mikhailovna. According to the narrator, Netochka and Katya will not see each other for another eight years, but as the novel remained unfinished, their reuniting is never described.
The final chapters describe Netochka\'s teenage years growing up in the household of the gentle and maternal Alexandra Mikhailovna and her cold and distant husband Pyotr Alexandrovitch. She forms a deeply empathetic relationship with Alexandra Mikhailovna, but is troubled by her friend\'s painfully solicitous attitude toward her husband, and by what appears to be calculated indifference and dissimulation on his part. Netochka suspects some mystery from their past, and eventually a clue presents itself in the form of a letter that she accidentally discovers pressed between the pages of an old book in the library. It is a letter to Alexandra Mikhaylovna from a distraught lover, lamenting the necessity of their final separation, and grieving for the irreparable harm he has caused her reputation and her marriage. Netochka\'s discovery of the letter sets off a chain of events that bring Alexandra Mikhaylovna to the point of emotional breakdown, and Netochka to the point of womanhood as she confronts Pyotr Alexandrovitch with the truth of what he has done to his wife.


# Netochka Nezvanova (novel)
Several narrative threads, as with the relationship between Netochka and Katya, are left unresolved but with clear indications that they would be resumed in future installments of the novel. It is noticed, at first by Alexandra Mikhailovna, that Netochka has a beautiful singing voice, and arrangements are made for her to receive training. Her love of singing and its connection to her emotional life are examined in a number of scenes, but her artistic development is clearly only in its beginning stages. The novel finishes with an enigmatic exchange between Netochka and Ovrov, Pyotr Alexandrovitch\'s secretary, that is suggestive of further development of the story relating to the love letter.

### Art and the Artist
The status of art and the artist, particularly the Romantic artist, was a subject of much literary discussion in the late 1840s, and *Netochka Nezvanova* was intended to be Dostoevsky\'s literary statement of his view on the issue. According to Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky\'s ultimate aim, though it remained unrealized, was \"to portray a character that unites a dedication to art with an equally firm commitment to the highest moral-social ideals.\" In her childhood Netochka lives in the shadow of Efimov\'s all-consuming artistic obsession, which initially distorts her moral sensibility, but is to become the motivation for the development of a compassionate and fearless conscience bound to her own love of artistic expression. Thus Dostoevsky wished to reject both the egoism of Romanticism, as portrayed through Efimov, and the materialism of those, like Belinsky, who wished to focus only on utilitarian and practical goals to the detriment of art.


# Netochka Nezvanova (novel)
### The woman question
Another subject of much discussion at the time was the place of women in society, or what became known as \"the woman question\". Dostoevsky\'s aim, unprecedented at the time in Russia, was \"to depict a talented and strong-willed woman who refuses to allow herself to be crushed --- who becomes the main *positive* heroine of a major novel\", rather than merely depicting woman as the victim of injustice or iniquity. The novel was originally subtitled \"*The History of a Woman*\".


# Go (Holmes novel)
***Go*** is a semi-autobiographical novel by John Clellon Holmes. (Holmes referred to the book as a *roman à clef*.) It is considered to be the first published novel depicting the beat generation. Set in New York, it concerns the lives of a collection of characters largely based on the friends Holmes used to hang around with in the 1940s and 1950s in Manhattan. An underworld of drug-fueled parties, bars, clubs and free love is explored through the eyes of character Paul Hobbes, Holmes\' representation of himself in the novel. Hobbes is torn between joining his friends in their riotous existence and trying to maintain his relatively stable life and marriage to his wife Kathryn.
*Go* concerns protagonist Paul Hobbes\' struggle to maintain his marriage to his wife, Kathryn, while simultaneously indulging in the world of the 1940s and 1950s Beat Generation. It follows the complications of interpersonal relationships arising from a group of disillusioned and often eccentric young people. Hobbes finds himself in a world of promiscuity, casual drug use and petty crime but retains a certain detachment from it, sometimes to the annoyance of his friends. From wild all night parties to Allen Ginsberg\'s visions of William Blake to the death of Bill Cannastra, the events of the book are largely real events, some of them alluded to in other beat works, most notably Ginsberg\'s \"Howl\". Holmes has said that the only plot element entirely invented by himself is Kathryn\'s infidelity.
The original manuscript was named *The Daybreak Boys* as an allusion to a rivergang on the New York waterfront in the 1840s, but this title was rejected as a book with a similar title had been published by Scribner\'s shortly before *Go* was received. The word *Go* appears regularly in the book, spoken by many of the cast of characters, almost as a mantra. In Britain *Go* was originally published as *The Beat Boys*.
The characters in *Go* are, as was common in beat generation literature, representations of the real people the author knew while writing the book.


# Go (Holmes novel)
- Paul Hobbes is John Clellon Holmes
- Gene Pasternak is Jack Kerouac
- David Stofsky is Allen Ginsberg
- Hart Kennedy is Neal Cassady
- Will Dennison is William S. Burroughs
- Bill Agatson is Bill Cannastra
- Albert Ancke is Herbert Huncke
- Dinah is LuAnne Henderson
- Ed Schindel is Al Hinkle
- 1952, USA, Scribner\'s (), Pub date ? ? 1952, hardback


# Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction
***Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction*** (1997) is a novel by Luke Davies.
The novel follows an unnamed narrator and his relationship with Candy, his girlfriend and later wife, and their addiction to heroin. The novel was loosely based on Luke Davies\' own troubles with addiction and after the release of a movie adaptation of the novel Australian painter Megan Bannister, Davies\' ex-wife, identified herself as the inspiration for Candy.
In 2006 the novel was adapted into a movie directed by Neil Armfield from a script by Davies starring Heath Ledger as the narrator and Abbie Cornish as Candy.
An unnamed narrator who is addicted to heroin introduces his beloved blonde girlfriend, Candy, to the drug. Early in their relationship the couple try to detox separately, with the narrator staying in Sydney while Candy returns home to Melbourne to stay clean. While Candy succeeds the narrator fails to stay clean and when she returns home she quickly relapses.
After pawning their possessions for drugs fails to procure them the necessary amount of money to secure a hit of heroin, a pawnbroker offers Candy cash for sex, which she accepts. Learning that someone from their social circle works at a brothel, Candy takes up the work herself and quickly finds that she can earn up to a thousand dollars a day working as a prostitute and escort. The narrator runs small scams to try to supplement their income.
With money for heroin temporarily secured, the couple decide to get married. Shortly after Candy becomes pregnant and though the two plan to quit heroin \"tomorrow\", by the time Candy is 5 months pregnant, they are still keeping up their habit. Candy has a miscarriage and the baby is stillborn.
Candy goes from working in high end brothels and for wealthy clients to prostituting herself on the street. As their ability to procure heroin becomes more erratic, Candy tells the narrator she wants to quit prostitution. The narrator decides to provide for them by selling drugs and is able to purchase the recipe for making heroin off a professor friend of theirs, Casper.
Though the narrator and Candy are able to successfully make heroin they are less successful at selling and end up using most of their product. Ironically now that they have a near endless supply of their drug of choice the narrator cannot enjoy it due to his collapsed veins.


# Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction
The narrator and Candy eventually give up their drug business and go on methadone, successfully rehabilitating themselves. With cash from Candy\'s parents they are able to buy a rundown farm in the countryside, however as she comes down off heroin Candy becomes bitter about both her relationship with the narrator and her relationship with her parents.
After she has an affair with a neighbor who deals pot, things fall apart. The narrator leaves and stays with an old friend whom he angers, and gets kicked out after two days. The narrator then begins his own affair but is soon called by Candy\'s father. Candy has had a full nervous breakdown and is hospitalised. The narrator makes his way home to find a very changed and very delusional Candy. After she is released they try one more time, but the narrator breaks the rules after running into Casper. Candy leaves the narrator, and shortly afterward Casper is caught making heroin. His employer sends him to rehab but Casper leaves, knowing that action marks the end of his career. Casper then gets antidepressants and alcohol, goes to his lab, cooks one last batch, and commits suicide. The narrator goes into rehab and sobers up. He sees Candy the first chance he is allowed to, and she tells him she knows they have to end. They have to stay apart to be clean.
Davies has admitted the novel is based on his experiences as a heroin addict in the 1980s, the \"worst years\" being 1984 to 1990. Sydney and Melbourne were the epicentres of a \"severe\" heroin problem during this period. Davies has also emphasised that the novel is \"fiction rather than memoir\".
Following the release of the film based on the book, also called *Candy* (2006), Melbourne painter Megan Bannister was identified as the woman who is portrayed as Candy in the novel. She and Davies were married for six years during the 1980s and confirms that key events in the film (and novel) really did happen except that \"living it was 50,000 times worse\".
Davies put the story together over the course of the early 1990s, stating in interviews that \"chapters were written separately and out of sequence\". The first edition was published on 16 June 1998.


# Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction
*Candy* is an intense, and at times taxing, exploration of the heroin addiction shared by a young couple deeply in love. Beyond being a love story with a cautionary tale about drug addiction, *Candy* looks at the human need for escapism. Through the main character\'s relationship we see the self-deceptions that addicts use to justify their rapid degradation, both morally and physically, in attempting to maintain their growing drug habits.
Davies says: \"\... the character Candy is a two-dimensional approximation of the narrator\'s desires, obsessions and his inability to see the truth at any deep level\". In the second part of the book, as the narrator and Candy meet tragedy through the loss of their unborn child and Candy\'s mental breakdown, the story explores the themes of guilt, loss, and self-awareness.
- Shortlisted, Christina Stead Prize for fiction, New South Wales Premier\'s Literary Awards 1999
- Joint Winner, Best Young Australian Novelist, *The Sydney Morning Herald* 1998
- Shortlisted, Addison Wesley Longman Award for the Best Cover/Jacket D
A film adaptation, also called *Candy* (2006), stars Heath Ledger as Dan, Abbie Cornish as Candy, Geoffrey Rush as Casper, Noni Hazlehurst as Mrs. Wyatt, and Tony Martin as Mr. Wyatt. It was directed by Neil Armfield and produced by Emile Sherman and Margaret Fink.
- 1997, Allen & Unwin, Sydney ISBN 9781864483390. Issued in paperback. pp. viii 286 6
- 1998, USE, Ballantine Books , Pub date 16 June 1998, Softcover
- 1998, Vintage Books, Random House, UK
The book was also published in France (Editions Heloise d\'Ormesson), Germany (Droemer-Knaur), Greece, Israel, and Spain (Editions Planeta).
The subtitle, \"A Novel of Love and Addiction\", was only used in the American edition; elsewhere the book is only called *Candy*. There is also an essential difference between the American edition and all the others: in the US edition, the opening chapter \"Example of Good Times\" runs for only a page, then the chapter repeats and continues as the final chapter in the book. Davies has stated publicly he regrets agreeing to this change, and the Australian edition should be taken as the definitive one.


# Candy: A Novel of Love and Addiction
- *Candy*, Allen & Unwin


# Raking the Ashes
***Raking the Ashes*** is a 2005 novel by Anne Fine. It is narrated in the first person by Tilly.
Tilly has always been adept at knowing and getting what she wants out of life. Until she meets Geoffrey, gentle and generous to a fault, with his two little children and an ex-wife who can only think of Tilly in terms of stereotypes.
After an initial meeting on the beach years earlier, Tilly meets the long divorced Geoffrey at a party. She soon divorces her husband and Geoffrey moves in with her. Tilly very much enjoys having another person in the house to help cook and clean, and who loves and accepts her entirely, especially as she recognises that she is not a very nice person. However, Tilly has problems with Geoffrey\'s fundamental dishonesty and his refusal to share his family with her and Tilly is resentful at simply being a \'pleat\' in the family economy, there to be taken in and then let out (let down) when she is not needed. Tilly is good enough to help look after the children for months on end while their mother is in America to treat her cancer, yet when it comes to choosing a school for Harry she can be safely left out while granny, who is barely part of their lives, is invited to help choose the school. Though it is fine for Tilly to spend hours in the middle of the night at Harry\'s bedside listening to his nightmares and the gruesome stories he hears at school, her suggestion to Geoffrey that he see a counselor is rubbished as Geoffrey thinks \'I know my own child\', and Geoffrey even fails to mention the letter from school describing Harry\'s destructive behaviour.
Time and again Tilly is driven to dislike, and even hate Geoffrey over his dishonesty, Geoffrey\'s refusal to listen to her hints about his children (\'Minna\'s persistent truancy, Harry\'s strange, quiet slidings on and off the rails\'), or to live in the real world, his refusal to tell her about major financial decisions (selling his late fathers cottage, getting a second mortgage, giving his ex-wife significant financial help for various cancer treatments that even he believes cannot work).


# Raking the Ashes
When Tilly finds that Geoffrey\'s desire to be nice resulted in his agreeing to his son\'s wedding at a time when it was impossible for Tilly to come, merely to save the mother of the bride the loss of the deposit on her holiday, and that he then lied to Tilly about it, pretending that they were never consulted about the date, she is finally given the impetus to leave, and to exact revenge.


# The Other Darker Ned
Methuen)
***The Other, Darker Ned*** is a 1979 novel written by author Anne Fine about a girl (called Ione) who hears her blind father complaining to his secretary that she only ever \'mopes\' and he wishes that she would do something. She then goes to an Oxfam shop and takes a huge shock when she hears about poverty in India.
Ione holds a jumble sale in the village to buy a bullock for farmers in India who are dying. The title *The Other Darker Ned* refers to the character she sees in her head who is a resemblance of her friend Ned. She becomes so shaken by the image that she decides to stop at nothing to hold the jumble sale. She is extremely successful and manages to buy two bullocks, get Ned, and his girlfriend (Professor Muffet\'s secretary) to stop quarrelling and fall in love.


# Rokudai Shōjiki
`was a Japanese history book written in the early Kamakura period, narrating events at that time in the order they occurred. The `*`Rokudai`*`, which literally means six generations, refers to Emperors Takakura, Antoku, Go-Toba, Tsuchimikado, Juntoku and Go-Horikawa. The fact that Go-Horikawa is referred to as `*`The Reigning Emperor`*` (今上天皇) suggests that the book was written shortly after the Jōkyū War (1221). For a long time, Minamoto no Mitsuyuki had been considered as the author of the book. Recently, however, historians have argued that Fujiwara no Tadataka, who was retired at the time the book was written, is more likely the actual author.`
The book contends that Emperor Go-Toba lost the Jōkyū War because of his immorality, that he was basically a villain of the whole story, and that the event therefore does not necessarily challenge the authority of the emperor and his court. This viewpoint, which was convenient for both the imperial court and the newly formed Kamakura shogunate, had profound influence in later relations between the people of kuge and that of samurai.
- *Masukagami*, which also narrates events in Kamakura period.


# Denkoroku
`is a kōan collection written in 1300 by Keizan Jokin Zenji, the Great Patriarch of Sōtō Zen Buddhism, based on approximately a year of his Dharma talks.`
The book includes 53 enlightenment stories covering 1600 or more years based on the traditional legendary accounts of Dharma transmission in the Sōtō lineage. Successive masters and disciples in the book are Shakyamuni Buddha circa 360 to 440 BCE in India, to Zen master Ejō in about 1230 or 1240 in Japan.
While other translations are available as of 2012, this article was developed for the most part from the introduction and translator\'s note by Francis Dojun Cook.

### Contents
Dharma transmissions covered 28 ancestors from India and 23 from China, followed by Dōgen and Ejō in Japan. Out of modesty and his sense of propriety, Keizan, the 54th ancestor, omitted himself and Tettsu Gikai, one of his teachers who was a student of Ejō and was still alive in 1300. Each chapter is a few pages, except in a couple cases where the author wants to explain a point.
The format for each koan account is in four parts: (1) the main koan case that is the enlightenment encounter between master and disciple, (2) a brief biographical account on the life of the disciple including context for the encounter, (3) Keizan\'s *teisho* or commentary on the koan, and (4) a verse written by Keizan summarizing the point, following the Zen tradition of understanding presented by the master or disciple in poetry.
The book is not true in a strictly historical sense: for example, Bodhidharma is probably a mythical figure, the Sixth Patriarch was probably not Huineng, and someone else probably wrote the *Platform Sutra*. Instead *Denkōroku* may be read as true in the sense that great novels like *Moby-Dick* or *The Great Gatsby* are true. Keizan included fantastical or magical details from the lives of some ancestors, especially those in India, which audiences in times past may have appreciated but which today might be met with skepticism.
The following summary is taken from the Cook translation table of contents, with names according to Thomas Cleary in parentheses.


# Denkoroku
### India
Keizan begins with Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha, followed by his disciple Mahākāśhyapa (Kasyapa), and then Ananda, both of whom knew Buddha before he died. Following are Shanavasa, Upagupta, Dhritaka (Dhrtaka), Micchaka, Vasumitra, Buddhanandi, Buddhamitra (Punyamitra), Parshva, Punyayashas, Ashvaghosa (Ashvaghosha), and Kapimala. Then comes Nagarjuna, Kanadeva, Rahulata, Sanghanandi, Gayashata (Jayashata), Kumarata, Jayata, Vasubandhu, Manorhita (Manora), Haklenayashas (Haklena), Aryasimha (Sinha), Basiasita (Vashashita), Punyamitra, and Prajnatara. Finally, Bodhidharma was the 28th ancestor from India.

### China
Following Bodhidharma, Dazu Huike (Huike Shenguang) was the 29th ancestor, the 2nd in China. Following are Jianzhi Sengcan (Sengcan), Dayi Daoxin (Daoxin), Daman Hongren (Hongren), Dajian Huineng (Huineng), Qingyuan Xingsi (Qingyuan), Shitou Xiqian (Shitou), Yaoshan Weiyan (Yaoshan), Yunyan Tansheng (Yunyan), Dongshan Liangjie (Dongshan), Yunhju Daoying (Yunju), Tongan Daopi (Daopi), Tongan Guanzhi (Tongan), Liangshan Yuanguan (Liangshan), Dayang Jingxuan (Dayang), Touzi Yiqing (Touzi), Furong Daokai (Daokai), Danxia Zichun (Danxia), Zhenxie Qingliao (Wukong), Tiantong Zongjue (Zongjue), Xuedou Zhijian (Zhijian), and Tiantong Rujing (Rujing).


# Denkoroku
### Japan
The 51st ancestor was Eihei Dogen who traveled from Japan to China and back. The 52nd ancestor was his student, Koun Ejō.
Keizan is generally held to be the author.
Keizan originally gave this series of 53 Dharma talks to the monks of the Daijō-ji monastery during spring and the following winter *ango* practice periods. Keizan was 36 years old at the time.
According to one translator, Francis Cook, there is some controversy and \"uneasiness\" about authorship. At first, the work was hidden from the public eye for nearly 600 years. A monk named Sen\'ei was the first to publish it, in 1857, or 557 years after it was written. Then in 1886, Yoshida Gizan published an annotated edition in Kyoto. In 1885, Sōji-ji published what is called the Honzan edition, based on a manuscript copy owned by a private collector. The oldest existing manuscript copy was found in 1959. It is thought to have been copied during the late to mid-15th century. Komazawa University published a catalog in 1962, which listed 11 copies. By 1976, 19 copies were known---some of them verified and some not. Some of these copies were known to no longer exist. Okubo Doshu, a noted Dogen scholar, doubted the work\'s author for a number of reasons, including discrepancies in the last two chapters, along with the absence of a historical record attributing what is a major work to Keizan. But neither he nor any other scholar has ever come out to say that Keizan is *not* the author, so the consensus remains to attribute the work to Keizan.
While Dōgen is held to be the school\'s founder, Keizan was in large part responsible for the flourishing of Sōtō Zen. He resisted the purist approach taken by Dōgen who preferred to teach and write; he took care to serve his congregation who might have dead or dying relatives; he founded new monasteries and temples; and he attracted followers like Gashau and Meiho who became his successors. Today Sōtō Zen remains one of the largest Buddhist organizations in Japan.
One translator, Cleary, writes:


# Denkoroku
### Japan
- Roshi P. T. N. Jiyu Kennett, *Zen is Eternal Life*, Shasta Abbey Press, 4th edition, 2000,
- *The Denkoroku: or The Record of the Transmission of the Light*, by Keizan Zenji, translated by Rev. Hubert Nearman, Shasta Abbey Press, 2001,
- *Transmission of Light, Zen in the Art of Enlightenment by Zen Master Keizan*, Translated and introduction by Thomas Cleary, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1990.
- *The Record of Transmitting the Light: Zen Master Keizan\'s Denkoroku*, Translated and introduction by Francis Dojun Cook, Wisdom Publications, 2003 1991,


# The River Ki
First English-language edition(publ.Kodansha)
`is a novel by Japanese writer Sawako Ariyoshi. Published by Chuokoronsha in 1959, it has been translated into English. Set in Wakayama prefecture, the novel's focus is on three generations of women representing modern Japanese history.`
-


# Snowblind (book)
***Snowblind: A brief career in the cocaine trade*** written by American author Robert Sabbag in 1976 is a non-fiction account about a character named Zachary Swan who turned his hand to smuggling cocaine from Colombia into the US. Set in the 1970s before organised crime took over the cocaine trade, it is based primarily in New York City and Bogotá and features a variety of colourful characters. Unlike other smugglers at the time Swan concocted a vast array of scams designed both to evade customs officials and protect his \'employees\' from prosecution, all of which are highly imaginative and entertaining.
- Howard Marks wrote an introduction for the UK 1998 Canongate reprint.
- Damien Hirst designed a repackaged version limited to 1000 copies with sleeve, reinforced mirror hard backed cover, imitation credit card, (in the name of Zacharie Swan), and a rolled up \$100 bill hidden in a cut away trench in the middle of the book. All three conspirators, Sabbag, Marks and Hirst hand signed all 1000.


# Chronicler of the Winds
***Chronicler of the Winds***(Original title:\*\*\*\*\*\*) is a novel written by Henning Mankell in Swedish in 1995. The story is set in an unnamed port city in Africa which resembles Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, where the author often lived and worked. The narrator is a baker who finds a ten-year-old boy named Nelio. The boy has been shot on the stage of a theatre, and he tells the baker his life story and all his troubles, including living on the street, being persecuted for albinism, and being traumatized as a child soldier. Nelio is \"presented as an inspirational figure\" in a style derived from African storytelling. The novel was translated by Tiina Nunnally and published in English in 2006.
Mankell is known for his \"socially aware crime fiction\" with Inspector Kurt Wallander as a central character. He was fascinated by Africa where he traveled first in the 1970s. From 1987, he lived and worked in both Africa and Sweden. From 1986 on he was director of the Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique. In great contrast to the inspector, who has been described as \"a morose, self-loathing plainclothes officer\", the novel deals with the life of the street boy Nelio and his death at age ten. Mankell said that \"the story unfolds in a manner derived from African storytelling\". He favorably compared that style to what he considered that of the typical (chronological) European story: \"The African way is much more adventurous. You can jump between realities. You can let dead people meet with living people\".
The story is set in an unnamed port city in Africa, told in the first-person by a baker, José M. V. He finds Nelio, a 10-year-old boy, shot on the stage of a theatre. He helps the wounded child who refuses medical care, and listens to the story the boy has to tell over the course of nine days before he dies.


# Chronicler of the Winds
Market in Maputo
Nelio says he grew up in a village close to the border. The village was destroyed during a civil war by partisans, who killed his father, sister, and many others, and deported him and his mother to a camp from which he escapes. He meets Yabu Bata, who has albinism. Together they reach the sea, and Nelio alone moves to a port city. He lives as a street boy, sleeping in the monument of a rider. He joins a gang of other homeless street children led by a 14-year-old boy. They live off waste, stealing, and earning a little money by watching the cars of the rich. A happy event is the birthday of Alfredo Bomba, which they celebrate in an empty house of a man who travels.


# Chronicler of the Winds
Alfredo is diagnosed as terminally ill. To make his last days as pleasant as possible, the group wants to perform a play. Alfredo enjoys the performance in a theatre and dies. Watchmen notice the children and everyone is able to flee except Nelio, who stays with the corpse and is shot. Nelio dies nine days later. José decides to give up his profession and travel as the chronicler, telling Nelio\'s story, reasoning: \"I kept asking myself: where does the evil in human beings come from? Why does barbarism always wear a human face? That\'s what makes barbarism so inhuman\".
The novel was published in 1995 by Ordfront in Stockholm. It was published in English, translated by Tiina Nunnally, in 2006 by Harvill Secker, and in several other languages.
A reviewer in *The Observer* writes: \"The genocide that forces Nelio out of his village and the degradation suffered by the street children are described in angry detail\", but also sees that Nelio is \"presented as an inspirational figure\", even with magical powers. A reviewer for *The New York Times* notes \"crisscrossing time and space in a story that is at once wrenchingly tragic and uplifting\".
The novel was nominated for the August Prize and the Nordic Council\'s Literature Prize in 1995. In 1996 it was awarded the novel prize of the Swedish broadcaster SR P1.
The novel became a 1998 Portuguese language film entitled \'*\'. The film, a Sweden--Portugal--Mozambique co-production, was nominated for a Guldbagge Award for best film in 1999.
Mankell and director Jens Monath produced a film,*Mein Herz schlägt in Afrika\'\' (My Heart Beats in Africa), which was aired in two parts by the ZDF in spring 2009. It was based on topics from the novel such as the life of street children, the persecution of people with albinism, and young adults who are traumatized by spending their childhood as child soldiers.


# Pather Panchali (novel)
***Pather Panchali*** (; ) is a 1929 novel written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and was later adapted into a 1955 film of the same name by Satyajit Ray. Considered to be one of the greatest literary works describing rural life, *Pather Panchali* deals with the life of the Roy family, both in their ancestral village in rural Bengal and later when they move to Varanasi in search of a better life, as well as the anguish and loss they face during their travels.
It first appeared as a serial in a Calcutta periodical in 1928 and was published as a book the next year; it was the first published novel written by the author. It was followed in 1932 by a sequel *Aparajito*, which was adapted into a 1956 film of the same name by Satyajit Ray.
Horihor Ray, an impoverished Brahmin, lives in the village of Nischindipur. Indir Thakrun, an old widowed woman, who had nobody to look after her, takes shelter in the house of Horihor, to whom she is distantly related. Horihor\'s wife Shorbojoya, an ill-tempered lady, cannot bear the sight of the old woman. She is therefore given a tumble-down thatched hut to live in. However, Durga, Shorbojoya\'s six-year-old daughter, is very fond of Indir Thakrun and stays with her for hours to listen to fairy-tales.
After some time, Shorbojoya gives birth to a son. Shorbojoya is jealous of Indir Thakrun as she thinks that Durga is more fond of the old woman than of her mother. Indir Thakrun is mercilessly turned out of the hut for a trifling reason. The helpless old woman implores for shelter in her dying moments but she is heartlessly refused; she passes away in a rice-barn.


# Pather Panchali (novel)
Four or five years later, the boy named Apu grows up to be very inquisitive and sensitive to the beauty and mystery of nature. He and his elder sister Durga are always out for some new adventures like roaming through the forests, taking part in indigenous games and plucking flowers and fruits stealthily. Apu is admitted into the village school where many village elders assemble and talk on diverse subjects. Apu is taken by his father to a client\'s house. It is the first time that Apu gets a glimpse of the outside world which fills his mind with joy and excitement. The village festivity, the fair, and the *Jatra* performance, all bring variety and thrill to the monotonous flow of village life. Durga, restless yet innocent, dies suddenly, plunging the whole family into grief and leaving her little brother all alone. Horihor leaves home for a long period and struggles desperately to earn a livelihood. After returning home he decides to leave Nischindipur. They pack up and go to the railway station. As the train steams in, they board the train leaving behind Nischindipur forever with its many sweet and sour memories.
*Pather Panchali* was translated first to Telugu under the same name by Maddipatla Suri in 1960 and published. It was translated to Sinhalese under the name *Mawathe Geethaya* (Sinhala) by Chintha Lakshmi Sinhaarachchi and published in 1986. This was immensely popular in Sri Lanka and was followed by the translations of the other two books of the Apu trilogy by the same translator.
\'Pather Panchali\' was translated into Malayalam under the name, \'Pather Panchali - Paathayuday Sangeetham\' by Mr. M. K. N. Potty, which was first published in April 2009 by Green Books Pvt Ltd., Trichur, Kerala.
An English translation by T.W. Clark and Tarapada Mukherji was published in 1968 by Indiana University Press as part of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, and an abridged translation by K. Roy and Margaret Chatterjee followed in 1976.
An adaptation for radio by Tanika Gupta was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 24 February & 3 March 2013 as a \"Classic Serial\".


# The Prague Orgy
First edition (publ. Jonathan Cape)
***The Prague Orgy*** (1985) is a novella by Philip Roth. The short book is the epilogue to his trilogy *Zuckerman Bound*. The story follows Roth\'s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, on a journey to Communist Prague in 1976 seeking the unpublished manuscripts of a Yiddish writer. The book, presented as journal entries by Zuckerman, details the struggle of demoralized artists in a totalitarian society.


# Silence (Endō novel)
`is a 1966 novel of theological and historical fiction by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, published in English by Peter Owen Publishers.  It is the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to 17th century Japan, who endures persecution in the time of Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion.  The recipient of the 1966 Tanizaki Prize, it has been called "Endo's supreme achievement" and "one of the twentieth century's finest novels".  Written partly in the form of a letter by its central character, the theme of a silent God who accompanies a believer in adversity was greatly influenced by the Catholic Endō's experience of religious discrimination in Japan, culture gap in France, and a debilitating bout with tuberculosis.`
The novel has been adapted to film twice, a 1971 Japanese film directed by Masahiro Shinoda (for which Endo co-wrote the screenplay), and a 2016 film directed by American filmmaker Martin Scorsese.
The young Portuguese Jesuit priest Sebastião Rodrigues (based on the historical Italian figure Giuseppe Chiara) travels to Japan to assist the local Church and investigate reports that his mentor, a Jesuit priest in Japan named Ferreira, based on Cristóvão Ferreira, has committed apostasy. Less than half of the book is the written journal of Rodrigues, while the other half of the book is written either in the third person, or in the letters of others associated with the narrative. The novel relates the trials of Christians and the increasing hardship suffered by Rodrigues.
Rodrigues and his companion Francisco Garrpe (also a Jesuit priest) arrive in Japan in 1639. There they find the local Christian population driven underground. To ferret out hidden Christians, security officials force suspected Christians to trample on a *fumi-e*, a carved image of Christ. Those who refuse are imprisoned and killed by *ana-tsurushi*, which is by being hung upside down over a pit and slowly bled.


# Silence (Endō novel)
Rodrigues and Garrpe are eventually captured and forced to swim as Japanese Christians lay down their lives for the faith. There is no glory in these martyrdoms, as Rodrigues had always imagined -- only brutality and cruelty. Prior to the arrival of Rodrigues, the authorities had been attempting to force priests to renounce their faith by torturing them. Beginning with Ferreira, they torture other Christians as the priests look on, telling the priests that all they must do is renounce their faith in order to end the suffering of their flock.
Rodrigues\' journal depicts his struggles: he understands suffering for the sake of one\'s own faith; but he struggles over whether it is self-centered and unmerciful to refuse to recant when doing so will end another\'s suffering. At the climactic moment, Rodrigues hears the moans of those who have recanted but are to remain in the pit until he tramples the image of Christ. As Rodrigues looks upon a *fumi-e*, Christ breaks his silence: \"You may trample. You may trample. I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. You may trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men\'s pain that I carried my cross.\" Rodrigues puts his foot on the *fumi-e*.
An official tells Rodrigues, \"Father, it was not by us that you were defeated, but by this mudswamp, Japan.\"
*Silence* received the Tanizaki Prize for the year\'s best full-length literature. It has also been the subject of extensive analysis. In a review published by *The New Yorker*, John Updike called *Silence* \"a remarkable work, a sombre, delicate, and startlingly empathetic study of a young Portuguese missionary during the relentless persecution of the Japanese Christians in the early seventeenth century.\" William Cavanaugh highlights the novel\'s \"deep moral ambiguity\" due to the depiction of a God who \"has chosen not to eliminate suffering, but to suffer with humanity.\"


# Silence (Endō novel)
*Silence* was not immediately successful among Japanese Catholics, who were among some of the novel\'s harshest critics. Instead, the novel\'s popularity was boosted by \"left-wing college students\" who saw a connection to the plight of Japanese Marxists in the circumstances of Rodrigues. The novel was notably compared to Graham Greene\'s *The Power and the Glory*, leading Endo to be referred to as \"the Graham Greene of Japan.\"

### Stage
Besides Endo\'s stage version, *The Golden Country*, there have been several adaptations.

### Films
Masahiro Shinoda directed the 1971 film *Silence*, an adaptation from the novel.
It was re-adapted by João Mário Grilo as *The Eyes of Asia* in 1996.
In 2016, the novel was adapted into a film, also named *Silence*, directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, and starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano and Ciarán Hinds. The film premiered at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome on November 29, 2016.

### Music
Composer and poet Teizo Matsumura wrote the libretto and music for an opera with the same title, which was premiered at the New National Theatre in Tokyo in 2000. The novel inspired Symphony no. 3, \"Silence\", composed in 2002 by Scottish musician James MacMillan.
- History of Roman Catholicism in Japan
- Urakami Cathedral


# The Blue Umbrella
***The Blue Umbrella*** is a 1980 Indian novel written by Ruskin Bond. It was adapted into 2005 Hindi film by the same name, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, which later won the National Film Award for Best Children\'s Film. In 2012, the novel was adapted into a comic by *Amar Chitra Katha* publications, titled, *The Blue Umbrella -- Stories by Ruskin Bond*, and included another story, *Angry River*. This story appeared in Bond\'s collection of short stories, *Children\'s Omnibus*.
In the village of Garhwal lives a girl named Binya.
In the village, Ram Bharosa keeps an old shop and sells Coca-Cola with no ice, tea, curd and sweets. One day, Binya receives a beautiful blue umbrella by some foreigners in exchange for her leopard claw pendant. Soon, the shopkeeper becomes jealous of the umbrella and tries to buy it from Binya by claiming, \"This is a fancy umbrella which small girls should not have\", but Binya refuses. As time passes, Ram\'s jealousy of the umbrella turns into an obsession. He employs a boy named Rajaram from the next village to work at the shop. When Rajaram learns of his boss\' desire to own the umbrella, he makes an attempt to steal it but fails and is caught. Rajaram then gives up Ram\'s name, causing his shop to be boycotted. Ram is now remorseful of his actions and miserable. Binya realizes her showing off the blue umbrella indirectly led to Ram\'s suffering. In the end, Binya willingly gives the umbrella to Ram, who in turn gifts her a bear claw pendant.


# Gukanshō
`is a historical and literary work about the history of Japan. Seven volumes in length, it was composed by Buddhist priest Jien of the Tendai sect c. 1220.  `
Jien, the author of *Gukanshō* (as rendered in a portrait found in the *Ogura Hyakunin Isshu*.)
Political problems arising from the relations between the Imperial government and the *bakufu* inspired Jien to write. Jien was the son of Fujiwara no Tadamichi, and his insider\'s perspective ensured that his work would have a distinct point-of-view. Rather than working towards an absence of bias, he embraced it; and *Gukanshō* is fairly described as a work of historical argument. The writer does try to approach Japan\'s past in a new way, but he does so under the influences of old historical and genealogical interests.
The text is composed of three major sections:
1.  Volumes 1 and 2 consist of imperial chronicle beginning with Emperor Jimmu and concluding with Emperor Juntoku.
2.  Volumes 3 through 6 present a historical description focusing on political transitions.
3.  Volume 7 offers a summary of the contemporary state of the Japanese polity.
The careful writer attempted to apply Buddhist principles such as *mappō* to the process of developing a chronicle of people and events. He was also self-consciously focused on the application of Buddhist principles in the analysis of Japanese history. However, Jien could never completely divorce his position as a son and brother of Fujiwara *kogyū* officials from his position as a priest who studied and practiced Buddhism.
- Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo
- International Research Center for Japanese Studies
- Japanese Historical Text Initiative
- Historiography of Japan


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
***Girl with a Pearl Earring*** is a 1999 historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier. Set in 17th-century Delft, Holland, the novel was inspired by local painter Johannes Vermeer\'s *Girl with a Pearl Earring*. Chevalier presents a fictional account of Vermeer, the model and the painting. The novel was adapted into a 2003 film of the same name and a 2008 play. In May 2020, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a new dramatisation of the novel.
Tracy Chevalier\'s inspiration for the novel was a poster of Johannes Vermeer\'s *Girl with a Pearl Earring*. She had bought the poster as a nineteen-year-old and it hung wherever she lived for sixteen years. Chevalier noted that the \"ambiguous look\" on the girl\'s face left a lasting impression on her. She describes the girl\'s expression \"to be a mass of contradictions: innocent yet experienced, joyous yet tearful, full of longing and yet full of loss.\" She began to think of \"the story behind that look", imagining it as directed at the painter.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
Chevalier\'s research included reading the history of the period, studying the paintings of Vermeer and his peers, and spending several days in Delft. Pregnant at the time of researching and writing, she finished the work in eight months because she had a \"biological deadline\".
Sixteen-year-old Griet has to leave her family home in Delft in 1664 after her father is blinded in an accident. As a tile-painter, her father is a member of the artists' guild, so employment is found for her as a maid in painter Johannes Vermeer\'s household. In the strictly stratified society of the time, this is a fall in status because of the bad reputation that maids have for stealing, spying and sleeping with their employers. A further complication is that the Vermeers belong to the grudgingly tolerated Catholic minority while Griet is a Protestant. At their home, she befriends the family\'s oldest daughter, Maertge, but is never on good terms with the spiteful Cornelia, a younger daughter who takes after her class-conscious mother, Catharina. Griet also finds it difficult to keep on the right side of Tanneke, the other house servant, who is moody and jealous.
Griet lives for two years at her employers' and is only allowed to visit her home on Sundays, where the family circle is breaking up. Her younger brother Frans is apprenticed outside and eventually her younger sister Agnes dies of the plague. But during the early months of her work at the Vermeers\', Pieter, the son of the family butcher at the meat market, starts courting Griet. She has been strictly brought up and does not welcome this at first, but tolerates his interest because it is of advantage to her impoverished parents.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
Griet is increasingly fascinated by Vermeer\'s paintings. Vermeer discovers that Griet has an eye for art and secretly asks her to run errands and perform tasks for him, such as mixing and grinding colors for his paints and acting as a substitute model. This takes up much of her time, and Griet arouses the suspicions of Catharina, but Vermeer\'s mother-in-law, Maria Thins, recognizes Griet\'s presence as a steadying and catalyzing force in Vermeer\'s career and connives at the domestic arrangements that allow her to devote more time to his service. However, Griet is warned by Vermeer\'s friend, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, not to get too close to the artist because he is more interested in painting than he is in people. Realizing that this is true, Griet remains cautious.
Vermeer\'s wealthy but licentious patron, Pieter van Ruijven, notices "the wide-eyed maid", molests her when he can and pressures Vermeer to paint them together, as he had with an earlier maid that Van Ruijven had then made pregnant. Griet and Vermeer are therefore reluctant to fulfil this request and eventually Vermeer comes up with a compromise. Van Ruijven will be painted with members of his own family and Vermeer will paint a portrait of Griet by herself which is to be sold to Van Ruijven. For the painting, he forces her to pierce her ears and wear his wife\'s pearl earrings without her permission. Cornelia seizes the chance to let Catharina discover this and in the resulting scandal Vermeer remains silent and Griet is forced to leave.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
Ten years later, long after Griet has married Pieter and settled into life as a mother and butcher\'s wife, she is called back to the house following Vermeer\'s death. Griet assumes that Vermeer\'s widow wishes to settle the household\'s unpaid butcher's bill. There Griet learns that Vermeer had asked for her painting to be hung in the room as he was dying. In addition, though the family is now poorer, Vermeer\'s will has included a request that Griet receive the pearl earrings that she wore when he painted her, which Van Leeuwenhoek forces Catharina to hand over. Griet realizes, however, that she could no more wear them as a butcher\'s wife than she could have as a maid. She therefore decides to pawn the earrings and pay the fifteen guilders owed to her husband from the price.
The novel was published in Britain in 1999 and a year later in the United States, where it became a *New York Times* bestseller. It was nominated for several fiction prizes, and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 2000 and the 2001 Alex Award for books that have special appeal to young adults. In 2001 Plume released the U.S. paperback edition with an initial print-run of 120,000 copies; a year later the book had been reprinted 18 times with close to two million copies sold. In 2005 HarperCollins brought out a UK special edition with nine colour plates of Vermeer paintings, published in celebration of one million copies sold.
*The New York Times* described the work as a \"brainy novel whose passion is ideas\"; *Atlantic Monthly* praised Chevalier\'s effort \"in creating the feel of a society with sharp divisions in status and creed". However, *Publishers Weekly* noted details that "threaten to rob the narrative of its credibility. Griet\'s ability to suggest to Vermeer how to improve a painting demands one stretch of the reader\'s imagination. And Vermeer\'s acknowledgment of his debt to her, revealed in the denouement, is a blatant nod to sentimentality". Details were also called into question by the art historian Gary Schwarz, particularly the simplistic portrayal of the Catholic/Protestant division in a country where the differences between Protestants were equally important.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
As well as the high English-language sales, the novel's popularity has seen it translated into most European languages and in Asia into Turkish, Georgian, Persian, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean.
In Chevalier\'s fictional account, the character Griet is the model for Vermeer\'s painting
Rather than writing a story of Vermeer having an illicit relationship with the household maid, Chevalier builds tension in the work with the depiction of their restraint. As *Time* magazine notes, Chevalier presents \"an exquisitely controlled exercise that illustrates how temptation is restrained for the sake of art\". The restraint is also a function of the distanced style that Chevalier chose for her narrator, Griet. It has been noted that its aim is to replicate Vermeer's style of painting. It concentrates particularly on visual detail, both in the appearance of characters and of domestic surroundings, and their spatial placing in relation to each other.
It is this cool approach that differentiates the book from the three other novels published in 1999 which also deal with 17th century Dutch painting. Susan Vreeland's *Girl in Hyacinth Blue* is a set of stories centred upon a supposedly lost painting by Vermeer; and Katharine Weber's *The Music Lesson* deals with the stolen Vermeer painting of that title. Deborah Moggach's *Tulip Fever*, on the other hand, is set in Amsterdam and also deals with the love between a painter and his subject. In addition, it too started from an attempt to decipher the enigmatic look of the sitter in a painting of the period.
Another theme - that is demonstrated in the narration rather than commented on overtly - is how women of that time, in Lisa Fletcher's words, "did not own their bodies, but were the possessions first of their parents, then of their employers, and finally of their husbands. As the novel progresses, Griet becomes increasingly aware that she is 'for sale'\". She is given no choice by her parents over whether or where she will work. Van Ruijven and other characters assume she is sexually available simply because she is an unchaperoned maid. And once Pieter becomes Griet's accepted suitor, her parents leave her alone to his physical advances, anticipating that the match will be to their benefit.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
### Historical materials
Apart from *Girl with a Pearl Earring* itself, in which Griet is the sitter, several more of Vermeer's paintings feature in Chevalier's novel. At the very start, *View of Delft* is recalled by Griet's father. When Griet enters the household, Vermeer is working on *Woman with a Pearl Necklace* and Tanneke mentions soon after that she had been Vermeer's model for *The Milkmaid*. His next subject is *Woman with a Water Jug*, for which the baker's daughter models. Griet describes the painting to her father and also witnesses its creation in closer detail now that she is helping in the studio. Van Ruijven's wife (Maria de Knuijt) later models for *A Lady Writing a Letter*. During this episode it is recalled that she had previously appeared in *Woman with a Lute* and that her husband had seduced the maid who sat for *The Girl with the Wine Glass*. Van Ruijven himself, a sister and a daughter, figure in *The Concert*, which is conceived of as a successor to *The Music Lesson*. A further painting, *The Procuress*, is not Vermeer's painting of that title but a genre piece by Dirck van Baburen that belongs to Maria Thins. This hangs on the wall to the right of *The Concert*. Finally we hear from Vermeer\'s daughter Maertge that she has been painted, a reference to *Study of a Young Woman*.


# Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
### Historical materials
These paintings that survive compensate for the lack of much real information available in the historical record about the main male characters. That has allowed Chevalier to integrate into her imaginary scenario some of the few facts that are known about Vermeer and so give her fiction the appearance of reality. But scarcity of evidence extends outside the Vermeer household as well. Although Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is known to have acted as executor to Vermeer's will, there is no documentary proof of friendship between the two. Van Leeuwenhoek was certainly interested in optical devices and it has been speculated that Vermeer made use of a camera obscura, but that is as far as the evidence goes. Again, there is a high level of probability that Pieter van Ruijven was Vermeer's patron, since 21 of the artist's paintings belonged to his estate, but no documentary evidence survives. And there is certainly not the slightest hint that he was the sexual predator that Chevalier portrays.
Such considerations are important since, as Lisa Fletcher argues, historical novels "intervene in our view of the past" and influence our reaction to it in the present. Thus it was noted that the 2001 exhibition of "Vermeer and the Delft School" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York "attracted almost twice the number of visitors than the Vermeer exhibition held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1996. For Walter Liedtke, the gallery\'s curator of European paintings, the success of the exhibition was due, at least in part, to Chevalier\'s novel."
- Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
- Girl with a Pearl Earring (play)
- Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring, HarperCollins paperback, London 2000
- Lisa Fletcher, Chevalier\'s Girl with a Pearl Earring, Insight Publications 2012
- Lisa Fletcher, \"His paintings don\'t tell stories\...\": Historical Romance and Vermeer, Sheffield Hallam University


# Empire from the Ashes
***Empire from the Ashes*** is an omnibus collection of science fiction novels by American writer David Weber.
Published in 2003 by Baen Books, it is an omnibus reissue of Weber\'s *Dahak* trilogy, including *Mutineers\' Moon*, *The Armageddon Inheritance* and *Heirs of Empire*.
The trilogy\'s protagonist is Colin MacIntyre, who is on a routine training flight over the Moon when it reveals itself to be Dahak, a self-aware space battle planetoid millennia old. MacIntyre and Dahak defeat Dahak\'s previous enemies and restore a galactic empire.
- *Moonfall* (film), a 2022 American science fiction film about the Moon being a spaceship from a fallen human civilization that seeded the Earth with humanity


# A Pack of Liars
***A Pack of Liars*** is a children fiction novel by Anne Fine. It was first published by Hamish Hamilton in 1988. It won the Dillons/Puffin Birmingham Book Award in 1991.
Anne Fine has won numerous awards over the years including the Carnegie Medal and the British Book Awards both in 1990 and 1993.


# Flour Babies
***Flour Babies*** is a day school novel for young adults, written by Anne Fine and published by Hamilton in 1992. It features a group \"science experiment\" in a classroom full of underachieving students: \"When his class of underachievers is assigned to spend three torturous weeks taking care of their own \"babies\" in the form of bags of flour, Simon makes amazing discoveries about himself while coming to terms with his long-absent father. Many year 6 students will do this project to teach them about responsibilities. \"
Fine won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year\'s best children\'s book by a British subject. She is one of eight writers with two such honours (no one has won three), having won the 1986 Medal for *Goggle-Eyes*. The earlier book uses a day school frame to recount a story of family life.
Little, Brown published the first U.S. edition in 1994. The teachers were renamed and the students were moved from \"class 4C\" to \"Room 8\" for the American audience. Some libraries report the title *Flour babies and the boys of Room 8*.


# Flour Babies
The story centres around Simon Martin, a pupil in class 4C at an unnamed school. 4C is the class reserved for the school\'s worst students. As it so happens, a new student has arrived at the school, and, by sheer coincidence, his name is Martin Simon. The two boys are the complete antithesis of each other -- Martin Simon passed all his science exams with flying colours, reads voraciously and even speaks and reads French fluently. The class teacher, Mr. Cartright, sends the boy to Dr. Feltham\'s class, and Simon, who had been sent there by accident, soon arrives. The class are choosing their options for their contribution to the school Science Fair. They wish they could work on one of the most exciting experiments -- The Exploding Custard Tins, Soap Factory, or Maggot Farm, for example -- but these have been reserved for those who passed their science exams. As a result, 4C have ended up having to choose between a series of boring experiments. First they have to choose a topic -- their options are consumer studies, textiles, child development, nutrition, and domestic economy. Simon Martin is given the task of pulling a voting slip out of a tub; Martin Simon\'s slip comes out, and the topic he has chosen is \"child development\".


# Flour Babies
The experiment which Dr. Feltham (an eccentric science teacher who organises the fair) has chosen for child development is \'Flour Babies\'. Each boy is given a six-pound bag of flour, in rags to form the look of a baby, and he must care for it at all times, as if it were a real baby. They must also write a diary explaining how they cope with this responsibility. Needless to say, the boys are not happy with this experiment, and neither is their teacher. But Simon misunderstands a conversation he overhears between Dr. Feltham and Mr. Cartright, and thinks that they will get to kick the flour babies to bits at the end. Mr. Cartright decides to pick another topic, but Simon has already mistakenly informed the class about kicking the babies to bits; they like the idea and press gang him into letting them do the experiment. Simon becomes fond of his flour baby, while the others complain. Simon reflects on his own childhood: his Dad left home when Simon was just six weeks old, and never came back. His relationship with his mother has always been precarious, and Simon now begins to learn about the pressures of parenthood.


# Angry River
***Angry River*** is a 1972 children\'s novel by Indian author Ruskin Bond illustrated by Trevor Stubley. It was published in India and England and translated into Dutch, French, and Hindi.
*Angry River* is a children\'s novel by Ruskin Bond. The story is about Sita, a girl who lives with her grandparents in a hut on an island. One of the walls of their hut leans against a rock and the other three walls are made of mud. They lead a very simple lifestyle. While her grandfather works outside, Sita and her grandmother work in the house. Suddenly, Sita\'s grandmother becomes extremely ill and Sita\'s grandfather plans to take her grandmother to the hospital in town. He leaves in a boat with three of his goats and tells Sita that he will be back in a few days. He also warns her of the rain, saying that it might cause a flood and that if the level of the water goes very high, she must climb the big peepal tree on the island.