Kirjahaku

Paul Kinder, a novelist with one forgotten book to his name, teaches creative writing in a university in the north-west of England. Either he's researching his second, breakthrough novel, or he's killing time having sex in cars.Either eternal life exists, or it doesn't. Either you'll laugh, or you'll cry.Or maybe both.

Deconstructions: A User's Guide is a new and unusual kind of book. At once a reference work and a series of inventive essays opening up new directions for deconstruction, it is intended as an authoritative and indispensable guide. With a helpful introduction and specially commissioned essays by leading figures in the field, Deconstructions offers lucid and compelling accounts of deconstruction in relation to a wide range of topics and discourses. Subjects range from the obvious (feminism, technology, postcolonialism) to the less so (drugs, film, weaving). Backed up by an unusually detailed index, this User's Guide demonstrates the innumerable and altering contexts in which deconstructive thinking and practice are at work, both within and beyond the academy, both within and beyond what is called 'the West'.

Approaching the writing of major intellectuals, artists, and philosophers need no longer be daunting. How to Read is a new sort of introduction--a personal master class in reading--that brings you face to face with the work of some of the most influential and challenging writers in history. In lucid, accessible language, these books explain essential topics such as Shakespeare's passion for complexity and his enduring ability to portray the power of love. Nicholas Royle conveys the richness and complexity of Shakespeare's work by focusing, above all, on how to read and enjoy short passages and interpret specific words from the plays and poems themselves. Discussing poetry and the question of reading, to the nature of memory and forgetting, to the power of love, Royle covers many of Shakespeare's most prevalent themes. Attention is also given to important aspects of historical context and critical reception and debate, as well as to the effects of different interpretations and different media (stage, film, the Internet, and more). Royle's primary concern, however, is with letting the reader experience anew or for the first time the extraordinary pleasure and stimulation of reading Shakespeare. Extracts are taken from a range of Shakespeare's works including Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Othello, The Winter's Tale, and the Sonnets."

There are few figures more important in literary and critical theory than Jacques Derrida. Whether lauded or condemned, his writing has had far-reaching ramifications, and his work on deconstruction cannot be ignored. This volume introduces students of literature and cultural studies to Derrida's enormously influential texts, covering such topics as: deconstruction, text and difference; literature and freedom; law, justice and the 'democracy to come'; drugs, secrets and gifts. Nicholas Royle's unique book, written in an innovative and original style, is an outstanding introduction to the methods and significance of Jacques Derrida.

There are few figures more important in literary and critical theory than Jacques Derrida. Whether lauded or condemned, his writing has had far-reaching ramifications, and his work on deconstruction cannot be ignored. This volume introduces students of literature and cultural studies to Derrida's enormously influential texts, covering such topics as: deconstruction, text and difference; literature and freedom; law, justice and the 'democracy to come'; drugs, secrets and gifts. Nicholas Royle's unique book, written in an innovative and original style, is an outstanding introduction to the methods and significance of Jacques Derrida.

This is the first book-length study of the uncanny, an important topic for contemporary thinking on literature, film, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism and queer history. Much of this importance can be traced back to Freud’s extraordinary essay of 1919, ‘The Uncanny’ (Das Unheimliche).As a ghostly feeling and concept, however, the uncanny has a complex history going back to at least the Enlightenment. Royle offers a detailed account of the emergence of the uncanny, together with a series of close readings of different aspects of the topic. Following a major introductory historical and critical overview, there are chapters on literature, teaching, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, film, the death drive, déjà vu, silence, solitude and darkness, the fear of being buried alive, the double, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy, madness and religion.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the most original and inspiring writer and philosopher of our time. In a series of distinctive essays that are at once self-contained and intricately linked, Royle explores the legacies of Derrida's thinking in the context of philosophy, language, globalisation, war, terrorism, justice, the democracy to come, poetry, literature, memory, mourning, the gift, friendship and dreams. Lucid, inventive and at times funny, Royle allows us to appreciate how much Derrida's work has altered the ways we read and think. Autobiography, children's literature, the Gothic and modernist fiction, for example, figure together with philosophy, queer studies, speech act theory and psychoanalysis. The writings of Horace Walpole, Herman Melville, E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Bowen, Joe Brainard and David McKee are illuminatingly put in play alongside Shakespeare. Royle's book suggests that one of Derrida's most profound legacies has to do with the combination of responsibility and freedom his work inspires for both reading and writing. In Memory of Jacques Derrida offers an exceptionally clear overview of Derrida's work, while also tracing directions in which it might productively be read in the future.

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the most original and inspiring writer and philosopher of our time. In a series of distinctive essays that are at once self-contained and intricately linked, Royle explores the legacies of Derrida's thinking in the context of philosophy, language, globalisation, war, terrorism, justice, the democracy to come, poetry, literature, memory, mourning, the gift, friendship and dreams. Lucid, inventive and at times funny, Royle allows us to appreciate how much Derrida's work has altered the ways we read and think. Autobiography, children's literature, the Gothic and modernist fiction, for example, figure together with philosophy, queer studies, speech act theory and psychoanalysis. The writings of Horace Walpole, Herman Melville, E. M. Forster, Elizabeth Bowen, Joe Brainard and David McKee are illuminatingly put in play alongside Shakespeare. Royle's book suggests that one of Derrida's most profound legacies has to do with the combination of responsibility and freedom his work inspires for both reading and writing. In Memory of Jacques Derrida offers an exceptionally clear overview of Derrida's work, while also tracing directions in which it might productively be read in the future.

This book reflects on the figure of veering to form a new theory of literature. Contrary to a widespread sense that literature has become increasingly irrelevant to our culture and everyday life, Royle brilliantly traces a strangely compelling 'literary turn'. Starting with an 'Advertisement' (which literally means a 'turning towards') like an 18th-century novel, he explores images of swerving, loss of control, digressing and deviating to form this new theory of literature. Royle's study ranges from Montaigne to Stephen King, from the 'dance of atoms' in Lucretius to the 'human veer' in Don DeLillo. With wit and irony he investigates 'veering' in the writings of Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Melville, Hardy, Proust, Lawrence, Bowen, J.H. Prynne and many others. Veering provides new critical perspectives on all major literary genres: the novel, poetry, drama, the short story and the essay, as well as 'creative writing'. It proposes a new term for understanding post-1960s cultural and intellectual history: 'the literary turn'. It transverses different disciplines and discourses including verse, vertigo, the dinameu, detournement, transversality, environmentalism, the linguistic, the ethical and the political turn.

Nicholas Royle's highly praised debut novel recalls David Mitchell's lyrical bravado: in a world where our very language is being appropriated by advertising, propaganda and whatever new technologies can do to mangle it, Royle asserts that the novel has to survive by adapting, staying fresh-and undergoing bizarre metamorphoses. Quilt confronts the mad hand of grief while embracing the endless possibilities of language. Tender, absorbing and at times shockingly funny, this extraordinary novel is both mystery and love story. His challenge to and experiments with literary form forge a new mode of storytelling that is both playful and inquisitive. He sets about the mundane yet exhausting process of sorting through the remnants of his father's life - clearing away years of accumulated objects, unearthing forgotten memories and the haunted realms of everyday life. At the same time, he embarks on an eccentric side-project. And as he grows increasingly obsessed with this new project, his grip on reality seems to slip.

'We are punished by our sins, not for them' Elbert Hubbard X7 takes you on a sinister, startling and scintillating journey through the deadliest of sins with seven superb horror tales. In these pages both hero and anti-hero will succumb to sin and reap the results of their behaviour. Be it the gastonomic society that uncovers a unusual delicacy, a brother seeking to become closer to his lost sister, the wrath of a serial killer - and his psychologist - being unleashed or the simple sin of lazing a while by the waterside, this anthology will shock and surprise and equal measure. Featuring new and exclusive stories from Alex Bell, Simon Bestwick, Simon Clark, Tom Fletcher, Amelia Mangan, Gaie Sebold and Nicholas Royle.

This book provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date critical introduction to the writings of Hélène Cixous (1937-), focusing on key motifs, such as dreams, the supernatural, literature, psychoanalysis, creative writing, realism, sexual differences, laughter, secrets, the ‘Mother unconscious’, drawing, painting, life writing, telephones, non-human animals, telepathy and the ‘art of cutting’. There are close readings of Shakespeare, Brontë, Shelley, Poe, Carroll, Freud, Woolf, Joyce, Beckett and Derrida, for example, alongside in-depth explorations of her own writings, from Inside (1969) and ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1975) up to the present. Royle’s book will be useful to students and academics coming to Cixous’s work for the first time, but it will also appeal to readers interested in contemporary literature, creative writing, life writing, narrative theory, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, trauma studies, feminism, queer theory, ecology, drawing and painting.

This book provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date critical introduction to the writings of Hélène Cixous (1937-), focusing on key motifs, such as dreams, the supernatural, literature, psychoanalysis, creative writing, realism, sexual differences, laughter, secrets, the ‘Mother unconscious’, drawing, painting, life writing, telephones, non-human animals, telepathy and the ‘art of cutting’. There are close readings of Shakespeare, Brontë, Shelley, Poe, Carroll, Freud, Woolf, Joyce, Beckett and Derrida, for example, alongside in-depth explorations of her own writings, from Inside (1969) and ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (1975) up to the present. Royle’s book will be useful to students and academics coming to Cixous’s work for the first time, but it will also appeal to readers interested in contemporary literature, creative writing, life writing, narrative theory, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, trauma studies, feminism, queer theory, ecology, drawing and painting.

In this one-of-a-kind book, novelist and academic Nicholas Royle brings together two remarkably different creative figures: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. His exploration of their lives and work delves deeply into questions about the value of art, music and literature, as well as the role of universities in society.Blending elements of memoir and cultural commentary, Royle creates a tender and often hilarious portrait of family life during the pandemic, weaving it together with musings on dreams, second-hand bookshops and unpublished photos of Bowie taken by Stephen Finer. He also shares previously unrecorded details about Blyton’s personal life, notably her love affair with Royle’s grandmother.David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine offers a singular perspective on the cultural significance of two iconic figures. In doing so, it makes a compelling case for the power of storytelling and music to shape our lives.

In this one-of-a-kind book, novelist and academic Nicholas Royle brings together two remarkably different creative figures: Enid Blyton and David Bowie. His exploration of their lives and work delves deeply into questions about the value of art, music and literature, as well as the role of universities in society.Blending elements of memoir and cultural commentary, Royle creates a tender and often hilarious portrait of family life during the pandemic, weaving it together with musings on dreams, second-hand bookshops and unpublished photos of Bowie taken by Stephen Finer. He also shares previously unrecorded details about Blyton’s personal life, notably her love affair with Royle’s grandmother.David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine offers a singular perspective on the cultural significance of two iconic figures. In doing so, it makes a compelling case for the power of storytelling and music to shape our lives.

"An uncanny effect often arises when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred . . ." - Sigmund FreudNicholas Royle's stories are "immaculately sinister", according to Olivia Laing in the Times Literary Supplement, while Phil Baker, in the Sunday Times, described Royle as "a real craftsman of disquiet".In his third collection, The Dummy & Other Uncanny Stories, Royle focuses on archetypes and phenomena that, through their particular melding of the familiar and the unfamiliar, produce uneasy, or uncanny, effects. These stories reflect Royle's continuing development as an exponent of the form, in which he is always seeking to learn and to grow, and to push against boundaries.

Editor’s Choice, The Bookseller A mix of memoir and narrative non-fiction, White Spines is a book about Nicholas Royle’s passion for Picador’s fiction and non-fiction publishing from the 1970s to the end of the 1990s. It explores the bookshops and charity shops, the books themselves, and the way a unique collection grew and became a literary obsession. Above all a love song to books, writers and writing.

‘Shadow Lines very much celebrates the world of books’ —Telegraph Nicholas Royle’s love of second-hand books and the ‘inclusions’ he finds inside them, their presence betrayed by ‘shadow lines’, is about making connections. Someone has scribbled a number in a book? He’ll text or call. An old address? He’ll return the book to where it used to live. Follow him as he walks between bookshops, reading as he goes, on the hunt for treasure, for ways to make us feel closer – to the books on our shelves, to each other and to our own lives. Share in Royle’s enthusiasm for the Rev W Awdry’s Railway Series, Penguin Modern Stories and Paul Auster’s cult classic, The New York Trilogy, as well as books in art and film. If you love books, bookshops and browsing, this is your perfect all-year gift – head to your happy place with a copy Shadow Lines today! (Note: ‘inclusions’ not supplied.)

A brutal killer, inspired by the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux, leaves each of his victims posed as if in a painting. Meanwhile cult film director Johnny Vos is making a low-budget biopic about the same artist. He hires women from Antwerp?s red light district and from an internet voyeur house as extras in order to recreate the poses of Delvaux?s famous sleepwalking nudes. When two prostitutes end up murdered, English film critic Frank Warner, in town to interview Vos, turns investigative journalist and becomes personally involved when his own girlfriend goes missing. In the search for the killer, everyone is implicated. Simultaneously macabre and erotic, Antwerp will not release you until its final page has turned.

In this touching, funny and beautifully written portrait of family life, mother-son relationships and bereavement, Nicholas Royle captures the spirit of post-war parenting as well as of his mother whose dementia and death were triggered by the tragedy of losing her other son-Royle's younger brother-to cancer in his twenties. At once poetic and philosophical, this extraordinary memoir is also a powerful reflection on climate crisis and 'mother nature', on literature and life writing, on human and non-human animals, and on the links between the maternal and memory itself.