Книги, похожие на «Nicola Barker, Five Miles from Outer Hope»

Now seen as one of the great English comic novels, Tristram Shandy caused a stir on publication in polite 18th-century English society. The novel broke with conventions of form and structure, foreshadowing Postmodern authors by 200 years, and scandalized with bawdy descriptions and rambling prose. Hugely influenced by Francis Bacon, Rabelais, and Jonathan Swift, clergyman Lawrence Sterne manages to both eloquently champion the literary and scientific views of the day, and to satirize those same idols in the next outrageous breath.The questionable ‘hero’ and narrator of the novel, the eponymous Tristram Shandy, attempts to tell the reader his life story, but as he digresses ever further on everything from sexual practices, the importance of a name, obstetrics, linguistics, weaponry, and philosophy, the reader quickly learns that the path won’t be a linear one, and gets wrapped up in the author’s exuberance and wit – as Tristram’s ill-fated conception and birth don’t even enter the story until Volume III. Encompassing a humorously memorable cast of misfits, including his eccentric father Walter, obsessive Uncle Toby, accident-prone mother Susannah, pastor Yorick, and a gaggle of other characters, Tristram Shandy’s restless energy and modern-seeming wit explain why Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Schopenhauer, Michael Winterbottom, and Michael Nyman count among its numerous fans.

A compelling vision of a disorienting and barbaric future from Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.Many years in the future, city life has broken down, communications have failed and food supplies are dwindling. From her window a middle-aged woman – our narrator – watches things fall apart and records what she witnesses: hordes of people migrating to the countryside, gangs of children roaming the streets. One day, a young girl, Emily, is brought to her house by a stranger and left in her care. A strange, precocious adolescent, drawn to the tribal streetlife and its barbaric rituals, she is unafraid of the harsh world outside, while our narrator retreats into her hidden world where reality fades and the past is revisited …