Showing results for "World Englishes" in Literature & Fiction

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests in his essay that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling children as food. By doing this he mocks the authority of the British officials.

Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a well-known blogger and doctoral student, is in awe of her supervisor—postcolonial and race studies professor Saraswati. But her life and sense of self are turned upside down when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Nivedita’s praise of Saraswati during a radio interview just hours before the news breaks calls into question her own reputation as a young activist. Following the uproar, Nivedita is forced to reflect on the key moments in her life, when she doubted her identity and her place in the world.

Sister Agatha has lived a long, saintly life across three centuries—only to be told, during a routine check-up, that she’s got just one week left to live. It’s a bit of an inconvenience, really. You see, Sister Agatha once made a vow: to be the oldest person in the world. At last count, she was in fifth place. So close . . . But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and the super-centenarian creates a bold Plan B.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! WARNING! Under no circumstances must employees strike a deal with unauthorized personnel on Dark Enterprises property. Such behavior may result in death…or the end of the world. Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation...

When Jo Breen uses her divorce settlement to buy a neglected property in the Byron Bay hinterland, she is hoping for a tree change, and a blossoming connection to the land of her Aboriginal ancestors. What she discovers instead is sharp dissent from her teenage daughter, trouble brewing from unimpressed white neighbours and a looming Native Title war between the local Bundjalung families. When Jo unexpectedly finds love on one side of the Native Title divide she quickly learns that living on country is only part of the recipe for the Good Life.

Wang Er, a twenty-one-year-old ox herder, is shamed by the local authorities and forced to write a confession of his crimes, but he instead takes it upon himself to write a modernist literary tract. Later, as a lecturer at a chaotic, newly built university, Wang Er navigates the bureaucratic maze of 1980’s China, boldly writing about the Cultural Revolution’s impact on his life and those around him. Finally, alone and humbled, Wang Er must come to terms with the banality of his own existence.

Michael (Marcus Brigstocke) and Maxine (Kerry Godliman) Wilson and their teenage daughters, Lola and Cat, (plus their bearded dragon Chomsky, and about 150,000 bees) have resolved to live a cleaner, greener, serener life. They are attempting to live ethically...whatever that means.

The late Binodini Thakur had been very clear that she would never agree to sell her hissa in her Bauji's big old house on Hailey Road. And her daughter, Bonu, is determined to honor her mothers wishes. But what to do about her four pushy aunts who are insisting she sell?

One of the main movers and shakers at TS Sports Stars agency, Trevor Heslop is honest, decent and sensitive. Unfortunately, he works in a world of cutthroats and corruption, with nightmare clients and a rapacious partner with the morals of a barracuda. Add to that his dysfunctional family - estranged wife Meryl and teenage son Toby - and it’s a miracle he manages to stay afloat in the shark tank that is his life.

Brought to you by Penguin. A work that still poses provocative questions about perception and reality, Flatland is a brilliant parody of Victorian society where all existence is limited to length and breadth - its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. The amiable narrator, A...

At the end of the 18th century, two brilliant and eccentric young scientists set out to measure the world. Measuring the World recreates the parallel but contrasting lives of two geniuses of the German Enlightenment - the naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss.

It’s not the end of the world. That’s what 39-year-old Tess Eliot has to remind herself after losing her newspaper column ("Tess Knows Best") and being dumped by her boyfriend for a younger woman (a feng shui expert? Really?). Then Tess is hired to write an etiquette guide preparing readers for the Ancient Mayan doomsday of December 21, 2012, and she has to ask herself: Could the world really be coming to an end? At first, Tess fakes her way through chapters like "Boundaries in the Bunker" and "Cannibalism: Yes or No?" But after uncovering a secret plot for world destruction, she is forced to embark on a life-changing odyssey.

Inspired as a boy by the multiple meanings to be found for a single word in the dictionary, Kohei Araki is devoted to the notion that a dictionary is a boat to carry us across the sea of words. But after thirty-seven years creating them at Gembu Books, it's time for him to retire and find his replacement. He discovers a kindred spirit in Mitsuya Majime - a young, disheveled square peg with a penchant for collecting antiquarian books and a background in linguistics - whom he swipes from his company's sales department.

A dazzling collection of comedies from the later Restoration period England's 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688 and the reign of new monarchs William and Mary signified a turning point for Restoration comedy with laws being passed to restrict playwrights' freedoms. The latter years are marked by a...

Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There's nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there's all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might be from the contents of the bag. Especially a red notebook with her jottings, which really makes him want to meet her. Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?

It’s the end of summer 2003. George W. Bush has recently declared the mission in Iraq accomplished, the unemployment rate is at its highest in years, and Martha Stewart has just been indicted for insider trading. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Midwest, Troy Augustus Loudermilk (fair-haired, statuesque, charismatic) and his companion Harry Rego (definitely none of those things) arrive at America’s most prestigious creative-writing program, to which Loudermilk has recently been accepted for his excellence in poetry. Loudermilk, however, has never written a poem in his life.

Rosie Maldonne is outspoken and sexy. She's also unemployed, and, with three children and a cat, life is a little tough. The four of them - well, five, if you count the cat - live in the South of France, in a run-down trailer near a vacant lot. They make do, living off her part-time waitressing job and a little help from the state.

Dr. Anarchy is a man with a simple dream: to conquer and rule the entire world. While he has yet to achieve his goal, he has managed to become absolute lord and master of one small corner of it. This is the story of what one man was able to achieve though hard work, dedication, careful planning, unhealthy obsession, giant robots, disintegrators, remote controlled grolem dolls, a horde of disposable henchmen, killbots, an annoying cyborg ninja, and 36 rules every supervillain should follow!

Years after fleeing San Francisco and getting sober, Jhanvi has made a life for herself working at a grocery co-op and saving for her surgeries. But when her friend (and sometimes more) Henry mentions that he and his techie festival-goer friends spent $100,000 to transform a warehouse basement into a sex dungeon, Jhanvi starts wondering if there's a way to exploit these gullible idiots. She returns to San Francisco, hatching a plan to marry Henry for his company's generous healthcare benefits.

These are the further misadventures of the pertinacious professor and his perky partner who pucker around the globe and through time and space, in a vain attempt to "cure the world of all its ills".