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Traversing heritage across three continents, this poignant coming-of-age novel chronicles the enduring presence of systemic racism and the resistance to it. Born in Cameroon and raised in the suburbs of Paris, Nathan feels unmoored, as if he does not belong in France. His mother tells him about his great-grandfather who left Cameroon for New Orleans to seek his fortune shortly after World War II. Nathan travels there to search for the vestiges of his ancestor's passage in America. To him, New Orleans is the promised land for the Black man. However, renting a room in a shotgun house in the Tremé district, he discovers a different reality. This storied neighborhood testifies to the strength of a people who have survived slavery, segregation, and the struggle for civil rights with a strong sense of community. But the relentless inequities, capped by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, have taken a toll. As Nathan comes to understand this fraught history, he also plumbs his own past, including his sense of abandonment by his father in Cameroon. In this coming-of-age novel, Nathan is coming to be. The evocative, poetic language of Fabienne Kanor's novel confers a brutal beauty in incidents of violence and moments of joy, holding the reader in a constant state of tension. Peopled by flawed human beings trying to find their way and grow a life under the constant threat of violence, Old World chronicles the deep trauma and long-term effects of systemic racism in the United States and people's efforts to rise above it.

A profound exploration of the enduring impact of war in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "War is back again." So begins Alexander Kluge's latest book, prompted by a war of aggression that, though being waged in Europe, is of global importance. Blending simple stories with multimedia and reflecting on human responses and hope, the author does not aim to take sides nor make an appeal. Rather, he is concerned with what he calls "mole war," the tenacious and often subterranean survival of war--what war makes of people and what life of its own it is capable of. Kluge's book is based on an iconic model, the primer, and named after a famous one: Bertolt Brecht's. Here we find simple stories underpinned with montages, film stills, and sequences. The author was ten years old when--sitting at his school desk and with his finger on the map--he followed German tanks on their journey to Stalingrad. In the time between then and his ninety-first birthday in February 2023, this chronicler of emotions has studied the costumes of war again and again: War is mortal but does not die quickly. How can we respond to its demands?

A stirring memoir of exile and self-discovery by a central figure in ethno-psychiatry. In To Sit on the Earth, pioneering ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan charts his intellectual and emotional journey, from his youthful infatuation with Freud and Wilhelm Reich to his mature adoption of anthropologist Georges Devereux's ethnographic approach to psychoanalysis. Expelled from Egypt as a Jew in 1956 when he was just a boy, Nathan spent his formative years on the outskirts of Paris. Caught up in situationist and Marxist politics, he enthusiastically participated in the revolutionary Events of May 1968. He then settled into a distinguished career as a writer, professor, and founding director of a free ethno-psychiatry clinic serving migrant populations in the French capital. Along the way, Nathan's field research and practice took him to Benin, Burundi, and Brazil, where he sought out sorcerers, shamans, and other indigenous healers. As he did so, he encountered telling echoes of his ancestors' age-old practices in Judeo-Arab Cairo. Combining case histories and theoretical reflections with personal and familial anecdotes, while engaging with contemporary thinkers--including Sartre, Lacan, Bourdieu, and Foucault--this multi-layered, genre-defying memoir invites us to reconsider the beliefs that connect us to others and ourselves. To Sit on the Earth lays out a subtle, compelling case for the theological and cultural diversity essential to a thriving modernity.

A genre-defying account of confinement and its literary echoes through history. As the pandemic sweeps through Paris in March 2020, the writer HC faces a choice: stay in Paris or flee to the countryside? The weight of historical responses bears down on her--those of her ancestors and Jewish writers during moments of persecution. Still uncertain, she flees to the country at the last moment, with her cats and her daughter, with her diaries and notebooks. What will she do here? Write? What will she write about? Can she write about the experience of being confined? She will write about her cats; every day she will observe their lives and take notes about how they cope with being housebound, and later, in the spring, with the outdoors. Thucydides, Defoe, Camus, Kafka--she will compare her experiences with those of others who have been confined by malady or persecution. She will write of her mother, who fled impending disaster on many occasions and always kept a suitcase ready. She too will endure. The important thing is to have a good death, surrounded by those she loves, not locked down in a hospital.

A meditation on loss and recovery through the act of translation and its recuperative powers. An unnamed translator mourning the loss of a close friend retreats to Dresden to translate the "Time Passes" section of Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse. Translating this lyrical evocation of time and its devastations in a city with which the writer has no connections and where neither her language nor Woolf's are spoken offers an interruption to the course of her life. She immerses herself in this prose poem of ephemerality. The narrator delves into phrases from "Time Passes" and subjects them to the inexact science and imperfect art of translation. This, in turn, leads her to wide-ranging reflections on other instances of loss, destruction, and recovery--the Chernobyl disaster, the High Line in New York City, the bombing of Dresden and Wallmann's commemorative Bell Requiem Dresden, the evacuation of the Hebridean island Foula, Hiroshi Sugimoto's photographs of seascapes, Debussy's "La cathédrale engloutie," and Ceri Richards's series of paintings by the same name. She reflects on places that are destined for decay and yet are returning to life, broken worlds in which there is still strength for a new beginning. In Tess Lewis's visionary English translation, Cécile Wajsbrot's lyrical exploration of the role of the writer and translator becomes an exquisite meditation on loss and recovery.

A short story collection from Nobel Prize winner J. M. G. Le Clézio offers a poignant and powerful exploration of the lives of the underprivileged and marginalized. J. M. G. Le Clézio's On the Wrong Side, a collection of eight short stories, continues the author's life-long pursuit of granting visibility to the unseen and a voice to the voiceless. Here, the author focuses on the underclasses, primarily children who have been left behind, abandoned, and subjected to unspeakable violence. In these haunting tales, we encounter Maureez Samson, a mistreated orphan from Rodrigues Island, who, thanks to her exceptional voice, becomes a famous singer and defies all expectations; some young Indians in Darién, a region straddling Panama and Colombia, struggle to raise their young son and save their idyllic land from its invasion and destruction by drug lords; Juanico and Chuche, two slave children who are taken in by the community of Saint Kateri Takakwitha after an arduous and perilous journey; and in Nogales, on the border between Mexico and the United States, the "street rats," children who cross through the sewers to wreak havoc and perhaps indulge their dreams of life on the other side. In Le Clézio's own words, these stories are not simply meant to reveal or describe the plight of the "rejected," but to "create in the reader a feeling of revolt in the face of the injustice of what is happening to them."

A lively discussion between two eminent Indian academics that examines what it means to be an Indian. Through a stimulating dialogue, two old friends trace the history of the idea of India through digressions, anecdotes, and observations. Historian Romila Thapar and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak reflect on the challenges posed by essentialism and exclusion whenever cultures attempt to define and assert themselves. They also emphasize the role of education in fostering a more inclusive and accurate understanding of the nation's complex history. Their conversation revolves around the narratives that have shaped Indian identity--from Vedic times to the present--and those whose voices and visions for this land remain unheard and unseen. Ranging from nationalism to religion and beyond, TheIdea of India discusses an urgent question: What does it mean to be an Indian in contemporary society?

Reflections on the chords and discords inherent in the relationship between tradition and modernism. Written between the early 1960s and the mid-1970s, the articles and lectures collected in Moving Focus reflect on some of the major concerns of the practicing artist and scholar of modern Indian art: tradition and modernism, the question of the image, and the use of art criticism. The collection also includes essays on the work of Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Binodebehari Mukherjee, Ramkinker Baij, and Amrita Sher-Gil. Together, they deal with the focal changes taking place in the contemporary art situation--a period of great significance in terms of cultural development, just about a decade and a half after India's hard-won Independence--and seek to put them in perspective. The analytical essays of K. G. Subramanyan, one of India's most celebrated artists, remain as relevant and useful today as they were when this collection first appeared decades ago, and are perfectly suited to introducing the non-specialist to Indian modernism and its global concerns. Subramanyan played a pivotal role in shaping India's artistic identity after Independence. Mani-da, as he was fondly called, seamlessly blended elements of modernism with folk expression in his works, spanning paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, set designs, and toys. Beyond his visual artistry, his writings have laid a solid foundation for understanding the demands of art on the individual. In the year of his centenary, Seagull is proud to publish his writings in special new editions.

An engaging exploration of the quest for individuality within the rich tapestry of artistic traditions, by one of India's best-known artists. "The fulfillment of a modern Indian artist's wish to be part of a living tradition, i.e. to be individual and innovative, without being an outsider in his own culture, will not come of itself, it calls for concerted effort." In Living Tradition, a critical study of modern Indian art as it has evolved through continuous interaction with several traditions--foreign and indigenous--K. G. Subramanyan, one of India's most celebrated artists, offers a theoretical groundwork for that "concerted effort." In the course of his study, he explores the distinctions between Indian and European traditions, the continuities in India's folk traditions, and the attempts of several thinkers and artists to identify an Indian artistic tradition or to deny it altogether in a quest for personal expression or universality. With over seventy-five illustrations in color complementing Subramanyan's thought-provoking essay, Living Tradition provides readers with a visually engaging exploration of the vibrant tapestry of Indian art. Subramanyan played a pivotal role in shaping India's artistic identity after Independence. Mani-da, as he was fondly called, seamlessly blended elements of modernism with folk expression in his works, spanning paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, set designs, and toys. Beyond his visual artistry, his writings have laid a solid foundation for understanding the demands of art on the individual. In the year of his centenary, Seagull is proud to publish his writings in special new editions.

An exploration of the weight of history and the demand for originality on the contemporary artist, written by one of India's best-known artists. What conception does a modern artist or critic have of contemporary art activity? How do modern artists react to their environment and cultural inheritance? And what general norms of achievement can we think of in the highly heterogeneous art scene of today? In Creative Circuit, K. G. Subramanyan, one of India's most celebrated artists, draws upon his considerable experience as a practicing artist and theoretician to engage with these concerns from a modern Indian perspective. Through a series of five lectures, Subramanyan critically examines key concepts such as modernity, eclecticism, and nostalgia, which have become integral to contemporary art discourse. He provocatively questions the perceptions, illusions, and emotional motivations driving artistic expression in today's heterogeneous art scene, prompting readers to reconsider established norms of achievement in the context of evolving artistic practices. With over one hundred color illustrations complementing Subramanyan's insightful discourse, Creative Circuit offers a visually engaging exploration of the interplay between tradition and innovation in contemporary art. Subramanyan played a pivotal role in shaping India's artistic identity after Independence. Mani-da, as he was fondly called, seamlessly blended elements of modernism with folk expression in his works, spanning paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, set designs, and toys. Beyond his visual artistry, his writings have laid a solid foundation for understanding the demands of art on the individual. In the year of his centenary, Seagull is proud to publish his writings in special new editions.

Essays on the evolving aesthetic sensibilities of a globalized, rapidly changing world. In this collection of essays, written by K. G. Subramanyan over twenty-five years, this artist delves into the evolving aesthetic sensibilities in a globalized world, offering profound reflections on art, aesthetics, tradition, and societal challenges. As one of India's most celebrated artists, Subramanyan provides invaluable insights into contemporary art and cultural dynamics Covering a broad spectrum of topics including art, visual perception, creativity, craft practice, tradition, and societal issues, Subramanyan's essays offer a comprehensive exploration of the complexities shaping modern civilization. He critically examines the impact of globalization, industrialization, environmental degradation, and societal disparities on art, education, and society, urging readers to negotiate these challenges with insight and vigilance. Subramanyan played a pivotal role in shaping India's artistic identity after Independence. Mani-da, as he was fondly called, seamlessly blended elements of modernism with folk expression in his works, spanning paintings, murals, sculptures, prints, set designs, and toys. Beyond his visual artistry, his writings have laid a solid foundation for understanding the demands of art on the individual. In the year of his centenary, Seagull is proud to publish his writings in special new editions.

Delves into Theodor W. Adorno's lesser-known musical career and successful music criticism. Theodor W. Adorno is recognized as one of the twentieth century's most prominent social theorists. Though best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, Adorno began his career as a composer and successful music critic. Comprehensive and illuminating, Orpheus in the Underworld centers on Adorno's concrete and immediate engagement with musical compositions and their interpretation in the concert hall and elsewhere. Here, Adorno registers his initial encounters with the compositions of the Second Viennese School, when he had yet to integrate them into a broad aesthetics of music. Complementarily essays on Bela Bartók, Jean Sibelius, and Kurt Weill afford insight into his understanding of composers who did not fit neatly into the dialectical schema propounded in the Philosophy of New Music. Additionally, essays on recording and broadcasting show Adorno engaging with these media in a spirit that is no less productive than polemical and focused as sharply on their potentialities as on their shortcomings. Orpheus in the Underworld offers a captivating exploration of Adorno's musical compositions, shedding new light on his understanding of influential composers and his critical perspectives on recording and broadcasting.

The story of the people of Buland Masjid, a community of migrants in Delhi. In Dreaming a Paradise, Chitvan Gill draws on years of research and photographic reportage to unveil the tales of individuals driven to escape poverty, violence, and despair in search of happiness and a place to call home. At the heart of this book lies Buland Masjid, an unauthorized colony on the Yamuna riverbank in Delhi, India, which thrives with restless industry even under the unyielding grip of poverty. The women and men of this colony recycle scrap, repair machines, manufacture clothes, run schools, and sell delicious food, breathing new energy into a once-desolate economy. However, beneath the surface lies a tale of urban planning gone awry, reflecting the comprehensive failure of those in power. Delving into the lives of those cast aside and walled off from India's vast wealth, this book highlights the huge divide between modern India's haves and have-nots, and the inherent contradictions in a nation grappling with its identity. In a compelling exploration of humanity's journey, Dreaming a Paradise reveals the triumphs, tragedies, hopes, and hardships of resilient souls seeking their own patch of heaven amidst chaos. From the eternal cycles of loss and discovery, we witness the formation of civilizations and the timeless yearning that defines the human condition.