Helen R. Lane Books

An "introduction to the nonfascist life" (Michel Foucault, from the Preface) When it first appeared in France, Anti-Oedipus was hailed as a masterpiece by some and "a work of heretical madness" by others. In it, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari set forth the following theory: Western society's innate herd instinct has allowed the government, the media, and even the principles of economics to take advantage of each person's unwillingness to be cut off from the group. What's more, those who suffer from mental disorders may not be insane, but could be individuals in the purest sense, because they are by nature isolated from society. More than twenty-five years after its original publication, Anti-Oedipus still stands as a controversial contribution to a much-needed dialogue on the nature of free thinking.

A collage made of pictures of Buenos Aires, divided in short stories (some surprisingly brief), told in the warm, humorous, precise and metaphorical style that made Luisa Valenzuela a recognized worldwide author.

Presents the essential ideas of the founder of French surrealism

At a small gallery in Florence, a Peruvian writer happens upon a photograph of a tribal storyteller deep in the jungles of the Amazon. He is overcome with the eerie sense that he knows this man...that the storyteller is not an Indian at all but an old school friend, Saul Zuratas. As recollections of Zuratas flow through his mind, the writer begins to imagine Zuratas's transformation from a modern to a central member of the unacculturated Machiguenga tribe. Weaving the mysteries of identity, storytelling, and truth, Vargas Llosa has created a spellbinding tale of one man's journey from the modern world to our origins, abandoning one in order to find meaning in both.

Part diary, part autobiography, part self-analysis and commentary, this revealing memoir by the playwright of the Absurd is an expression of the writer's search for the wellsprings and justifications of his existence. Diary jottings mingle with searing memories of his authoritarian father, metaphysical musings with thoughts on anti-Semitism, his wartime experiences, Soviet death camps, and the sham of bourgeois "revolutionaries". There is also the occasional light-hearted fantasy, played out with children who might be his own; the germ of the idea for "Rhinoceros" and various passages of self-probing.