Calder Publications Young Adam Trocchi Alexander

This collection of Scottish short stories has been chosen to give as wide as possible a picture of Scottish fiction of the nineteenth century. Authors such as Walter Scott, James Hogg, John Galt, Margaret Oliphant and Robert Louis Stevenson are widely known as major figures outside Scotland, and this collection - which also includes stories from lesser-known authors such as W.E. Aytoun, James Grant, George McDonald, William Black and William Alexander - places them within the context and tradition of Scottish literature • This volume has been compiled and annotated by Douglas Gifford (former senior lecturer in English studies at the University of Strathclyde) for use in schools and universities as well as for general reading • Edited by Douglas Gifford

When the young priest Francesco Vela becomes the incumbent of the parish of Soana, a small village in Ticino, he is tasked with bringing back into the Catholic fold a family of shepherds, the Scarabotas, who are accused of indecency and incest. Yet, after visiting them among the grandiose scenery of the alpine mountains and meeting their beautiful daughter Agata, Francesco experiences a spiritual and sensual awakening that throws his world and his beliefs upside down, forcing him to choose between his faith and his desire to connect with nature • This multi-layered tale, first published in 1918, is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of Gerhart Hauptmann, the recipient of the 1912 Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most important exponents of German Naturalism

A young woman, who works as a maid for a living, takes her charge out to play in a Parisian garden square. Sitting on a bench, she starts talking to a stranger, a travelling salesman, and their conversation gradually turns into an exchange of confidences, as she speaks of her desire for a more stable future and he of his feelings of rootlessness and disillusionment. As the afternoon wears on, the two sense an increasing connection between them • Understated and impressionistic, and consisting almost entirely of dialogue, The Garden Square is one of Marguerite Duras’s finest novels, which she also adapted for the stage

A distressed young man murders the woman he loves in a cafe, watched by a large crowd. Fascinated by the crime she has witnessed, Anne Desbaresdes returns several times to the scene, forming a relationship with a man who also saw the murder, and drinking through the afternoon with him as he patiently answers her eager questions. Slowly, they find themselves being taken over by forces which threaten their own stability • Moderato Cantabile is a carefully woven tapestry of emotion, in which the characters’ inner lives are reflected by the story’s spaces and landscapes

Like all the greatest writers, Samuel Beckett was primarily interested in discovering the meaning and purpose of life and of the world into which we are born. Knowledgeable about the religion his family and education instilled in him, which as an adult he could neither accept nor reject, he used it extensively in his novels, plays and poetry. Beckett’s works also explored philosophy and the imaginative world of Dante and Milton, as well as the theories of Darwin and scientific speculation, in order to create a literature that investigates human destiny more deeply and originally than any other writer had done before • In this, his second book about the essence and depth of Samuel Beckett’s thinking and literary art, John Calder analyses the dualism of Beckett’s theological writing, his debt to the Gnostics, Manichaeism and Geulincx in particular, the presence of ghosts in his work, and why his late writing has received so little attention compared to the early and middle periods

Increasingly Samuel Beckett’s writing is seen as the culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century – succeeding the work of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. Beckett is a writer whose relevance to his time and use of poetic imagery can be compared to Shakespeare’s in the late Renaissance. John Calder has examined the work of Beckett principally for what it has to say about our time in terms of philosophy, theology and ethics, and he points to aspects of his subject’s thinking that others have ignored or preferred not to see. Samuel Beckett’s acute mind pulled apart with courage and much humour the basic assumptions and beliefs by which most people live. His satire can be biting and his wit devastating. He found no escape from human tragedy in the comforts we build to shield ourselves from reality – even in art, which for most intellectuals has replaced religion

Above a disused bar, in a dilapidated Parisian hotel that houses an assortment of indigent, marginalized lost souls, one of the inhabitants, a mysterious, reclusive holy man, is the subject of much speculation from some of his fellow occupants and respectful reverence from others. As the tale unfolds, the dynamics of this precarious microcosm are laid bare, in a powerful portrayal of those society has forgotten • Written when the author of Cain’s Book was at the height of his creative powers and enjoying an increasing reputation in avant-garde literary circles, ‘The Holy Man’ is here presented with ‘A Being of Distances’, ‘Peter Pierce’ and ‘A Meeting’, stories which similarly tackle themes of loneliness and disenfranchisement

Dreamerika!, Alan Burns’s fourth novel, first published in 1972, provides a satirical look at the Kennedy political dynasty, serving up an idiosyncratic hotch-potch of history that gives an old tragedy new meaning. For this book, Burns collected newspaper clippings, headlines, cartoons and photographs, cut them up, filed them and then interspersed them throughout his text to create a collage of contrasting effects • Presented in a fragmented form that reflects society’s disintegration, Dreamerika! fuses fact and dream, resulting in a surreal biography, an alternate history which lays bare the corruption and excesses of capitalism just as the heady idealism of the 1960s has begun to fade

First published in French magazines in the 1960s, the essays and interviews collected in this volume tackle two of Sartre’s most enduring concerns as a philosopher: politics and literature. With regard to the former, they develop the notion of the intellectual not only as an aloof theoretician, but also as a constructive agent of change. His writings on literature explore the limitations of language as an exact vehicle for meaning, the author’s lack of ownership of his own words and the avenues that certain types of theatre such as Artaud’s open for non-verbal communication • A useful, concise introduction to Sartre’s thinking, Politics and Literature investigates concepts and highlights conflicts, interrogations and debates that remain topical and relevant to this day

This collection brings together the four plays that feature Ionesco’s everyman protagonist Jean Berenger. In ‘The Killer’, he comes across a “radiant city”, an ideal civilization which is being terrorized by a killer, whom he tries to help apprehend. In ‘Rhinoceros’, he is the only person in a provincial town who is not affected by a condition that turns its victims into the eponymous horned beast. In ‘Exit the King’, he is the powerful King Berenger the First, who refuses to accept that he is dying. And in ‘A Stroll in the Air’ he acquires the capacity of flight and sees another world lying beyond the clouds • While each play in the Berenger cycle is unique, they are all prime examples of Ionesco’s conception of the theatre of the absurd, and touch on themes that preoccupied the author throughout his career, such as mortality, alienation, freedom and the evils of Fascism

A series of sketches and observations of daily life – a crowd gathering in front of shop windows, an old man talking to his grandchild about death, a professor lecturing about Proust and Rimbaud, a woman concealing her disdain at a family gathering – Nathalie Sarraute’s first work of fiction places human existence under the microscope, revealing the dynamics at play between our thoughts and actions beneath the veneer of social convention • First published in 1939 to little fanfare, Tropisms was ahead of its time and finally received the recognition it deserved when it was republished in 1957 at the height of the nouveau roman movement, of which it is now considered a precursor

On a train from Paris to Rome on his way to surprise his lover, the businessman Leon Delmont begins to mull over his past and question the decisions he has made about his future. These musings – together with his impressions of the unfolding scenery, conjectures about his fellow passengers and some recurring leitmotifs – form the basis of a riveting narrative that provides a psychological case study of an everyman and subtly illustrates the onset of the protagonist’s doubts and fears • Published in 1957 and awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Michel Butor’s groundbreaking third novel remains the most popular and widely read work of the nouveau roman genre. Famously written in the second person in order to immerse the reader more fully into the psyche of the main character, Changing Track pulls off the rare feat of being at once experimental and accessible, disquieting and engrossing