Bookbot

Ralph Manheim

    The Life Before Us
    An Introduction to Metaphysics
    Kinderjaren
    The neverending story
    Shadows in paradise
    Death on the Installment Plan
    • Death on the Installment Plan is the story of young Ferdinand's first 18 years. His life is one of hatred, of the grinding struggle of small shopkeepers to survive, of childhood sensations and fantasies - lusty, scatological, violent, but also poetic. There is a running battle with his ineffectual insurance clerk of a father, with his mother, who lives and whines around the junkshop she runs for the boys benefit; there is also the superbly funny Meanwell College in England, where the boy went briefly, a Dickensian, nightmare institution. Always there is humiliation, failure, and boredom, at least until he teams up with the "scientist" des Pereires. This inventor, con-man, incorrigible optimist - whose last project is to grow enormous potatoes by electricity - rescues him, if only temporarily; for the reader he is one of the most lovable charlatans in French literature.

      Death on the Installment Plan
      4,3
    • A haunting classic from the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, Shadows in Paradise reveals the deepest scars of the men and women who experienced the Holocaust. After years of hiding and surviving near death in a concentration camp, Ross is finally safe. Now living in New York City among old friends, far from Europe’s chilling atrocities, Ross soon meets Natasha, a beautiful model and fellow émigré, a warm heart to help him forget his cold memories. Yet even as the war draws to its violent close, Ross cannot find peace. Demons still pursue him. Whether they are ghosts from the past or the guilt of surviving, he does not know. For he is only beginning to understand that freedom is far from easy—and that paradise, however perfect, has a price. “The world has a great writer in Erich Maria Remarque. He is a craftsman of unquestionably first rank, a man who can bend language to his will. Whether he writes of men or of inanimate nature, his touch is sensitive, firm, and sure.”—The New York Times Book Review

      Shadows in paradise
      4,2
    • The neverending story

      • 528bladzijden
      • 19 uur lezen

      Small and insignificant Bastian Balthazar Bux is nobody's idea of a hero, least of all his own. Through the pages of an old book he discovers a mysterious world of enchantment - but a world that is falling into decay. The great task of making things well again falls on Bastian and so begins a dazzling, magical adventure.

      The neverending story
      4,2
    • Kinderjaren

      • 111bladzijden
      • 4 uur lezen

      Gevoelens en ervaringen van een Joodse kleuter, die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog met zijn ouders enkele jaren in een concentratiekamp doorbrengt.

      Kinderjaren
      4,0
    • The German existentialist delineates his theories concerning the nature, problems, and limitations of man's being

      An Introduction to Metaphysics
      4,0
    • The Life Before Us

      • 192bladzijden
      • 7 uur lezen

      Signé Ajar, ce roman reçut le prix Goncourt en 1975. Histoire d'amour d'un petit garçon arabe pour une très vieille femme juive : Momo se débat contre les six étages que Madame Rosa ne veut plus monter et contre la vie parce que " ça ne pardonne pas " et parce qu'il n'est " pas nécessaire d'avoir des raisons pour avoir peur ". Le petit garçon l'aidera à se cacher dans son " trou juif ", elle n'ira pas mourir à l'hôpital et pourra ainsi bénéficier du droit sacré " des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes " qui n'est pas respecté par l'Ordre des médecins. Il lui tiendra compagnie jusqu'à ce qu'elle meure et même au-delà de la mort..

      The Life Before Us
      4,1
    • Margarete Buber, the journalist daughter of Martin Buber, and Milena Jesenska, the beautiful lover of Kafka, met in Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1940. For four terrible years, the two women formed an extraordinary bond and made a pact that if only one survived, the other would bear witness. Only Margarete lived to remember. This is her story of Milena--of fearless love, sacrifice, and nobility.

      Milena. The Tragic Story of Kafka's Great Love
      4,0
    • De bot

      Roman

      • 624bladzijden
      • 22 uur lezen

      Op een mooie zomerdag aan het einde van de Jonge Steentijd vist de visser Edek in de Oostzee een bijzondere, sprekende bot. Deze vis, oeroud en alwetend, biedt de visser onsterfelijkheid en leidt hem door de eeuwen heen, van het Stenen Tijdperk naar een tijd waarin mannen de geschiedenis maken, maar de schaduw van vrouwen blijft. Als schrijver vertelt Edek in de jaren zeventig aan zijn zwangere Ilsebil de lange geschiedenis van negen levens en negen kookvrouwen. Terwijl hij zijn verhaal deelt, wordt de bot opnieuw gevangen, dit keer door drie vrouwen en voor een feministisch tribunaal in Berlijn gebracht, aangeklaagd als steunpilaar van de mannen. Günter Grass verkent in deze vertelling de dynamiek tussen mannen en vrouwen, de emancipatie van vrouwen en de rol van mannen in de geschiedenis. Hij stelt dat de menselijke geschiedenis sterk wordt beïnvloed door voedsel en wijst op de traditionele verantwoordelijkheden rondom eten. Door levensverhalen te verweven met tribunaalscènes, verbindt Grass het heden met een persoonlijke geschiedenis. Dit werk is een aards, Rabelaisiaans epos vol verhalen, sprookjes, gedichten, recepten, humor en diepere gedachten.

      De bot
      3,9
    • My Belief

      • 394bladzijden
      • 14 uur lezen

      My Belief: Essays on Life and Art is a collection of essays by Hermann Hesse. The essays, written between 1904 and 1961, were originally published in German, either individually or in various collections between 1951 and 1973. This collection in English was first published in 1976, edited by Theodore Ziolkowski.

      My Belief
      3,6
    • Brutal, scandalous, perverted, yet humorous, hummable, and with a happy ending- Bertolt Brecht's revolutionary masterpiece The Threepenny Opera is a landmark of modern drama that has become embedded in the Western cultural imagination. Through the love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath, the play satirizes the bourgeois of the Weimar Republic, revealing a society at the height of decadence and on the verge of chaos. Complemented with music by Kurt Weill, it was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, and the song "Mack the Knife" became one of the most popular and widely recorded songs of the twentieth century.

      Penguin Classics: The Threepenny Opera
      3,7