фэнтези

современная зарубежная литература

приключения

книги о приключениях

книги по психологии

In Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels.Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia – the real reason behind an I.Q. test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother – and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candour and characteristic humour, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning.

детская фантастика

рассказы о животных

книги о животных

сказки о животных

сказочные истории

Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir

Shanghai, 1912: beautiful courtesans mercilessly compete for the patronage of wealthy gentlemen. For the women, the contest is deadly serious, a perilous game of economic survival that, if played well, can set them up for life as mistresses of the rich and prominent. There is no room for error, however: erotic power is hard to achieve and harder to maintain, especially in the loftiest social circles.Enter veteran seducer, Magic Gourd, formerly one of Shanghai’s “Top Ten Beauties” and now the advisor and attendant of Violet, an aspiring but inexperienced courtesan. Violet may have the youth and the allure, but Magic Gourd has the cunning and the knowledge without which the younger woman is sure to fail. These ancient tricks of the trade aren’t written down, though; to pass them on to her student, Magic Gourd must reach back into her own professional past, bringing her lessons alive with stories and anecdotes from a career spent charming and manipulating men who should have known better but rarely did.The world of sexual intrigue that Tan reveals in ‘Rules for Virgins’ actually existed once, and she spares no detail in recreating it. But this story is more than intriguing (and sometimes shocking) historical literary fiction. The wisdom conveyed is ancient, specific, and timeless, exposing the workings of vanity and folly, calculation and desire that define the mysterious human heart.

детская познавательная и развивающая литература

история для школьников

Rules for Virgins

Shanghai, 1905. Violet Minturn is the young daughter of the American mistress of the city’s most exclusive courtesan house. But when revolution arrives in the city, she is separated from her mother in a cruel act of chicanery and forced to become a ‘virgin courtesan’.Half-Chinese and half-American, Violet moves effortlessly between the cultural worlds of East and West, quickly becoming a shrewd businesswoman who deals in seduction and illusion. But her successes belie her private struggle to understand who she really is and her search for a home in the world.Lucia, Violet’s mother, nurses wounds of her own, first sustained when, as a teenager, she fell blindly in love with a Chinese painter and followed him from San Francisco to Shanghai, only to be confronted with the shocking reality of the vast cultural differences between them. Violet’s need for answers will propel both her and her mother on separate quests of discovery: journeys to make sense of their lives, of the men – fathers, lovers, sons – who have shaped them, and of the ways we fail one another and our children despite our best attempts to love and be loved.Spanning fifty years and two continents, ‘The Valley of Amazement’ resurrects lost worlds: from the moment when China’s imperial dynasty collapsed, a Republic arose, and foreign trade became the lifeblood of Shanghai, to the inner workings of courtesan houses and the lives of the foreign ‘Shanghailanders’ living in the International Settlement, both erased by World War II. It is also a deeply evocative narrative of family secrets, the legacy of trauma, and the profound connections between mothers and daughters, which returns readers to the compelling territory so expertly mapped in ‘The Joy Luck Club’.With her characteristic wisdom, grace and humour, Amy Tan conjures a story of the inheritance of love, its mysteries and betrayals, and its illusions and truths.

православное христианство

житийная литература

Русская православная церковь

подвижничество

христианская жизнь

православные святые

воспоминания

православие

The Valley of Amazement

Please note that due to the limitations of some ereading devices, it was not possible to represent diacritical marks in this title.The highly anticipated novel from the bestselling author of ‘The Joy Luck Club’ and ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’.On an ill-fated art expedition of the Southern Shan State in Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas morning tour – and disappear. Through the twists of fate, curses and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the Burma jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and destruction of the Myanmar military regime.Filled with Amy Tan’s signature ‘idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery’ (Los Angeles Times), ‘Saving Fish from Drowning’ seduces the reader with a façade of Buddhist illusions, magical tricks and light comedy, even as the absurd and picaresque spiral into a gripping morality tale about the consequences of intentions – both good and bad – and of the shared responsibility that individuals must accept for the actions of others.

Saving Fish From Drowning

The international bestseller from the author of ‘The Joy Luck Club’ and ‘The Bonesetter’s Daughter’.Olivia Yee is only five years old when Kwan, her older sister from China, comes to live with the family and turns her life upside down, bombarding her day and night with ghostly stories of strange ancestors from the world of Yin. Olivia just wants to lead a normal American life.For the next thirty years, Olivia endures visits from Kwan and her ghosts, who appear in the living world to offer advice on everything from restaurants to Olivia’s failed marriage. But just when she cannot bear it any more, the revelations of a tragic family secret finally open her mind to the startling truths hidden in Kwan’s unorthodox vision of the world.

современная русская литература

Санкт-Петербург

дневниковые записи

The Hundred Secret Senses

An unbearably moving, intensely passionate, deeply personal account of life as seen through the eyes of one of America’s best-loved novelists.‘When I began writing this history, I let go of my doubts. I trusted the ghosts of my imagination. They showed me the hundred secret senses. And what I wrote is what I discovered about the endurance of love.’So writes Amy Tan at the beginning of this remarkably candid insight into her life. Tan takes us on a journey from her childhood, as a sensitive but intelligent young Chinese-American, ashamed of her parents’ Chinese ways, to the present day and her position as one of the world's best-loved novelists.She describes the daily difficulties of being at once American and Chinese and yet feeling at times like she was truly neither. Most significantly, and heartbreakingly, she tells the history of her family: the grandmother who committed suicide as the only means of defiance open to her against a husband who ignored her wishes; her remarkable mother, whose first husband had her jailed when she tried to leave him; and the shocking deaths of both her father and husband when Amy was just 14.How this weight of history has brought itself to bear on the adult Amy looms large in her own story. Ghosts, chance and fate have played a part in her life, and ‘The Opposite of Fate’ is an insight into those ancestors, the women who ‘never let me forget why these stories need to be told’.