The Qliphoth

Literature & Fiction

Paul Green

Literary

Libros Libertad

El Greco - Domenikos Theotokopoulos

Manolis Aligizakis

Poetry

This book is for Rivers Inlet and Millbanke Sound, two of the great gillnetting areas on the British Columbia coast, and my personal favourites, but areas no longer fished; and also for the sockeye and the dog salmon we fished there, and the people who set those nets. Make your reasons, lay what blame there is where you wish, it hardly matters: the nets drift now only in memory, and the memory drifts. And this is for those who fished with us, but are no longer here to see this, but who also continue to drift through our collective recollection. -- John Skapski

Tides at the Edge of the Senses

John Skapski

Genre Fiction

Song Lake Summer

GENE LEES

Travelling with Shadows

Eduardo B. Pinto

H. B. Ross, a veteran oil hand by his late teens who enjoys browsing the encyclopedia in his spare time, is convinced that the major problem with oil is that there is just too much of the stuff. Everywhere he turns in Oklahoma, almost behind every blackjack, he's beginning to believe, rich pools lurk. With the price of oil in the pits – ten barrels (420 gallons) going for a dollar – H. B. wonders how crude can ever amount to much, with clods yanking it from the ground faster than it can be used. He battles many who want to run the choke wide open, among them one Cecil Jones, a rich royalty owner. Cecil, when not pushing unlimited production, strives for mastery of his wife Mary Belle, a woman full of unsettling ideas like the one proposed that morning: a bunch of women going off alone, to watch a dancing marathon in Tulsa, without a single man to guide their thinking for an entire afternoon. A dutiful wife, Mary Belle manages to give Cecil his way, in every little thing, while steering him, with an unseen touch, to where she prefers he go. It is a time of plenty, the 1920s and early 1930s, when the curtain rises on the great American oil glut. And it is a time of searching for H. B. not only for treasures below ground, but, more importantly, for the grand prize at the end of the rainbow: to find his true love as he maneuvers to outwit Cecil and Mary Belle and discover himself.

Time of Plenty

Ed O'Brien

Eusebio Franklin, a school teacher from a small community, is faced with the most terrifying dilemma imaginable: should he carry out an act of mass terrorism in order to save the human race? Eusebio has been chosen to defend our human race in a special session of the United Nations. It's the late 22nd century, and most people are genetically enhanced; Eusebio is among the minority that remain unimproved, known as Primals, consisting mostly of the impoverished global underclass. The UN is on the verge of implementing a "Proposed Extinction of the Primal Species" and Eusebio's been picked to represent his race in a last ditch legal effort to save the Primals from extinction. It's a hearing like no other. Our human race is on trial. Our own sordid history - the devastation we've caused to indigenous cultures around the world, the destruction of our environment and of other species - becomes evidence in the case against our continued existence. But as the hearing progresses, Eusebio is faced with a terrible decision. He's secretly visited by Yusef who represents the Rejectionists - a renegade group of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus refusing to accept the d-humans' genetic optimization because it prevents them from knowing God. Yusef urges Eusebio to take the only meaningful action to save the human race from extinction: detonate a nuclear bomb hidden in the UN building in New York where the session is taking place. As the story develops to its dramatic climax, Eusebio finds himself increasingly alienated from the d-human world, while Yusef's plot places him in an agonizing moral dilemma: whether to engage in an act of nuclear terrorism to preserve the human race. In this novel, the reader faces challenging questions about spirituality, history and global politics: Could our race "evolve" itself to a higher plane? At what cost and benefit? If we lost what is now the "human race" as a result, would that be so bad, given our sordid and shameful history? On the other hand, is there something special, our soul, worth keeping at any price? Ultimately, the novel forces the reader to grapple with the fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?AWARDS UPDATE: *** In March 2010, Requiem of the Human Soul won 2nd place in the Reader Views Literary Awards for the Science Fiction category.***

Requiem of the Human Soul

Jeremy Lent

United States

How does a monk raised in a monastery deal with naked women and the atrocities of war? In 1566, Spain expands its dominion over the newly discovered territories not yet widely known as America. The many native nations of this new land pose no threat to Spain's superiority, despite the ferocity of their resistance. Conquistadors rule–natives are slaughtered and enslaved. Only the Church denounces the horror. The missionaries are the natives' only hope. Friar Salvador Cepeda is a determined, devout and virgin Franciscan monk. He is sent across the ocean to join a historical conquest expedition to the lands of the recalcitrant Carib Indians of the valley of Caracas in the Province of Venezuela, and the cruelty, lust and avarice of the Conquest shake his faith to its foundations. When beautiful native Apacuana enters his life and takes him into the stronghold of the most feared chief, Guacaipuro, Salvador discovers a native society he never imagined, a God he never knew and a passion he cannot condemn. Torn between what he has always believed and his new insight of life Salvador must find a new way to confirm his faith or else become an apostate.

Arrows

Religion & Spirituality

Luisa Maria Celis

When Ken Kirkby unveiled his painting, Isumataq in Parliament on March 28, 1992, he had to make do with a 25-foot model and the first four panels of the painting itself. The original, at 152' long and 12' high would not fit into the building. But even the model brought tears to the eyes of the 301 members of Parliament and senators gathered there. Isumataq is an Inuit word meaning, "An object in the presence of which wisdom might show itself" and refers to the manlike monuments of stone called Inuksuit that the Inuit have erected for generations to serve as travel guides and markers of good hunting and fishing. Kirkby's hope was that the enormous painting he had been working on for ten years would open people's eyes to the beauty of the north and to the plight of the Inuit in that far land. Kirkby describes Isumataq as "the portrait of the soul of a nation." In the speech he made to parliament that day, Kirkby said, "Isumataq is my tribute to Canadians. It is my homage to the Canadian Arctic and its peoples who inspired me to paint it. Isumataq is made of years of personal effort and millions of individual brush strokes–as Canada has been made of the efforts of millions of individuals. Isumataq is an invitation and it is a demand. Let's join each other and be worthy of this place." Ken Kirkby: A Painter's Quest for Canada is the story of a remarkable man who was born in England during the Second World War and grew up in Portugal under the tutelage of an old fisherman who filled his head with visions of a land of snow, icebergs and polar bears–a land of adventure and freedom. The young boy grew into a man who was determined to see that country. For more than four years, Ken Kirkby lived with the Inuit on the land. From them he learned how to live in harmony with the earth. He travelled across the north from Alaska to Baffin but it was in the eastern Arctic, in the place now called Nunavut that he first encountered an Inukshuk. For Kirkby, these majestic stone cairns became the symbol of all that was good and true and noble about these people and their way of life. When he finally left the Arctic with the images of snow, brilliant skies, towering icebergs and unspeakable suffering engraved on his soul, he was determined to help the Inuit gain their rights and freedom. He had not seen democracy at work in that land. Government there consisted of the RCMP, the clergy, and the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. His tribute to them was Isumataq, which may well be the defining work of Ken Kirkby's life. But like the painting, Ken's story is larger than life. This book is a story of passion and dedication to art, to Nunavut and to a country called Canada.

Ken Kirkby: A Painter's Quest for Canada

Goody Niosi

Poet cries out to painter, craft me an eloquent verse with charmed couplets rhyming emotion and the painter replies, poet, paint me a joyful canvas splashing beauty on in layers And when they sweated they wiped each other's brow and when they tired they steadied each other's arm until... – Manolis The making of paintings and the writing of poetry are solitary activities. They are the property of the senses and are often beyond reason's frail reach. I consider poetry the highest of the art forms, so it was with surprise and delight I learned that Manolis, an exceptionally fine poet, was interested in a collaboration of our efforts. The results are this beautiful book. Like Manolis, I was not born in this country we now call Canada. I am an immigrant in a long line of immigrants reaching back over millennia to the first human beings who came to populate this continent. I was drawn to this immense country of countless shape-shifting places, from the stories recounted by an old Portuguese whaler when I was a child. Over more than fifty years later, I am left with a sense of wonder and a profound gratitude for my good fortune to be part of this place. The works in this book have been made from curiosity, desire and discipline. I hope they engage you as much as they have us who made them. – Ken Kirkby, Canadian painter

Vespers

Manolis

Ken Kirkby

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