Selected Poems (Liberation classics)

Literature & Fiction

Langston Hughes

Poetry

Serpent's Tail

This book collects together the two most vital "automatic" texts of Surrealism. Breton’s prefatory essay The Automatic Message relates this technique to the underlying concepts and aesthetic of the Surrealist movement. 
The Magnetic Fields (1919) was the first work of literary Surrealism and is thus one of the foundations of modern European thought and writing. This authorised translation is by the poet David Gascoyne, himself a member of the group and a friend of both authors. 
The Immaculate Conception (1930) traces the interior and exterior life of man from Conception and Intra-Uterine Life to Death and The Original Judgement. The central section is a celebrated series of "simulations" of various types of mental instability. 
Maurice Nadeau (in The History of Surrealism) described the book as "An astonishing series of poems in prose, more brilliant than those of either Breton or Eluard on his own . . . if all that remained of the Surrealist movement were the pages of The Immaculate Conception, man, alerted, could not turn away from the astounding mystery of his condition."

Immaculate Conception

Éluard, Paul

BRETON, André

Contemporary

ALFRED JARRY is chiefly known as the creator of UBU, the anti-hero of what is acknowledged as the first "absurd" drama, but this was only one facet of a writer now seen as one of the most vital (and peculiar) influences on the French literature of this century. Visits of Love was Jarry's second novel, originally written for a publisher specialising in erotica (who must have been perplexed by the result). The "visits" consist of a remarkable series of tableaux, dialogues and assignations which deviously undermine the dreary situations of conventional erotic writing. They become more and more extravagant, transcending the everyday, passing beyond death, returning to bizarre versions of historical myths, or to the lavatorial trysts of Madame Ubu. Jarry's intricate style is pushed to its furthest limits, from crude buffoonery to ornate Symbolist texts of earnest intensity. Certain chapters are unique in his writing: Raymond Queneau described The Old Man of the Mountain as Jarry's most perfect work, and ' the episode Fear Visits Love is among his most often reprinted works in France. Despite its curious origins, the novel is an essential part of Jarry's oeuvre.

Visits Of Love (Works)

Jarry, Alfred

What does a turnip have in common with a pair of GBP500 sunglasses? They've both played a pivotal role in football history. Following on from Neil MacGregor's groundbreaking The History of the World in 100 Objects, Gavin Mortimer provides a quirky and unique take on the beautiful game told through its defining objects. A History of Football in 100 Objects begins on the momentous day in October 1863 when several men in frock coats formed the Football Association. Ever since, the sport has continually evolved - and created new ways to thrill and infuriate its billions of followers along the way. If you've ever wanted to know when footballers started to feign injury, why an old sock helped Pele become a global legend or how a draper's letter changed football, you'll find the answer in this fascinating history of invention, ingenuity, indiscipline - and sometimes inebriation. From the inaugural red card to a Buddhist shrine, each of the objects selected gives us an intimate glimpse of an unexpected truth behind footie mythology - and together they relate the larger history of the world's biggest and most-loved sport.

A History of Football in 100 Objects

Bill Mann

Gavin Mortimer

At the tender age of fourteen, Sarah Clark is seduced by her thirty-eight-year-old English teacher, Daniel Carr, and becomes entangled in an illegal, erotic, passionate, and dangerous affair&#8212a vicious meeting of minds and bodies that ends badly. Devastated by grief and longing, Sarah embarks upon a series of meaningless self-abasing sexual encounters, hoping to reclaim the intensity of that first relationship. Then, seven years later, Carr unexpectedly returns and Sarah is drawn again into a destructive coupling. Now that she is no longer an innocent young girl, is she strong enough to finally tame the beast within her?A modern Lolita, Taming the Beast is an emotionally unflinching and alluring tale that introduces a powerful new writer.

Taming the Beast

Emily Maguire

Erotica

Eat My Heart Out

Zoe Pilger

'Judas Iscariot's here, look. Here comes Judas Iscariot...' Nine-year old Sean has never seen anything like what happens on the day Margaret Thatcher takes power and his grandad discovers his uncle voted for her. So begins the start of a family secret and the end of Sean's idyllic childhood in the industrial Midlands-until, one day, deciding that someone's got to stop the train of destruction, he sets out for revenge. A heartbreaking and timely story of a moment of national crisis as felt by one family, How I Killed Margaret Thatcher delivers a devastating English twist on the dictator novel.

How I Killed Margaret Thatcher

Cartwright, Anthony

Genre Fiction

All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain At Work

The average person spends 100,000 hours of their life at work, but how much do we really know about what we do with it? What is it really like to work in advertising, to be a train driver, a sex worker or an orthodox rabbi? What do we do in our working hours, and how does that colour our life, beliefs and happiness? And what happens to how we feel about work in a recession? 
In "All Day Long" Joanna Biggs finds the answers to these questions and more, by talking to the interns and bosses, professionals and entrepreneurs, and thinkers and doers who make up the workforce. Her journey takes us from Parliament to the long grassed fields of the Outer Hebrides, from a hospital in Wales to the wings of the Royal Opera House, introducing us to the different worlds of work and the people who inhabit them. 
Full of human detail and street level observation, Joanna Biggs' writing combines genuine empathy with social, cultural and political awareness. Like Studs Terkel's classic book "Working" did several decades ago in America, her book paints a portrait of the UK right now, showing us who we are through what we do.

All Day Long

Biggs, Joanna

Essays & Correspondence

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Serpent's Tail Classics)

Arts & Photography

Bangs, Lester

Music

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Books by Serpent's Tail