Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Sacred Darkness - cover

Sacred Darkness

Levan Berdzenishvili

Translator Brian James Baer, Ellen Vayner

Publisher: Europa Editions

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Based on true events, this novel set in a Soviet prison is “both a feat of fractured storytelling and a beautiful excavation of a recent, haunting past” (Publishers Weekly). 
 
As a political dissident, Berdzenishvili lands in jail, serving a sentence on trumped-up charges of activism and agitation. But rather than being the hell he expected, jail allows him access to a wide array of intellectuals, professionals, citizens of all walks of life, many of whom, he freely admits, he would not have had the chance to meet if he had not been in jail. 
 
Here he bears witness to those lives. Each chapter carries a single person’s name and focuses on a single story. Collectively, however, these portraits create a multifaceted and vast picture of life in the Soviet Union, including during its demise. A nation seeks to suppress its brightest citizens, to keep them locked away in the dark. But in that darkness, unbeknown to the jailor, bonds stronger than walls were forming.
Available since: 01/15/2019.
Print length: 256 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Mads Øvlisen - cover

    Mads Øvlisen

    Mads Øvlisen

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Experience a first-hand interview with the legendary Mads Øvlisen, Chairman of LEGO and fmr. CEO and Chairman of Novo Nordisk and The Royal Danish Theatre. The modern business topics discussed in each chapter of The Mind of a Leader: Legends are closely related to the issues raised in Niccolò Machiavelli's controversial strategic masterpiece “The Prince”.  The Mind of a Leader: Legends is an outstanding training and development tool offering practical hands-on advice in regards to both individual and organizational success. A fascinating journey to the inside of successful modern organizations and leadership minds.
    Show book
  • Choosing Family - A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance - cover

    Choosing Family - A Memoir of...

    Francesca T. Royster

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A brilliant literary memoir of chosen family and chosen heritage, told against the backdrop of Chicago’s North and South Sides. 
     
    As a multiracial household in Chicago’s North Side community of Rogers Park, race is at the core of Francesca T. Royster and her family's world, influencing everyday acts of parenting and the conception of what family truly means. Like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, this lyrical and affecting memoir focuses on a unit of three: the author; her wife Annie, who's white; and Cecilia, the Black daughter they adopt as a couple in their forties and fifties. Choosing Family chronicles this journey to motherhood while examining the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a Black, queer, and feminist perspective. Royster also explores her memories of the matriarchs of her childhood and the homes these women created in Chicago’s South Side—itself a dynamic character in the memoir—where “family” was fluid, inclusive, and not necessarily defined by marriage or other socially recognized contracts. 
        
    Calling upon the work of some of her favorite queer thinkers, including José Esteban Muñoz and Audre Lorde, Royster interweaves her experiences and memories with queer and gender theory to argue that many Black families, certainly her own, have historically had a “queer” attitude toward family: configurations that sit outside the white normative experience and are the richer for their flexibility and generosity of spirit. A powerful, genre-bending memoir of family, identity, and acceptance, Choosing Family, ultimately, is about joy—about claiming the joy that society did not intend to assign to you, or to those like you.
    Show book
  • A Man and His Mountain - The Everyman Who Created Kendall-Jackson and Became America's Greatest Wine Entrepreneur - cover

    A Man and His Mountain - The...

    Edward Humes

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist tells the story of the self-made billionaire who built the Kendall-Jackson empire from nothing into the biggest selling brand of premium wines in the U.S. 
     
    Jess Stonestreet Jackson was one of a small band of pioneering entrepreneurs who put California's wine country on the map. His life story is a compelling slice of history, daring, innovation, feuds, intrigue, talent, mystique, contrarianism, and luck, offering a unique window on the elegant, adventurous, and cut-throat worlds of Jackson's two passions: wine and horseracing. Time after time his decisions would be ignored, derided, then finally envied and imitated, as whole industries watched him become a billionaire and tried to keep up. He reinvented himself at mid-life, and became founder and CEO of Kendall-Jackson. The empire he constructed endures and thrives even after his death in 2011. In A Man and His Mountain, Edward Humes brings us the no-holds barred tale of the brilliant, infuriating, successful man who seemed to win more than his share by staying far ahead of the pack.
    Show book
  • Small Acts of Courage - A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy - cover

    Small Acts of Courage - A Legacy...

    Ali Velshi

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    This program is read by the author.A captivating family history that illustrates how small actions can have an outsized political impact.Small acts of courage matter. Sometimes, they change the world. Our history books are filled with the stories of those who fought for democracy and freedom—for idealism itself—against all odds, from Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. These iconic struggles for social change illustrate the importance of engagement and activism, and offer a template for the battles we are fighting today. But using the right words is often easier than taking action; action can be hard, and costly.More than a century ago, MSNBC host Ali Velshi’s great-grandfather sent his seven-year-old son to live at Tolstoy Farm, Gandhi’s ashram in South Africa. This difficult decision would change the trajectory of his family history forever. From childhood, Velshi’s grandfather was imbued with an ethos of public service and social justice, and a belief in absolute equality among all people—ideals that his children carried forward as they escaped apartheid, emigrating to Kenya and ultimately Canada and the United States.In Small Acts of Courage, Velshi taps into 125 years of family history to advocate for social justice as a living, breathing experience—a way of life more than an ideology. With rich detail and vivid prose, he relates the stories of regular people who made a lasting commitment to fight for change, even when success seemed impossible. This heartfelt exploration of how we can breathe new life into the principles of pluralistic democracy is an urgent call to action—for progress to be possible, we must all do whatever we can to make a difference.A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
    Show book
  • Running Outside the Comfort Zone - An Explorer's Guide to the Edges of Running - cover

    Running Outside the Comfort Zone...

    Susan Lacke

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Running offers much more than road racing! 
    After a decade of writing about running, sports columnist Susan Lacke found herself in a serious running rut. The runners around her seemed to be thriving, setting goals, and having fun, but her own interest in running was lackluster. 
    Seeking to reengage with the sport she once loved, Lacke spent a year exploring running in its many shapes and forms, taking on running challenges that scared her, pushed her, and downright embarrassed her. From races with giant cheese wheels to a regional wife-carrying competition, a naked 5K to climbing the dark stairwells of the Empire State Building, Lacke's brave forays and misadventures are chronicled in wondrous and funny stories. 
    Running Outside the Comfort Zone uncovers the brash, bold, and very human sides of running, and along the way Susan rekindles her own crush on America's favorite all-comers sport.
    Show book
  • The Spiritual Mandela - Faith and Religion in the Life of Nelson Mandela - cover

    The Spiritual Mandela - Faith...

    Dennis Cruywagen

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    In the first book of its kind, an acclaimed South African journalist and former parliamentary spokesperson for the ANC shares how Nelson Mandela balanced his Christian faith with his political views, exploring how the beloved leader reconciled his own beliefs with the hard truth that religion had often been used as a tool to oppress his people."Insightful. . . a nuanced understanding of how faith influenced the renowned civil rights activist." — Publishers Weekly, starred review". . .illuminating and an essential addition to studies of Mandela's life and work."—BooklistNelson Mandela revealed nothing about his personal religious beliefs in his writings or in his public pronouncements. But those who were close to him know that he held Christian views. At his request, the final components of his funeral followed the Methodist service.Acclaimed journalist Dennis Cruywagen traces the spiritual component of Mandela's life, from his youth in a traditional Thembu village to his education at Wesleyan and Methodist mission schools to his time as an activist to his period on Robben Island and the years thereafter. Based on interviews with some of Mandela's close colleagues, such as Ahmed Kathrada, as well as priests and other religious figures with whom he interacted, this book unearths an unknown dimension of one of recent history's most respected men.
    Show book