Monday begins on Saturday - Понедельник начинается в субботу
Added by: otherwordly | Karma: 222.42 | Fiction literature | 28 December 2008
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Monday Begins on Saturday (Russian: Понедельник начинается в субботу) is a 1964 science fiction (science fantasy) novel by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. Set in a fictional town in northern Russia, where highly classified research in magic occurs, the novel is a satire of Soviet scientific research institutes, complete with an inept administration, a dishonest, show-horse professor, and numerous equipment failures. It offers an idealistic view of the scientific work ethic, as reflected in the title which suggests that the scientists' weekends are nonexistent.
The "Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry" located in a fictional Northern Russian town of Solovets is portrayed as a place where everyone must work hard willingly, or else their loss of honesty is symbolized by hair growing from their ears. These hairy-eared people are viewed with disdain, but, in a turn symbolic of Soviet times, many of them stay in the institute because it provides them with a comfortable living no matter what.
Tale of the Troika, which describes Soviet bureaucracy at its worst, is a sequel, featuring many of the same characters.
Love, War and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150-1500
This is a study of the appearances of the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights in the French, German and English epic and romance literature of the Middle Ages. It examines their religious roles, such as caring for the sick, their warrior role of fighting Muslims, and examines the role of 'Templars' in the Grail romances. It traces how these roles developed over time and considers what function the appearances of these military religious orders performed in the composition of a work of fictional literature. The frequent appearances of the Military Orders in medieval fictional literature are of interest both to historians and to literary specialists. This is the first study to consider the subject in depth across the medieval period.
"Fictional Minds suggests that readers understand novels primarily by
following the functioning of the minds of characters in the novel
storyworlds. Despite the importance of this aspect of the reading
process, traditional narrative theory does not include a complete and
coherent theory of fictional minds. Readers create a continuing
consciousness out of scattered references to a particular character and
read this consciousness as an "embedded narrative" within the whole
narrative of the novel. The combination of these embedded narratives
forms the plot.
Misadventures in the (213)
Packed with Hollywood life lessons and more B-level celebs that you can shake a stick at, "Misadventures in the (213)"--a reference to the area code in L.A.--is a brilliantly witty, fictional romp through the Los Angeles entertainment machine.