{"title":"Thekla Clark","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"children-in-exile-book-thekla-clark-9780701165901","title":"Children in Exile","description":"In 1979 Americans Thekla and John Clark, expatriates living in Italy took on responsibility for a family of Vietnamese refugees. Less than a year later they also offered a home to the survivors of a Cambodian family: Sarry and her three children. Out of this strange multi-cultural household, in a large battered house in the Tuscan countryside, a community emerged. The Du Caus and the Khuls arrived dazed and malnourished, after years of hardship in Vietnamese refugee camps and Pol Pot's chaotic Cambodia. The Clarks gradually began to piece together their adopted families' harrowing stories: of betrayal and torture, of hunger and fear, of the capriciousness and psychological mind games of the Khmer Rouge; of backbreaking work in the rice paddies, of the squalor of refugee camps. This book interweaves the stories of their difficult pasts with an account of their time in Italy, and the rich cultural exchange which resulted: kung fu and Cambodian dancing among the olive trees, the tragi-comic effects of getting used to new conventions and of coming to accept that friendship and love can be familiar and constant. This account give a personal insight into the painful recent history of the Far East, but is also a look at the nature of exile and the way in which people overcome barriers of difference.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49531039056145,"sku":"GOR004261614","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701165901.jpg?v=1750743972"},{"product_id":"wystan-and-chester-book-thekla-clark-9780571179008","title":"Wystan and Chester","description":"During the 1950s and 1960s, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman spent their summers on Ischia in the Gulf of Naples, at a time when the island had not yet been developed for tourists. The writer of this memoir, who herself arrived on Ischia as a young American divorcee looking for a new husband, got to know the friends well and remained close to them for the rest of their lives. Her recollections provide a portrait of the two men - their habits, remarks, meals, domestic arrangements, lovers, pets and (eventually, elsewhere) their ageing and decline.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49643996217617,"sku":"GOR002421249","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652082278673,"sku":"GOR011652973","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51699844776209,"sku":"GOR004411600","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571179002.jpg?v=1751198629"},{"product_id":"charles-olson-cl-book-thekla-clark-9780393029581","title":"CHARLES OLSON CL","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50321521475857,"sku":"CIN0393029581A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393029581.jpg?v=1751196584"},{"product_id":"wystan-and-chester-book-thekla-clark-9780231107068","title":"Wystan and Chester","description":"The first nuanced, personal portrait of Auden and Kallman's relationship of more than thirty years, Wystan and Chester opens a window on a central aspect of Auden's life that has been overlooked by most biographies and critical studies. In a series of witty, poignant, and occasionally disturbing vignettes, Clark recounts the artists at work and at play: the raucous, Bacchanalian dinner parties on Ischia and the quiet mornings of writing on the porch of their house in Kirchstetten, Austria. She chronicles the early years of their friendship, when Auden and Kallman became her young daughter Lisa's constant companions, and when their nurturing partnership helped to foster unparalleled creative output for both. Remembering also Kallman's steady decline in his later years, Clark paints a sympathetic picture of the talented and troubled artist and of Auden's abiding love for him. Clark's story is generously sprinkled with glimpses of Auden's eccentricities. She recollects his fascination with female anatomy and with the process of birth; his unusual mix of moral seriousness and intellectual frivolity; his love for church ritual and his conviction that homosexuality was wrong.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346872897809,"sku":"CIN0231107064A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53548358664465,"sku":"CIN0231107064G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0231107064.jpg?v=1751101251"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-thekla-clark.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}