The Hall Of Uselessness
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The Hall Of Uselessness
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The Hall Of Uselessness by Simon Leys
An NYRB Classics Original Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao's Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys's essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of Andr Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon. Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time.
Simon Leys is the pen-name of Pierre Ryckmans, who was born in Belgium and settled in Australia in 1970. Leys is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and Member of the Academie Royale de Literature Francaise (Belgium). His most recent award was the Prix Femina, and he has also been awarded the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Henri Gal (Academie Francaise). His works include Chinese Shadows (Viking,1977), a new translation of the Analects of Confucius (Norton, 1997) and The Death of Napoleon (Picador, 1991) won the prestigious Christina Stead Prize for fiction, and was recently made into a feature film starring Ian Holm.
THE WRECK OF THE BATAVIA will be simultaneously published in the U.K. by Grove Atlantic and in Australia by Black Inc.
THE WRECK OF THE BATAVIA will be simultaneously published in the U.K. by Grove Atlantic and in Australia by Black Inc.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781590176207 |
| ISBN 10 | 1590176200 |
| Title | The Hall Of Uselessness |
| Author | Simon Leys |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The New York Review of Books, Inc |
| Year published | 2013-07-30 |
| Number of pages | 576 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |