Janet Frame Knihy

Kniha představuje českému čtenáři nejznámější novozélandskou spisovatelku. Svazek obsahuje novelu Sněhuláku, sněhuláku (1963) a soubor povídek Laguna, jímž Frameová v roce 1951 literárně debutovala. Sbírku čtyřiadvaceti povídek sepsala jako pacientka psychiatrické léčebny, kam byla v době svého dospívání umístěna s chybnou diagnózou „schizofrenie“. Krátké, námětově zdánlivě jednoduché příběhy inspirované vlastními zkušenostmi jsou rámované kulisami autorčina dětství a jsou vhledem do autorčina částečně ještě adolescentního pohledu na svět, jejího ohledávání vlastního vnitřního světa, popsaného ovšem velmi obrazně, výsostně poeticky, se smyslem pro výstižný detail a metaforu. Spojujícím prvkem všech příběhů je jednak ztráta: ztráta pocitu bezpečí, ztráta domova, ztráta mysli nebo i sebe sama, a jednak znepokojivá, syrová a emocionálně silná otevřenost. Když tato prvotina získala nejprestižnější novozélandské literární ocenění The Hubert Church Prose Award, zachránilo to autorku od lékaři plánované lobotomie a byla po letech propuštěna. Pozdnější novela Sněhuláku, sněhuláku zpracovává v magicko-realistickém duchu téma věčnosti a konečnosti. Sledujeme zde „dobrodružství smrtelnosti“, jak je prožívá sněhulák postavený malou holčičkou před jejím domem.

Librarian note: Alternative cover edition of ISBN 0586085866 This is the second volume in Janet Frame's autobiography, in which she tells of how she left the close-knit family home in Oamaru for teacher training college in Dunedin. Her college years were a time of intense loneliness that culminated in an attempted suicide and commital to a mental institution. Labelled as a schizophrenic, Janet spent eight harrowing years in psychiatric hospitals until the publication of her prize-winning collection of stories won her a discharge.

New Zealand's preeminent writer Janet Frame brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections, gathered here for the first time in a single volume. From a childhood and adolescence spent in a poor but intellectually intense railway family, through life as a student, and years of incarceration in mental hospitals, eventually followed by her entry into the saving world of writers and the "Mirror City" that sustains them, we are given not only a record of the events of a life, but also "the transformation of ordinary facts and ideas into a shining palace of mirrors." Frame's journey of self-discovery, from New Zealand to London, to Paris and Barcelona, and then home again, is a heartfelt and courageous account of a writer's beginnings as well as one woman's personal struggle to survive.

New Zealand's preeminent writer brings the skill of an extraordinary novelist and poet to these vivid and haunting recollections.

This is the cautionary tale of Toby Withers and Zoe Bryce, companions at the edge of the alphabet--that strange, incommunicable region of the mind walled by silence, noisy with dreams. Toby and Zoe meet on the ship to England. Irishman Pat Keenan, a London bus driver, passionately ordinary, forms the apex of the triangle.

After being misdiagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman, Janet Frame spent several years in psychiatric institutions. She escaped undergoing a lobotomy when it was discovered that she had just won a national literary prize. She then went on to become New Zealand's most acclaimed writer. As she says more than once in this autobiography: 'My writing saved me.'

'One of the most impressive accounts of madness to be found in literature ... A masterpiece' Anita BrooknerPublished as part of a beautifully designed series to mark the 40th anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics.

When a man who is believed dead revives in the mortuary and returns home, he is forced to re-examine his relationships with his family and others.

Our world is changing at a dizzying our physical environment, our communities and our cultures, how we communicate and the speed with which we adapt to new ways of experiencing and living in the world. Caught in the midst of decline and regeneration, what are we losing and what are we gaining? And how do we decide what's worth saving and what should be thrown away? In this issue, we travel to places on the cusp of staggering change, talk to people who have seen and done it all and rescue a few choice items from the recycling bin. From Ireland's Catholic priests - once exported around the world and now under threat even in their own country - to the hitherto obscure music saved from extinction via the vast exchange mart of the Internet, "Granta 105" captures moments of both disappearance and rebirth in all their complexity and strangeness.

Owls Do Cry is Janet Frames first novel. She describes her ideas behind it in the second volume of her autobiography: "Pictures of great treasure in the midst of sadness and waste haunted me and I began to think, in fiction, of a childhood, home life, hospital life, using people known to me as a base for the main character, and inventing minor characters. For Daphne I chose a sensitive, poetic frail person, who, I hoped, would give depth to inner worlds and perhaps a clearer, at least an individual, perception of outer worlds. The other characters, similarly fictional, were used to portray aspects of my 'message' - the excessively material outlooks of 'Chicks', the confusion of Toby, the earthy make-up of Francie, and the toiling parents, the nearest characters to my own parents.