Atala / Rene

Customer Reviews:

Rene by Chateaubriand.......2002-05-29

A powerful tale of love, isolation and loss in post-revolutionary France. The author narrates the tale of Rene, a young man isolated from his family by early tragedy and from a social mileu by his 'mal de siecle'. We are first introduced to Rene, living on an Indian Reservation in America, far from home, as he is pressed by some companions to explain what events in his life have brought hime to choose such a life of solitude and wilderness. We learn of Renes mostly unhappy upbringing and see him travel the world in search of some unknown solution to his lack of belonging or purpose in life. The only person in his life he is able to love and feel close to is his sister Amelie. The only periods of happiness in his life, in fact, have been those spent with his sister.
But Amelie hides a terrible secret which is gradually destroying her - feelings of incestuous love for her brother. The plot builds to a tense and dramatic climax when Amelie confesses to her "criminelle passion" and is overheard by Rene. She finds solice in the church, becomes a nun and is lost to the outside world, and Rene, forever. Desperate without the only comfort and stabilising influence in his life, and shocked by his sisters revelation, Rene abandons the comforts of civilized society and retreats to America.
The book contains an personal insite into the effect of the revolution on an individual member of the aristocracy, as well as the timeless personal struggles of love and family.
Although the book contains several parallels between René's life and Chateaubriand's (Chateaubriand tried to commit suicide at 18, travelled to North America and was very close to his sister) the book is much more than merely an autobiographical tale.
At the time the book was written, René expressed the popular feeling in France and the character was a hero - `The young man ill at ease.'`René' was written as a moralising tale to show the dangers of not following the Christian faith - Amelie dies happy, having found the church but René doesn't find happiness or faith. (Napoleon had at the time signed a pact with the pope to increase Catholicism in France.) However readers did not understand this message, but saw René as rejecting society. The character came to represent the `mal du siecle' - a search for meaning and identity. The book symbolised a sense of displacement, alienation, uncertainty and longing.

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Atala - Rene - Le Dernier Abencerage
Francois Rene de Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: Flammarion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
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Lorenzaccio
Le Cid (Crofts Classics)

ASIN: 2070370178

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Atala Rene
Francois R. Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: Pocket (FR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 226609016X

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Atala & Rene
Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: SIGNET BOOKS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TXLL1K

ATALA - RENE - LES NATCHEZ (EXTRAITS) (Classiques Larousse)

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ATALA - RENE - LES NATCHEZ (EXTRAITS) (Classiques Larousse)
Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: Larousse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QTXPQG

Product Description

Small format softcover in French - 101 pages - abridged

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Atala - Rene Les Natchez (extraits) Classiques Larousse

Manufacturer: Larousse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000IAFA7K

ATALA - René Le dernier abencérage Les Natchez [ LEATHERBOUND ]

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ATALA - René Le dernier abencérage Les Natchez [ LEATHERBOUND ]
François-René de Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: Garnier Frères
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000L6JE0A

Product Description

1876 Lovely leatherbound edition. Frontispiece, notes, table. Nouvelle Édition, revue avec soin sur les editions originals cont.

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Atala -- Rene, Les Natchez (Extraits) (Classiques Larousse)

Manufacturer: Larousse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: B000FP57IK

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ATALA AND RENE
CHATEAUBRIAND
Manufacturer: A SIGNET
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000S3RN2C

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Atala and Rene
Francois-Rene De (Rayner Heppenstall, Tr.; Robert Baldick intro) Chateaubriand
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000QB7ZQU

Book Description

Latin translation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in which Harry Potter, a normal eleven-year-old boy, discovers that he is a wizard. Long ago, Harry's parents were killed in a battle with the evil Lord Voldemort. When we first meet Harry, he is living miserably with his repulsive and non-magical (or Muggle) Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon Dursley, and their even more revolting son, Dudley. Following a bizarre but hilarious chain of events, Harry finds himself at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with an outrageous cast of characters, including super-smart Hermione Granger, vile Draco Malfoy, sinister Professor Snape, and the wise Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Adventures galore ensue.

Customer Reviews:

facile et iucundum est hunc librum legere!.......2007-09-05

quis aliquid magis quam hunc librum Latine legere vult? bene scriptum est et bonum non solum alicui legere sed etiam ad discipulos docendos. eme, tolle et lege hunc librum et laetus esto!

Great alternative to the classics for the re-learner.......2007-07-25

At age 68 I recently decided to renew my brief high-school acquaintence with Latin so picked up a copy of Wheelock's Latin (another superb book)and jumped right in. By Chapter 14 (out of 40), I wanted to tackle something a little more meaty and different than the Wheelock exercises, but certainly not the classics yet. Harrius Potter is currently filling that bill very well. The Latin is obviously not a perfect translation, but close enough that the English version is a good check when I need a hint. At my re-learning stage, it's dictionary-heavy work (Cassell's and/or Chambers Murray work fine) and it forces me to jump ahead for grammar items not yet covered in my normal progression...both good things. And, of course, it's a good story.

Great Gift!.......2007-01-13

My son has had a few years of Latin. He is just starting to be able to understand more complicated pieces. This is a great book because he is already familiar with the story, and can figure out some of the chapters even when he doesn't know all the words. And he has found it fun to see how some modern words are "created" following the Latin rules.

Bene exeat.......2006-01-01

Great book, great translation.

Since this is the first modern book that I've read in Latin, the thing that initially surprised me most is the fact that it could be done at all. It's a testament to the timeless quality of J. K. Rowling's writing, as well as to the brilliance of her translator, Peter Needham, that the book reads beautifully and fluently despite the occasional appearance of twentieth-century problems such as Uncle Vernon's car (autocinetum), the trafffic jam (vehicula impedita) in which it gets stuck, and motorcycles (birotulae automatariae), flying and earth-bound.

What I began to realize as I read Needham's delightful translation is that reports of the demise of Latin have, as they say, been exaggerated. One of my Greek professors used to joke about a student of his who went on to study at Oxford after getting a degree in classics here in the U.S. The report came back that his tutor at Oxford was pleased with this student's Latin, to which the response from his teachers here was, "That's high praise coming from a native speaker." As you read Needham's translation, it seems indeed that Latin is his native tongue.

That Harry Potter could be translated so convincingly into Latin also says a lot about the indebtedness of our culture to the Romans--the Romanness of European culture if you will--even this far down the road from Cicero and Caesar. In ways so deep and broad that we entirely overlook them, our culture is unthinkable without the Romans. Indeed, despite advances in science, technology, and general knowledge, Roman culture still feels remarkably modern and offers enough points of similarity and contact with our own that it's not absurd to imagine Harry Potter transposed to ancient Rome. How different it would be reading Harry Potter in Sumerian or ancient Egyptian or even biblical Hebrew.

Here's to hoping Needham will continue on with the rest of the series!

Original review date: 12/31/05. Updated 3/6/07. The much-hoped-for, and equally delightful, second installment of the Latin series was released in late 2006. I have reviewed this book as well.

Enjoyable and useful. Can we have more, please?.......2005-07-20

As far as length and complexity, Harrius Potter provides a much-needed middle-ground between the simple works such as Fabulae Mirabiles and the less challenging of the Classics.

Sensing that such was the case, I bought this book for a specific reason. I had studied Latin in my younger years and, having recently taken it up again, I wanted to teach myself to read and understand a longer work directly without translating it (even subconsciously) in my mind.

The simple but engaging subject of this book, together with the impeccable Latin in which it is written, proved to be a perfect combination for my puspose. As I turned the pages of Harrius Potter, the dictionary became less and less necessary, until I realized that I was able to *taste* the language directly off the page.

Apart from this personal anecdote, I enjoyed Harrius Potter for many reasons. The Latin is simple yet quite elegant; virtually all verb-moods and tenses are employed along the most orthodox rules of the "consecutio temporum," together with all the pronouns and a good syntactical variety of clauses and case-usage. The necessary neologisms are tastefully chosen in a way that does not sound far-fetched. The size of the book is manageable, and the story is truly a jolly good one.

Actually, had it not been for its being available in Latin, I probably would not have read any of Rowling's novels - as I have now found out, she is a truly great storyteller deserving of the notoriety she has earned. And if anything, the Latin language bestows Harrius Potter even more of a timeless aura.

I sincerely hope that more works such as this will become available in the near future.

Long Afternoon Of Earth (USA)
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Fascinating Travelogue (sans plot)

A great novel...but one that fades with pages.

Exactly what the name suggests

Life at the end of time

Made me think and made me wonder

Long Afternoon Of Earth (USA)
Brian Wilson Aldiss
Manufacturer: House of Stratus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Alternate History | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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Year Zero

ASIN: 075511339X

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating Travelogue (sans plot).......2006-10-28

Although written 20 years earlier, "The Long Afternoon of Earth" bears a strong resemblance to Aldiss' later "Helliconia" series. The main point of these books is to explore a world in which astronomical influences have drastically altered the climate. "Afternoon" is set billions of years in the Earth's future, when tidal forces have slowed Earth's rotation to the point where one side of the planet always faces the aging Sun, while the other side is in perpetual darkness. The book takes us on a tour of this world, to see how the creatures of Earth have adapted to this profound change.

In "Helliconia" and "Afternoon", characters are secondary. The book is not about them; they merely serve as tour guides, leading the reader on a trip through the various regions of the planet. In fact, Aldiss' protagonists tend to be unlikable. This keeps the readers and characters at arm's length, so the focus remains where it belongs, on the world itself. Gren, the main character in "Afternoon," is clever, but ignorant, selfish and brutish. You don't root for him, and you learn not to expect much of him. You simply follow him as he travels, encountering with him the strange and dangerous beauty of the latter day Earth.

Similarly, the plot is threadbare, almost an afterthought. The book is not about the story, either, and at times that can be frustrating. For example, early in the book, several humans, as part of a rite of passage in old age, hitch a ride on a "traverser" (a mile-long spider-like vegetable) from Earth through space to the Moon. There, they are tapped by others to lead an invasion of the home world. Clearly, you think, this is "The Story." However, the scenario is no sooner set up than it is abandoned. The invaders are not heard from again until 5 pages from the end of the book, when they show up briefly, accomplish nothing, then leave.

And that's okay. Even without a decent story or characters, this is still a fascinating book. I am awed by the sheer power of Aldiss' creativity in fleshing out this strange world. Many of the creatures, defense mechanisms, and lifecycles that Aldiss envisions are truly ingenious. On the day side, increased sunlight has propelled plant life to the dominant position in nature. Plants now fill most niches formerly filled by animals; they can move, eat, see, climb, think, even fly. The teeming jungles of the day side are savage, and the battle for existence fierce. Humans are the only true animals to have survived, albeit in a devolved, primitive state. It may sound far-fetched, but Aldiss does an admirable job of making the world not only plausible, but real.

As long as you approach "Long Afternoon of Earth" as a travelogue, and don't expect to find enduring characters or an intricate plot, it is an amazing trip through a bizarre world that happens to be our own. It is a well-crafted speculation on what Earth might be like in the distant future, and how life might adapt to such extreme circumstances. Even with its defects, I couldn't put it down. It is a trip well worth taking.

A great novel...but one that fades with pages........2006-06-22

The first seventy-five pages of this novel (roughly corresponding to the original installment of the short story sequence) are among the most inventive, spellbinding and mysterious you'll read in all contemporary literature. If you haven't read the book yet, it's worth paying more than this price to read the beginning of this book.

However I chose four, rather than five stars for one reason. The highly unique style and general mystery present early in the book, begins to evaporate over the remaining pages very quickly. Aldiss becomes far too explicative about the origins of the floral world and takes a progressively more pessimistic view about his audience's ability (and desire) to figure these things out for themselves. The ''sensawunda'' factor also becomes very extreme, to the point where few settings or organisms reappear after their initial introduction.

Doubly, most of the very compelling generalizations about the nature of the world described in the first part of the book, are systematically disproven in the later chapters. It turns out that the banyan doesn't cover all available sunlit space, that there are in fact remaining mammals apart from green men around and so on. This is profoundly disappointing for the reader who was quite taken with the original context the book created.

Another obvious (and often complained about) problem is that the humans -originally presented as devolved, degenerated shells of their earlier species- become progressively more intelligent and verbose as the novel progresses. The use of the Morel to explain this otherwise inexplicable evolution of cognitive power is unconvincing, as more characters than Gren achieve progressively enhanced analytical and communicative powers for no apparent reason. For example, early in the book, the longest speech the human characters had ever heard, is about three short sentences long and it was difficult for them to hold attention to it due to its length. Later, the human characters expound for paragraphs without difficulty in expression or comprehension. Often too, they are doing so whilst conveying a conceptual understanding about situations and events they could never possess were they indeed the creatures found in the opening of the novel.

The book is very similar to Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity in this respect. In that much like the creatures of Meskalin, they become progressively less alien not because we develop sympathies and connections to a common humanity...but because they start acting and talking increasingly like us.

This loss of mystique is one of the only reasons the book could be reasonably criticized in my view. Apart from it, it's among the most original and enchanting science fiction novels of the 1960s.

Exactly what the name suggests.......2004-05-17

This is one of those books to force the mind away from the everyday, the mundane, the what's-happening-today-in-Bongo Bongoland-and-what-are-we-doing-about-it that has our minds squeezed so tight we can't think further than the next daily broadcast of the world news and the next spoon-fed opinion from our favorite demigogue. The planet earth has a future that might, or mightn't include a fragile, two-legged creature who thinks he owns it all. In this book it includes him, but he doesn't own it.

The Long Afternoon of Earth is a lesson in perspective, in humility, in one of the many possible futures of mankind when all the wars have been fought and forgotten, when all the nations and political parties have had their sparks of glory and died. It's a world of no heroes, no cowards, no real signifance except the same one mankind faced in his deepest history: survival. There's a touch of wistfulness here, a touch of melancholy. But it's a good lever to pry your mind away from the mess your dog made on the livingroom floor, the mess your favorite politician made on the floor of your big ideas, the mess your nation made on the face of a planet that goes on and on, where human affairs and the centuries are an insignificant spark.

Read it.

Life at the end of time.......2002-03-20

Much of this book is stunning in its scope and originality. We are in the far distant future in the last days of the earth before the sun goes nova. The sun is so much hotter that all animal life has died and plants have taken over the earth making it an incredibly lush green jungle. All animal life has died but one species -- man -- and he is barely hanging on, literally in the branches of the great banyan tree that spans the continent. It's this view of man, not as lord of creation but as the last survivor of the animal kingdom that gives the book its power. That and the image of a green earth that is an incredibly dangerous place. It's a plant eat plant world. We follow the adventures of a boy as he discovers the world and we start to follow the adventures of some other humans that get accidentally taken to the moon by a mile long flying vegetable that is one of the stunningly creative ideas in the story. I gave the novel four stars instead of five because it is too short. With everything that happens you expect a grand ending and instead it feels rushed. The adventures on the moon are cut short and forgotten and the boy's adventures seem abruptly ended with a kind of conventional happy ending. Despite this one great flaw, this is a book well worth reading for it's sheer generosity of imagination. In it's own unique and crazy way, it's a classic.

Made me think and made me wonder.......2002-03-18

I first read this book when i was 15 years old and I was an instant Brian Aldiss fan. This book is kind of short, but it's one you want to read slowly so that you don't miss anything. And it can be hard to miss things since at times there is a lot going on. The end of the book is my favorite part because its really bizarre. If you like sci fi that's not all aliens and technical than I bet you'll like this book.

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THE LONG AFTERNOON OF EARTH

Manufacturer: New American Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GQSXX4

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Long Afternoon Earth
Brian Aldiss
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0451020189

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The Long Afternoon of Earth
Brian ALdiss
Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OB4WY0

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Brutal Vegetative Nature

The Long Afternoon on Earth
Brian Aldiss
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MQ5W8M

Customer Reviews:

Brutal Vegetative Nature.......2007-09-30

Don't fall in love with any of the characters because they might be dead very soon. At least, that's the way things go in the first two parts of this novel which follow a group of youngsters surviving (or not) in the jungle that has taken over much of the Earth's surface in the distant future, when the plant kingdom includes very mobile predators. That last part of the novel focuses on a boy's relatively lonely adventure.

The brutality of nature is given full play in the hands of British author Brian Aldiss in a way that American authors, at the time, avoided. It stunned me when I first read it many many years ago.

Aldiss is not a scientist and the premises of this novel should not be examined and judged by scientific standards. It's an adventure story and a mood piece. And like many scifi novels of the time, it was built up of short stories published in magazines.

The British title was HOTHOUSE and the Brits speak derisively of the longer American title, THE LONG AFTERNOON OF EARTH (Amazon's title is in error) which I unabashedly prefer as more evocative and alluring. The American version with its longer title ironically had less text since some of the original British version was excised. I have read both versions and don't feel the full version is superior in effect to the abridged (while others swear it is).

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Long Afternoon of Earth
Brian Aldiss
Manufacturer: UNSPECIFIED VENDOR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000TXFO1S

Book Description

Rebecca's Revival is the remarkable story of a Caribbean woman--a slave turned evangelist--who helped inspire the rise of black Christianity in the Atlantic world. All but unknown today, Rebecca Protten left an enduring influence on African-American religion and society. Born in 1718, Protten had a childhood conversion experience, gained her freedom from bondage, and joined a group of German proselytizers from the Moravian Church. She embarked on an itinerant mission, preaching to hundreds of the enslaved Africans of St. Thomas, a Danish sugar colony in the West Indies. Laboring in obscurity and weathering persecution from hostile planters, Protten and other black preachers created the earliest African Protestant congregation in the Americas.

Protten's eventful life--the recruiting of converts, an interracial marriage, a trial on charges of blasphemy and inciting of slaves, travels to Germany and West Africa--placed her on the cusp of an emerging international Afro-Atlantic evangelicalism. Her career provides a unique lens on this prophetic movement that would soon sweep through the slave quarters of the Caribbean and North America, radically transforming African-American culture.

Jon Sensbach has pieced together this forgotten life of a black visionary from German, Danish, and Dutch records, including letters in Protten's own hand, to create an astounding tale of one woman's freedom amidst the slave trade. Protten's life, with its evangelical efforts on three continents, reveals the dynamic relations of the Atlantic world and affords great insight into the ways black Christianity developed in the New World.

Customer Reviews:

The Untold Story.......2007-05-07

This was a great book overall. It was factual history that has been obscured and hidden for 400 years. We have been fed the stories of the "great white hope" who came to "save" the slaves from their heathenish African ways. This book clearly counters that claim by asserting that it was through the African slaves themselves that Christianity spread in the caribbean. It is well documented and purely factual. Anytime the author made a statement of opinion that wasn't quite factual he said "maybe", or "perhaps". Overall, it was an excellent book. It was somewhat of a difficult read, but it never hurts to expand your vocabulary!

A Fascinating Subject!.......2006-08-04

This is a much needed study on the history of black evangelical Christianity in the black diaspora. As a black African evangelical Christian woman with ancestral ties to both Europe and the Caribbean, I have been informed, intrigued, amused, puzzled, saddened, challenged and overall inspired by the story of Rebecca Protten's life. The author has done a remarkably thorough job. Thank you!

Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.(Book review) : An article from: Canadian Journal of History

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Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.(Book review) : An article from: Canadian Journal of History
Mark Meuwese
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Canadian Journal of History, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2005. The length of the article is 852 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.(Book review)
Author: Mark Meuwese
Publication: Canadian Journal of History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 40 Issue: 3 Page: 594(2)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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