"Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual...

A young girl who loves fancy things helps her family to be fancy for one special night.

Learn all about the history and cultural significance that the exciting Taiwan Lantern Festival event holds around the world today. This title is complete with historical and modern illustrations and photographs, as well as a glossary and a look at the Chinese Zodiac.

Culling the best of his monthly column "Stuff I've Been Reading" in The Believer magazine, the bestselling author presents hilarious observations on a vast array of topics, and provides a wide-ranging reader list that serves as a reminder as to why we read.

"Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech...

"The country girls are Caithleen "Kate" Brady and Bridget "Baba" Brennan, and their story begins in the repressive atmosphere of a small village in the west of Ireland in the years following World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a survivor. Setting out to conquer the bright lights of Dublin, they are rewarded with comical miscommunications, furtive liaisons, bad faith, bad luck, bad sex, and compromise; marrying for the wrong...

Jean Rouch is known to many worldwide as a French anthropologist and innovative filmmaker. Much of his work is linked to the birth of cinéma vérité. However, Rouch's fifty-year involvement with a particular group of people in Niger shines a more personal light on his work - one of friendship and collaboration. Together with this group, Rouch made numerous ethnographic films and developed their own cinematographic style. These films have been termed...

"All the Time in the World proffers a miscellany of customs, traditions, and pleasures people have pursued throughout the ages. An antidote to the contemporary cult of Getting Things Done, the book takes its cue from the medieval books of hours, which prescribed certain readings and contemplations for various parts of the day and year. Full of witty bon mots, interesting etymologies, and arresting anecdotes, the book encompasses an array of cultures...

A young Brahmin named Siddhartha searches for ultimate reality after meeting with the Buddha. His quest takes him from a life of decadence to asceticism, from the illusory joys of sensual love with a beautiful courtesan, and of wealth and fame, to the painful struggles with his son and the ultimate wisdom of renunciation. Integrating Eastern and Western spiritual traditions with psychoanalysis and philosophy, written with a deep and moving empathy...

Stambali is a religious ritual in Tunisia, a journey with the rhythm of the "gombri" and "chkackek," traces an individual and collective hypnosis, an annual tribute that the disciples of Sidi Saad pay to their master during an initiatory journey and rite of purification that lasts three days. The camera, video and film follow the rhythm of the possession, dances, and goes into a trance.