{"title":"Series: The Seagull Library of French Literature","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Seagull Library of French Literature offers a rich journey through the diverse realms of French thought and creativity. Readers can immerse themselves in works that explore complex ideas and narratives, reflecting the depth and elegance characteristic of French literary tradition. This collection spans a variety of themes, inviting thoughtful reflection and a deeper understanding of culture, philosophy, and human experience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom philosophical inquiries to compelling storytelling, the series presents a curated selection that appeals to lovers of intellectual engagement and artistic expression alike. Whether seeking inspiration, knowledge, or a fresh perspective, readers will find in this collection a meaningful encounter with the enduring spirit of French literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-real-and-its-double-by-clement-rosset-9781803095233","title":"The Real and Its Double","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eClément Rosset bridges highbrow philosophy with everyday life, using pop culture to illuminate complex metaphysical issues.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs a maverick philosopher unafraid of challenging the ideas and methods of his colleagues, Clément Rosset's work attempts to connect sometimes lofty academic philosophy with the concerns of everyday life. For decades, he has worked to illuminate some of the most obscure metaphysical issues, often using popular film, theatre, novels, and comic books to illustrate his ideas. As a result, he has gained a reputation as both a happy sage and a singular mind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eThe Real and Its Double\u003c\/em\u003e, expertly translated by Chris Turner, Rosset takes on the question of the Real and humanity's natural ability to sidestep and bypass it. The key to this type of evasion, Rosset suggests, is a certain form of oracular thinking that lies buried in the origins of Western metaphysics and psychology. Here, Rosset eschews the prolix and paradoxical psychological theories of Derrida and Lacan in favour of an exceptional lucidity that speaks to his Nietzschean-tragic love of life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIf good philosophy can be defined as expressing complicated things in a simple way, then here, in one of his best-known works, Rosset has proven himself a master.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47000812224748,"sku":"9781803095233","price":31.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/27052423482829.jpg?v=1763306722"},{"product_id":"seedtime-by-philippe-jaccottet-9781803093598","title":"Seedtime","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe first volume of notes and reflections from one of Switzerland's most prominent and prolific men of letters.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSeedtime\u003c\/em\u003e—Jaccottet's notebooks—is an especially good introduction to this leading francophone Swiss author, containing the poet's observations of the natural world and his reflections on literature, art, music, and the human condition. In these explorations, he returns again and again to the fundamental, focusing his prodigious talents on describing the exact shade of light on a meadow, the sound of running water, the color of cherry and almond blossoms, or the cry of a bird in the stillness before dawn.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn this translation by Tess Lewis, English readers will finally be able to join this poet as we follow in his footsteps of fifty years ago and find the still-viable seeds of his delicate and tenacious verse.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47455684755692,"sku":"9781803093598","price":39.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/81FhDGWp0wL._SL1500.jpg?v=1774793922"},{"product_id":"the-anchors-long-chain-by-yves-bonnefoy-9781803092935","title":"The Anchor’s Long Chain","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAn experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eYves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, \u003cem\u003eThe Anchor’s Long Chain\u003c\/em\u003e is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy’s earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical—but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life’s eternal questions with each new poem.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLonger, discursive pieces, including the title poem’s meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy’s powerful, discursive poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47461451202796,"sku":"9781803092935","price":31.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803092935-the-anchor-s-long-chain.jpg?v=1774969135"},{"product_id":"the-second-seedtime-by-philippe-jaccottet-9781803093604","title":"The Second Seedtime","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe second volume of notes and reflections from one of Switzerland's most prominent and prolific men of letters.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOne of Europe's finest contemporary poets, Jaccottet is a writer of exacting attention. Through keen observations of the natural world, art, literature, and music, and reflections on the human condition, Jaccottet opens his readers' eyes to the transcendent in everyday life. \u003cem\u003eThe Second Seedtime\u003c\/em\u003e is a collection of \u003cem\u003ethings seen, things read, and things dreamed.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe volume continues the project Jaccottet began three decades earlier in his first volume of notebooks, \u003cem\u003eSeedtime\u003c\/em\u003e. Here, again, he gathers flashes of beauty dispersed around him like seeds that may blossom into poems or moments of inspiration.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe returns, insistently, to such literary touchstones as Dante, Montaigne, Góngora, Goethe, Kierkegaard, Hölderlin, Michaux, Hopkins, Brontë, and Dickinson, as well as musical greats including Bach, Monteverdi, Purcell, and Schubert.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Second Seedtime\u003c\/em\u003e is the vivid chronicle of one man's passionate engagement with the life of the mind, the spirit, and the natural world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47461633261804,"sku":"9781803093604","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803093604-the-second-seedtime.jpg?v=1774973813"},{"product_id":"the-roving-shadows-by-pascal-quignard-9781803093659","title":"The Roving Shadows","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA bold and adventurous work of literature that explores the relationship between reading, writing, sex, and death.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first book in Pascal Quignard's Last Kingdom series, \u003cem\u003eThe Roving Shadows\u003c\/em\u003e can be read as a long meditation on reading and writing that strives to situate these otherwise innocuous activities in a profound relationship to sex and death. Writing and reading can, in fact, be linked to our animal natures and artistic strivings, to primal forces and culturally persistent fascinations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith dexterity and inventiveness, Quignard weaves together historical anecdotes, folktales from the East and West, fragments of myth, and speculative historical reconstructions. The whole, written in a musical style not far removed from that of Couperin, whose piano composition \u003cem\u003eLes Ombres errantes\u003c\/em\u003e lends the book its title, coheres into a work of literature that reverberates in the psyche long after one has laid it down.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Roving Shadows\u003c\/em\u003e is a rare and wondrous tour de force that cements Quignard's reputation in contemporary world literature. Available now in English, this boldly adventurous work will find a new and welcoming audience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47464625963244,"sku":"9781803093659","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781803093659-the-roving-shadows.jpg?v=1775050189"},{"product_id":"the-silent-crossing-by-pascal-quignard-9781803093611","title":"The Silent Crossing","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA haunting homage to life and liberty, to society and solitude, and to the binding and unbinding that constitute the weft of our lives.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing on materials from across many cultures, Pascal Quignard makes an effort to establish shared human values as the breeding ground for a modern Enlightenment. Considering atheism as a spiritual liberation, suicide as a free act, and the rejection of society as a free choice, the author explores philosophical themes that have run through human civilizations—most often as heresies—from our earliest days.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn his search for freedom, Quignard questions the binding dependency of religion, querying how, in a world where all forms of society presuppose that someone (or some collective) is looking over our shoulders, we can be free. These reflections, he implies, are the essential spiritual exercise for our times.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFew voices in contemporary French literature are more distinct than that of Quignard. By reading this fragmentary, episodic assemblage of intimate experiences and borrowed tales, we open up a space of liberty, creating for the reader space for meditation and, perhaps, liberation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Silent Crossing\u003c\/em\u003e encourages readers to ponder these themes deeply, embracing the philosophical journey the book embarks upon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471828926700,"sku":"9781803093611","price":35.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/6ef39e9c787755fbbe6ab5d43d71e5fe.jpg?v=1775694135"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/series-the-seagull-library-of-french-literature.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}