Books by John Ward

In a new adaptation for London's Gate Theatre, award winning British playwright Nick Payne retells the story of Sophocles Electra in a visceral and powerful new stage version.

After a bloody stint abroad, onetime spy Amir Duran, has returned home to the British colony of Granada, Spain, to do what he does best: police work. But it's a bad time to be a cop in Granada. Climate change has ravaged the colony's all-powerful agricultural industry and its unscrupulous plantation owners have resorted to farming the most lucrative-and addictive-crop their hothouses can produce. With half the city hooked on plantation dope, crime is abundant and hope is in short supply. To make matters worse, Granada's British overlords have conveniently turned a blind eye to the sins of the powerful and the suffering of the poor. When Amir's own partner is gunned down while investigating a drug-related homicide, Amir decides playing by the rules just won't cut it anymore. Amir sets out for justice-and retribution-by any means necessary. Even it means tearing the whole bloody system down.

This book gives an account of the literary representation of Jews as businessmen from the early nineteenth century to the onset of the Third Reich. The historical context provides the background for an examination of the literary representation of Jewish businessmen and presents evidence for the perpetuation, transformation, and combination of stereotypes. The double bind of assimilation - that the Jews were vilified whether they succeeded or failed - is illustrated from literary treatments by the Romantic writer Wilhelm Hauff and the early twentieth-century writers Lion Feuchtwanger and Paul Kornfeld of the historical figure of 'Jud Su Oppenheimer'. Gustav Freytag's use of the Jews as 'counter-ideals' in his notorious bestseller Soll und Haben (1855) and the onset of racial anti-Semitism in Wihelm von Polenz's Der Buttnerbauer (1895) are illustrative of how literary anti-Semitism hardened in the course of the nineteenth century. The book considers a number of literary texts, some well known, some less familiar, which are revealing of the way in which Jewish-Gentile relations were imagined in their time.

Providing an introduction to the volatile economic and political history of Latin Americal since the 1950s, this title discusses the interactions between economic, political and social issues. It has been updated to take into account recent historiography and the current situation in Latin America in relation to the wider world, especially the US.