Books published by Seagull Books London Ltd

Maryse Condé is one of the best-known and most beloved French Caribbean literary voices. The author of more than twenty novels, she was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 and has long been recognized as a giant of black feminist literature. While Condé has previously published an autobiography of her childhood, What Is Africa to Me? tells for the first time the story of her early adult years in Africa--years formative not only for her, but also for African colonies appealing for their own independence.What Is Africa to Me? traces the late 1950s to 1968, chronicling Condé's life in Sékou Touré's Guinea to her time in Kwame N'Krumah's Ghana, where she rubbed shoulders with Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Julius Nyerere, and Maya Angelou. Accusations of subversive activity resulted in Condé's deportation from Ghana. Settling down in Sénégal, Condé ended her African years with close friends in Dakar including, filmmakers, activists, and Haitian exiles, before putting down more permanent roots in Paris. Condé's story is more than one of political upheaval, however; it is also the story of a mother raising four children as she battles steep obstacles, of a Guadeloupean seeking her identity in Africa, and of a young woman searching for her freedom and vocation as a writer. What Is Africa to Me? is a searing portrait of a literary genius--it should not be missed.

"Drawings by Heinz Egger"--Title page verso.

Few figures in cinema history are as towering as Russian filmmaker and theorist Sergei Mikhailovitch Eisenstein (1898-1948). Not only did Eisenstein direct some of the most important and lasting works of the silent era, including Strike, October, and Battleship Potemkin, as well as, in the sound era, the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible--he also was a theorist whose insights into the workings of film were so powerful that they remain influential for both filmmakers and scholars today. Seagull Books is embarking on a series of translations of key works by Eisenstein into English. On Disney, which was begun in 1940 but was never finished, was part of a series of essays Eistenstein wrote on masters of cinema; for Eisenstein, Walt Disney offered a way to think about how such impulses and animism and totemism survived in modern consciousness and art. This edition presents the original, unfinished essay along with material on Disney that Eisenstein worked on in subsequent years but never succeeded in integrating with the original.

Hasan Azizul Huq is known for his stories that bring a powerful social consciousness to bear on the lives of ordinary people in contemporary Bangladesh--but doing so with surprising twists to what we think of as the typical grounds of realistic fiction. The Agony of the Ghost gathers twelve remarkable stories from his large oeuvre that offer a sense of the range of his insights and approaches. In "Without Name or Lineage," a man returns home in search of his wife and son after the war, only to find them in ways both unexpected and expected. "The Sorcerer" finds a sorcerer dying without revealing his secrets to three brothers who had been trying to compel him to tell--and strange deaths follow. In " Throughout the Afternoon," a disarmingly simple story, a young boy awaits his grandfather's death. In all the stories, the lives of the most disadvantaged people in Bengali society are revealed in harrowing, unforgettable detail.

Bangladesh in 1971 showed vividly, and terribly, the deadly effects of war. Piles of corpses, torture cells, ash and destruction everywhere in the wake of the Pakistani army's attacks on Bengali people. Blue Venom and Forbidden Incense, two novellas by Bangladeshi writer Syed Shamsul Haq, bear bleak witness to the mindless violence and death of that period. Blue Venom tells of a middle-aged middle manager who is arrested and taken to a cell, where he is slowly tortured to death for being a namesake of a rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam. Forbidden Incense, meanwhile, tells of a woman's return to her paternal village after her husband was taken by the army. In the village, she meets a boy with a Muslim name whose entire family has been killed; as they attempt together to gather and bury scattered corpses, they, too, are caught by the killers.

This gripping novel brilliantly straddles the divide between thrillers and literature. Moinul Ahsan Saber here tells the story of Kobej Lethel, a ruthless soldier of fortune employed by a corrupt village chief. Lethel has never had a problem with the job before: he gets an assignment and handles it, even if that entails violence. But during Bangladesh's War of Independence, the chief sides with the Pakistani army as it carries out unspeakable atrocities. Suddenly, Lethel can no longer accept his role--he refuses, and rebels. But the transformation proves temporary: by the end of the war, he's back to his old ways, fighting for nothing more than a paycheck, on nothing more than an order. ​A powerful novel of war, history, and the deadly draw of violence, The Mercenary is an unforgettable look into the mind of a man who cannot escape the killing that has become his occupation.

Bengali writer Riza Rahman is the author of more than fifty novels, as well as countless short stories, set in Bangladesh and bringing to life the difficult, mostly forgotten lives of its poorest and most disadvantaged citizens. Letters of Blood is set in the often violent world of prostitution in Bangladesh. Rahman brings great sensitivity and insight to her chronicles of the lives of women trapped in that bleak world as they face the constant risk of physical abuse, disease, and pregnancy, while also all too often struggling with drug addiction. A powerful, unforgettable story, Letters of Blood shows readers a hard way of life, imbuing the stories of these women with unforgettable empathy and compassion.

One of the greatest ambassadors of Indian cinema on the global stage, Mrinal Sen has always seen his life and work as part of the social and political fabric of his time. Considered the enfant terrible of Indian cinema when he broke on the scene in the 1960s and '70s, Sen today is known for his films that capture moments of truth in the ordinary lives of ordinary people. His masterfully subtle and nuanced portraits of urban class tension, leftist politics, and the city of Calcutta itself--which Sen has called his El Dorado--set his cinema apart from that of his contemporaries. Montage encapsulates half a century of filmmaking. A first-of-its-kind anthology, it includes original writings--memoirs, letters, musings on politics, literature, theater, and cinema; critiques of contemporaries such as Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, as well as inspirations such as Charlie Chaplin and a host of international filmmakers, especially those from Latin America--and intensive interviews with scholars and critics. The result is a unique montage, revealing both the filmmaker and the man, mapping a unique creative landscape, and offering valuable insights into his acclaimed films.

Banaphool--which means wildflower--was the pen name of beloved Bengali writer Balaichand Mukhopadhyay (1899-1979). Wildfire brings together forty-five short pieces by Banaphool that are brilliantly representative of his uncompromising, multifaceted talent. Stark and short, often much too short, some even cryptic, these stories often leave much of the narrative to our imagination. Here we find an irresistible grab bag: utterly whimsical tales, several ghost stories, a few morality fables, some bitterly critical political satires, and a number of stories that examine the plight of those neglected in or rejected by society. The wildflower, Rabindranath Tagore had told the author, has no place in the porcelain vase, nor in the temple--it blossoms by the roadside, unnoticed, except by the creative vision. Identifying with it, Banaphool brings to our notice the worth of the marginal as well as the beauty of the mundane. The perfect introduction to a master writer, Wildfire will enchant and impress English-language readers new to Banaphool's work.

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay was one of the greatest writers in modern Bengali literature, best known for his autobiographical novel Pather Panchali, which, along with another of Bandyopadhyay's books, formed the basis for Satyajit Ray's classic Apu Trilogy. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Satyacharan is a young graduate in 1920s Calcutta, who, unable to find a job in the city, takes up the post of a 'manager' of a vast tract of forested land in neighboring Bihar. As he is increasingly enchanted and hypnotized by the exquisite beauty of nature, he is burdened with the painful task of clearing this land for cultivation. As ancient trees fall to the cultivator's axe, indigenous tribes--to whom the forest had been home for millennia--lose their ancient way of life. The promise of 'progress' and 'development' brings in streams of landless laborers, impoverished schoolmasters and starving boys from around the region, and the narrator chronicles in visionary prose the tale of destruction and dispossession that is the universal saga of man's struggle to bend nature to his will. Written in 1937-39, and now available in English translation, Aranyak is an unforgettable account of hard lives in a place of vanishing beauty, preserved here for all time by a brilliant artist.

A play that recounts the tragic death of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo Republic and an African nationalist hero.

Two men talk in Tokyo. One, a Belgian, is a diplomat. The other, Dutch, is a photographer. What, they wonder, is the real face of Japan? How can they get beyond the European idea of the nation and its people--with its exoticism--and see Japan as it truly is? The Belgian has an idea: he helps the photographer find a model to shoot in front of Mount Fuji as the "typical Japanese." The plan works better than either had imagined--in fact, it works too well: the photographer falls in love, neglects his friend and his career, and, feeling out of place and disillusioned in Holland, returns to Japan as often as possible over the next five years. A reunion is planned: the three will meet again at Mount Fuji. Time, it seems, has stood still . . . except the woman has a secret, and plans of her own. This moving novel of obsession and difference is the latest masterwork from one of the greatest European writers working today, redolent with the power of desire and alive to the limits of our understanding of others.