A lyric novel about the play of grief, empathy, new and old love, and the quest to overcome blindness in human relations. Caught in the cross-currents of a fraught divorce and a new love, the death of her mother, and a global pandemic, a writer plunges into an obsession with the work of 1960s French philosopher Roland Barthes. Her struggles to make sense of his work and life—and of what can happen to a woman's settled life in a single harrowing year—result in an engrossing, funny, earthy, and innovative lyric work. The quest for authenticity in motherhood, sexuality, and tenancy on the earth and in the home, as well as the unusual lyric form, make the novel unified in spirit yet transdisciplinary in approach.

"Barthes's most popular and unusual performance as a writer is "A Lover's Discourse," a writing out of the discourse of love. This language primarily the complaints and reflections of the lover when alone, not exchanges of a lover with his or her partner is unfashionable. Thought it is spoken by millions of people, diffused in our popular romances and television programs as well as in serious literature, there is no institution that explores, maintains, modifies, judges, repeats, and otherwise assumes responsibility for this discourse . . . Writing out the figures of a neglected discourse, Barthes surprises us in "A Lover's Discourse" by making love, in its most absurd and sentimental forms, an object of interest." Jonathan Culler

In a study that will be of interest to all those concerned with the politics of gender, the history of sexuality, and the erotics of reading, Christopher Craft investigates questions fundamental to any history of present sexualities. How does the modern binary homosexual/heterosexual relate to earlier formulations like "sexual inversion" and "sodomy"? What part does literature play in the development of such categories, or in a culture's resistance to them? And what are the implications for the creation and maintenance of the presumed "natural" male heterosexual subject? How has male heterosexual subjectivity been established as a bulwark against the attractions of a homosexual desire that is repeatedly incited by the very culture that condemns it? Craft examines the discourses of nineteenth-century psychiatry and sexology; some of Freud's central writings; and Tennyson's In Memoriam, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Stoker's Dracula, and Lawrence's Women In Love. In a study that will be of interest to all those concerned with the politics of gender, the history of sexuality, and the erotics of reading, Christopher Craft investigates questions fundamental to any history of present sexualities. How does the modern binary homosexual/heterosexual relate to earlier formulations like "sexual inversion" and "sodomy"? What part does literature play in the development of such categories, or in a culture's resistance to them? And what are the implications for the creation and maintenance of the presumed "natural" male heterosexual subject? How has male heterosexual subjectivity been established as a bulwark against the attractions of a homosexual desire that is repeatedly incited by the very culture that condemns it? Craft examines the discourses of nineteenth-century psychiatry and sexology; some of Freud's central writings; and Tennyson's In Memoriam, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Stoker's Dracula, and Lawrence's Women In Love.

"When I say this book is a love story, I mean it is about things that cannot be gotten over-like this world, and some of the people in it." In 1819, the poet John Keats wrote six poems that would become known as the Great Odes. Some of them-"Ode to a Nightingale," "To Autumn"-are among the most celebrated poems in the English language. Anahid Nersessian here collects and elucidates each of the odes and offers a meditative, personal essay in response to each, revealing why these poems still have so much to say to us, especially in a time of ongoing political crisis. Her Keats is an unflinching antagonist of modern life-of capitalism, of the British Empire, of the destruction of the planet-as well as a passionate idealist for whom every poem is a love poem. The book emerges from Nersessian's lifelong attachment to Keats's poetry; but more, it "is a love story: between me and Keats, and not just Keats." Drawing on experiences from her own life, Nersessian celebrates Keats even as she grieves him and counts her own losses-and Nersessian, like Keats, has a passionate awareness of the reality of human suffering, but also a willingness to explore the possibility that the world, at least, could still be saved. Intimate and speculative, this brilliant mix of the poetic and the personal will find its home among the numerous fans of Keats's enduring work.

'A fragmentary meditation on the nature of love' Guardian A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together. Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

Design and develop high-performance, reusable, and maintainable applications using traditional and modern Julia patterns with this comprehensive guide Key FeaturesExplore useful design patterns along with object-oriented programming in Julia 1.0Implement macros and metaprogramming techniques to make your code faster, concise, and efficientDevelop the skills necessary to implement design patterns for creating robust and maintainable applicationsBook Description Design patterns are fundamental techniques for developing reusable and maintainable code. They provide a set of proven solutions that allow developers to solve problems in software development quickly. This book will demonstrate how to leverage design patterns with real-world applications. Starting with an overview of design patterns and best practices in application design, you'll learn about some of the most fundamental Julia features such as modules, data types, functions/interfaces, and metaprogramming. You'll then get to grips with the modern Julia design patterns for building large-scale applications with a focus on performance, reusability, robustness, and maintainability. The book also covers anti-patterns and how to avoid common mistakes and pitfalls in development. You'll see how traditional object-oriented patterns can be implemented differently and more effectively in Julia. Finally, you'll explore various use cases and examples, such as how expert Julia developers use design patterns in their open source packages. By the end of this Julia programming book, you'll have learned methods to improve software design, extensibility, and reusability, and be able to use design patterns efficiently to overcome common challenges in software development. What you will learnMaster the Julia language features that are key to developing large-scale software applicationsDiscover design patterns to improve overall application architecture and designDevelop reusable programs that are modular, extendable, performant, and easy to maintainWeigh up the pros and cons of using different design patterns for use casesExplore methods for transitioning from object-oriented programming to using equivalent or more advanced Julia techniquesWho this book is for This book is for beginner to intermediate-level Julia programmers who want to enhance their skills in designing and developing large-scale applications.

"This book presses us to look harder at closely held beliefs and to question deeply rooted premises and commitments with which we are perhaps too comfortable."---Richard W Garnett Noire Dame Law School --