"The first epistle of the Journey to Virginland trilogy, Catena is Dog's maiden foray into his ancestral country ..."--Jacket.

Brimming with black humor and piercing satire, at turns picaresque and epistolary, "Journey to Virginland" explores the breakneck paradigm shifts of the 21st century, navigating through the morass with the guidance of Dog, the novel's loutish yet wise antihero. Through a devilishly iconoclastic story line, Dog parses the key cultural and religious failures that have made for a world held hostage by hyper-capitalism, consumerism, and post-9/11 realpolitik on the one hand, and an ominous resurgence of nationalism and religious extremism on the other. Yet far from basking in a prospect of doom, Dog embarks on an impassioned quest for identity and meaning, ultimately proposing an exuberant, decidedly life-affirming vision of human transformation. With its vibrant style, kaleidoscopic yet highly calibrated thematic diversity, and, ultimately, unfettered sense of humanity, "Journey to Virginland" establishes itself as a groundbreaking literary enterprise and a true original.

With the publication in English in 1930 of Civilization and its Discontents and its thesis that instinct – and, ultimately: nature – had been and must be forever subordinated in order that civilization might thrive and endure, Freud contributed what some contemporaries saw to the central debate of his era – a debate which had long preoccupied both official American pundits and the American populace at large. At the beginning of the new Millennium, evidence abounds that an American debate still rages over the meaning of “nature,” the rightful weight of instinct, and the status of civilization. The Millennium itself has appeared in popular and official discourses as an appropriate marker of an age in which nature is close to the edge of radical extinction and has also become more and more unreliable as a paradigm for representation and debate. At the same time, the contemporary tailoring of nature to postmodern needs and expectations inevitably reveals the conceptual difficulty of any possible, simple opposition between nature and culture as if they were clearly distinguishable domains. If nature, then, can clearly be seen as a discursive concept, it may also be a timeless concept insofar that it has been shaped, created, and used at all times. Every epoch, age and era had “its own nature,” with myth, history and ideology as its dominant shaping forces. From the Frontier to Cyberia, nature has been suffering the “agony of the real,” resurfacing in discursive strategies and demonstrating a powerful impact on American society, culture and self-definition. The essays in this collection “speak critically of the natural” and examine the American debate in the many guises it has assumed over the last century within the context of major critical approaches, psychoanalytical concepts, and postmodern theorizing.

The spell that the West has always exercised on the American people had its most intense impact on American literature and thought during the nineteenth century. Smith shows, with vast comprehension, the influence of the nineteenth-century West in all its variety and strength, in special relation to social, economic, cultural, and political forces. He traces the myths and symbols of the Westward movement such as the general notion of a Westward-moving Course of Empire, the Wild Western hero, the virtuous yeoman-farmer--in such varied nineteenth-century writings as Leaves of Grass, the great corpus of Dime Novels, and most notably, Frederick Jackson Turner's The Frontier in American History. Moreover, he synthesizesthe imaginative expression of Westernmyths and symbols in literature withtheir role in contemporary politics,economics, and society, embodiedin such forms as the idea of ManifestDestiny, the conflict in the Americanmind between idealizations of primitivism on the one hand and of progressand civilization on the other, theHomestead Act of 1862, and public-land policy after the Civil War. The myths of the American Westthat found their expression in nineteenth-century words and deeds remaina part of every American's heritage,and Smith, with his insightinto their power and significance,makes possible a critical appreciation of that heritage.

The main purpose of writing this book is to share my lifelong experiences gained throughout the years covering major topics including the environment and climate change that I felt are important to share with my readers. The topics depict my accumulated knowledge and skills and the challenges I faced indicating how each of us go through ups and downs in life. Much of the discussion focuses on my exposure to tough and successful times in Ethiopia, Sweden and in 30 other countries around the globe. The second purpose of preparing this book is to inform my readers about the Ethio-Swedish historical links and current relationships and to answer a primary question that comes to mind, and that is: 'what can we learn from Sweden' (how Sweden handle environment and adopt climate change) as well as to thank the Swedish people and government for their kind provision of scholarships and funds for my higher education, research, community development and overall well-being throughout the years I have lived there. I am hoping that my life's autobiography covered in this book will inspire communities and especially young people to be able to walk on the right path and achieve their dreams in life. Besides, I hope it will enlighten my readers about the causes and effects of the on-going human activities on the natural, biophysical and human environments in Ethiopia, Sweden and other countries around the globe.