Kouméalo ANATE ; préface Tanella BONI

Tchotcho EKUE ; Kokou TONGNEVI

Edem KODJO

Rafael Echeverría

Marx sostuvo que, a diferencia del socialismo utópico del pasado y de varias propuestas socialistas y anarquistas de su época, su contribución se caracterizaba por ser científica. Su aporte teórico cruzaba del pantanoso terreno doctrinario al territorio firme de la ciencia. El pensamiento marxiano, proclamaba el mismo Marx, tenía estatus científico. Ese era, según él, su rasgo distintivo fundamental. Ese mismo rasgo fue posteriormente uno de los grandes atractivos que para muchos teóricos parecía ofrecer el marxismo. Sin embargo, en aras del rigor, cabe preguntarse: ¿Cuáles son los criterios de cientificidad en los que se sustenta esta afirmación? ¿Cuál es el concepto de ciencia que propone Marx? ¿Se ciñe su contribución a dicho concepto?

Los ensayos reunidos en este libro, que pretenden dar respuesta a estos interrogantes cruciales, forman parte de la investigación que Echeverría realizara a fines de la década de los setenta y que sirvió de base para su tesis doctoral en la Universidad de Londres. Hoy, por primera vez, son presentados en un mismo volumen. Las conclusiones a las que arriba el autor no dejarán de sorprendernos y difícilmente nos dejarán indiferentes. Esperamos que sean capaces de suscitar reacciones y debates, de manera de avanzar en una evaluación que permita situar la obra del gran pensador que fue Marx en un lugar apropiado, más allá de la idolatría o de la demonización.

310 páginas - 22,50 dólares - ISBN: 9789563060843

Francisco Varela

“Lo que he querido desarrollar en estos ensayos es una comprensión del fenómeno de la vida en toda su gloria y majestad. Esto quiere decir evitar caer en la tentación dominante de partir del universo impersonal y muerto de la física para luego verse forzado, casi a contrapelo, a rescatar de ahí lo vivo, cuya especificidad es lo individual creador de significado. Gran parte de la ideas que aquí presento son precisamente el esfuerzo por romper ese sueño newtoniano, y por recentrar el fenómeno de la vida sobre sus propias bases, es decir, no como evento improbable que escapa a la muerte física, sino como ocurrencia central de la naturaleza que funda todo conocer y, en particular, el conocimiento del mundo físico. La conclusión a la que estos ensayos apuntan es que lo central es una circularidad inalienable entre el acto de conocer y vivir, entre el universo de lo vivo y el conocer como objeto de estudio. Dicho de otra manera, el fenómeno de la vida, como un todo, quiere decir, precisamente, que el acto de vivir precede a la explicación del origen de la vida sobre la Tierra. Que el conocer precede a la comprensión del conocer visto como mecanismo biológico y neuronal. Que la experiencia vivida es la base misma de la exploración científica de la conciencia.”

474 páginas - 31,75 dolares - ISBN: 9789563060812

Cristián Reyes

El proyecto denominado “Herramientas para la Formación de Profesores de Matemáticas”, tiene como objetivo contribuir al mejoramiento de la calidad de la formación pedagógica y disciplinaria de los estudiantes de pedagogía en matemática, a través de la incorporación de una Metodología de Estudio de Casos y el desarrollo de una colección de Monografías de contenidos matemáticos.

243 páginas - 25,02 dolares - ISBN: 9789563060782

Samad BEHRANGI - Translated to German by B. BINIAZ

Asad SEIF

Asaf SEIF (born in 1957 in Bandar Anzali) is an Iranian writer and researcher. He has been living in Europe since 1984 and is engaged in literary and cultural activities. He is a member of Iranian writers in exile association and was a member of its board of editors for one term. He has published numerous articles and studies in the field of social analysis and literary criticism. His latest study on “Love in fiction by Iranian writers in exile” is published by Forough Publications.

14 euros - ISBN: 978-3-943147-10-0

Aramesh DOSTDAR

Aramesh DOSTDAR (born in 1932 in Tehran) is an Iranian philosopher, writer, scholar and a former philosophy lecturer at Tehran University. He moved to Germany in 1958 to study philosophy in University of Bonn. From 1973 to 1980 he taught philosophy in the University of Tehran, until his dissmision during closure of universities by the Islamic government in the so called Cultural Revolution. Aramesh Dustdar who is currently living in Germany, is probably one of the few Iranian philosophers in the western meaning of the word. He is known for both complexity of the language but clarity and precision of ideas expressed. .
Four of his books have been published in Persian, 2 of them “Dark Luminosities” and “The Hidden Kinship” by Forough Publications.
He is uncompromising on controversial and sensitive issues such as incompatibility between Islam and democracy or the situation of intellectuals in the Muslim world, as, in his view, a real, Western type intellectual can not be tolerated in any Muslim society.
The murders of political and intellectual dissidents and opponents in the Islamic Republic of Iran are a “brilliant” example of that antagonism between Islam and democracy, he points out.

443 pages - 22 euros - ISBN: 978-3-943147-09-4

Michael SOMMER
Translated from German by Dr. Nabil Al Haffar

In this brief research, ancient civilization scholar Michel Sommer provides an exemplary model of a study in the science of history, which assimilated Assmann’s ideas about the theoretical field productively. Concerning the civilizational history of the region extending between the Mediterranean and the Tigris River, in the late Greek and Greek times, it is a sensitive and controversial research in fact, not because it explores the historical roots of the civilization region, which the Romans called Syria - and it is today implicitly and brutally involved in gang and proxy wars, in a form of “third world war”, according to the diagnosis of many observers - but because in his analysis of social models and religious systems in the late Greek and Greek era, he paints a new, humanistic picture of the different cultures of the empire and their intellectual status.
Michael Sommer has succeeded, by being realistic and exciting at the same time, in shedding lights on the past that shows every concrete detail as part of a tangled relationship, as it opens up horizons, that questions and doubts current “clichés”!

2020 - 224 pages - ISBN: 978- 9953 -583 -93-8

Boutros AL MAARI

This book offers pleasure to the eye as well as to the mind of the reader. Neither the texts are the basis for it nor the drawings, but rather they complement each other to produce an art book that we rarely find in our libraries. Al-Maari tries to be as simple as his paintings, simple in his texts and ideas that he calls stories and that are not without a poetic whiff or literary value. Damascus also is strongly present in his texts and he is not apologetic in showing his longing to his mother-city, so he celebrates it from a distance as if he is still walking in its streets and alleys like any young lover.
Through this book, Al-Maari tries to attract the ordinary audience - as he calls it – and lead them through the door of reading and savoring art from his simple yet sophisticated way of drawing and writing.
We hope that this experience will be a motivation for similar works by our writers and young artists, enriching our Arabic library.

2018 - 88 pages - ISBN: 978-9933-9242-6-3
Arabic

DOSTOEVKY
Translated from Russian by Adnan Jamous

Sheikh Hamad award for translation and international understanding for the achievement in Russian – Arabic translation
Doha – Qatar - 2018

This book includes a summary of rich experience, acquired by a creative person during his lifetime, with all the harsh tribulations and violent clashes, shameful slips, noble stances, and impressive creative achievements.
The writer monitored all the subtle aspects of the development of the “living life” and followed very carefully the reflection of its manifestations in the Russian and foreign press. Eyewitnesses state: that the writer used to review newspapers and magazines daily “until the last column of them”, and was keen to capture through the great diversity of important and secondary facts, its internal unity, its socio-psychological foundations, its spiritual-moral essence, and its philosophical-historical significance. It is interesting that some contemporary Russian intellectuals of Dostoyevsky considered that his genius was more evident in his “diaries” than in his “creative works”.
What gives this volume its added value, is that it is the first time that Dostoevsky is translated directly from Russian to Arabic.

2017 - 688 pages - ISBN: 978-9933-9242-1-8
Arabic

The Asian American Superhero Antholog - Edited by Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow, and Jerry Ma

Appealing to both comics fans and Asian Americans seeking to claim their place in American culture, Secret Identities makes brilliant use of the conventions of the superhero comic book to expose the real face of the Asian American experience.

This groundbreaking graphic anthology brings together leading Asian American creators in the comics industry—including Gene Yang (National Book Award finalist for American Born Chinese), Bernard Chang (Wonder Woman), Greg Pak (The Hulk), and Christine Norrie (Black Canary Wedding Special )—to craft original graphical short stories set in a compelling “shadow history” of our country: from the building of the railroads to the Japanese American internment, the Vietnam airlift, the murder of Vincent Chin, and the incarceration of Dr. Wen Ho Lee.

Entertaining and enlightening, Secret Identities offers whiz-bang action, searing satire, and thoughtful commentary from a community too often overlooked by the cultural mainstream, while showcasing a vivid cross-section of the talents whose imagination and creativity is driving the contemporary comics renaissance.

Jeff Yang was the founder of the pioneering Asian American periodical aMagazine. The author of three books and the biweekly column “Asian Pop” for the San Francisco Chronicle, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Parry Shen, best known for his lead role in the movie Better Luck Tomorrow, lives in Southern California. Keith Chow, an educator and comics journalist, lives in Maryland. Jerry Ma, the founder of the indie comics studio Epic Proportions, lives in New York City.

$21.95 / £15.99
Pub Date: Spring 2009
Format: paperback
Trim: 8 x 10, 192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59558-398-7

Baseball and the Rise (and Fall) of the American Way Abroad - by Robert Elias

Is the face of American baseball throughout the world that of goodwill ambassador or ugly American? Has baseball crafted its own image or instead been at the mercy of broader forces shaping our society and the globe? The Empire Strikes Out gives us the sweeping story of how baseball and America are intertwined in the export of “the American way.”

From the Civil War to George W. Bush and the Iraq War, we see baseball’s role in developing the American empire, first at home and then beyond our shores. And from Albert Spalding and baseball’s first World Tour to Bud Selig and the World Baseball Classic, we witness the globalization of America’s national pastime and baseball’s role in spreading the American dream. Besides describing baseball’s frequent and often surprising connections to America’s presence around the world, Elias assesses the effects of this relationship both on our foreign policies and on the sport itself and asks whether baseball can play a positive role or rather only reinforce America’s dominance around the globe. Like Franklin Foer in How Soccer Explains the World, Elias is driven by compelling stories, unusual events, and unique individuals. His seamless integration of original research and compelling analysis makes this a baseball book that’s about more than just sports.

Robert Elias teaches law and politics at the University of San Francisco. He’s the author and editor of eight books, most recently Baseball and the American Dream, and a baseball novel, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

$27.95 / £10.99
Pub Date: Fall 2009
Format: hardcover
Trim: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 416 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59558-195-2

The Purging of Muslim Spain - by Matthew Carr

In April 1609, King Philip III of Spain signed an edict denouncing the Muslim inhabitants of Spain as heretics, traitors, and apostates. Later that year, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory, on threat of death.

In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families and communities were obliged to abandon homes and villages where they had lived for generations, leaving their property in the hands of their Christian neighbors. In Aragon and Catalonia, Muslims were escorted by government commissioners who forced them to pay whenever they drank water from a river or took refuge in the shade.

For five years the expulsion continued to grind on, until an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory, nearly 5 percent of the total population. By 1614 Spain had successfully implemented what was then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history, and Muslim Spain had effectively ceased to exist.

Blood and Faith is celebrated journalist Matthew Carr’s riveting chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical backdrop of the history of Muslim Spain. Here is a remarkable window onto a little-known period in modern Europe—a rich and complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming odds.

Matthew Carr is a writer, broadcaster, and journalist and the author of The Infernal Machine (The New Press). He lives in Derbyshire, England.

$28.95
Pub Date: Fall 2009
Format: hardcover
Trim: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 368 pages
ISBN: 978-1-59558-361-1

Merlinda BOBIS

1987. The Philippine government fights a total war against insurgency. The village of Iraya is militarised. The days are violent and the nights heavy with fireflies in the river where the dead are dumped. With her twelve-metre hair, Estrella, the Fish-Hair Woman, trawls corpses from the water that tastes of lemon grass. She falls in love with the Australian Tony McIntyre who disappears in the conflict. Ten years later, his son travels to Manila to find his father.

How much can the heart accommodate? Death and love, an enemy and a sweetheart, war and an impassioned serenade, and more. Only four chambers but with infinite space like memory, where there is room even for those whom we do not love.

Awards
Winner: 2014 Juan C. Laya Prize for Best Novel in a Foreign Language
Winner: 2013 Most Underrated Book Award
Finalist: 2013 Davitt Awards. Best Crime and Mystery Books by Australian Women

“As I was reading my thoughts kept turning to Wide Sargasso Sea. It shares with Jean Rhys’s masterpiece more than just a threat to topple into tragedy, but Fish-Hair Woman takes a wider view. It is a love story, a murder mystery, a story about family and a story about the impact of the kind of self-perpetuating government corruption that so often befalls a country in political turmoil. It’s ambitious and sprawling, and things could quickly go wrong. Fortunately, they don’t. Bobis is a talented, passionate writer who is unafraid of exploring the storytelling potential of the novel.”
–Tristan Foster, Verity LA

Published by Spinifex, co-edition with Anvil Press, Philippines; Translation into Spanish by JC Sáez Editor, Chile (2017).

2011 - 232 x 154 mm - 303 pp - AUD$29.95 - ISBN: 9781876756970

khulud kHAMIS

Jewellery designer, Maisoon, wants an ordinary extraordinary life, which isn’t easy for a tradition-defying, activist, Palestinian citizen of Israel, who refuses to be crushed by the feeling that she is an unwelcome guest in the land of her ancestors. Frustrated by the apathy of her boyfriend Ziyad and her father Majid—who want her to get on with her life and forget those in the Occupied Territories—she lashes out, only to discover her father isn’t the man she thought he was.

Raised a Christian, in a relationship with a Muslim man and enamoured with a Palestinian woman from the Occupied Territories, Maisoon must decide her own path.

khulud khamis unpacks the multiple layers of culture, religion, sexuality, politics, feminism and nationalism in the hope of gathering the fragmented pieces of the past and reclaiming the lost contiguity of being Palestinian.
—Samah Sabawi, Palestinian playwright and commentator

... khulud khamis has the rare gift of speaking directly to a reader’s soul; this radiant novel shows just what can happen when women challenge the limits of their world. —Sharon Olinka, author of The Good City

khulud khamis is a Palestinian feminist writer, born to a Slovak mother and a Palestinian father. She holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Haifa and works in the field of social change organizations. She is a member of the feminist organization Isha L’Isha – Haifa Feminist Center. She lives in Haifa with her daughter. This is her first novel.

Published by Spinifex Press; co-edition with New Internationalist UK; Italian translation FILA37 (2015); Turkish translation Gulduniya (2017).

2015 - 192 pp - ISBN: 9781742199009
Fiction

Susan HAWTHORNE

In a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries.

It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published.

Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.

Bibliodiversity is a term invented by Chilean publishers in the 1990s as a way of envisioning a different kind of publishing. In this manifesto, Susan Hawthorne provides a scathing critique of the global publishing industry set against a visionary proposal for organic publishing. She looks at free speech and fair speech, at the environmental costs of mainstream publishing and at the promises and challenges of the move to digital.

Susan Hawthorne has worked in the book industry for more than 30 years as a writer, festival organiser, reviewer, editor, publisher and mentor. In 1991, she co-founded Spinifex Press with Renate Klein, after working for Penguin Australia for four years. She has written extensively about the industry, co-organised digital training for small and large publishers, taught Publishing Studies and Creative Writing, and has been an active member of peak bodies for publishers and writers. From 2011 to 2016, she was the English-language Coordinator for the International Alliance of Independent Publishers based in Paris. She is Adjunct Professor in the Writing Program at James Cook University and Publisher at Spinifex Press.

Bibliodiversity can be read as a manifesto for the defence and promotion of diversity in all its forms, but also as a master class in ethics.—JUAN CARLOS SÁEZ C., Director Gerente, JC Sáez Editor, Chile

This publication should be mandatory reading for anyone within the publishing industry.—MARY MASTERS, General Manager, Small Press Network, Australia

2014 - 104 pp - ISBN: 9781742199306
Non-Fiction

Rights: World. Published by Spinifex Press; Canadian rights sold to Fernwood Publishing; Translations into Arabic: December 2015, Tunisia, Éditions Med Ali, Arabic; Syria, Atlas Publishing, Arabic; Egypt, Elain Publishing, Arabic; Lebanon, Dar-Alfarabi and Arab Diffusion. French, 2016: France, Éditions Charles Léopold Mayer; Switzerland, éditions d’en bas; Benin, Éditions Ruisseaux d’Afrique; Mali, Éditions Jamana; Cameroun, Presses universitaires d’Afrique ; Spanish, 2017: Chile, JC Sáez; Mexico, Trilce Ediciones; Uruguay: Ediciones Trilce; also publishers in Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia. German, 2017, Verbrecher Verlag.

Fernando VELOSO, Sergio GUIMARÃES FERREIRA (orgs.)

Este importante livro mostra que é possível alcançar redução expressiva da violência armada, da insegurança e da criminalidade que aterrorizam a população de grandes áreas urbanas do Brasil. Seus autores mostram – com fatos e não vagos discursos – que isso não se trata de uma esperança insensata. Não apenas porque foi alcançado em Nova York, Boston, Bogotá e várias outras cidades do mundo, mas principalmente porque, no Brasil, reduziu-se a violência em lugares em que isso era mais improvável: no Jardim Ângela, bairro da periferia da cidade de São Paulo que chegou a ser considerado o bairro mais violento do mundo, e em Diadema, que deixou de ser em quatro anos a cidade mais violenta de São Paulo, passando a ocupar o 18º posto.

Se você não pretende se deixar levar pelo desencanto, pela frustração, pelo ceticismo e pela desesperança, leia este livro. Entenderá, com base em experiências reais, que é possível, sem ilusões voluntaristas, apelos messiânicos e excessos e abusos no exercício da autoridade do Estado, mostrar aos bandidos armados que essa é uma longa guerra de muitas batalhas, mas que, ao fim e ao cabo, eles não só não podem ganhá-la, como a estão perdendo – e a perderão.

2008 - 208 páginas - 16 x 23 cm - R$ 35,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-046-1

Lêdo IVO
Pinturas de Gonçalo IVO
Desenho de Gianguido BONFANTI

O poema narra a visão da infância guardada pela memória. Obra de perda e despedida, seus versos longos se desdobram como as ondas do mar alagoano. Música e imagem se fundem para exprimir uma reflexão sobre o sentido da existência, da qual as pinturas de Gonçalo Ivo não são comentário ou simples ilustração.

2008 - 64 páginas - 16,8 x 24,5 cm - R$ 38,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-040-9

Katia MACIEL (org.)

37 textos de teóricos e artistas que compõem, em suas inter-relações, amplo panorama sobre as novas situações de cinema, em que superfícies híbridas de luz e movimento se conjugam com a participação e a imersão dos espectadores. A introdução da organizadora define o título do livro.

2009 - 432 páginas - 16 x 23 cm - R$ 65,00 - ISBN: 978-85-7740-009-3