Fall 2025 Pageturners Books

Alfred Jarry is regarded as one of the founders of modern avant-garde theatre Dada, Surrealism, Pataphysics, Theatre of Cruelty, the Absurd all owe a debt to Jarry.” (Encore) This volume contains his three classic Ubu texts: Ubu Roi, Ubu Cocu and Ubu Enchaîné. Through the lucid translations of Connolly and Taylor, the reader comes to realize that the violent and loathsome Ubu is Jarry’s dark metaphor for man in the modern age. As Ubu himself said, We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well.”

Publisher: ‎Grove Press
Publication Date: ‎1994
Print Length: 160 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0802150103
ISBN-10: 0802150101

A specter is haunting us: fear. We are constantly confronted with apocalyptic scenarios: pandemics, world war, the climate catastrophe. Images of the end of the world and the end of human civilization are conjured up with ever greater urgency. Anxiously, we face a bleak future.  Preoccupied with crisis management, life becomes a matter of survival. 

But it is precisely at such moments of fear and despair that hope arises like a phoenix from the ashes.  Only hope can give us back a life that is more than mere survival. Fear isolates people and closes them off from one another; hope, by contrast, unites people and forms communities.  It opens up a meaningful horizon that re-invigorates and inspires life.  It nurtures fantasy and enables us to think about what is yet to come.  It makes action possible because it infuses our world with purpose and meaning.  Hope is the spring that liberates us from our collective despair and gives us a future.

In this short essay on hope, Byung-Chul Han gives us the perfect antidote to the climate of fear that pervades our world.

Publisher: ‎Polity
Publication Date: ‎2024
Print Length: ‎ 111 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1509565191
ISBN-10: 1509565191

From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.

One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung’s family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung’s powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

Publisher: ‎Harper
Publication Date: ‎2006
Print Length: ‎ 238 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0060856267
ISBN-10: 0060856262