Product Description
While investigating the disappearance of Sri Dao, a Thai girl smuggled into Frankfurt for the flourishing sex trade, Kemal Kayankaya, the gritty P.I. with an attitude, uncovers an underworld of illegal aliens, corrupt cops, hustlers, and pimps. IP. Amazon.com Review
Proving that the classic Hammet/Chandler private eye plot canbe enriched in even the most exotic setting, Arjouni continues hispungent series about the Turkish-German detective KemalKayankaya. Like his creator, Kayankaya is the son of Turkish guestworkers, and he gets very little respect from his adopted country. Aclient, an "average schmuck from Frankfurt's West End" namedWeidenbusch, wants Kayankaya to find his missing Thai ladyfriend, whoseems to have been kidnapped by gangsters preying on illegalaliens. But Jakob Arjouni, who has learned from the masters how toturn a story inside out until we almost forgot where we started, hasplenty of twisty surprises in store. Arjouni's last Kayankaya mystery,And Still DrinkMore!, is also a good read. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hard-Boiled in Germany
Arjouni's hard-boiled Turkish PI Kemal Kayankaya returns for his third story, this one centered in the world of Germany's "guest workers" and illegal immigrants. Germany's racism is played up in thisone, as Kayankaya attempts to find a missing Thai woman. As usual, hiswise-assedness gets him into deeper trouble than he really needs. There isa subplot with his best friend, Slibusky, which is a little hard to follow,but for the most part it's the smart, quick, read I've come to expect fromArjouni. ... Read more

Product Description
Eccentric, intercultural, learned, and hip, these poems by a noted translator span continents, decades, and galaxies: "any news from Alpha Centauri / they have their own scene there pretty small pretty quiet / a fortnightly newsletter printed on green gas." Required reading for students and fans of the masters of modern poetry. "Treading the fine line between farce and pathos," this selection of the best work from the past thirty-five years by Anselm Hollo is an antidote to "a flowery earnestness that tries to convey an oh-aren't-we-all-in-this-together sort of feeling" prevalent in some contemporary poetry. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (4)

Interesting, if a bit strange
There are any number of private eye novelists around, and I'm one of those people who are always looking for something different. This book, a first novel about a man of Turkish descent who works in Frankfurt, Germany, as a private eye, is definitely different. It comes with the usual trappings of a detective novel, but it's a good story nontheless.

Kemal Kayankaya is Turkish by birth but was raised by Germans, and has little left of his heritage. He works in Frankfurt as a private eye, and is very stereotypical: he drinks too much, fools around with prostitutes, cracks wise when he would be wise to be serious, and is doggedly determined to solve his case. In the current installment, a Turkish man has been murdered and his wife thinks the police have no interest in solving the crime because of his race. Kayankaya dives into the case face first, getting into fistfights, having a car chase him, and getting teargassed, in between pistol-whipping various suspects.

This is a good book: I would recommend it. It *does* have the dated feel that a lot of European stuff has in contrast to American movies and television. You always think they're looking to Chandler rather than Robert B. Parker for their inspiration. Everything's *very* hardboiled. That being said, this is a fun book.

boiling water on his socks
It is ingeniously plotted and has an original background - the Turkish community in Germany. The information about that community was interesting. I don't know how accurate it was. They are apparently victims of severe discrimination. Kemal Kamankaya gets gratuitously insulted for his Turkish origin at all turns.
One problem is what the dust-jacket claims as a merit "the influence of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett is impossible to miss."You can say that again. It begins with the private eye waking with a hangover and breakfasting on coffee and beer. He then goes on to Sachertorte (which Philip Marlowe would not have done) and gets hired by a woman to investigate her husband's murders, which she thinks the police are ignoring because he was Turkish.
I had a problem with some of the dialog which must be due to the use of German slang. I'm not blaming the translator, Anselm Hollo. Colloquialisms are often just untranlatable, but translators should decide whether to tranlate into British or American demotic. People are addressed as "sister" "duckie" and "dearie." I imagine "God almighty, what a skinflint. What's lose for a paltry thirty marks" was something more idiomatic in German.Maybe some of the jokes are funnier in German or maybe they are well-known idioms. For example the character who "snapped his jaws and squinted as if I had poured boiling water on his socks." which made me think of about the only line of German poetry I remember from school "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten."

good "hartgesottene" detective story
As usual, I read this book in the original German, for one of my college courses, so I can't speak for the translation.The style in German is pretty simple, so most of the book should translate well.However, there is a lot of dialogue in some German dialects, and I don't know how that translates into English.

The story is pretty simple.Kemal Kayankaya is ethnically Turkish, but he was raised by a white German couple, so he doesn't feel like he belongs in the Turkish minority.He still looks Turkish, though, so he has problems fitting into German society.A Turkish woman, Ilter Hamul, comes to Kayankaya for help because he's Turkish.

Ilter's husband, Ahmed Hamul, was murdered, and the police aren't investigating.Kayankaya starts working on the case on his birthday (that's where the title comes from) and solves it within three days.The case becomes much more complicated than a simple murder, and involves drugs and corruption, and a very brief look at some of the troubles Turks face as a minority in Germany.That's kind of a bonus, because this is basically a simple, hardboiled detective novel.

Kayankaya is a good example of a hardboiled detective, so if you like hardboiled detectives, you'll like this book very much.Even if you don't, you'll probably enjoy it anyway, because it's well written.I usually don't like mysteries (besides Sherlock Holmes) but I enjoyed "Happy Birthday, Turk!"

Hard-Boiled in Frankfurt
If you're looking for a solid, hard-boiled with a twist, try this first book in a series about a Turkish PI living in Frankfurt. Kemal Kayankaya is a detective well-rooted in the genre's requirements, he's always drinking,often a wise-ass, gets his ass kicked a few times, and kicks a little ass,and underneath all the weariness and disgust, has a streak of compassion.Economical in length, the story about murdered immigrants, drugs, crookedcops, and the red-light district translates well from the original German. ... Read more

Product Description
This book offers the first collected works of the poetry of Piero Heliczer, an important underground poet, filmmaker, actor ("Flaming Creatures"), and musician (he was present in seminal jams which evolved into the Velvet Underground) and a small press publisher (Dead Language Press). Heliczer blends abstract or atmospheric images to create an almost religious notion of poetry and life. He was a crucial but obscure figure in the art underground of the Lower East Side 1960s.

Edited by Anselm Hollo and Gerard Malanga.
10 b&w.
6 x 8 in. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

At Last, Piero Gets Some Credit
I knew Piero Heliczer, and was shocked to hear of this death. He was a talented filmmaker, poet, writer, musician, and all around scenester back in the Warhol days, although he pretty much developed a circle of his own collaborators. If only his films were available on DVD!! In the meantime, as one of the forgotten founders of the 60s New York avantgarde movement, this book is a fitting tribute to Piero's poetic vision. Unlike some of this contemporaries, Piero wasn't particularly skillful at publicizing his works, or his contribution to experimental cinema / poetry history, which accounts in some measure for his near obscurity. But don't let that put you off; this is great work.It's nice to see that Gerard Malanga and Anselm Hollo have put this volume out. It's a beautiful job. Highly recommended.

American Poet
In the sort-of easy, surrealist, mannerism of Heliczer's work, we are simultaneously charmed and made aware of a dark undercurrent of thought that keeps us questioning his intention. His line breaks and diction do seem arbitrary at times, but his metaphors provide many interesting hooks that coalesce in the imagination long after the book has been set aside for other interests.
Ultimately, what we come away with is the idea that Heliczer has left us with a testament to his double vision, as he synthesizes late twentieth-century New York in the mindset of a medieval troubadour. Amid the sometimes sterile environment of contemporary poetry, this book provides a fruitful cathedral of new avenues for a whole new audience, giving Heliczer a rightful position among the visionary artists of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Simple but Beautiful
This collection of poems from three great russian poets is a wonderful little book. These poems are beautifully simple and cut right to the heart, they are what we care the most about, love and the quality of life. My favorite is the Poem For a Young Girl which is moving in its tuthfulness, and sencerity. It touches me especially because i can identify with this "young girl" and the narator's comments on revolution and believing are amazing. The whole book is filled in every page with the wonder of the written word.

PEACE and LOVE ... Read more

Product Description
"Braided River" consists of a major selection from forty years of Anselm Hollo's published work, as well as a selection from his most recent, uncollected work. It describes a 'braided' lifetime's endeavors to generate text that reflects a twentieth century existence in Europe, including England, and the United States of America. A native of Finland, Hollo has been anthologized and discussed as a 'British' poet in the Sixties and early Seventies, later on, as an 'American' one. A lifelong associate of the Beat, Black Mountain, New York (One and Two), and Language schools of U.S. American Poetry, Hollo hopes to convey to younger writers the amazing variety and strength of the writing (both poetry and prose) that has emerged from those quarters in the past fifty-odd years, and that has been strongly connected to the most active work created in the United Kingdom. This body of work represents the United States' true contribution to modern and postmodern world literature, and it exists, to this day, in glorious independence from what poet/essayist Charles Bernstein has called 'official verse culture.'Hollo's aim is to acquaint younger writers with this vigorous, multifarious, rhizomic tradition of U.S. American writing. He also hopes to demonstrate the multi- and cross-cultural connections that have influenced it, something he practices in his Boulder classes, examining twentieth century European poetry and French poetry in particular, and in his translation workshops. ... Read more

Product Description
Professor Martens is an elder statesman who has dutifully served the czarist regime. Near the end of his career and of his life, Martens is once again summoned to St. Petersberg. Traveling by train from his home in Parn, he recalls his life of public service only to realize the terrible personal price he has paid and that he has helped perpetuate a brutal regime in his Baltic homeland. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A rich novel about International Law in 19th Century Russia
My admiration for Jaan Kross first developed after reading The Czar's Madman a number of years ago. I then bought and started this later book, but found it required a degree of concentration that I could not give it. Now, several years later, I have finally picked it up and re-read it, and am very glad that I did.

This book is beautifully written, and for that alone it is well worth reading. However, if one is interested in the history of late 19th Century Russia, it is also a refreshing tale filled with interesting historical connections.

Jaan Kross has proved himslef to be a great literary figure, and one of the rare examples of Estonian fiction available in the West. His writing is not particularly well suited to all audiences and tastes, but hold great promise for those with a love for Russia and Baltic culture and history.

Not to be missed
Kross brings to bear an encyclopaedic knowledge of Estonian and Russian history upon this book about an aging man's journey through his own memories. The novel takes place, for the most part, on a train, but wefollow Professor Martens' digressions into the details of his own rise toinfluence, love life, internal arguments, and penetrating self-doubt.Martens is one of the most engaging characters one is likely to encounter.He is vain, but keeps it mostly to himself, and Machiavellian, although herarely admits it. The progress of the novel is ponderous. This is notin-flight reading material. But it is worth the time, effort, andattention. ... Read more

Product Description
Here are Anselm Hollo’s notes on rue Wilson Monday:

“When I was invited to spend five months in France, in an old hotellong frequented by artists and writers, I decided to write somethingthat would NOT be your typical ‘sabbatical poem’—thatfamiliar rumination, by the U.S. American academic (temporary)expatriate, ‘on’ the Mona Lisa, Baudelaire’s grave, or‘how different all this is from back home in Missoula Montana!’

“I believe that rue Wilson Monday turned out to be somethingpossibly more interesting: a hybrid of day book, informal sonnetsequence, and extended, ‘laminated’ essay-poem, with anaesthetic (dare I say lyricism?) perhaps better understood by ouryounger generation of poets than by their predecessors, thosemid-twentieth-century traveloguists. Works I found particularlyinspiring in my endeavor were Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets and EdwardDorn’s Abhorrences—books that will make me chuckle and weep tothe end of my days.

“The book received its title from French poet GuillaumeApollinaire’s 1913 poem ‘Lundi rue Christine’ (Monday rueChristine), a Cubist work composed almost entirely out of verbatimspeech from various conversations in a cafe.

“In rue Wilson Monday, similar conversations take place in andaround my head during that stay (August 1998/January 1999) at theHotel Chevillon, an artists’ and writers’ retreat in the smalltown of Grez-sur-Loing. Back in 1876, Robert Louis Stevenson came tovisit his cousin Robert at this hotel, whose present street address is114 rue Wilson, “La Rue Grande” (Main Street) back then.

“To invite the reader to participate in my often ellipticalconversations with these folks, I have provided footnotes, and thesetoo are an integral part of the poem and the conversation.” ... Read more

Product Description
This is a translation of a classic Finnish novel from 1983 about a culturally diverse region in Finland, Ostrobothnia. The novel was made into a successful film by Pewkka Parikka in 1988.

Translated into English by Anselm Hollo. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A modern classic of Finnish literature
The modern classic "A Day in Ostrobothnia" won Antti Tuuri his Nordic Prize for Literature in 1985 and was successfully made into a feature film by Pekka Parikka in 1988 (Plainlands, orig. Fi. Pohjanmaa). The novel depicts action and psychology with equal skill.

The novel offers an abundance of Finland's dramatic history, seamlessly embedded in local and idiosyncratic episodes. Some critics feel the novel places them in the middle of a Western movie; others compare Tuuri to Faulkner and Hemingway in the English-speaking world and in the Finnish tradition to Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers and Väinö Linna's Unknown Soldier and the trilogy Under the North Star.

Anselm Hollo, acclaimed translator of Finnish, renders Tuuri's humor, irony, and witticism beautifully in English. He has adopted a voice and tone that does Tuuri's exacting prose justice. A Day in Ostrobothnia serves up a captivating reading experience.
... Read more

Product Description
poetry w/drawings by Jane Dalrymple-Hollo ... Read more