A Severed Head

A Severed Head
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 199
Release: 1976-11-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495839

A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.

The Severed Head

The Severed Head
Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0231157207

Renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection) offers an extended consideration of artistic figurations of the severed head, the organizing theme to an exhibition she coordinated at the Louvre in 1998. Though she follows a single historical trajectory, moving from Paleolithic skull cults to antique Greek sculpture to the Surrealist drawings, Kristeva eschews the disciplinary constraints of art history, instead employing psychoanalysis to explore the intertwined problems of representation and mortality posed by the severed head. For Kristeva, the capacity to figure the life of the mind first requires a confrontation with this horrific object that stands at the boundary between life and death, registering not only the loss of corporeal form but also subjective interiority. Though this book does not engage with recent images of decapitation, it is not without contemporary political-cultural import; for Kristeva, these cruel artistic figurations offer us the capacity to contemplate the sacred within a technology-driven contemporary visual culture. Verdict While a challenging text, this beautifully written and richly layered meditation on mortality and representation will undoubtedly appeal to those readers interested in semiotic and psychoanalytically informed readings of art.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr.(c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Severed

Severed
Author: Frances Larson
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847088015

Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.

Tales of a Severed Head

Tales of a Severed Head
Author: Rachida Madani
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2012-10-09
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0300176287

A brilliant retelling of the classic Arab tale of Scheherazade, set in the present day

The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue

The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue
Author: Patricia Palmer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107041848

This book explores actual and literary depictions of beheadings in sixteenth-century Ireland and addresses how violence is transcribed into art.

The Beginning of Everything

The Beginning of Everything
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062217151

Robyn Schneider's The Beginning of Everything is a witty and heart-wrenching teen novel that will appeal to fans of books by John Green and Ned Vizzini, novels such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and classics like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Varsity tennis captain Ezra Faulkner was supposed to be homecoming king, but that was before—before his girlfriend cheated on him, before a car accident shattered his leg, and before he fell in love with unpredictable new girl Cassidy Thorpe. As Kirkus said in a starred review, "Schneider takes familiar stereotypes and infuses them with plenty of depth. Here are teens who could easily trade barbs and double entendres with the characters that fill John Green's novels." Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, The Beginning of Everything is a refreshing contemporary twist on the classic coming-of-age novel—a heart-wrenching story about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

The Philosopher's Pupil

The Philosopher's Pupil
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2010-07-20
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1453200878

A New York TimesNotable Book: An “ingeniously plotted” tale of tragedy, comedy, and small-town gossip (The New York Times Book Review). The quiet English town of Ennistone is known for its peaceful, relaxing spa—a haven of restoration, rejuvenation, and calm. Until the night George McCaffrey’s car plunges into the cold waters of the canal, carrying with it his wife, Stella. And until the village’s most celebrated son, famed philosopher John Robert Rozanov, returns home, upending the lives of everyone with whom he comes in contact. Stirred up by talk of murder and morality, obsession and lust, religion and righteousness, the residents of Ennistone begin to spiral out of control, searching for answers and redemption for the sins of their peers—and discovering more about themselves than they ever wanted to know. With breakneck plotting and intricately flawed characters, The Philosopher’s Pupil is a darkly humorous novel from the Man Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea, The Sea, masterfully exploring the human condition and the inherent blend of comedy and tragedy therein.

Hotel Brasil

Hotel Brasil
Author: Frei Betto
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1908524278

Rio de Janeiro. A family hotel whose clients reflect Brazilian society: multi-racial, with starkly contrasting backgrounds, and destitute. The first victim is found decapitated in bed, the head lying on the floor of his room. An eerie Mona Lisa smile on the victim's face and no evidence of a struggle indicate a murderer received as a friend. Other hotel guests are eventually killed, all decapitated. A classical crime novel in one way but really an opportunity for the author to describe Brazilian society, especially those left behind.