Most Popular Books by Milena

Letters to Milena is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka''s letters to Milena Jesenská from 1920 to 1923

"Probe[s] deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes . . . A compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship" (Ruth Ozeki, award-winning author of A Tale for the Time Being). Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents'' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually, he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can''t bring himself to tell his wife, who shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred. "The best of the best from this year''s bountiful harvest of uncommonly strange offerings . . . Deeply original." — O, The Oprah Magazine "Exceptional . . . In today''s less-than-brave new world in which sincere human interaction is disappearing even as the numbers of so-called ''friends'' are multiplying, Necktie is a piercing reminder to acknowledge, nurture, and share our humanity." — BookDragon "The quiet reflection of this jewel of a novel is revelatory, redemptive and hypnotic until the last word." — Kirkus Reviews

Milena learned only after the war that her parents were deported from Czechoslovakia in July 1943 and died at Auschwitz. Milena''s guardian had been fond of Milena''s mother and preserved her old friend''s letters. These she gave to Milena, and they form the heart of this book.

Milena Jesenská, born in Prague in 1896, is most famous as one of Franz Kafka''s great loves. Although their relationship lasted only a short time, it won the attention of the literary world with the 1952 publication of Kafka''s letters to Milena. Her own letters did not survive. Later biographies showed her as a fascinating personality in her own right. In the Czech Republic, she is remembered as one of the most prominent journalists of the interwar period and as a brave one: in 1939 she was arrested for her work in the resistance after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, and died in Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944. It is estimated that Jesenská wrote well over 1,000 articles but only a handful have been translated into English. In this book her own writings provide a new perspective on her personality, as well as the changes in Central Europe between the two world wars as these were perceived by a woman of letters. The articles in this volume cover a wide range of topics, including her perceptions of Kafka, her understanding of social and cultural changes during this period, the threat of Nazism, and the plight of the Jews in the 1930s.

MY FATHER, THE PRINCE MY FATHER, THE PRINCE by Princess Milena Petrovi-Njego Thompson Copyright 1991, 2000

Stressing the interconnectedness of tourism and culture, this valuable handbook explores what tourism industry professionals need to know to succeed. Globalization, landmark attractions, and cultural heritage are among the topics discussed from both international and local perspectives. Each chapter also concludes with a comprehensive series of self-assessment questions and a proposed task that professionals and students can do to enrich their cultural learning experience.

Forty years old and suddenly motherless, Blanca is left shocked and rudderless by the death of the most important person in her life. To deal with her dizzying grief and confusion, Blanca turns to her dearest friends, her closest family, a change of scenery, and sex. Leaving Barcelona behind, she returns to her mother''s former home in Cadaques on the coast, accompanied by her two sons, two ex-husbands, and two best friends, with plans to meet her married lover. Haunted by both the past and the present, Blanca spends the summer in this impossibly beautiful place alongside those she loves most. In loss she learns to find resilience and hope, and what it means to live, truly and happily, on her own terms.

"Powerful . . . The vivid descriptions of the Sardinian landscape are a fitting complement to the heroine''s conflicted heart" ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review). As this compelling novel opens, a young unnamed woman reflects on the life of her bewitching, eccentric, and fiercely emotional grandmother, whose abiding search for love spans much of the twentieth century. In 1943, as American bombs fall on the city of Cagliari, she is thirty and considered an old maid, still living at home with her parents. But when the bombing ceases, and despite her protests, her father forces her to marry the first man to propose, an older widower she doesn''t love. After suffering several miscarriages, she is sent for treatment at a spa on the mainland, where she falls in love with an injured Italian army veteran. Back home, she gives birth to a son. She never reveals the affair to her husband—but decades later, she returns to the mainland and travels to her former lover''s hometown of Milan. Dressed in her finest coat and shoes, she wanders the streets in search of the elusive veteran . . . Set against a backdrop of rugged mountains and Italian villages lost in time, this international bestselling novel is a multigenerational family saga about love, lust, and country. "Agus''s descriptions of the everyday are as beautiful and haunting as her portrayal of life''s most dramatic episodes. Add an unexpected ending and the result is a graceful, powerful book." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

The authors of this volume seek to approach the May Fourth movement of 1919 from novel perspectives and contribute to the ongoing critique of the movement. The essays are centered on the intellectual and cultural/historical motivations and practices behind May Fourth discourse.

Debut novelist Banks crafts a sweeping tale of seduction, betrayal and war...(her) evocative prose is impressive throughout....Banks delivers an engaging tale of forgiveness and the strength of familial ties, even when those ties have been frayed almost to extinction. A spectacular novel of colonial China that should put this first-time author on the map. Kirkus Reviews Riding the Tiger In the turbulent years of the late 1930s on the China coast, Jack, a powerful foreign business tycoon, and Ana, a sensual and deep Russian jazz singermeet as strangers and part as lovers on the night Shanghai burns and falls to the Japanese. And then Ana simply vanishes. Besotted, Jack returns to Hong Kong determined to find Ana. He must hide his anguish from his fiance, Violet, a beautiful and paranoid Hong Kong socialite, as she begins her lavish wedding plans. As the Japanese army advances, a tragedy unfolds, encompassing the passion and destruction of humans clinging to their dreams as the only world they know changes around them. Half a century later, a young woman lives with a hidden shame. Jardine Woo is a modern Chinese girl who makes a living jumping out of party cakes, but under her cheerful exterior lies a secret: her mother was a Jane Doe, struck dead on a Hong Kong street nearly thirty years earlier, her infant daughter in her arms. Grown up now, Jardine has adjusted to life with no familyor so she thinks. Then, the extraordinary occurs, and her world will change in the blink of an eye. Algernon Worthing, an Englishman on his deathbed, claims not only that he knows her, but also that she is inextricably connected to a long-hidden crime that occurred before she was even born.

This book proposes a novel theory of self-determination; the Rule of the Great Powers. This book argues that traditional legal norms on self-determination have failed to explain and account for recent results of secessionist self-determination struggles. While secessionist groups like the East Timorese, the Kosovar Albanians and the South Sudanese have been successful in their quests for independent statehood, other similarly situated groups have been relegated to an at times violent existence within their mother states. Thus, Chechens still live without significant autonomy within Russia, and the South Ossetians and the Abkhaz have seen their conflicts frozen because of the peculiar geo-political equilibrium of power within the Caucuses region. The Rule of the Great Powers, which asserts that only those self-determination seeking entities which enjoy the support of the majority of the most powerful states (the Great Powers) will ultimately have their rights to self-determination fulfilled. The Great Powers, potent military, economic and political powerhouses such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, often dictate self-determination outcomes through their influence in global affairs. Issues of self-determination in the modern world can no longer be effectively resolved through the application of traditional legal rules; rather, resort must be had to novel theories, such as the Rule of the Great Powers. This book will be of particular interest to academics and students of law, political science and international relations.

The Zero Waste Shop Revolution by Milena Glimbovski - founder of Germany’s first zero waste shop – is the story of a woman who made a difference. In 2014, Milena Glimbovski had the bold idea to open a plastic-free supermarket "Original Unverpackt". At the time, the idea felt like a long shot. Many years, TED talks, successes, and failures later, Milena Glimbovski has arisen as an icon in the global zero waste movement. In her book, she talks of her experiences, the zero waste movement, and each recipe, trick, and life-hack she learned on her journey. The journey is inspiring and its telling is both sincere and scathingly funny. “There is a better way” ‘’If you’re currently sitting at home, in lockdown, tired of skipping through reruns of your favorite shows, and wondering how you can make a difference; do yourself a favor and read this book’’

Milena Michiko Flašar''s Mr Katō Plays Family is an eccentric second-lease-on-life novel for fans of A Man Called Ove and Beautiful World, Where Are You. Mr Katō—a curmudgeon and recent retiree—finds his only solace during his daily walks, where he wonders how his life went wrong and daydreams about getting a dog (which his wife won’t allow). During one of these walks, he is approached by a young woman. She calls herself Mie, and invites him to join her business Happy Family, where employees act as part-time relatives or acquaintances for clients in need, for whatever reason, if only for a day. At first reluctant, but then intrigued, he takes the job without telling his wife or adult children. Through the many roles he takes on, Mr Katō rediscovers the excitement and spontaneity of life, and re-examines his role in his own family. Using lessons learned with his “play families,” he strives to reconnect with his loved ones, to become the father and husband they deserve, and to live the life he’s always wanted. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Sevilla Mendoza family, long-time residents of the Sardinian coast, are not quite what you''d call `conventional''. At the heart of the family is a young teenage girl in the throes of a dangerous affair with a married man. With a nervous mother, a dreamer for a father and an obsessive piano player for a little brother, she finds herself living a double life: one as a good daughter, the other on an erotic journey that will change her forever. While the Shark is Sleeping is an enchanting story of the loss of innocence and the desire to be loved.

This book studies how religion influences the way people in Colombia remember a massacre of 79 civilians that occurred in a Catholic church in 2002. It analyses how strategies of memorialisation are part of religious peacebuilding initiatives that aim to resist and denounce crimes against human, ethnic, cultural and economic rights.

Can an individual act of suicide be socially significant, or does it present too many imponderable features? This book examines suicide like no other. Unconcerned with the individual dispositions that lead a person to commit such an act, Usurping Suicide focuses on the reception suicides have produced – their political, social and cultural implications. How does a particular act of suicide enable a collective significance to be attached to it? And what contextual circumstances predispose a politicised public response? From Mohamed Bouazizi''s self-immolation during regime change in Tunisia to Dimitris Christoulas''s public shooting at a time of increased political upheaval in Greece, and beyond – this remarkable work examines how the individuality of the act of suicide poses a disturbing symbolic conundrum for the dominant liberal order.

This book is a collective journal of the COVID-19 pandemic. With first-hand accounts of the pandemic as it unfolded, it explores the social and the political through the lens of the outbreak. Featuring contributors located in India, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Bulgaria, the book presents us with simultaneous multiple histories of our time. The volume documents the beginning of social distancing and lockdown measures adopted by countries around the world and analyses how these bore upon prevailing social conditions in specific locations. It presents the authors’ personal observations in a lucid conversational style as they reflect on themes such as the reorganization of political debates and issues, the experience of the marginalized, theodicy, government policy responses, and shifts into digital space under lockdown, all of these under an overarching narrative of the healthcare and economic crisis facing the world. A unique and engaging contribution, this book will be useful to students and researchers of sociology, public health, political economy, public policy, and comparative politics. It will also appeal to general readers interested in pandemic literature.