This week’s book giveaway is The Paradox of Love by Pascal Bruckner, translated by Steven Rendall and with an afterword by Richard Golsan.

The sexual revolution is justly celebrated for the freedoms it brought—birth control, the decriminalization of abortion, the liberalization of divorce, greater equality between the sexes, women’s massive entry into the workforce, and more tolerance of homosexuality. But as Pascal Bruckner, one of France’s leading writers, argues in this lively and provocative reflection on the contradictions of modern love, our new freedoms have also brought new burdens and rules—without, however, wiping out the old rules, emotions, desires, and arrangements: the couple, marriage, jealousy, the demand for fidelity, the war between constancy and inconstancy. It is no wonder that love, sex, and relationships today are so confusing, so difficult, and so paradoxical.

Drawing on history, politics, psychology, literature, pop culture, and current events, this book—a best seller in France—exposes and dissects these paradoxes. With his customary brilliance and wit, Bruckner traces the roots of sexual liberation back to the Enlightenment in order to explain love’s supreme paradox, epitomized by the 1960s oxymoron of “free love”: the tension between freedom, which separates, and love, which attaches. Ashamed that our sex lives fail to live up to such liberated ideals, we have traded neuroses of repression for neuroses of inadequacy, and we overcompensate: “Our parents lied about their morality,” Bruckner writes, but “we lie about our immorality.”

Congratulations to Margaret Cohen, whose book The Novel and the Sea has won the 2012 Barbara and George Perkins Prize from The International Society for the Study of Narrative. The prize is awarded to the book making the most significant contribution to the study of narrative in a given year.

“This book is bracing and exciting, an adventure in its own right. It skillfully makes its compelling case about the role played by maritime craft in the history of the adventure novel, and about the role played by adventure in the literary realm more generally. It will provoke thought, argument, and revision of some long-held truisms, especially about the importance of the novel of manners, and of psychological realism in prose forms of the modern West.”–John Plotz, Brandeis University

We invite you to check out our new 2012 literature catalog at: http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/lit12.pdf

You will find new books such as The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Michelangelo, Enigmas of Identity, Whatever Gets You through the Night, and more. New paperbacks are also available—great titles such as Allegory, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, and Not for Profit.

The MLA meeting is going on now in Seattle. We’re there at booth no. 408. Stop by to say hello and browse new books.

This week’s book giveaway is On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling by Michael Dirda.

A passionate lifelong fan of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars—the most famous and romantic of all Sherlockian groups. Combining memoir and appreciation, On Conan Doyle is a highly engaging personal introduction to Holmes’s creator, as well as a rare insider’s account of the curiously delightful activities and playful scholarship of The Baker Street Irregulars.

Because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote far more than the mysteries involving Holmes, this book also introduces readers to the author’s lesser-known but fascinating writings in an astounding range of other genres. A prolific professional writer, Conan Doyle was among the most important Victorian masters of the supernatural short story, an early practitioner of science fiction, a major exponent of historical fiction, a charming essayist and memoirist, and an outspoken public figure who attacked racial injustice in the Congo, campaigned for more liberal divorce laws, and defended wrongly convicted prisoners. He also wrote novels about both domestic life and contemporary events (including one set in the Middle East during an Islamic uprising), as well as a history of World War I, and, in his final years, controversial tracts in defense of spiritualism.

On Conan Doyle describes all of these achievements and activities, uniquely combining skillful criticism with the story of Dirda’s deep and enduring affection for Conan Doyle and his work. This is a book for everyone who already loves Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the world of 221B Baker Street, or for anyone who would like to know more about them, but it is also a much-needed celebration of Arthur Conan Doyle’s genius for every kind of storytelling.

Edwidge Danticat’s collection of essays, Create Dangerously, originally published in cloth by PUP and now in paperback by Vintage, has been selected for the One Book, One Philadelphia reading program. What this means is that the Free Library of Philadelphia is encouraging all Philadelphians (Is that what they are called?) to read the book and will sponsor a series of events — readings, lectures, film screenings — to foster a dialogue around the issues in the book.

Create Dangerously is a beautiful, moving book that presents Edwidge’s thoughts on what it means to be a writer; what it means to be an immigrant writer; and what it means to be an immigrant writer, writing outside of your homeland. I love the title of this article announcing the selection: “Creating dangerously, reading collectively”, as it really captures one of the themes in the book: an author may write at their own peril in order to bring important ideas about human rights to a global audience.

While I know many will pick up the paperback for economic reasons, I hope some people will opt to purchase the hardback edition. It is such an elegant and provocative package — with a printed case and a little slip of a dust jacket that is hand-printed — that it would be a lovely addition to anyone’s personal library (especially since it can be found on some online retailers for a mere $3-$4 more than the paperback!).

Albemarle County School Board in Virgina voted to remove Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet from sixth-grade reading lists because of its objectionable portrayal of Mormonism. Parents cited that the book would be an inaccurate introduction to American religions. This article from USA Today even attempts to pick out some of the offending passages of the novel.

A Study in Scarlet was first published in 1887. It was not until 1923 that Sir Arthur actually visited Utah (and was presumably able to eat some humble pie during his audience with church leaders.)

Want to learn more about A Study in Scarlet and see how the rest of the Holmes and Conan Doyle canon have stood the test of time? Acclaimed critic and Washington Post writer Michael Dirda tackles the frequently misled, often misunderstood Conan Doyle in his forthcoming book, On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling coming this November. On Conan Doyle is the third entry in Princeton’s Writers on Writers Series.

Mormons and Sherlock Holmes are – independently – making a splash this year in pop culture. “The Book of Mormon” took home nine Tony awards in 2011, including Best Musical. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law return in the film “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” December 16 and the first sanctioned Holmes sequel, House of Silk, is forthcoming from mystery writer Anthony Horowitz.

Thanks to our friends at New York Magazine and The Atlantic for posting the story.

This weekend, Scheherazade, a film by Yousry Nasrallah, will open at the Riverside Theater in New York. Though this film is set in modern Egypt, it relies on the very old art of storytelling and conjures the persona of the queen of this art form — Scheherazade. According to this review in Variety, the film uses the narrated stories of several women to probe larger questions about women’s oppression and sexuality in politically repressive states.

This film will be shown in limited release which means only a lucky few in NY and LA get to see it for now. So, for those of you interested in the culture of story-telling and Scheherazade, we recommend picking up a copy of Whatever Gets You through the Night by Andrei Codrescu. Hailed by critics as an imaginative re-telling of portions of the original Arabian Nights, it also probes the culture of story-telling in ancient and contemporary times. Read a sample chapter here.

Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously, returns to Haiti and finds resilience and regeneration: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/07/edwidge-danticat-reflects-on-port-au-prince.html

Built for 200,000 people yet home to more than 2 million, Port-au-Prince is a city that constantly reminds you of the obvious, as though you were a 6-year-old. No, not everything is broken. And no, not all the people are dead. It is a city that everything—political upheaval, fires, hurricanes, the earthquake—has conspired to destroy, yet still it carries on. The still-leaning houses and the rubble that has begun to grow weeds, the tent camps that have become micro-cities of their own, all bear their own testimony to a city that should have ground to a halt long ago, yet continues to persevere.

Create Dangerously will soon be published in paperback, but the cloth edition with its exclusive cover design and half jacket is still available everywhere. One of my favorite features of this book is that the half jacket can be shifted up and down along the spine, revealing different portions of the artwork beneath. It subtly changes the cover each time I pick it up. Check it out for yourself!

Chronicle that is. In her San Francisco Chronicle review of Andrei Codrescu’s latest book, Jenny Hendrix writes, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night nominally includes only one of the 1,001 stories that, told over several nights by Sheherezade, keep the king curious enough to spare her. But Codrescu’s is not so much a retelling as a treatise on or demonstration of the Nights’ mechanics; in his hands, this story becomes almost infinite.”

She continues to praise Codrescu’s writing and story-telling, saying, “Like Borges before him, Codrescu shows the borders between fiction and truth to be ragged, if not nonexistent. A kind of linguistic alchemy occurs between word and flesh….Although much of the book is dedicated to, and may be read as, a serious investigation of storytelling and its place in our future (our own iSheherezade), Codrescu never loses sight of the fact that these stories are meant to be ‘entertainments’ above all.”

Read the complete review here.

Check out these great interviews of Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously, at the New York Public Library’s LIVE event.

(And pick up a copy of the book, too!)

From Our Man In Boston:

You can thank academic presses for many things including publishing books not necessarily academic. In this case, I am pleased to point out that Princeton University Press has done the world of literature a good turn, publishing poet, Road Scholar and Exquisite Corpse editor Andrei Codrescru’s Whatever Gets You through the Night: A Story of Sheherezade and the Arabian Entertainments.

If you were lucky enough to be one of the 273 people in the audience last week at the Kansas City Public Library you heard Andrei Codrescu speak about his new book Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which just made the Los Angeles Times’s prestigious Summer Reading list!). I just ran across this fun article at the KC Library’s blog which describes Andrei’s book and also lists other popular re-tellings of famous stories. Head over there to see if your favorite makes their list and if not, leave a note in the comments section.

Author and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu discussed his new book Whatever Gets You Through the Night at the Plaza Branch on June 2, 2011.