"The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag's bestselling 1992 novel, retold the love story of Lady Emma Hamilton and Lord Nelson with consummate power. In her enthralling new novel-once again based on a real story-Sontag shows us our own country on the cusp of modernity. In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalewska, Poland's greatest actress, travel to California to found a "utopian" commune. Maryna, who has renounced her career, is accompanied by her small son and husband; in her entourage is a rising young writer who is in love with her. The novel portrays a West that is still largely empty, where white settlers confront native Californians and Asian coolies. The image of America, and of California-as fantasy, as escape, as radical simplification-constantly meets a more complex reality. The commune fails and most of the emigres go home, but Maryna stays and triumphs on the American stage. In America is a big, juicy, surprising book-about a woman's search for self-transformation, about the f

A historical novel follows the efforts of a group of Poles, led by a famous actress, to build a utopian commune in California in the 1870s.

Edited by Sontag's son Davie Rieff, this volume presents the full texts of four of her essential books: Against interpretation(1966), with its groundbreaking essays on camp, science-fiction, and the art of film; Styles of radical will (1969), On photography (1977), and Illness as metaphor (1978). Also here as a special feature are six previously uncollected essays including studies of William S. Burroughs and the painter Francis Bacon and a series of reflections on beauty, aging, and the emerging feminist movement. --Adapted from publisher description.

Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography. In "The aesthetics of Silence," Sontag examines how silence mediates the role of art as a form of spirituality in an increasingly secular culture. "The Pornographic Imagination" attempts to define and understand the genre of pornography. "What's Happening in America" muses on the state of the country in 1966 when the essay was written, discussing history, politics, and consumerism. Other essays in Syles of Radical Will are - "Thinking Against Oneself: Reflections on Cioran," "Theatre and Film," "Bergman's Persona," "Godard," and "Trip to Hanoi."

Maria Irene Fornes: Plays is a collection of four plays by one of the most distinguished playwrights in America. Fornes - a playwright, director, translator, and lyricist - is the author of more than two dozen works for the stage, among them the celebrated Fefu and Her Friends and the musical Promenade. This volume, her second of collected plays, includes the recent Mud, The Danube, Sarita, and The Conduct of Life. In 1982 she was given an Obie Award, one of six she has received over the years, in recognition of her Sustained Achievement in the Theatre. -- from back cover.