Romanul unei revoluții fără început și sfârșit. Două planuri, unul din secolul al XIX-lea, celălalt din prezentul secolului al XXI-lea, se împletesc în niște circumstanțe extra-ordinare. Emin și Max Murgescu, zis Macu, un soi de afacerist obsedat de Eminescu, se caută continuu prin timp și spațiu. Iar strașnica jurnalistă Louise e centrul de greutate în această tatonare fără sfârșit. Coincidențele răsar parcă de nicăieri, contextele istorice și socio-politice capătă profunzime, crizele și corupțiile se adâncesc, măștile cad încet-încet, iar solomonarul nu face decât să strângă menghina și mai puternic. Solomonarul, noul roman al lui Florin Chirculescu, o carte-eveniment, pune reflectorul pe celălalt Eminescu, reușind să-l umanizeze așa cum niciun text nu a făcut-o până acum. „În literatura română de azi, Solomonarul este un obiect fascinant. Roman istoric și roman al actualității, roman despre Eminescu și roman despre zonele de turbulență ale lumii contemporane, roman despre obsesiile naționale și roman gândit la o scară planetară, roman plin de idei și roman traversat de aventuri și conspirații, roman realist și roman fantastic, roman cu o arhitectură riguroasă și roman deschis explorărilor ca o cutie misterioasă, Solomonarul activează portaluri pe care literatura română nu le-a cunoscut până la Florin Chirculescu.“ Mihai Iovănel „După Greva păcătoșilor, Florin Chirculescu revine cu un roman remarcabil din toate punctele de vedere: Solomonarul. Documentarea minuțioasă și erudiția se contopesc cu ficțiunea, realitățile particulare se toarnă într-o formă universală, fie că sunt surprinse în prezentul foarte apropiat, în trecutul cețos ori în viitorul glamorous, viziunea realistă se declină în sute de nuanțe, dar și în inserții fantastice, științifice, culturale, pop ș.a.m.d., stilul inconfundabil al scriitorului – frazarea rafinată, decupajul, oralitatea, interferențele, naturalețea și ușurința cu care jonglează cu toate acestea – se imprimă pe fiecare pagină. Grosso modo, Solomonarul are o complexitate narativă năucitoare. Deschide multe uși. Iar după acest tur de forță, cititorul și-l va aminti pe Eminescu altfel. Și nu doar pe el.“ Eli Bădică coordonatoarea colecției n’autor

In Earthsong, the trilogy’s long-awaited finale, the Aliens have abandoned Earth, taking their technologies with them and plunging the planet into economic and ecological disaster. Devastated, the women decide to take their failed Láadan project back underground, desperately seeking guidance from their long-dead foremothers. The women discover an ingenious solution to the problem of human violence and seek to spread their knowledge—but has their final solution come too late?

Pahtal and his brother, Imul, have scraped a life together in pre-civil war Guatemala by finding and selling ancient relics from the Maya ruins. Their latest expedition uncovers a potentially life-changing find, a valuable tablet, etched with glyphs, hidden within the mouth of a sculpture of Nohochacyum, a god of creation – and destruction. But when they attempt to retrieve their prize, Imul is crushed beneath the stone carving. Overcome with grief and guilt, Pahtal blames his state of mind for the uncanny events he begins to experience. From an eccentric new lodger, to kitchen objects that move on their own, to encountering demons and creatures straight out of the ancient stories, Pahtal soon realizes that releasing the tablet has released the gods etched into its surface. Worse, two of the gods are determined to continue their ongoing war. A war prophesied to bring about an end of times. Whatever the cost, Pahtal must find a way to imprison the gods once more… before the world burns.

In Earthsong, the trilogy’s long-awaited finale, the Aliens have abandoned Earth, taking their technologies with them and plunging the planet into economic and ecological disaster. Devastated, the women decide to take their failed Láadan project back underground, desperately seeking guidance from their long-dead foremothers. The women discover an ingenious solution to the problem of human violence and seek to spread their knowledge—but has their final solution come too late?

Under what conditions could ecology, instead of being one cluster of movements among others, organise politics around an agenda and a set of beliefs? Can ecology aspire to define the political horizon in the way that liberalism, socialism, conservatism and other political ideologies have done at various times and places? What can ecology learn from history about how new political movements emerge, and how they win the struggle for ideas long before they translate their ideas into parties and elections? In this short text, consisting of seventy-six talking points, Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz argue that if the ecological movement is to gain ideological consistency and autonomy it must offer a political narrative that recognises, embraces and effectively represents its project in terms of social conflict. Political ecology must accept that it brings along division. It must provide a convincing cartography of the conflicts it generates and, based on this, it must try to define a common horizon of collective action. In order to represent and describe these conflicts, Latour and Schultz propose to reuse the old notions of ‘class’ and ‘class struggle’, albeit infused with a new meaning in line with the ecological concerns of our New Climate Regime. Advancing the idea of a new ecological class, assembled by its collective interests in fighting the logic of production and safeguarding our planet’s conditions of habitability, they how can a proud and self-aware ecological class emerge and take effective action to shape our collective future?

Under what conditions could ecology, instead of being one cluster of movements among others, organise politics around an agenda and a set of beliefs? Can ecology aspire to define the political horizon in the way that liberalism, socialism, conservatism and other political ideologies have done at various times and places? What can ecology learn from history about how new political movements emerge, and how they win the struggle for ideas long before they translate their ideas into parties and elections? In this short text, consisting of seventy-six talking points, Bruno Latour and Nikolaj Schultz argue that if the ecological movement is to gain ideological consistency and autonomy it must offer a political narrative that recognises, embraces and effectively represents its project in terms of social conflict. Political ecology must accept that it brings along division. It must provide a convincing cartography of the conflicts it generates and, based on this, it must try to define a common horizon of collective action. In order to represent and describe these conflicts, Latour and Schultz propose to reuse the old notions of ‘class’ and ‘class struggle’, albeit infused with a new meaning in line with the ecological concerns of our New Climate Regime. Advancing the idea of a new ecological class, assembled by its collective interests in fighting the logic of production and safeguarding our planet’s conditions of habitability, they how can a proud and self-aware ecological class emerge and take effective action to shape our collective future?

Un roman despre trauma căutărilor sentimentale și identitare. Un scriitor pe la șaizeci de ani, evreu de origine, părăsit de soție, încearcă să-și pună ordine în viață și gânduri. Îl urmărim timp de aproape doi ani, perioadă în care asistă și la degradarea tatălui său. Peste problemele personale, se suprapune un impas creativ, pe care încearcă să-l depășească ficționalizându-și traumele, iubirile, eșecurile, obsesiile și dilemele etice. Pe acestea – și multe altele – le topește într-un mozaic romanesc al cărui protagonist, Marcel Cohn, e compus din instantanee surprinse din copilărie până la senectute, iar poveștile lui ne sunt dăruite spre lectură tot nouă, cititorilor. O geometrie a tandreței este, în fond, un excelent roman al căutărilor continue – de sine, identitare și sentimentale.

Un roman despre trauma căutărilor sentimentale și identitare. Un scriitor pe la șaizeci de ani, evreu de origine, părăsit de soție, încearcă să-și pună ordine în viață și gânduri. Îl urmărim timp de aproape doi ani, perioadă în care asistă și la degradarea tatălui său. Peste problemele personale, se suprapune un impas creativ, pe care încearcă să-l depășească ficționalizându-și traumele, iubirile, eșecurile, obsesiile și dilemele etice. Pe acestea – și multe altele – le topește într-un mozaic romanesc al cărui protagonist, Marcel Cohn, e compus din instantanee surprinse din copilărie până la senectute, iar poveștile lui ne sunt dăruite spre lectură tot nouă, cititorilor. O geometrie a tandreței este, în fond, un excelent roman al căutărilor continue – de sine, identitare și sentimentale.

Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own? What does it mean that evolution built minds not once but at least twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tells a bold new story of how subjective experience crept into being—how nature became aware of itself. As Godfrey-Smith stresses, it is a story that largely occurs in the ocean, where animals first appeared. Tracking the mind’s fitful development, Godfrey-Smith shows how unruly clumps of seaborne cells began living together and became capable of sensing, acting, and signaling. As these primitive organisms became more entangled with others, they grew more complicated. The first nervous systems evolved, probably in ancient relatives of jellyfish; later on, the cephalopods, which began as inconspicuous mollusks, abandoned their shells and rose above the ocean floor, searching for prey and acquiring the greater intelligence needed to do so. Taking an independent route, mammals and birds later began their own evolutionary journeys. But what kind of intelligence do cephalopods possess? Drawing on the latest scientific research and his own scuba-diving adventures, Godfrey-Smith probes the many mysteries that surround the lineage. How did the octopus, a solitary creature with little social life, become so smart? What is it like to have eight tentacles that are so packed with neurons that they virtually “think for themselves”? What happens when some octopuses abandon their hermit-like ways and congregate, as they do in a unique location off the coast of Australia?By tracing the question of inner life back to its roots and comparing human beings with our most remarkable animal relatives, Godfrey-Smith casts crucial new light on the octopus mind—and on our own.