Melanie Challenger è un'autrice la cui opera esplora temi di identità e luogo con una voce poetica distintiva. La sua scrittura approfondisce le complessità dell'esperienza umana, spesso attraverso immagini vivide e profonda introspezione. Ha dimostrato un talento nel creare narrazioni risonanti che catturano momenti storici significativi attraverso resoconti personali. I contributi letterari di Challenger sono contrassegnati dalla loro profondità e potenza evocativa, offrendo ai lettori una prospettiva unica sulla condizione umana.
How do we think about the things we have lost? Why have we become so estranged from Nature? What are our emotional responses to extinction, and how can those responses help to shape our future relationship with the natural world?
Exploring the complexities of human nature, this collection features poems inspired by the Pygmalion myth, capturing the delicate balance between action and inaction, as well as success and failure. The voice within these works is resolute and compassionate, reflecting on the tensions of a tumultuous century. Through her sensitive observations, Challenger creates a powerful celebration and lamentation of the human experience.
In a voice both innocent and wise, touchingly reminiscent of Anne Frank's, Zlata Filipovic's diary has awoken the conscience of the world. Now thirteen years old, Zlata began her diary just before her eleventh birthday, when there was peace in Sarajevo and her life was that of a bright, intelligent, carefree young girl. Her early entries describe her friends, her new skis, her family, her grades at school, her interest in joining the Madonna Fan Club. And then, on television, she sees the bombs falling on Dubrovnik. Though repelled by the sight, Zlata cannot conceive of the same thing happening in Sarajevo. When it does, the whole tone of her diary changes. Early on, she starts an entry to "Dear Mimmy" (named after her dead goldfish): "SLAUGHTERHOUSE! MASSACRE! HORROR! CRIMES! BLOOD! SCREAMS! DESPAIR!" We see the world of a child increasingly circumscribed by the violence outside. Zlata is confined to her family's apartment, spending the nights, as the shells rain down mercilessly, in a neighbor's cellar. And the danger outside steadily invades her life. No more school. Living without water and electricity. Food in short supply. The onslaught destroys the pieces she loves, kills or injures her friends, visibly ages her parents. In one entry Zlata cries out, "War has nothing to do with humanity. War is something inhuman." In another, she thinks about killing herself. Yet, with indomitable courage and a clarity of mind well beyond her years, Zlata preserves what she can of her former existence, continuing to study piano, to find books to read, to celebrate special occasions - recording it all in the pages of this extraordinary diary.
Humans are the most inquisitive, emotional, imaginative, aggressive and baffling animals on the planet. But how well do we really know ourselves?How to Be Animal offers a radical take on what it means to be human and argues that at the heart of our psychology is a profound struggle with being animal. Tracing the history of this thinking through to its far-reaching effects on our lives, and drawing on a range of disciplines, Challenger proposes that being an animal is a process, beautiful and unpredictable, and that we have a chance to tell ourselves a new story; to realise that if we matter, so does everything else.
How We Became Estranged from Nature - With a New Preface by the Author
This "hybrid of travelogue and natural science" by an award-winning author is "truly poetic"--now revised with a new introduction and accompanied by the voices of two young activists calling for new kind of relationship to our planet ( The New York Times Book Review ). Our era is now dubbed the Anthropocene: The Age of Man. Our species has become the primary cause of the extinction of other life and of the dramatic changes we see across the planet. In her twenties, Melanie Challenger began a series of journeys to explore the link between her own estrangement from nature and these striking transformations. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she began to uncover the connections between human activity and the living world around us. In time, her travels became a loose meditation on extinction, on how losses affect us and why they matter. On Extinction is part travelogue, part environmental history. Woven through her journey are the thoughts of the anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine why and what's next.
Rok 1992 prožila Zlata Filipović v úkrytu v Sarajevu. Deník, který si začala psát jako bezstarostná dvanáctiletá dívka, se stal deníkem válečným – záznamem zkázy, která ji obklopovala, a svědectvím o životě dítěte ve městě pod palbou. Zlatin deník nakonec vyšel knižně v 35 jazycích a dodnes se čte na školách po celém světě. Její životní zkušenost stála u zrodu unikátního projektu. Společně s Melanie Challenger strávila Zlata Filipović poslední dva roky sbíráním válečných deníků z celého světa, z nichž mnohé nikdy nebyly publikovány nebo byly dávno zapomenuté. Jejich autory jsou děti či mladí lidé do dvaadvaceti let, kteří od roku 1914 do současnosti zažili nejrůznější válečné konflikty, války občanské nebo světové. Soubor válečných deníků, jenž se Zlatě Filipović společně s Melanií Challenger podařilo shromáždit a který nyní vychází pod názvem Umlčené hlasy i v češtině, zachycuje univerzální zkušenost mladých lidí s válkou, ať už se odehrává kdykoliv a kdekoliv. Deníky jsou svědkem jejich zoufalství, zmatenosti, pocitů nespravedlnosti a bolesti, ale i každodenních událostí, snahy žít normálním životem, dospívání, naděje, humoru, plánů do budoucna... Ačkoliv tyto zkušenosti pocházejí z různých míst světa a zahrnují období téměř celého století, jako by spolu mluvily, soucítily spolu a zněly jedním hlasem ukradeného dětství a mládí, které se nikdy nevrátí.
Eine neue Geschichte der Menschheit
Eine vollkommen neue Geschichte der Menschheit. Wir Menschen sind die neugierigsten, emotionalsten, einfallsreichsten, aggressivsten und gleichzeitig verwirrendsten Tiere auf dem Planeten. Doch wie gut kennen wir uns wirklich? Hadern wir mit unserer eigenen tierischen Natur und vernachlässigen damit einen zentralen Aspekt unseres Menschseins? Challengers revolutionäres Buch kombiniert neueste wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse aus Natur- und Umweltgeschichte, Biologie und Philosophie, und führt uns thematisch von den frühen Agrargesellschaften über die Antike und die Moderne bis hinein in die nahe Zukunft der künstlichen Intelligenz. Ausstattung: mit zahlreichen Abbildungen
