Alexander Key – författare

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.In the Arabic eleventh-century, scholars were intensely preoccupied with the way that language generated truth and beauty. Their work in poetics, logic, theology, and lexicography defined the intellectual space between God and the poets. In Language Between God and the Poets, Alexander Key argues that ar-Raghib al-Isfahani, Ibn Furak, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani shared a conceptual vocabulary based on the words ma‘na and haqiqah. They used this vocabulary to build theories of language, mind, and reality that answered perennial questions: how to structure language and reference, how to describe God, how to construct logical arguments, and how to explain poetic affect.

Adab is not an English word, but it could become one. This collection, in honour of Julia Bray, experiments with juxtaposed articles, quotations, translations and lines of poetry to let readers create connections in the same way authors did a thousand years ago in Arabic. The collaboration is inspired by the ongoing work of Julia Bray, which continues to demonstrate the rewards of taking what we read seriously.The field of Arabic studies is increasingly rejecting a hard line between the modern and the premodern. This book is an intervention in that development – arguing that the premodern can structure contemporary thinking. It offers translations, commentaries and discussions of important and insufficiently known primary texts together with the original Arabic text of poems. These cross-genre and cross-disciplinary connections can catalyse future research and show how a key feature of the Arabic literary tradition is relevant to how we think about scholarship today. The chapters provide readers with both an academic resource and an intellectual conversation with the past.

Adab is not an English word, but it could become one. This collection, in honour of Julia Bray, experiments with juxtaposed articles, quotations, translations and lines of poetry to let readers create connections in the same way authors did a thousand years ago in Arabic. The collaboration is inspired by the ongoing work of Julia Bray, which continues to demonstrate the rewards of taking what we read seriously.The field of Arabic studies is increasingly rejecting a hard line between the modern and the premodern. This book is an intervention in that development – arguing that the premodern can structure contemporary thinking. It offers translations, commentaries and discussions of important and insufficiently known primary texts together with the original Arabic text of poems. These cross-genre and cross-disciplinary connections can catalyse future research and show how a key feature of the Arabic literary tradition is relevant to how we think about scholarship today. The chapters provide readers with both an academic resource and an intellectual conversation with the past.

Adab is not an English word, but it could become one. This collection, in honour of Julia Bray, experiments with juxtaposed articles, quotations, translations and lines of poetry to let readers create connections in the same way authors did a thousand years ago in Arabic. The collaboration is inspired by the ongoing work of Julia Bray, which continues to demonstrate the rewards of taking what we read seriously.The field of Arabic studies is increasingly rejecting a hard line between the modern and the premodern. This book is an intervention in that development – arguing that the premodern can structure contemporary thinking. It offers translations, commentaries and discussions of important and insufficiently known primary texts together with the original Arabic text of poems. These cross-genre and cross-disciplinary connections can catalyse future research and show how a key feature of the Arabic literary tradition is relevant to how we think about scholarship today. The chapters provide readers with both an academic resource and an intellectual conversation with the past.

A castaway on a rocky island is captured by a gang of evil menHe was born Conan of Orme, but Orme is no more. When nuclear war causes the oceans to swallow up the Western world, Conan escapes by chance, washing up on a craggy, desolate isle. After years of privilege, island life is a hard adjustment, but he grows strong—learning to fish, to make fire, and to befriend the birds. On moonless nights, he screams into the darkness, tortured by a loneliness he cannot overcome. One day, a ship appears on the horizon, and Conan believes himself saved. But for this young survivor, trouble is just beginning. The ship belongs to the New Order, cruel rulers who are rebuilding Earth through brute force. They send their new slave to the cutthroat city of Industria, intending to break his spirit. But Conan finds power on the island, and with it, he will remake the world.  

His memory gone, a mysterious youth knows only one thing: It’s time to runOn a crowded commuter train, a young boy shakes with fear, unable to remember how he got there or where he’s going. His memory is a total blank. He doesn’t even know his name. But beside him is a blind girl, Ginny, who has a way of seeing deep within people’s souls. Looking inside the boy’s addled memory, she discovers that his name is Jan—and he has every reason to be afraid. When the train stops, Jan flees into the night, and the police come charging after him. No matter where he goes—a church, the woods, the back alleys of this cozy suburban town—the hunters keep getting closer. He has incredible powers, and the government wants to use them for evil purposes. As his memory returns, Jan will tame his powers and stop running. With Ginny’s help, he will begin to fight back.

On the run from killers, a boy genius looks for strength in numbersWhen he steps on stage, Ronnie Cleveland feels his troubles slip away. He is the Blue Boy, a genius who sings, plays piano, and solves math problems faster than any calculator. His nightclub act is a great success, but he feels fear creeping into his heart. When a young Spanish girl warns him that trouble is coming, he knows she is right—and that it’s too late to stop it. Before his time in the spotlight, Ronnie worked for a pair of underworld accountants. Because he remembers every number he ever crunched, the Blue Boy’s head holds enough dirt to put the entire mob in jail—and that makes him a target. When his manager and bodyguards disappear, Ronnie runs to find the mysterious girl, and seek refuge in the most lonesome place in the world. 

In the behavior of animals, an author discovers the limitless possibility of natureIn a wild stretch of countryside where only the toughest creatures can survive, an author witnesses a miracle: a white dove. His young companion chases after the bird, catching it easily with his bare hands—a second miracle. He takes it home as a pet, and there they find the third miracle of the day: the dove’s mate, who traveled hundreds of miles to reunite with her vanished beloved. But how did she know where to find him—and what does her journey tell us about the mysteries of the wild? To the author, the miracle of the doves is too remarkable to be explained by instinct. He suspects they share a kind of telepathy, and he begins to see signs of other unspoken mysteries everywhere he looks—from insects on the ground to branches on the trees. Life is a mystery, but the answers await us if, like the doves, we know how to listen.

In the Carolina hills, a friend reaches out from beyond the graveHis parents dead, Timor is brought to America to live with his uncle in rural Appalachia. Although half-American, this shy young boy has never lived outside of Indonesia and finds it hard to adjust to life in the mountains. His only friend is Wiley Pendergrass, a mysterious old hermit who sees magic in discarded wood. For Timor, Wiley makes a ladder-back chair out of sassafras—a hard yellow wood with powers that will change Timor’s life forever. Accused by a local gem collector of stealing a precious box, Wiley pushes his ancient pickup as hard as he can to escape the police. Screaming around a hairpin mountain turn, he loses control and sails off the side of a cliff. Soon after, the chair begins speaking to Timor in Wiley’s voice. His friend may be gone, but with the help of a little Appalachian magic, Timor has a chance to clear Wiley’s name.

A pint-size robot with a big spirit goes on an interstellar adventure Running low on metal, an assembly line spits out something unusual: a peculiar little robot, no bigger than a boy. His name is Sprockets, and though he is small, he has the most powerful electronic brain on Earth. “Destroy him!” cries the foreman, but Sprockets escapes. He runs through the moonlit city, pushing his little body as hard as he can until rain starts to fall—and he begins to rust. But Sprockets is rescued just in time by Jim and his father, Dr. Bailey—a brilliant inventor who sometimes has trouble with fractions. Luckily for him, there is no finer tabulator than Sprockets.   They adopt this little robot as their own, and soon set off for another world—where Sprockets will be charged with saving the universe and learning what it is to be alive. Sprockets is the 1st book in the Sprockets series, which also includes Rivets and Sprockets and Bolts.

Sprockets and his brother race across space to solve a martian mystery Life for Sprockets, the little robot with the giant brain, has been very exciting since he came off the assembly line. Backed up by Dr. Bailey and his son Jim, Sprockets has zipped across the stars, having fun all the way. Now it’s time for his greatest adventure yet, and he has someone new to help him out: his little brother, Rivets, who’s pretty handy in a pinch—even if he does have one or two screws loose.   Dr. Bailey is working day and night to perfect an interplanetary radio, but Sprockets and Jim build one in a single night. When their new contraption picks up a signal coming from Mars, Dr. Bailey sends Sprockets and Rivets to investigate. Pursued by a mysterious gang of Mongolian researchers led by the fearsome Vladimir Katz, Rivets and Sprockets must escape the red planet with all their gears intact. Rivets and Sprockets is the 2nd book in the Sprockets series, which also includes Sprockets and Bolts.

Captured by spies, a robot dog fights to return to his master The Consolidated Mechanical Men Corporation makes all sorts of robots, but it has never produced a robot dog. When Bingo Brown, grandson of the famous navy inventor Commander Brown, sends in a request for just such a marvel, the engineers do their best, but no matter what they try, their standard brain just won’t fit inside the pooch’s head. Finally, they shave a bit off either side of the gray matter, and the result is Bolts: a scrappy little mutt with razor teeth, a razor wit, and a habit of speaking his utterly deranged mind.   When a gang of Mongolian spies searching for Consolidated’s new superbrain diverts Bingo Brown’s shipment, the puppy puts up quite a fight. On the run from spies and desperate to find his owner, Bolts will prove that his bite is just as bad as his bark. Bolts is the 3rd book in the Sprockets series, which also includes Sprockets and Rivets and Sprockets.

After years in captivity, a brilliant otter escapes into the wildGrowing up in the high country, Swimmer bathed in clean water and dined on fresh crawfish. Then the trapper came, killing Swimmer’s mother and imprisoning him and his sister, who did not survive. After years of being poked and prodded by the Professor, he has had enough. He slips out of the townhouse and into the park across the street but is forced to return home when the city water proves too filthy to swim in. Unable to proceed on his own, he does something he vowed never to do: He asks the caretaker, Clarence, for help. Convinced that Swimmer would die in the wild, Clarence refuses to help the otter break free. And so, when the Professor is on a trip to Nashville for a lecture, Swimmer takes his chance, escaping back into the high country. It’s a wild world out there, and this clever otter intends to conquer it all. 

In a changed reality, a curious boy confronts an ancient angerBoy Jaim’s world is a peaceful place where war and violence are a distant memory and man and beast live together as friends. Although his contemporaries prefer to fly far above the surface of the earth, Boy Jaim is an explorer who yearns to chart the mysteries of the forest floor. And so, accompanied by his dog, Doubtful, he ventures into the woods and finds something he believed the world had left behind: hate. Doubtful smells the beast first—a powerful animal, dangerous and full of rage. It is a bear, come to take revenge on humankind for slaughtering its brothers long ago, and its violence forces Boy Jaim’s people to take up weapons for the first time in generations. But when the bear begins communicating with Boy Jaim, he finds they have common cause and will have to work together to survive.

In the dark of a grim hospital ward, five children escape to another worldThey call themselves the incurables. They are five children doomed to spend their lives in Belleview’s Ward Nine, unable to walk, care for themselves, or even take a trip outside. Their days are gloomy, but they have one another, and at night they play the game. Whispering about places that could never be, they build worlds so vivid that they almost seem real. And then one night, their dreams come true. While the others sleep, Brick closes his eyes and thinks harder than he ever has about the place he calls the Magic Meadow—a lush hill where dandelions grow. When he opens his eyes, he has been transported. The meadow is real, and with his friends at his side, he will return there again and again—to learn, to walk, to live. 

To save his kingdom, a stable boy steps through a portal to the futureWhen the duke dies, the evil wizard Albericus presents his heir with the sword of Aradel, a magical blade whose owner can never be bested in combat. Brian, the stable boy, has no interest in politics until the day that he spills a water trough onto the new duke’s horse and finds the sword of Aradel pointed at his throat. He picks up his quarterstaff, expecting certain death, but the lowly stable boy defeats the duke with ease. The sword of Aradel is a fake! The true sword has been hidden by spell in a far-off future land. A powerful sorceress knights Brian and sends him forward in time to find the blade that will save the kingdom. With Albericus in pursuit, Brian charges through the portal and emerges in a strange new world known as New York City, where a magic sword waits for a noble knight to wield it once again.

Lost in an unfamiliar world, a traveler searches for understandingAt night, Little Jon’s people go out to watch the stars. Mesmerized by a meteor shower, he forgets to watch his step and falls through a moss-covered door to another land: America. He awakes hurt, his memory gone, sure only that he does not belong here. Captured by a hunter, Jon escapes by leaping six feet over a barbed-wire fence. Hungry and alone, he staggers through the darkness and is about to be caught when he is rescued by a kind family known as the Beans. They shelter him, feed him, and teach him about his new home. In return, he will change their lives forever. Although the Beans are kind to Little Jon, the townspeople mistrust the mysterious visitor. But Jon has untold powers, and as he learns to harness them, he will show his newfound friends that they have no reason to be afraid. 

A magical dog falls through a portal and finds himself in AlabamaJagger is a protector of the hunted—a great white dog who stands between the people of his village and the evils that lurk outside of it. When an earthquake splits open the ground beneath his feet, Jagger travels through space to a mysterious forest, where a deer is running for her life. To save her, he fights off a pack of vicious hounds and gets shot in the leg by a pair of hunters. As he lies bleeding in the woods, running out of hope, he cries out with his mind—and a young girl’s voice answers. Nan Thornberry has always had the ability to talk to animals, but she has never met one like Jagger. She and her older brother rescue the dog and bandage his wound. In return, he will serve as their protector, guarding them against the greatest evil he has ever had to face. 

On the run from killers, a boy genius looks for strength in numbersWhen he steps on stage, Ronnie Cleveland feels his troubles slip away. He is the Blue Boy, a genius who sings, plays piano, and solves math problems faster than any calculator. His nightclub act is a great success, but he feels fear creeping into his heart. When a young Spanish girl warns him that trouble is coming, he knows she is right—and that it’s too late to stop it. Before his time in the spotlight, Ronnie worked for a pair of underworld accountants. Because he remembers every number he ever crunched, the Blue Boy’s head holds enough dirt to put the entire mob in jail—and that makes him a target. When his manager and bodyguards disappear, Ronnie runs to find the mysterious girl, and seek refuge in the most lonesome place in the world.