A History of Ambiguity

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228442
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Ambiguity by : Anthony Ossa-Richardson

Download or read book A History of Ambiguity written by Anthony Ossa-Richardson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since it was first published in 1930, William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity has been perceived as a milestone in literary criticism—far from being an impediment to communication, ambiguity now seemed an index of poetic richness and expressive power. Little, however, has been written on the broader trajectory of Western thought about ambiguity before Empson; as a result, the nature of his innovation has been poorly understood. A History of Ambiguity remedies this omission. Starting with classical grammar and rhetoric, and moving on to moral theology, law, biblical exegesis, German philosophy, and literary criticism, Anthony Ossa-Richardson explores the many ways in which readers and theorists posited, denied, conceptualised, and argued over the existence of multiple meanings in texts between antiquity and the twentieth century. This process took on a variety of interconnected forms, from the Renaissance delight in the ‘elegance’ of ambiguities in Horace, through the extraordinary Catholic claim that Scripture could contain multiple literal—and not just allegorical—senses, to the theory of dramatic irony developed in the nineteenth century, a theory intertwined with discoveries of the double meanings in Greek tragedy. Such narratives are not merely of antiquarian interest: rather, they provide an insight into the foundations of modern criticism, revealing deep resonances between acts of interpretation in disparate eras and contexts. A History of Ambiguity lays bare the long tradition of efforts to liberate language, and even a poet’s intention, from the strictures of a single meaning.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

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Author :
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780811200370
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Seven Types of Ambiguity by : William Empson

Download or read book Seven Types of Ambiguity written by William Empson and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1966 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines seven types of ambiguity, providing examples of it in the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot.

A Culture of Ambiguity

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231553323
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis A Culture of Ambiguity by : Thomas Bauer

Download or read book A Culture of Ambiguity written by Thomas Bauer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam’s medieval “Golden Age,” marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity—and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.

Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature

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Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110715813
Total Pages : 431 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature by : Martin Vöhler

Download or read book Strategies of Ambiguity in Ancient Literature written by Martin Vöhler and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambiguity in the sense of two or more possible meanings is considered to be a distinctive feature of modern art and literature. It characterizes the "open artwork" (Eco) and is generated by "disruptive tactics" (Wellershoff) and strategies to engender uncertainty. While ambiguity is seen as a "paradigm of modernity" (Bode), there is skepticism regarding its use in the pre-modern era. Older studies were dominated by the conviction that there was a lack of ambiguity in pre-modernity because, according to the rules of the "old rhetoric", ambiguity was seen as an avoidable error (vitium) and a violation of the dictate of clarity (perspicuitas). The aim of the volume is to re-examine the putative "absence of ambiguity" in the pre-modern era. Is it not possible to find clear examples of deliberately employed (intended) ambiguity in antiquity? Are the oracles and riddles, the Palinode of Stesichoros and Socrates (Phaedrus), the dissoi logoi of rhetoric, the ambiguities of the tragedies all exceptions or do they not indicate a distinct interest in the artistic use of ambiguity? The presentations of the conference, which will include scholars from various philologies, will combine a recourse to theoretical concepts of intended ambiguity with exemplary analyses from the field of pre-modern art and literature.

Risk, Ambiguity and Decision

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136711988
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (367 download)

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Book Synopsis Risk, Ambiguity and Decision by : Daniel Ellsberg

Download or read book Risk, Ambiguity and Decision written by Daniel Ellsberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ellsberg elaborates on "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms" and mounts a powerful challenge to the dominant theory of rational decision in this book.

The Ambiguities of Experience

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Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801457777
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ambiguities of Experience by : James G. March

Download or read book The Ambiguities of Experience written by James G. March and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first component of intelligence involves effective adaptation to an environment. In order to adapt effectively, organizations require resources, capabilities at using them, knowledge about the worlds in which they exist, good fortune, and good decisions. They typically face competition for resources and uncertainties about the future. Many, but possibly not all, of the factors determining their fates are outside their control. Populations of organizations and individual organizations survive, in part, presumably because they possess adaptive intelligence; but survival is by no means assured. The second component of intelligence involves the elegance of interpretations of the experiences of life. Such interpretations encompass both theories of history and philosophies of meaning, but they go beyond such things to comprehend the grubby details of daily existence. Interpretations decorate human existence. They make a claim to significance that is independent of their contribution to effective action. Such intelligence glories in the contemplation, comprehension, and appreciation of life, not just the control of it.—from The Ambiguities of Experience In The Ambiguities of Experience, James G. March asks a deceptively simple question: What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations? Folk wisdom both trumpets the significance of experience and warns of its inadequacies. On one hand, experience is described as the best teacher. On the other hand, experience is described as the teacher of fools, of those unable or unwilling to learn from accumulated knowledge or the teaching of experts. The disagreement between those folk aphorisms reflects profound questions about the human pursuit of intelligence through learning from experience that have long confronted philosophers and social scientists. This book considers the unexpected problems organizations (and the individuals in them) face when they rely on experience to adapt, improve, and survive. While acknowledging the power of learning from experience and the extensive use of experience as a basis for adaptation and for constructing stories and models of history, this book examines the problems with such learning. March argues that although individuals and organizations are eager to derive intelligence from experience, the inferences stemming from that eagerness are often misguided. The problems lie partly in errors in how people think, but even more so in properties of experience that confound learning from it. "Experience," March concludes, "may possibly be the best teacher, but it is not a particularly good teacher."

A Certain Ambiguity

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400834775
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis A Certain Ambiguity by : Gaurav Suri

Download or read book A Certain Ambiguity written by Gaurav Suri and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlier--and that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni is challenged by a skeptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledge--including religion. Together, the two men discover the power--and the fallibility--of what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry. As grandfather and grandson struggle with the question of whether there can ever be absolute certainty in mathematics or life, they are forced to reconsider their fundamental beliefs and choices. Their stories hinge on their explorations of parallel developments in the study of geometry and infinity--and the mathematics throughout is as rigorous and fascinating as the narrative and characters are compelling and complex. Moving and enlightening, A Certain Ambiguity is a story about what it means to face the extent--and the limits--of human knowledge.

Giorgione’s Ambiguity

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Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 1789142962
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (891 download)

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Book Synopsis Giorgione’s Ambiguity by : Tom Nichols

Download or read book Giorgione’s Ambiguity written by Tom Nichols and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2020-10-17 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Venetian painter known as Giorgione or “big George” died at a young age in the dreadful plague of 1510, possibly having painted fewer than twenty-five works. But many of these are among the most mysterious and alluring in the history of art. Paintings such as The Three Philosophers and The Tempest remain compellingly elusive, seeming to deny the viewer the possibility of interpreting their meaning. Tom Nichols argues that this visual elusiveness was essential to Giorgione’s sensual approach and that ambiguity is the defining quality of his art. Through detailed discussions of all Giorgione’s works, Nichols shows that by abandoning the more intellectual tendencies of much Renaissance art, Giorgione made the world and its meanings appear always more inscrutable.

The Ambiguity of Play

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044185
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ambiguity of Play by : Brian Sutton-Smith

Download or read book The Ambiguity of Play written by Brian Sutton-Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--The ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory

Ambiguity and Deterrence

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780198280125
Total Pages : 522 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis Ambiguity and Deterrence by : John Baylis

Download or read book Ambiguity and Deterrence written by John Baylis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text focuses on the disagreements which existed in British political and military circles over nuclear strategy directly after World War II. Based on recently released documents, it argues that British policy in this important area was much more ambiguous than is commonly supposed.

Navigating Ambiguity

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Publisher : Ten Speed Press
ISBN 13 : 1984857967
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Navigating Ambiguity by : Andrea Small

Download or read book Navigating Ambiguity written by Andrea Small and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking guide to help you lean in to the discomfort of the unknown to turn creative opportunities into intentional design, from Stanford University's world-renowned d.school. “Navigating Ambiguity reminds us not to run from uncertainty but rather see it as a defining moment of opportunity.”—Yves Béhar, Founder and CEO, fuseproject A design process presents a series of steps, but in real life, it rarely plays out this neatly. Navigating Ambiguity underscores how the creative process isn’t formulaic. This book shows you how to surrender control by being adaptable, curious, and unbiased as well as resourceful, tenacious, and courageous. Designers and educators Andrea Small and Kelly Schmutte use humor and clear steps to help you embrace uncertainty as you approach a creative project. First, they explain how the brain works and why it defaults to certainty. Then they show you how to let go of the need for control and instead employ a flexible strategy that relies on the balance between acting and adapting, and the give-and-take between opposing approaches to make your way to your goal. Beautiful cut-paper artwork illustrations offer ways to rethink creative work without hitting the usual roadblocks. The result is a more open and satisfying journey from assignment or idea to finished product.

Alexander

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Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812972716
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Alexander by : Guy Maclean Rogers

Download or read book Alexander written by Guy Maclean Rogers and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-10-11 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly two and a half millennia, Alexander the Great has loomed over history as a legend–and an enigma. Wounded repeatedly but always triumphant in battle, he conquered most of the known world, only to die mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. In his day he was revered as a god; in our day he has been reviled as a mass murderer, a tyrant as brutal as Stalin or Hitler. Who was the man behind the mask of power? Why did Alexander embark on an unprecedented program of global domination? What accounted for his astonishing success on the battlefield? In this luminous new biography, the esteemed classical scholar and historian Guy MacLean Rogers sifts through thousands of years of history and myth to uncover the truth about this complex, ambiguous genius. Ascending to the throne of Macedonia after the assassination of his father, King Philip II, Alexander discovered while barely out of his teens that he had an extraordinary talent and a boundless appetite for military conquest. A virtuoso of violence, he was gifted with an uncanny ability to visualize how a battle would unfold, coupled with devastating decisiveness in the field. Granicus, Issos, Gaugamela, Hydaspes–as the victories mounted, Alexander’s passion for conquest expanded from cities to countries to continents. When Persia, the greatest empire of his day, fell before him, he marched at once on India, intending to add it to his holdings. As Rogers shows, Alexander’s military prowess only heightened his exuberant sexuality. Though his taste for multiple partners, both male and female, was tolerated, Alexander’s relatively enlightened treatment of women was nothing short of revolutionary. He outlawed rape, he placed intelligent women in positions of authority, and he chose his wives from among the peoples he conquered. Indeed, as Rogers argues, Alexander’s fascination with Persian culture, customs, and sexual practices may have led to his downfall, perhaps even to his death. Alexander emerges as a charismatic and surprisingly modern figure–neither a messiah nor a genocidal butcher but one of the most imaginative and daring military tacticians of all time. Balanced and authoritative, this brilliant portrait brings Alexander to life as a man, without diminishing the power of the legend.

Ethnic Ambiguity and the African Past

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315428997
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis Ethnic Ambiguity and the African Past by : Francois G Richard

Download or read book Ethnic Ambiguity and the African Past written by Francois G Richard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The collective inquiries in this volume address ethnicity in ancient Africa as social fact and political artifact along numerous dimensions. Is ethnicity a useful analytic? What can archaeology say about the kinds of deeper time questions which scholars have asked of identities in Africa? Eleven authors engage with contemporary anthropological, historical and archaeological perspectives to examine how ideas of self-understanding, belonging, and difference in Africa were made and unmade. They examine how these intersect with other salient domains of social experience: states, landscapes, discourses, memory, technology, politics, and power. The various chapters cover broad geographic and temporal ground, following an arc across Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and East Africa, spanning from prehistory to the colonial period.

Plurality and Ambiguity

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226811263
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Plurality and Ambiguity by : David Tracy

Download or read book Plurality and Ambiguity written by David Tracy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994-06-10 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Plurality and Ambiguity, David Tracy lays the philosophical groundwork for a practical application of hermeneutics, while constructing an innovative model of theological interpretation developed out of the notions of conversation and argument. He concludes with an appraisal of the religious significance of hope in an age of radically different voices and constantly shifting meanings.

Potential Images

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Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 9781861891495
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis Potential Images by : Dario Gamboni

Download or read book Potential Images written by Dario Gamboni and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Potential Images Dario Gamboni explores ambiguity in modern art, considering images that rely to a great degree on a projected or imaginative response from viewers to achieve their effect. Ambiguity became increasingly important in late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetics, as is evidenced in works by such artists as Redon, Cezanne, Gauguin, Ensor and the Nabis. Similarly, the Cubists subverted traditional representational conventions, requiring their viewers to decipher images to extract their full meanings. The same device was taken up in the various experiments leading to abstraction. For example, it was Kandinsky's intention that his work could be interpreted in both figurative and non-figurative ways, and Duchamp's Readymades suggested the radical conclusion that 'it is the beholder who makes the picture'. These invitations to viewers to participate in the process of artistic communication had social and political implications, as they accorded artist and beholder symmetrical, almost interchangeable, roles.

For Moral Ambiguity

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 9780816638536
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (385 download)

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Book Synopsis For Moral Ambiguity by : Michael J. Shapiro

Download or read book For Moral Ambiguity written by Michael J. Shapiro and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the banner of family values, a war of more than words is being waged. At stake is the control of contemporary national culture-and the consciousness of succeeding generations. Michael J. Shapiro enters the fray with this galvanizing book, which exposes the assumptions, misconceptions, and historical inaccuracies that mark the neoconservative campaign to redeem an imagined past and colonize the present and future with a moral and political commitment to the "traditional family." Challenging the neoconservative assumption of a natural relation between a historically constant, traditional family structure and civic life, Shapiro shows how the situation of the family in relation to public life has emerged differently in different historical periods. For Moral Ambiguity juxtaposes moralizing versus historically sensitive, critical treatments of familial and public attachments, revealing how "the family"-as represented in historical and contemporary fiction, cinema, television, and other genres and media-emerges as a contingent cultural and historical structure. Shapiro treats the ways in which family space, however changeable, serves as a critical locus of "enunciation"-as a space from which diverse family personae challenge the relationships and historical narratives that support dominant structures of power and authority and offer ways to renegotiate the problem of "the political." By extending recognition to less heeded voices and genres of expression, he seeks to frame the political within a democratic ethos. Ultimately, the book compels us to understand "the political" as the continuous negotiation of different modes of civic presence.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101217332
Total Pages : 640 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Seven Types of Ambiguity by : Elliot Perlman

Download or read book Seven Types of Ambiguity written by Elliot Perlman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-12-16 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven Types of Ambiguity is a psychological thriller and a literary adventure of breathtaking scope. Celebrated as a novelist in the tradition of Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, Elliot Perlman writes of impulse and paralysis, empty marriages, lovers, gambling, and the stock market; of adult children and their parents; of poetry and prostitution, psychiatry and the law. Comic, poetic, and full of satiric insight, Seven Types of Ambiguity is, above all, a deeply romantic novel that speaks with unforgettable force about the redemptive power of love. The story is told in seven parts, by six different narrators, whose lives are entangled in unexpected ways. Following years of unrequited love, an out-of-work schoolteacher decides to take matters into his own hands, triggering a chain of events that neither he nor his psychiatrist could have anticipated. Brimming with emotional, intellectual, and moral dilemmas, this novel-reminiscent of the richest fiction of the nineteenth century in its labyrinthine complexity-unfolds at a rapid-fire pace to reveal the full extent to which these people have been affected by one another and by the insecure and uncertain times in which they live. Our times, now.