The Secession Talks is a collection of artist talks on exhibitions that took place at the Secession from 2011 to 2022. They contextualize the exhibition history of the Secession and allow for a new consideration and evaluation of the program. As a collection, these conversations between artists and well-known art critics, art historians, curators, and artist colleagues form a unique interface between artistic work and art education.

This is the story of Sonja Heda and her rise from humble beginnings as a waitress in Holland to walk-on appearances in such famous German films of the Weimar and Nazi eras as The Blue Angel, The Gypsy Baron, Jew Süss, Habanera, Munchausen and, eventually, the starring role in the Nazi screwball comedy Bagdad Capers. Joseph and Magda Goebbels, Hans Albers, Eva Braun, Lillian Harvey, Albert Speer, Marika Rökk since she knew them all, it was inevitable that she should think of writing her aut...

The author of The Arabian Nightmare spins "a wryly subversive and darkly erotic fable" ( The Sunday Times).The virginal hero of the tale, Prince Orkhan, escapes from the Cage of the Imperial Harem, in which the sons of the sultan are imprisoned, and finds himself hailed by the Harem's concubines as their new Sultan. He is immediately caught up in the excesses and perversions of the Harem. But evil flourishes in a bed of boredom and, after allowing...

An obsessive-compulsive housewife teeters on the edge of madness in this "immensely intelligent and delightful . . . dance of a book" ( The New York Times).The Limits of Vision is Robert Irwin's irrepressibly entertaining and imaginative novel about a young housewife named Marcia and the war she wages against dirt.Set over the course of a single day as Marcia goes about her quotidian activities—having the girls over for coffee, tidying the...

A cult classic that "combines the genres of travelogue, fable, dream narrative, novel and confessional into one beguiling whole" ( Publishers Weekly ).The hero and guiding force of this epic fantasy is an insomniac young man who, unable to sleep, guides the reader through the narrow streets of Cairo—a mysterious city full of deceit and trickery.He narrates a complex tangle of dreams and imaginings that describe an ...

This is the story of a story that plays out in real life. Tom is a stock controller. Though management of the shelves kept him busy in the daytime, his nights were frightful. Again and again he dreamt of guns, conjuring tricks, car chases, burials, disinterments, Martian landscapes and Molly. Tom is new to the Story as it was known to the sinister crew who first appeared in The Runes Have Been Cast. They make their reappearance in this new novel... Molly is a hoplophiliac, Quentin is the s...

Mamluks and Crusaders: Men of the Sword and Men of the Pen brings together a series of studies, based mainly on medieval Arabic sources, of Middle Eastern history and society in the late Middle Ages. Several of these studies deal with the confrontation between the Mamluks and the Crusaders. Others deal with aspects of Mamluk society and culture in Egypt and Syria from the 13th to the early 16th centuries. There are articles on such matters as Crusader feudalism and Mamluk iqta', Crusader a...

The digital storytelling project Humanizing Deportation invites migrants to present their own stories in the world’s largest and most diverse archive of its kind. Since 2017, more than 300 community storytellers have created their own audiovisual testimonial narratives, sharing their personal experiences of migration and repatriation. With Migrant Feelings, Migrant Knowledge, the project’s coordinator, Robert Irwin, and other team members introduce the project’s innovative partici...

**“[A]n electric new translation . . . Each page is adorned with illustrations and photographs from other translations and adaptations of the tales, as well as a wonderfully detailed cascade of notes that illuminate the stories and their settings. . . . The most striking feature of the Arabic tales is their shifting registers—prose, rhymed prose, poetry—and Seale captures the movement between them beautifully.” —Yasmine Al-Sayyad, New YorkerA magnificent and richly illustr...

Robert Irwin's authoritative introduction to the fourth volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam offers a panoramic vision of Islamic culture from its origins to around 1800. The introductory chapter, which highlights key developments and introduces some of Islam's most famous protagonists, paves the way for an extraordinarily varied collection of essays. The themes treated include religion and law, conversion, Islam's relationship with the natural world, governance and politics, calip...

‘Robert Irwin vividly and brilliantly blends the fictional life and all-too-real times of a film star of the Nazi era in this a narrative of diminishing options and the advance to death and destruction. Cultured, clever and funny at times, in a grim Charles Adams way, Robert Irwin’s novel is engrossing and enveloping. From a dull Dutch childhood in Dordrecht and a waitressing job, sexy Sonja Heda, cigarette in hand, wangles her way on to the film sets of various independent production comp...

Ibn Jubayr's account of his journey from his home in then Islamic Spain to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Syria, the Crusader Kingdoms and ultimately Egypt is a landmark text for the study and understanding of the Medieval Islamic World. Broadhurst's translation gives voice to Ibn Jubayr's vivid impressions of the 12th century Mediterranean. He recounts his experiences in Saladin's Egypt in contrast to rule of the Almohads in the Maghreb, and gives a positive assessment of the condit...