The Palace Complex

Download or read book The Palace Complex written by Michal Murawski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the history and significance of the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Poland. The Palace of Culture and Science is a massive Stalinist skyscraper that was “gifted” to Warsaw by the Soviet Union in 1955. Framing the Palace’s visual, symbolic, and functional prominence in the everyday life of the Polish capital as a sort of obsession, locals joke that their city suffers from a “Palace of Culture complex.” Despite attempts to privatize it, the Palace remains municipally owned, and continues to play host to a variety of public institutions and services. The Parade Square, which surrounds the building, has resisted attempts to convert it into a money-making commercial center. Author Michal Murawski traces the skyscraper’s powerful impact on twenty-first century Warsaw; on its architectural and urban landscape; on its political, ideological, and cultural lives; and on the bodies and minds of its inhabitants. The Palace Complex explores the many factors that allow Warsaw’s Palace to endure as a still-socialist building in a post-socialist city. “The most brilliant book on a building in many years, making a case for Warsaw’s once-loathed Palace of Culture and Science as the most enduring and successful legacy of Polish state socialism.” —Owen Hatherley, The New Statesman’s“Books of the Year” list (UK) “An ambitious anthropological biography of Poland’s tallest and most infamous building, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. . . . It is a truly fascinating story that challenges a tenacious stereotype, and Murawski tells it brilliantly, judiciously layering literatures from multiple disciplines, his own ethnographic work, and personal anecdotes.” —Patryk Babiracki, H-Net History

Download or read book Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power written by Gülru Necipoğlu and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1991 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Necipoglu demonstrates the palace's role as a vast stage for the enactment of a ceremonial that emphasized the sultan's absolute power and his aloofness from the outside world. In the absence of the monumentality, axiality, and rational geometric planning principles now usually associated with imperial architecture, the author's deciphering of the palace's iconography is all the more revealing.

Download or read book Palace of the Drowned written by Christine Mangan and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Tangerine, a "taut and mesmerizing follow up...voluptuously atmospheric and surefooted at every turn” (Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife and When the Stars Go Dark). It’s 1966 and Frankie Croy retreats to her friend’s vacant palazzo in Venice. Years have passed since the initial success of Frankie’s debut novel and she has spent her career trying to live up to the expectations. Now, after a particularly scathing review of her most recent work, alongside a very public breakdown, she needs to recharge and get re-inspired. Then Gilly appears. A precocious young admirer eager to make friends, Gilly seems determined to insinuate herself into Frankie’s solitary life. But there’s something about the young woman that gives Frankie pause. How much of what Gilly tells her is the truth? As a series of lies and revelations emerge, the lives of these two women will be tragically altered as the catastrophic 1966 flooding of Venice ravages the city. Suspenseful and transporting, Christine Mangan's Palace of the Drowned brings the mystery of Venice to life while delivering a twisted tale of ambition and human nature.

Download or read book Moving the Palace written by Charif Majdalani and published by New Vessel Press. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A Middle Eastern heart-of-darkness tale that flows like a dream . . . Crackling with razor-sharp humor” (The New York Times). At the dawn of the twentieth century, a young Lebanese explorer leaves the Levant for the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace in Tripoli and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. The protagonist soon takes charge of this hoard of architectural fragments, ferrying the dismantled landmark through Sudan, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula, attempting to return to his native Beirut with this moveable real estate. Along the way, he will encounter skeptic sheikhs, suspicious tribal leaders, bountiful feasts, pilgrims bound for Mecca, and T. E. Lawrence in a tent—in this “utterly charming” novel that was a recipient of the Académie Française’s François Mauriac Prize (Library Journal). “Renders the complex social landscape of the Middle East and North Africa with subtlety and finesse . . . Yet one doesn’t need to care about the region’s history, or its present-day contexts, to enjoy Moving the Palace.” —The Wall Street Journal

Download or read book Moscow Monumental written by Katherine Zubovich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An in-depth history of the Stalinist skyscraper"--

Download or read book A Palace for Our Kings written by James Wright and published by . This book was released on 2016-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Topkapi Palace written by Claire Karaz and published by Citlembik Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical, concise, and beautifully illustrated guide to the Topkapi Palace complex is up-to-date and packed with interesting and original information not found elsewhere. Detailed maps lead the visitor easily through the maze of buildings and courtyards. It contains information on the palace and collections, along with the sultans, harem women, pages, and eunuchs who lived there.