{"product_id":"9781770562264","title":"Touch to Affliction","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the ruins of poetry, fiction and philosophy comes \u003cem\u003eTouch To Affliction\u003c\/em\u003e, a meditation on the notion of homeland, on \u003cem\u003epatrie\u003c\/em\u003e and the inhumanity that arises from it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a text obsessed with ruins: the ruins of genre, of language, of the city, of the body. The history of the twentieth century is a history of barbarism, and Stephens walks, like a flâneur, through its midst, experiencing through her own body the crumbled buildings, the dessicated cities, the eviscerated language and humanity of our time, calling out in passing to those before her who have contemplated atrocity: Martin Buber, Henryk Gorecki, Simone Weil. In the end, it considers what we are left with – indeed, what is left of us – as both participants in and heirs to the twentieth century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Insistently political but never polemical, \u003cem\u003eTouch To Affliction\u003c\/em\u003e, at the interstices of thought and the unnameable, is at once lament, accusation and elegy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAbout \u003cem\u003ePaper City\u003c\/em\u003e: ‘Understanding is almost antithetical to the project Stephens seems to have assigned herself, that of unraveling or radically altering our sense of logic, of language, of narrative, of body, of desire, of words on paper. She wants the book to burn in our hands and, indeed, it does.’ – \u003cem\u003eNewPages\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Coach House Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47176081441008,"sku":"9781770562264","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781770562264_p0.jpg?v=1763706796","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781770562264","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}