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City Lights Publishers Back Catalog

All City Lights Books are available in the City Lights Bookstore (Map & Directions ) and at other fine bookstores around the country. You can also order these books directly from our web site, simply click on the "add to cart" button next to the book of your choice. All orders will be sent by U.S. 4th Class Mail. For expedited shipping, or international orders, please see our Ordering Information .

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AGAINST A FIELD SINISTER Edith A. Jenkins
AGAINST A FIELD SINISTER
A passionate life among waterfront workers, intellectuals, and women seeking wider worlds; fiction and memoirs.
0-87286-263-1
$7.95



Citizens of the Empire Robert Jensen
CITIZENS OF THE EMPIRE
The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity
In a plainspoken deconstruction of the dominant political rhetoric... Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of the prevailing myths by using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions.
0-87286-432-4
$11.95



The Heart of Whiteness Robert Jensen
THE HEART OF WHITENESS
Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege
While some whites would like to think that we have reached “the end of racism,” in the U.S., and others would like to celebrate diversity but remain oblivious to the political, economic, and social consequences of a nation founded on a system of white supremacy, Jensen proposes a different approach. He sets his sights not only on the racism that can’t be hidden, but also on the liberal platitudes that sometimes conceal the depths of that racism in American “polite society.”
0-87286-449-9
$12.95



Mygale Thierry Jonquet
MYGALE
Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith
City Lights Noir #4
Richard Lafargue, a well-known plastic surgeon, pursues and captures Vincent Moreau, who raped Lafargue’s daughter and left her hopelessly mad in an asylum. Lafargue is determined to exact an atrocious vengeance, and an ambiguous, even sadomasochistic relationship develops between self-apponted executioner and victim.
0-87286-409-X
$11.95



K


Death in Troy Bilge Karasu
DEATH IN TROY
Translated from the Turkish by Aron Aji
Mushfik is a young man growing up in Turkey, first in Sarikum, a small coastal village, and later in urban Istanbul. He comes of age in an atmosphere of sublimated, disoriented eroticism, his impulses restrained by religious and sexual taboos, rigid gender roles, stifling maternal love, and the enforced silences of social decorum.
0-87286-401-4
$11.95


FIRST WORLD, HA, HA, HA Elaine Katzenberger, ed.
FIRST WORLD, HA, HA, HA!
Writers and activists from Mexico and the U.S. provide the background and context for the Zapatista movement, and explore its impact, in Mexico and beyond. First-person testimonials from Chiapas, journalism, political theory, heavily illustrated with photos and fact-sheets. Includes writing by Elena Poniatowska, Eraclio Zepeda, Noam Chomsky Leonard Peltier, Ward Churchill, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Leslie Marmon Silko, and others.
0-87286-294-1
$13.95
$9.77



POSTCARDS FROM THE UNDERGROUND Larry Keenan
POSTCARDS FROM THE UNDERGROUND
Portraits of the Beat Era
In 1965 Keenan spent over a year documenting the last days of the Beat Generation. Here, in in this book of 20 postcards, is a timeless rendering of the spirit of the Beats.
0-87286-365-4
$8.95



BOOK OF DREAMS Jack Kerouac
BOOK OF DREAMS
Introduction by Robert Creeley
Book of Dreams is Jack Kerouac's record of his dreamlife, a parallel autobiography of the soul, the sleeper's On the Road: "I got my weary bones out of bed & through eyes swollen with sleep swiftly scribbled in pencil in my little dream notebook till I had exhausted every rememberable item. . . .
0-87286-380-8
$17.95



Good Blonde & Others Jack Kerouac
GOOD BLONDE & OTHERS
A Grey Fox/ City Lights Title
In these uncollected writings Jack Kerouac has left us a portrait of himself in his life. He hitches a ride to San Francisco from Southern California with a beautiful blonde, goes on the road with photographer Robert Frank, rides a bus through the Northwest and Montana, records the blues of an old hobo, talks about the Beats and how it all began, gives his "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and defends his novel The Subterraneans.
0-912516-22-4
$14.95



Heaven & Other Poems Jack Kerouac
HEAVEN AND OTHER POEMS
A Grey Fox/ City Lights Title
From 1956 to 1959, Jack Kerouac sent Evergreen Review editor Donald Allen poems for various projects, along with letters in which he discussed his poetry, his life, and the work of his young contemporaries. The unpublished poems are collected here, as are the letters, a comic strip drawn for the Cassady children, and Kerouac's self-penned poetic bibliography.
0-912516-31-3
$9.95



Old Angel Midnight Jack Kerouac
OLD ANGEL MIDNIGHT
A Grey Fox/ City Lights Title
"Old Angel Midnight is only the beginning of a lifelong work in multilingual sound, representing the haddalada-babra of babbling world tongues coming in thru my window at midnight... And it is the only book I've ever written in which I allow myself the right to say anything I want, absolutely and positively anything, since that's what you hear coming in that window... God in his Infinity wouldnt have had a world otherwise–Amen." –Jack Kerouac
0-912516-97-6
$10.00



POMES ALL SIZES Jack Kerouac
POMES ALL SIZES
Pocket Poets Series No. 48
From a recently surfaced manuscript, a treasury of mid-'50s road poems, intoxication poems, dharma verse, Canuck patois elegy, haikus, and blues.
0-87286-269-0
$13.95



SCATTERED POEMS Jack Kerouac
SCATTERED POEMS
Pocket Poets Series No. 28
Poetic gems from the author of On the Road and The Dharma Bums .
0-87286-064-7
$7.95



SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY Jack Kerouac
SCRIPTURE OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY
Pocket Poets Series No. 51
These meditations, zen koans, and prose poems express Kerouac's beatific trip to peace and joy through oneness with the universal.
0-87286-291-7
$7.95



Trip Trap Jack Kerouac, Albert Saijo, Lew Welch
TRIP TRAP: HAIKU ON THE ROAD
A Grey Fox/ City Lights Title
Here are the haiku Jack Kerouac, Albert Saijo, and Lew Welch, jotted down on the road from San Francisco to New York in 1959. Albert recounts their November trip in Lew's Willys Jeepster, making the big city scene, visiting Jack's home in Northport on Long Island, and eventually the long drive back West.
0-912516-04-6
$9.95



GYPSY CANTE Will Kirkland, ed. and trans.
GYPSY CANTE
Deep Song of the Caves
This illustrated book presents the passionate cante jondo of Andalusia that inspired Federico García Lorca and the Generation of  '27.
0-87286-361-1
$10.95



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The World's Embrace Abdellatif Laâbi
THE WORLD'S EMBRACE
Selected Poems
Translated from the French by Victor Reinking, Anne George, and Edris Makward
Compelling poems from one of the most prolific and critically acclaimed of contemporary North African writers. Imprisoned for many years by the Moroccan authorities, Laâbi's poetry is haunted by memories of torture and prisons and bears witness to his preoccupations with — and resistance to — the growing international sickness of state-supported inhumanity.
0-87286-413-8
$16.95



THE GNOSTICS Jacques Lacarriere
THE GNOSTICS
Inquiry into the character and history of courageous seekers who strive to "know" rather than accept doctrine and dogma.
0-87286-243-7
$10.95



ADVENTURES ON THE ISLE OF ADOLESCENCE La Loca
ADVENTURES ON THE ISLE OF ADOLESCENCE
Pocket Poets Series No. 46
"A kinetic portrait of sass and blood and fire and gentle weeping..." -- Los Angeles Times
0-87286-236-4
$5.95



BED OF SPHINXES Philip Lamantia
BED OF SPHINXES
Selected Poems
A collection of the poet's greatest works. "A voice that rises once in a hundred years." --André Breton
0-87286-320-4
$12.95



MEADOWLARK WEST Philip Lamantia
MEADOWLARK WEST
Poetry transiting city and wilderness: savage, electric, surreal.
0-87286-176-7
$6.95



LAURE Laure (Colette Peignot)
LAURE
The Collected Writings
Translated by Jeanine Herman
A companion of Georges Bataille writes her life in letters and essays: sadomasochism, Le Cercle Communiste Democratique, Surrealism, antifascist politics. A classic
twentieth-century text.
0-87286-293-3
$13.95



Points of Departure: New Stories from Mexico Mónica Lavin, Ed.
POINTS OF DEPARTURE
New Stories from Mexico
Translated by Gustavo Segade
Magical realism and exoticism are nowhere to be found in this collection of sophisticated, very contemporary stories. Rather, the surreal contradictions and juxtapositions of daily life in Mexico are a permeating presence. A sharp sense of irony, incongruity, and hilarity pervades many of the scenarios offered here, along with an acid-tongued fatality in the harsh face of a life where poverty, lawlessness, and urban decay coexist alongside innocent dreams of love.
0-87286-381-6
$15.95
$11.17



Sade Annie Le Brun
SADE
A Sudden Abyss
Translated by Camille Naish
A brilliant study of the Marquis de Sade as gothic novelist and inventor of a language to fathom relations of desire and power.
0-87286-250-X
$12.95



Parmenides & Empedocles Stanley Lombardo, Editor
PARMENIDES & EMPEDOCLES
Parmenides and Empedocles, along with Heraclitus, were at the same time among the greatest poets of the ancient world. Their work is rarely treated and still more rarely translated in its original form–as poetry. The complete extant fragments of Parmenides and Empedocles are collected here for the first time in a translation responsive to the original verse texts.
0-91251-666-6
$9.95



Almost Blue Carlo Lucarelli
ALMOST BLUE
Translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
City Lights Noir #1
A City Lights Italian Voices Title
A dynamic woman detective and a blind man pursue a bizarre killer through Bologna's post-punk underground
ISBN: 0-87286-389-1
Trade paperback original, 184pp
$11.95



M


Atet AD Nathaniel Mackey
ATET A.D.
Atet A.D. is the third volume of Nathaniel Mackey's ongoing epistolary fiction. Like the first two volumes, Bedouin Hornbook and Djbot Baghostus's Run, this work is written by the composer/multi-instrumentalist N., a founding member of a band formerly known as the Mystic Horn Society.
0-87286-382-4
$13.95



SCHOOL OF UDHRA Nathaniel Mackey
SCHOOL OF UDHRA
Mackey's second book of poems, composed of installments 8-15 of Song of the Andoumboulou. "A remarkable and daring testament that needs to be read and re-read..." --Wilson Harris
0-87286-278-X
$9.95



WHATSAID SERIF Nathaniel Mackey
WHATSAID SERIF
Mackey's third book of poems, composed of installments 16-35 of the serial work, Song of the Andoumboulou. "Mackey's raspy rebus-like cultural resurfacings are both beautiful to read and worthy of repeated efforts at comprehension." -- Publishers Weekly ". . . fragments and jazz-like structures building a monumental vision of humans whose lives are formed by ritual and magic." – The Bloomsbury Review
0-87286-341-7
$12.95



The Other Side of the Postcard devorah major, editor
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE POSTCARD
Published by the City Lights Foundation
In conjunction with the San Francisco Public Library, devorah major— the city’s poet laureate—made a public appeal for poems that explored the realities of people’s lives in a city as tough and tragic as it is beautiful and exhilarating.This anthology collects the best poetry from the project, which aimed to make public the creative voices of the city that rarely have an opportunity to be heard.
1-931404-06-2
$14.95



where river meets ocean devorah major
WHERE RIVER MEETS OCEAN
Poet Laureate Series No. 3
Published by the City Lights Foundation
This collection of poetry begins with the poet’s inaugural address as Laureate of San Francisco, a sparkling essay that shows how poetry can please and empower. Strong, introspective and caring, devorah major’s poems capture the challenge and joy of being an artist as they survey the political and social landscapes of one of America’s favorite cities.
1-931404-03-8
$9.95


Three to Kill Jean Patrick Manchette
THREE TO KILL
Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith

City Lights Noir #2
Businessman Georges Gerfaut witnesses a murder—and is pursued by the killers. His conventional life knocked off the rails, Gerfaut turns the tables and sets out to track down his pursuers. And what does he discover along the way? Manchette—masterful stylist, ironist, and social critic—limns the cramped lives of professionals in a neo-conservative world.
0-87286-395-6
$11.95



The Prone Gunman Jean-Patrick Manchette
THE PRONE GUNMAN
Translated from the French by Jim Brook
City Lights Noir #3
Martin Terrier is a hired killer who wants out of the game—so he can settle down and marry his childhood sweetheart. After all, that’s why he took up this profession! But the Organization won't let him go: they have other plans. Once again, the gunman must assume the prone shooting position. A tour de force, this violent tale shatters as many illusions about life and politics as bodies.
0-87286-402-2
$11.95



Sealed in Stone Toni Maraini
SEALED IN STONE
Translated from the Italian by Arthur Bierman
With an Introduction by Alberto Moravia
From inside her cell in the wall of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, Alix, a young Parisian recluse, observes a tumultuous world of thieves and scoundrels, rebels, heretics, and pilgrims. Set during the Hundred Years’ War and based on the historical figure of Alix la Bourgotte, Sealed in Stone traces the intersecting lives of a vagabond Turkish sailor, a Bohemian intellectual, the amazing Alix, and a young rebel from Lombardy who finds himself powerfully drawn to her.
0-87286-388-3
$10.95



Sealed in Stone Subcomandante Marcos
THE OTHER CAMPAIGN: THE ZAPATISTA CALL FOR CHANGE FROM BELOW
City Lights Open Media Series | Marcos & the Zapatistas in the news
The Other Campaign is a collection of texts – in English and Spanish – by Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatista compañeros that articulate a vision for “change from below,” a call to create social change outside and beyond the limits of electoral politics.
0-87286-477-4
$8.95



THE BACK ROOM Carmen Martín Gaite
THE BACK ROOM
Translated from the Spanish by Helen Lane
Winner of Spain's National Prize for Literature
The story of a woman coming of age in the repressive Spain of the Franco era.
0-87286-371-9
Paperback
$11.95



Aureole: An Erotic Sequence Carole Maso
AUREOLE: AN EROTIC SEQUENCE
Two women leaf through a book of French slang, with its delicate and delicious mixing of food and sex. A man and a woman sit in a parisian dive, caressing each other’s hands. Two lovers take late-night refuge in a beach cabana, their lovemaking lit by the lights of his automobile. These are glimpses of some of the haunting scenes and characters that people this sometimes wild, sometimes elusive exploration of desire’s magical and subversive qualities.
0-87286-410-3
$12.95



LISTEN Vladimir Mayakovsky
LISTEN!
Early Poems
Translated by Maria Enzensberger
Pocket Poets Series No. 47
The Russian avant-garde poet's prerevolutionary lyric poems and drawings.
0-87286-255-0
$9.95



Indigenous: Growing Up Californian Cris Mazza
INDIGENOUS: GROWING UP CALIFORNIAN
Cris Mazza delivers a spirited rebuttal to pop-culture stereotypes about growing up female in Southern California. Coming of age in the 1970’s and ’80s, Mazza’s memories aren’t about surfing, cheerleading or riding in convertibles. Though her story has its exotic elements—her family hunts and gathers food in the semi-arid coastal hills well into the early ’70s—she sets herself in the context of familiar Americana. Repeating motifs—gender issues, the California landscape, dogs, musicians, plus the perplexing melancholy of a sexless marriage—thread through these very personal essays, as Mazza confronts madness, disability, sexual dysfunction and death, speaking to the drama of ordinary lives.
0-87286-422-7
$16.95



SARAJEVO BLUES Semezdin Mehmedinovic
SARAJEVO BLUES
Translated from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay
From one of Bosnia's most prominent poets and writers: spare and haunting stories and poems that were written under the horrific circumstances of the recent war in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
0-87286-345-X
$12.95



Nine Alexandrias Semezdin Mehmedinovic
NINE ALEXANDRIAS
Pocket Poets Series #56
Following his depiction of Bosnia under siege in the much celebrated Sarajevo Blues, Semezdin Mehmedinovic now explores the vast space of his new continent. Mostly written in response to a cross-country journey by train in post 9/11 America, Mehmedinovic’s Nine Alexandrias provides a poetry of witness and testimony of a very different order. In this nightmarish and exhilarating odyssey, Mehmedinovic’s political acuity is displayed everywhere but barely pronounced. In Washington D.C., his new home, the graphic and tactile affirmation of life amidst horror depicted so masterfully in Sarajevo Blues, turns into an eerie silence that permeates both the expanse of the land and the heart of the American empire.
0-87286-423-5
$9.95



San Francisco Beat David Meltzer, editor
SAN FRANCISCO BEAT: TALKING WITH THE POETS
In these intimate, free-wheeling conversations, a baker's dozen of the poets of San Francisco talk about the scene then and now, the traditions of poetry, and about anarchism, globalism, Zen, the Bomb, the Kabbalah, and the Internet.
0-87286-379-4
$19.95



The Tribe Jean-Michel Mension
THE TRIBE
Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith
Contributions to the History of the Situationist International and Its Time, Vol 1
Between 1952 and 1954, Jean-Michel Mension haunted Saint-Germain-des-Prés as a member of the legendary Letterist International, direct progenitor of the Situationist International. In a series of conversations, Mension recounts this very particular vie de bohème whiled away with Guy Debord and a rogue’s gallery of hard drinkers and thinkers. The rich iconography includes many of Ed van der Elsken’s celebrated photographs of "the tribe" and a trove of Letterist leaflets and posters.
0-87286-392-1
$14.95



MEDUSA Marina Minghelli
MEDUSA
The Fourth Kingdom
Translated from the Italian by Beverly Allen
A City Lights/Italian Voices Book
Here we see Medusa in formation, Medusa as she might have been as a girl, before she entered myth, an innocent beauty whose quest is complicated by her need to understand the complex reactions she causes in others.
0-87286-353-0
$10.95



LOVE WORKS Janice Mirikitani
LOVE WORKS
San Francisco Poet Laureate Series #2
Love Works brings together a collection of Janice Mirikitani's strongest poems on a diversity of subjects: the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, family relationships, and the quest by people at the margins of society to claim justice, bread, and dignity.
1-931404-02-x
$9.95


The Beat Generation in San Francisco Bill Morgan
THE BEAT GENERATION IN NEW YORK
A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City
Set off on the eternal trail of the Beat experience in the city that inspired many of Jack Kerouac's best-loved novels including On the Road, Vanity of Duluoz, The Town and the City, and Desolation Angels. This is the ultimate guide to Kerouac's New York, packed with photos of the Beat Generation, and filed with undercover information and little known anecdotes.
0-87286-325-5
$12.95



The Beat Generation in San Francisco Bill Morgan
THE BEAT GENERATION IN SAN FRANCISCO
A Literary Tour
A blow-by-blow unearthing of the places where the Beat writers first came to full bloom: the flat where Ginsberg wrote "Howl," the sites of the Six Gallery and Gary Snyder’s zen cottage in Berkeley, the ghostly railroad yards where Kerouac and Cassady toiled, the pads where Jack & Neal & Carolyn lived, Ferlinghetti’s favorite haunts. Here, too, are Ferlinghetti’s reminiscences about the City Lights Bookstore and the defining literary events of the last half century. Based on in-depth interviews, this guide chronicles the West Coast Beat experience from 1948 through the 1970s, with never-before-heard stories and new information about Corso, Kaufman, DiPrima, Kyger, Lamantia, Brautigan, Meltzer, Kandel, Duncan, Rexroth, and others.
0-87286-417-0
$17.95



Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression Bill Morgan
HOWL ON TRIAL: THE BATTLE FOR FREE EXPRESSION
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Howl and Other Poems, with nearly 1,000,000 copies in print, City Lights presents the story of editing, publishing, and defending the landmark poem within a broader context of obscenity issues and censorship of literary works.
0-87286-479-0
$14.95



THE LEMON Mohammed Mrabet
THE LEMON
Translated by Paul Bowles
The adventures of a precocious twelve-year-old Moroccan who runs away from his home in the Rif Mountains to urban Tangiers. "Surprisingly effective." -- The New Yorker
0-87286-181-3
$8.95



M'HASHISH Mohammed Mrabet
M'HASHISH
Translated by Paul Bowles
"Ah," said Hassan, "I don't believe in the world. There's another world where life is different." Here are astonishing stories of that world.
0-87286-034-5
$8.95



This War Called Love Alejandro Murguía
THIS WAR CALLED LOVE
From Mexico City to San Francisco’s Mission district, nothing comes easy — in life or in love. Here is an unstereotypical view of a world as treacherous as it is tender, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.
0-87286-394-8
$11.95

Temporarily out of stock

VOLCÁN Alejandro Murgía and Barbara Paschke, eds.
VOLCÁN
Poems from Central America
Poetry from the most explosive region in the hemisphere: El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
Bilingual text.
0-87286-153-8
$13.95



SAN FRANCISCO'S TELEGRAPH HILL David F. Myrick
SAN FRANCISCO'S TELEGRAPH HILL
A City Lights Foundation Book
The City Lights Foundation has collaborated with the Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association to update and reprint David Myrick’s classic Telegraph Hill, a beautiful, lavishly illustrated book that is an invaluable community resource documenting the story of one of San Francisco’s most unique neighborhoods.
Hardcover
1-931404-00-3
$34.95


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ASTROLABE OF THE SEA Shams Nadir
ASTROLABE OF THE SEA
A mysterious astrolabe reveals ancient tales, allegories for the present situation of the Arab world.
0-87286-314-X
$9.95