Mumon -La porta senza porta seguito da 10 Tori di Kakuan e da Trovare il centro
Stanlio
"Zen has no doors.
The words of Buddha are meant to enlighten others.
Therefore, Zen must be without doors."

Thus wrote Mumon (1183-1260) introducing a collection of koans dedicated to a group of monks who were his students.

(cit. Adelphi) more
Nyogen Senzaki e Paul Reps -101 storie Zen
Stanlio
The reader will find a selection from "The Collection of Stones and Sand" by Muju, a Japanese master of the thirteenth century, and other classic Zen texts, up to the end of the nineteenth century.

“Zen is not a sect but an experience.”
From this experience, which centers around the notion of satori, "enlightenment," an immense literature has emerged, with numerous branches, starting from the sixth century in China (under the name of Ch’an) and from the twelfth century to the present day in Japan (under the name of Zen). - quote from Adelphi - more
Jacques Bacot -La vita di Marpa il Traduttore
Stanlio
Marpa the Translator (1012-1096), known in the West primarily as the irritable and discontented master who subjected his favorite disciple Milarepa to unheard-of labors before granting him any teachings, was among those who contributed the most to transplanting Indian Buddhism in Tibet.
Three times he left Tibet to undertake perilous journeys through Nepal and India in search of manuscripts and masters who could clarify the obscure doctrines of the Tantras.
Among the many extraordinary encounters, the one with Naropa was decisive; after instructing him and testing him with enigmatic messages, disconcerting visions, and wondrous apparitions, he designated him as his spiritual successor. (cit. Adelphi) more
Amos Tutuola -La mia vita nel bosco degli spiriti
Stanlio
In Nigeria, in the early 1950s, the young Amos Tutuola sent his first manuscript to an address he had found in an advertisement that appeared in a local newspaper.
Through a further turn of fate, the manuscript arrived at the publisher Faber and Faber: in this unlikely manner, the immortal spirit of the fable began to speak once more.
Dylan Thomas immediately recognized that tone, that wonder – and greeted Tutuola's first book with an enthusiastic review in the "Observer." (quote from Adelphi) more
Jacques Bacot -Vita di Milarepa I suoi delitti, le sue prove, la sua liberazione
Stanlio
- Milarepa was a magician, poet, and hermit. He became one so completely that Tibetans struggle not to separate these three characters, and depending on their perspective as magicians, laypeople, or religious figures, Milarepa is their greatest magician, poet, or saint. (Jaques Bacot)
- One of those precious texts upon which, with each new reading, one measures what has been understood in the meantime. (René Daumal)
- The Life of Milarepa is a biography - the oldest one that has been handed down - by UgTsang smyon He-ru-ka about the Buddhist monk, mystic, and yogi master Milarepa. more
Lev Tolstoj -La morte di Ivan Il’ic - Tre morti e altri racconti
Stanlio
If you want to have the immediate, undeniable sense of Tolstoy's greatness in just a few pages, you only need to open this book. A story seemingly among the most ordinary – a mediocre, indistinct character discovers, after a trivial domestic accident, that he is afflicted with a terminal illness – the tale of Ivan Il’ic is perhaps the work where, more than ever, death becomes presence, interlocutor, even the evocative power of a new reality. (quote from Adelphi) more
Robert Louis Stevenson -L’Isola del Tesoro
Stanlio
There are rare books that not only appear perfect in every time, in every age, in every situation, but seem to contain something more that goes beyond literature: they are books that resemble happiness, as Sciascia memorably put it... (cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Le finestre di fronte
Stanlio
- We are in Batum, on the Black Sea, in the early years of Stalin. Adil bey is the new Turkish consul.
He begins to look around.
He enters his office, "dirty with that gloomy dirt found in barracks and certain public offices."
He glances outside and sees two people leaning out of the window across the street.
- He spies on the spies, and meanwhile, his own body seems to be affected, a dark rage merging with fear.
And the anguish expands, nothing can stop it.
Against this backdrop, a tale of love, deceit, and death unfolds.
(cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Lettera a mia madre
Stanlio
- After years of absence, Georges Simenon returns to Liège to witness the last days of his ninety-year-old mother. In the hospital room, two faded gray eyes are fixated on him: "Why did you come, Georges?"
- They have seen each other little for almost fifty years.
- ... only now does Simenon feel he understands his mother, and at the same time knows almost nothing about her...
(quote Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -L’uomo che guardava passare i treni
Stanlio
Popinga leaves the house and, closing the door, also steps out of himself; we encounter everything and cannot help but see it through his eyes.
The crime, the terror, the daydreaming, the solitude, the clarity, the meticulousness: they are new pieces on an old chessboard, and with their help, Popinga desperately tries to evade checkmate.
(quoted from Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Pedigree
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Georges Simenon — Pedigree | DeRank™: 0,00

"Billions, billions and billions of animals on the face of the earth, in the air, in the water, everywhere, ceaselessly, minute by minute, make an effort of all their cells towards a becoming they do not know, like ants crossing precipices dragging burdens a hundred times their size, venturing among mountains of sand or mud and attempting ten times to assault the same obstacle, without their caravan changing course."
Thus they appeared, to Simenon's eye, the early years of his life: countless small gestures and little figures, clumps of pigment on an endless canvas. (cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Il testamento Donadieu
Stanlio
... one day the chieftain, Oscar the Shipowner, disappears.
From that moment starts this grand and meticulous chronicle, a story of disintegration that first engulfs La Rochelle and then spreads to Paris, transitioning from the sluggish rhythm of a seaside provincial city to the poisoned effervescence of the metropolis.
With the same certainty with which it was upheld, “the Donadieu order” collapses.
And in the collapse, it drags not only the clan but also the one who had been the cold agent of ruin: the social climber Philippe...
(quote from Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Hôtel del Ritorno alla Natura
Stanlio
This is the first book I skimmed through in the blink of an eye by GS, and then inevitably the others followed in quick succession...

"A German scientist and his companion live in isolation on one of the Galápagos Islands, convinced that by doing so they are leaving behind the corrupted civilization and 'returning to a state of nature.' But Countess von Kleber, accompanied by two gigolos, also has plans for that dazzling fragment of land surrounded by the sea..." (from Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Lettera al mio giudice
Stanlio
"I would so much like a man, just one man, to understand me.
And I would wish that man were you."
Thus the narrator addresses his judge, and consequently every reader, at the beginning of this novel. The story that follows is one of love and death, filled with intensity, exaltation, and anguish.
It is the story of a man who feels compelled to kill a woman because he loves her too much.
(cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -La neve era sporca
Stanlio
Frank, the memorable protagonist of this novel, is nineteen years old and is the son of the attractive madam of a brothel in a Northern city during the Nazi occupation. Cold, aloof, insolent, solitary, Frank secretly desires just one thing: to initiate himself into life. And he believes that the best way to do this is by killing someone without reason. He does. Then he commits other crimes, always in some way gratuitous.
(cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -La Marie del porto
Stanlio
Marie of the harbor is a figure that one cannot forget in the vast gallery of Simenon's women: an unassuming girl, a true "still water," who manages to captivate a brisk and bold man, accustomed to winning and commanding.
(cit Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Betty
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Georges Simenon — Betty | DeRank™: 0,00

A beautiful woman of scandalous behavior lands on a stool at a bar on the Champs-Élysées, her head muddled by alcohol.
What lies behind?
(quote Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Pietr il Lettone
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Georges Simenon — Pietr il Lettone | DeRank™: 0,00

- Maigret's presence at the Majestic inevitably had something hostile about it.
It was like a block of granite that the environment refused to assimilate.
- Not that he resembled the policemen made popular by caricatures.
He had neither a mustache nor double-soled shoes.
- "He had a particular way of positioning himself in a spot that sometimes proved unpleasant even to many colleagues"
(from Pietr il Lettone) more
Georges Simenon -La morte di Belle
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Georges Simenon — La morte di Belle | DeRank™: 0,00

- In a quaint cottage in a quiet American town, an eighteen-year-old girl, Belle Sherman, is murdered. That evening, by chance, Professor Spencer Ashby – who was hosting the young girl, the daughter of a friend of his wife – was left alone in the house with her.
- "The righteous" begin to look at him with suspicion, to find him "different," to isolate him. This is enough to bring back in him ancient disturbances, sexual fantasies, an inner disorder that, after years of a smooth life, he believed to be dormant, repressed. The coroner presses on with his questioning, and the professor's precarious balance crumbles.
- Another reality will emerge, from the shell of horror. (cit. Adelphi) more
Georges Simenon -Turista da banane
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Georges Simenon — Turista da banane | DeRank™: 0,00

Oscar Donadieu, a sensitive and introverted young man, the last heir of a powerful shipowner clan from La Rochelle, lands in Tahiti dreaming “of immersing himself in nature, of living face to face with it and with it alone, renouncing the comforts of civilization.”
Yet, even during the crossing, someone warned him: “Perhaps it would be better not to disembark and to head straight back to France.”
This way, he would avoid becoming one of those whom the locals disparagingly call “banana tourists,” remnants of tropical life wandering between sad drunkenness, easy girls, squalid nights, and sordid dealings. (quoted from Adelphi) more