Based on the fable of the man who traded his world for superhuman powers and knowledge, Faust became the life's work of Germany's greatest poet. It is a compelling dramatic poem that charts the life of a deeply flawed individual and his fight against despair and the nihilism of the diabolical Mephistopheles; it is also a symbolic and panoramic commentary both on the human condition and on modern history and culture. This edition presents Part One of Faust in a new translation that preserves the poetic character of the original, its style and diction, its tragic pathos and hilarious comedy. In addition, John Williams has translated the Urfaust, an early draft of Part One that offers a fascinating glimpse into the younger Goethe's imagination, and the sensational draft scenarios for the witches' Sabbath - material so ribald and blasphemous that Goethe did not dare publish it. 512pp. Paperback.

Painter, poet, immigrant, rebel and global citizen, born in Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran emigrated to America as a young man in the 1890s, where he became a successful artist and prose poet. His book The Prophet of 1923 became a worldwide bestseller, selling 40 million copies and being translated into more than 40 languages. It is a series of 26 philosophical essays written in poetic English prose, and as a writer, Gibran encouraged a renaissance in Arab literature. As an artist he painted hundreds of canvases including portraits of artistic celebrities. Raised a Maronite Catholic, his spirituality and thought embraces elements of other traditions including Sufi mysticism and the Baha'i faith. From his childhood and spiritual roots in Mount Lebanon, to the city wilderness of urban America, from his apprenticeships in the creative circles of Boston, Beirut, Paris and New York to his art and activism for Greater Syria, Gibran crafted a religiously inclusive art that embraced a universal message, informed by Christian, Islamic and Judaic elements. Exiled between the worlds of the Middle East and the West, he defied boundaries to assert a vision of an underlying humanity and faith that all people can share. This richly illustrated biography draws on a lifetime of dedicated research to tell his compelling story and how his determination and talent broke down barriers to forge a new and fruitful life and career in a new homeland. A splendid tome of 524pp with many illustrations plus eight pages of colour plates including his beautiful oil paintings Family Scene and Ages of Women. 24.8 x 18.7cm x 5cm deep, this really is a whopping heavyweight tome complete with elegant pagemarker.

Take a step out of the system and be encouraged and inspired by the artistic avant-garde with wise words on stealing, holding yourself back, probing pain, discovering you are not a creative genius, right things wrong space, wrong things right space, inventions, going to excess and intervention. Find ideas worth taking from Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley, Marina Abramovic who encourages us to embrace unpleasant emotions and investigate taboo subjects. William Blake resists and reassess the norm. Andy Warhol joins a collective to spark ideas and share experiences. Marcel Duchamp and Rachel Whiteread take things out of context to find new value. Cindy Sherman creates an alter ego and Jeff Koons challenges the boundaries of good taste. And there are others who question whether it's good to disrupt a routine, turn an idea on its head, or challenge the norm in a book that will give you the confidence to take creative risks and experiment, free from self-doubt. 112pp, softback with big typography and nice design, and eight pages of colour plates from the artists at the back.

'The libidinal, erotic and romantic need not come together in one lover. We can fuck without devotion, adore without horniness, gape without love - this has been the stuff of literature and song for millennia.' Yet sex talk is oddly superficial and much of daily life is certainly sexualised, typically while trying to sell us something. In 'The Secret Life of Catherine M'. Catherine remembers the beautiful anonymity of orgies, the free abandonment of herself to men. Similarly, theorist David Halperin describes gay bathhouses as opportunities for sex without elaborate straight courting rites. European philosophers and theologians have been at the forefront of this campaign against carnal joy and have deemed lust ignoble. Plato was writing in the 4th century before Christ and raised without any Christian shame. In his Symposium he portrays flirting with wit and charm and has no qualms about describing an erect penis. The generation after Plato, the early Stoics were not prudish about sex - statesman Seneca called desire a 'secret destruction'. The philosopher and commune leader Epicurus believed that sex was natural but superfluous and that sex was often healthier to relieve lust than not, especially if longing and love led to pain. Here is figurative fucking, achieving oneness, and sexual intercourse while being 'ashamed of being in the body'. For Augustine our genitals are wilful and capricious, and procreation without orgasm is the ideal. In his Paradise, men ejaculate like they might reach for a fruit - calmly, with no shudder. Aristotle rarely discussed sex and sexuality; 13th century theologian Thomas Aquinas married Augustine's fear of lust to Aristotle's virtue theory, and idea of a purposeful universe. For Aquinas, we were not made by God ...to wank or suck one another. These are all sins and the only allowable fucking is between a married man and woman to make babies.... In the 15th century, philosopher Marsilio Ficino was clearly in love with the younger Giovanni Cavalcanti, but was wary of 'the filths of the body' as he put it in De Amore. To many, screwing was safer as an intellectual or poetic trope than as an actual part of philosophical life. On sex, the most radical departure from medieval and Renaissance ideas came in the 18th century with philosophers like Rousseau, Diderot and Voltaire. The Marquis de Sade took this brazen materialism and turned it against his era's gentile rationality and the aristocratic aesthete used his position to rape and torture the poor, eventually being jailed then committed for his crimes. He was typical of another powerful man abusing women and another thinker who made sense of sex only by stripping it of everything but pure physicality. Inspired by philosophy, literature and private life, Damon Young explores the paradoxes of the bedroom in a book which more than teases your mind. 278pp.

Whether you believe in one god, many gods, or no god at all, this is a book to challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions and here she takes on a subject even more immense - God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, he narrates the history of religion as one long and remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. This innate desire to humanise God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. But we bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature - our compassion and thirst for justice - but all that is bad in it - greed, bigotry, violence. All the qualities inform our religions, cultures and governments and more than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanising impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Chapters include Adam and Eve in Eden, The Lord of the Beasts, The Face in the Tree, Spears into Ploughs, Lofty Persons and The High God. The book is an appeal to stop foisting our human compulsions upon the divine and in that truth lies the key to a more mature, more peaceful and more primal form of spirituality. 300pp, illus. Remainder mark.

Does my life look like that of Jesus, and if not, how do I get there? These two powerful questions set the tone for everything you are about to read from Cris and members of his church at All Hallows, Bow, in East London. The book is insightfully built round the idea that followers of Jesus should consider themselves as enrolled apprentices learning the ways of Jesus. Each reflection is rooted in Scripture and as you engage in the reflective exercises, answer questions and wrestle with God in prayer, the aim is that you will experience the Spirit's work in a new way. Do your strengths lie in your hands, in contributing, creating and leading? In your heart in loving, appreciating and belonging? In your head in knowing, thinking and understanding? Though our individual passions and strengths vary, Jesus invites each of us to grow in all areas of discipleship. The 40 daily readings which include Bible passages, reflections, exercises and prayer will help you step-by-step towards becoming more like Jesus. Day 8 is entitled Soul Food. Day 14 Satnavs and Road Maps. Day 18 Rock Bottom. Day 20 Standing on the Shoulders of Jesus. Day 24 A Bigger World. Day 37 Representing Jesus. An SPCK paperback, 168pp. Line art.

The sailing of the Mayflower, the ship that took the Pilgrim Fathers to the New World, is a fundamental event in American history, but it began as an English story that pioneered the idea of religious freedom. The illegal underground movement of Protestant separatists from Elizabeth I's Church of England is a story of subterfuge and danger, arrests and interrogations, prison and executions. It starts with Queen Mary's attempts to burn Protestantism out of England which created a Protestant underground. Later, when her reformation didn't go far enough, radicals recreated that underground, meeting illegally, facing prison and death for their crimes. They went into exile in the Netherlands where they lived in poverty and made their plans for the New World. Historian Stephen Tomkins tells this fascinating story, one that is rarely told as an important piece of English as well as American history that is full of contemporary relevance - religious violence, the threat to national security, freedom of religion, and the tolerance of dangerous opinions. The book is hair raising, sometimes hilarious and often tragic in telling the stories of the men and women who suffered or survived it. Tomkins has a PhD in Church History from the London School of Theology. 372pp, paperback.

The picture postcard was in its heyday in the late 19th century, when travel became a regular part of people's lives, and its popularity coincided with outbreaks of anti-semitism throughout Europe, with a notorious example being the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish officer was wrongly accused of an act of treason perpetrated by a French aristocrat. This collection makes profoundly uncomfortable reading at the same time as it sheds important light on the nature of anti-semitism and how it was spread. Around 300 postcards are reproduced here, divided by country as one nation's anti-semitism is markedly different from another's. Ordinary people sent anti-semitic postcards to their friends and relatives without any apparent awareness that the content was distasteful or inflammatory. Even in America the standard tropes are there, including exaggerated features, exclusion from the military, carrying an umbrella and an emphasis on money. In 19th century France the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war was popularly ascribed to Jewish influence. In Germany the Ostjude - Jew from the east - played a key role in forming the country's narrative of Jews as outsiders. Incidents such as the Konitz murder of 1900, where a Jew was wrongly blamed for a gruesome killing, fed into the mythology. The UK's king of seaside postcards, Donald McGill, freely used anti-semitic tropes until the rise of Hitler, when public opinion was no longer so receptive. Other countries discussed are Austria, Ukraine, and notably Poland which lost three million Jews in the Holocaust. A section on Nazi-era postcards includes images from "The Eternal Jew" exhibition of 1937 in Munich, showing Jews as physically deformed and suggesting that they were behind the Communist revolution in countries such as Russia. 238pp, softback, hundreds of colour illustrations. Save £20.

First published to accompany an exhibition of art of the same name at the at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham in October 2017 to January 2018, this rare exhibition catalogue is a celebration of Jan Steen's distinctive genius. Steen (1626-1679) is now widely admired as one of the most engaging and technically brilliant painters of the Dutch Golden Age. He produced a remarkable group of around 70 history paintings, depicting subjects taken principally from the Bible and classical mythology and history. The book concentrates specifically on his Old Testament scenes which represent some of his most ambitious works, none more so than the Wrath of Ahasuerus. In about 25 extant or securely documented paintings, Steen represented some 16 scenes from seven books of the Old Testament. We look closely at the paintings' resonances with Jewish history, culture, picture collecting and theatricality. Comparisons are made with Rembrandt and other great contemporary Dutch painters. Steen slowly shed his unfortunate reputation as a drunk and rather boorish character, and he was praised for his clarity and expressiveness, and his ability to render the humanity of his characters. We are led to understand his sarcastic and comical approach and note that his treatment of the subject of the Marriage at Cana, at which water was miraculously turned into wine, was probably the only Biblical miracle that could truly have touched Steen given his reputation as a jolly drinker. Samson and Delilah, Amnon and Tamar, the Head of a God, Esther accusing Haman at the Banquet, Jews in the Synagogue are among the full-page colour reproductions together with a useful timeline and many other woodcut and colour illustrations. 84 page large paperback.

A gripping personal journey of wonder and insight into science, faith, belief and devotion from the author of the international bestseller Shantaram. 'The Spiritual Path is a book on spiritual matters that my younger self wanted desperately; one that offers more answers than questions, and helps to reset the spiritual compass.' Gregory David Roberts takes us on a gripping personal journey of wonder and insight drawing on sacred traditions, rigorous logic, and the six year instruction of his spiritual teacher. He describes the step-by-step process he followed in search of spiritual connection that anyone of any belief or none can benefit from in their own lives. This account of the 'Leap of Faith' is a compellingly fresh addition to such enduring, spiritually inspiring works as 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance', 'The Road Less Travelled' and 'The Celestine Prophecy'. The book is very much a personal journey. 221pp in fairly large print, paperback.