Search results for ""Alma Books Ltd""
Alma Books Ltd The Double Axe
Dark forces are at work in the House of the Double Axe. Stephan, the thirteen-year-old son of King Minos of Crete, stumbles across a terrifying conspiracy. Is the Minotaur, a half man half bull who eats human flesh, real? Or is something even more dangerous threatening to engulf both the palace and the world? Stephan must race to save his family from a terrible fate and find out what really lurks inside the labyrinth... You think you know the story? Think again. The Double Axe is the first instalment in Philip Womack’s Blood and Fire series, which reimagines classical myths from the point of view of teenage protagonists. It’s a thrilling tale of adventure, and an opportunity for young readers to engage with and learn more about classical mythology.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Angela Merkel: The Chancellor and Her World
With the Eurozone engulfed in an unprecedented crisis, one political figure looms largest of all, Angela Merkel, the leader of its most powerful economy. While foreign affairs have become the central issues of her chancellorship in this crucial election year, the entire world is anxiously looking to Germany to play its part in Europe's rescue. This authorized biography sheds light on the person behind the politician - from her youthful days of hitchhiking in Tbilisi to being the guest of honour at a White House state dinner - and examines how a girl from East Germany rose to the highest echelons of European power. As well as explaining how Angela Merkel's world view was shaped and influenced by her background and ideology, Stefan Kornelius's lively account discusses her personal relations with international counterparts such as David Cameron, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin, as well as her attitude towards the countries and cultures over which they rule.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd A Fine Brother: The Life of Captain Flora Sandes
Shortlisted for the HW Fisher Best First Biography Prize 2012 "The only Western woman to enlist as a soldier in the First World War, the Englishwoman Flora Sandes became a heroine and a media sensation when she fought for the Serbian Army and pursued a distinguished career in its ranks. This account charts her incredible story: her tomboyish childhood in genteel Victorian England, her mission to Serbia as a Red Cross volunteer and subsequent military enrolment, her celebrity lecture tours, her marriage to a fellow officer, her survival in a Gestapo prison during the Second World War and her final years in Suffolk. A fascinating character of her times and an inspiration to women the world over, Flora Sandes is brought to life and restored to her rightful place in history by this biography, compiled with the help of her family, and using hitherto unpublished private papers and photographs."
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd Letters from London and Europe: First English Translation
The Leopard, published posthumously in 1958, was one of the most important works of fiction to appear in the Italian language in the twentieth century. Between 1925 and 1930, its author, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, wrote a number of letters to his cousins Casimiro and Lucio Piccolo in which he describes his travels around Europe (London, Paris, Zurich, Berlin). The letters, here published in English for the first time, display much of Lampedusa’s distinctive style present in his later work: not only the razor-sharp introspection, but also a wicked sense of humour, playful in its description of the comédie humaine.
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Alma Books Ltd The Lulu Plays and Other Sex Tragedies
Two of Wedekind's most seminal plays, Earth-Spirit and Pandora's Box both focus on the actions of the young heroine Lulu, who embodies both animal sensuality and waif-like innocence, as she escapes a life on the streets, receives a society education, marries, takes on various lovers, becomes a dancer in a revue, is imprisoned for murder and encounters Jack the Ripper. When Earth-Spirit was premiered in Leipzig in 1898, Wedekind was vilified and persecuted for advocating unfeigned sexual pleasure and making his heroine a heartless whore. Death and Devil and Castle Wetterstein, the other plays that make up this volume, are essentially extensions of and complementary to the Lulu tragedies.
£12.99
Alma Books Ltd A Long Day in a Short Life
As time ticks along with indifference, the inmates of the Washington District Jail drag on their daily routine behind bars. Innocent at their birth, these frail creatures who have lost their way now spend their lives shut out of society, deprived of all freedom, with little prospect of being readmitted into the human fold. Each prisoner has a story: some of them are charged with crimes of assault, murder and manslaughter, others of forgery, robbery and larceny - others still are not guilty of anything other than having been born to certain parents at a certain time in a certain country. A Long Day in a Short Life - Maltz's first novel to be published in the UK - is a powerful indictment of the penal system and a strong reminder about the underlying humanity of each individual.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Last Year at Marienbad: The Film Script
A man tells a woman that they have met before – that they became lovers but then agreed to separate for a year. The year is now up, and he has come back for her. At first, she remembers nothing, but as he relates their past together, real or imaginary, snapshots of memory appear – and she begins to believe him. As more details begin to re-emerge from the woman’s mind, the reader is shunted backwards and forwards between the past and the present, the actual and the illusory, that which is seen and that which is only glimpsed and guessed at. The director Alain Resnais was already famous for films such as Hiroshima, Mon Amour when he asked Alain Robbe-Grillet – the author of several seminal novels, including Jealousy and The Voyeur, and the leader of the Nouveau Roman school – to write a script for him. The result was Last Year at Marienbad, a film that, as well as winning the Golden Lion at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, has enthralled the critics, fascinated the public and become one of the greatest cult classics of modern cinema.
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd La Traviata
‘La Traviata’ was Giuseppe Verdi’s eighteenth opera and shows him at the height of his middle-period powers. Adapted from ‘La Dame aux Camelias’ by Alexandre Dumas fils, it portrays the love between the courtesan Violetta Valery and the young Alfredo Germont in fashionable Parisian society, with its inevitable tragic outcome. It had its premiere at La Fenice in Venice in 1853 and has gone on to become one of the most performed and greatly loved of all operas. There are articles in the guide about Verdi’s preparations for the first performances, a musical commentary, an overview of the opera’s social background and an examination of how the libretto was adapted from Dumas’s play. Also included are a survey of important performances and performers, sixteen pages of illustrations, a musical thematic guide, the full libretto and English translation, a discography, bibliography and DVD and website guides.
£12.00
Alma Books Ltd Tropisms
A series of sketches and observations of daily life – a crowd gathering in front of shop windows, an old man talking to his grandchild about death, a professor lecturing about Proust and Rimbaud, a woman concealing her disdain at a family gathering – Nathalie Sarraute’s first work of fiction places human existence under the microscope, revealing the dynamics at play between our thoughts and actions beneath the veneer of social convention. First published in 1939 to little fanfare, Tropisms was ahead of its time and finally received the recognition it deserved when it was republished in 1957 at the height of the nouveau roman movement, of which it is now considered a precursor.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd The Erasers
After a failed attempt on his life by an unknown terrorist cell, Professor Daniel Dupont decides to fake his own death. The government authorities, believing that the attack is part of a series of political assassinations, send Wallas, a recently promoted special investigator, to the provincial town where the crime took place. As he wanders the confusing streets of the town, he finds himself increasingly lost in a web of conspiracies, doppelgängers and memories. Cleverly deconstructing the detective genre, The Erasers, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first published novel, shifts between various characters and time frames, while maintaining the suspense of a conventional thriller. The result is an engrossing examination of consciousness and reality which is also one the founding texts of the nouveau roman school.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd Paris Spleen: Dual-Language Edition
Set in a modern, urban Paris, the prose pieces in this volume constitute a further exploration of the terrain Baudelaire had covered in his verse masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil: the city with all its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality, and the liberation provided by the sensual delights of intoxication, art and women. Published posthumously in 1869, Paris Spleen was a landmark publication in the development of the genre of prose poetry - a form which Baudelaire saw as particularly suited for expressing the feelings of uncertainty, flux and freedom of his age - and one of the founding texts of literary Modernism.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd Around the World in Eighty Days
Having learnt that a new railway in India has made it theoretically possible to travel all the way around the globe in no more than eighty days, Phileas Fogg, a wealthy and fastidious London gentleman, makes a wager of 20,000 with his Reform Club associates that he can achieve this hitherto unheard-of feat, and, accompanied by his French valet Jean Passepartout, boards a train for Dover the very same evening. Pursued on their epic journey by a Scotland Yard policeman who has mistaken Fogg for a bank robber, the intrepid voyagers face a race against time as they traverse a range of exotic and sometimes hazardous landscapes and make use of any and every mode of transport available to them including elephants in order to achieve their goal.A huge commercial success on first publication in 1872, Jules Verne's classic adventure story has been adapted numerous times for the stage and the screen, as well as inspiring many real-life adventurers who have sought to emulate Fogg's audacious ody
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Heart of Darkness and the Complete Congo Diary
On a boat in the Thames estuary, Marlow tells his travelling companions of his reconnaissance expedition for a Belgian trading company to its most remote outpost in central Africa, which brought him on the trail of the elusive Kurtz, a brilliant idealist gone rogue. His account relates not only the perils he encounters on his quest, but also the deterioration of his state of mind as he is confronted with a world that is hostile and alien to him. Renowned for its stylistic boldness and dramatic descriptions, Heart of Darkness is a stark yet subtle examination of the powers of the subconscious and the workings of western imperialism.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Men In Space
Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, "Men in Space" follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, football referees, deaf police agents, assassins and stranded astronauts as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and beyond. The icon's melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters' ellipses and near misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space: physical, political, emotional and metaphysical. What emerges is a vision a world in a state of disintegration.
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Alma Books Ltd Changing Track
On a train from Paris to Rome on his way to surprise his lover, the businessman Leon Delmont begins to mull over his past and question the decisions he has made about his future. These musings - together with his impressions of the unfolding scenery, conjectures about his fellow passengers and some recurring leitmotifs - form the basis of a riveting narrative that provides a psychological case study of an everyman and subtly illustrates the onset of the protagonist's doubts and fears. Published in 1957 and awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot, Michel Butor's groundbreaking third novel remains the most popular and widely read work of the nouveau roman genre. Famously written in the second person in order to immerse the reader more fully into the psyche of the main character, Changing Track pulls off the rare feat of being at once experimental and accessible, disquieting and engrossing.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd The Jews Beech
Based on a true story, The Jew''s Beech centres on two brutal murders in rural Westphalia the first of a local forester and the second of a Jewish moneylender near a beech tree and the impact these events have on the life of Friedrich Mergel, a local herdsman with a turbulent family history.A prototype of the murder mystery and a thoughtful examination of village society, this intriguing novella contains hints of the Gothic and the uncanny ominous thunderstorms, mysterious disappearances, eerie doppelgängers and grisly discoveries in the depths of the forest as well as a famously ambiguous climax.
£8.23
Alma Books Ltd Arrowsmith
Martin Arrowsmith, a young medical student at the University of Winnemac, is driven by a sincere passion and a desire to make a positive contribution to the world. But events get in the way, and a series of personal vicissitudes, love interests and societal pressures threaten to lead him away from the path of pure science until he is forced, in the face of a humanitarian crisis, to decide between scientific rigour and compassion, between maintaining his medical principles and saving lives.First published in 1925 to great critical acclaim, Arrowsmith is the third major novel by Sinclair Lewis, author of Main Street and Babbitt, and arguably his most ambitious work. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1926 which the author famously declined it contributed to Lewis''s growing reputation as a master storyteller, social commentator and the unsurpassed satirist of his time.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd The Return of Sherlock Holmes
London’s criminal underworld has risen once again, and a dangerous individual with an air gun is prowling the streets. The capital is in greater need of its protector Sherlock Holmes than ever. Three years have passed since Holmes and the evil mastermind Professor Moriarty fell, locked in combat, into the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, and when Doctor Watson collides with an odd-looking old book collector in the street, little does he know that the world’s greatest detective is about to return… Third volume in the Alma Classics Sherlock Holmes stories, this edition contains extra material for young readers, including a profile of the author, a section on the book, a list of characters, a glossary and a test-yourself quiz.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Eugene Onegin
Part of the Overture Opera Guides series in association with English National Opera, this new edition of Eugene Onegin contains new illustrations, many revised and newly commissioned articles, updated reference sections and a literal translation of the libretto that will enable the reader to get closer to the intentions and meaning of the original.
£12.00
Alma Books Ltd Parsifal
£12.00
Alma Books Ltd The Art of Sinking in Poetry
Written in 1727, The Art of Sinking in Poetry was one of Alexander Pope’s contributions to the literary output of the legendary Scriblerus club – a circle of writers dedicated to mocking what they perceived as a culture of mediocrity and false learning prevalent in the arts and sciences of their day. Taking the form of an ironic guide to writing bad verse, Pope’s tongue-in-cheek essay is wickedly funny in its lampooning of various pompous poetasters, as well as being essential reading for any budding writer wishing to avoid sinking to the unintentionally ridiculous, and instead reach for the sublime.
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd The Crocodile
The civil servant Ivan Matveich and his wife Yelena Ivanovna are spectators of an exhibition – in a shopping arcade – of a crocodile owned by a German, when Ivan is suddenly swallowed alive by the animal. Unsuccessful in his attempts to be freed from his prison, due to the German’s concern for his crocodile and excessive desire for compensation, the civil servant gradually comes to appreciate his new environment, while his wife begins to enjoy her new-found freedom. Inspired by Gogol’s surreal tales, Dostoevsky’s hilarious story has been interpreted by some as a vitriolic piece of social criticism and a veiled attack on the revolutionary philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Tosca
Tosca, one of Puccini’s greatest and most popular operas, is a supreme example of music’s power to enthral the audience. In his introductory essay to this guide, Bernard Williams discusses the enduring quality of its appeal. Bernard Keeffe, in his article, analyses different aspects of the score, noting Puccini’s special genius for orchestration and the subtle effects that give the opera its irresistible vitality, while Stuart Woolf’s survey of the historical background reveals its political and nationalistic undertones. Enriched by twenty-five archive photographs, a detailed thematic analysis, the original libretto with the facing literal translation and a section containing up-to-date discographical and bibliographical information, this guide will prove an invaluable companion for opera-goers and anyone wanting to delve deeper into the genesis, history and significance of Puccini’s work.
£12.00
Alma Books Ltd Hadji Murat: New Translation
Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Caucasian struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who accept him but never put their trust in him – and so Murat must find another way to end the struggle. Tolstoy knew as he was writing this, his last work of fiction, that it would not be published in his lifetime, and so gave an uncompromising portrayal of the Russians’ faults and the nature of the rebels’ struggle. In the process, he shows a mastery of style and an understanding of Chechnya that still carries great resonance today.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Leonardo da Vinci: The Resurrection of the Gods
This evocative account of the life of the Renaissance’s greatest figure traces Leonardo’s early development as an artist and court figure to his final years in exile, portraying his loves and sufferings, as well as his intellectual curiosity and tireless loyalty to his ideals. But it is the background to his famous painting La Gioconda and his relationship with the mysterious Florentine woman who modelled for it that are at the heart of the novel – here presented for the first time in an unabridged translation. The result is an engrossing and unforgettable read. An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of Russian literature that inspired one of Freud’s most important essays, Leonardo da Vinci also offers an illuminating snapshot of the society of the period – beset with intrigue and religious and social tension – and a host of memorable historical figures such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Machiavelli, Savonarola and the infamous Borgias.
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd The Tower
Amman, Jordan. As an ambitious digitization project gathers pace in a vast building outside Amman, some unpublished writings by Giordano Bruno – flawed genius of the late Renaissance, renegade philosopher, occultist with a prodigious memory – disappear together with the Jesuit priest sent by the Vatican to study them. When the priest is found dead and a series of mysterious threats ensues, it becomes clear that the stakes are high for all the parties openly or covertly involved. What dangerous ideas were contained in the stolen manuscript? What was the ultimate secret that Bruno tried to hide, even as he was persecuted, imprisoned and tortured by the Holy Inquisition? In this riveting, meticulously researched new novel, Alessandro Gallenzi draws on his experience as a publisher in the digital era and casts a light on the darker side of our modern technological world, while revealing how a well-kept secret can change the course of history for ever.
£8.50
Alma Books Ltd Man at Leisure
Published for the first time in 1972, this verse collection reveals lesser-known facets of the novelist Alexander Trocchi’s writing. The poems included span a long period of time, and range from the lyricism of his early love poetry and reflections on his involvement in drug culture to the penetrating comments on contemporary figures and events of his later pieces. Trocchi’s language is strong, rich and frankly obscene, and his arguments are both witty and profound. Featuring an introduction by William S. Burroughs and a new preface by John Calder, Man at Leisure forms a notable addition to the published work of one of the finest Scottish writers of the twentieth century.
£10.99
Alma Books Ltd Simon Boccanegra
Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra exists in two versions: that of the 1857 original and that of the 1881 revision. The texts of the libretto of both versions are included in this guide, with a number of essays which focus on the differences between the two. Rodolfo Celleti provides the story’s historical context, setting the events of the real life of Simon Boccanegra against the unification of Italy, which formed the political backdrop to the composition of both versions of Verdi’s opera. James A. Hepokoski gives a detailed synopsis of the 1881 score, and indicates the ways in which Verdi radically revised the original and reworked it to fit his late style. Lastly, Desmond Shawe-Taylor discusses Verdi’s attitude to his singers, and the critical reception that performances of both versions of the opera received. This edition contains over twenty illustrations, a thematic guide and the texts of the libretti in the original with literal translations. There is also a bibilography, discography and DVD guide, together with a list of websites that will allow the reader to explore the opera further. Contents: An Historical Perspective, Rodolfo Celletti; An Introduction to the 1881 Score, James Hepokoski; Verdi and his Singers, Desmond Shawe-Taylor; Simon Boccanegra: Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave with additions by Giuseppe Montanelli and additions and alterations by Arrigo Boito; Simon Boccanegra: English translation by James Fenton
£10.00
Alma Books Ltd The Theology of Samuel Beckett
Like all the greatest writers, Samuel Beckett was primarily interested in discovering the meaning and purpose of life and of the world into which we are born. Knowledgeable about the religion his family and education instilled in him, which as an adult he could neither accept nor reject, he used it extensively in his novels, plays and poetry. Beckett’s works also explored philosophy and the imaginative world of Dante and Milton, as well as the theories of Darwin and scientific speculation, in order to create a literature that investigates human destiny more deeply and originally than any other writer had done before. In this, his second book about the essence and depth of Samuel Beckett’s thinking and literary art, John Calder analyses the dualism of Beckett’s theological writing, his debt to the Gnostics, Manichaeism and Geulincx in particular, the presence of ghosts in his work, and why his late writing has received so little attention compared to the early and middle periods. It will open up the much underestimated Beckett to deeper understanding and provide enjoyment to the many who have become convinced that this once derided author is one of the major literary figures of his time.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd A Serendipitous Error and An Evil Malady
It is a winter evening, and Yegor Aduyev, the scion of a wealthy family from the landed gentry, slips into the house of Baron Neyleyn with the intention of asking his beautiful daughter, the eighteen-year-old Yelena, to be his wife. Will the besotted lover be successful in his pursuit or will the young coquette - who seems at times to reciprocate his feelings, but who lavished lingering looks on two dashing princes during a recent ball - shatter his hopes, his dreams and his entire world? A Serendipitous Error, written in 1839, when Goncharov was still in his twenties, is accompanied here by another early novella, An Evil Malady and a short fictional fragment. Taken together, these stories - translated for the first time into English - are further proof of the eclectic narrative skills of the celebrated author of Oblomov.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Green Henry: Annotated Edition
The story of young Henry, who struggles to fulfil his ambitions to become a successful painter and is torn between the gentle Anna and the proud and sensual Judith, is one of the most outstanding and personal Bildungsroman writ¬ten in the German language. Composed between 1846 and 1855, Keller’s poetic, semi-autobiographical novel draws on the author’s own youth, artistic studies and development as a man, as well as providing a comprehensive portrait of his country and his times. Green Henry is one of the most important novels in European literature, and undoubtedly the greatest work of fiction by a Swiss writer.
£10.99
Alma Books Ltd Crime and Punishment
Poverty-stricken and cut off from society, former law student Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov leads a desolate life in a dreary little room in St Petersburg. Having abandoned all hopes of sustaining himself through work, he now obsesses over the idea of changing his fortunes through an extreme act of violence: the killing of an elderly pawnbroker. His mind baulks at the horror of his plan, but when he hears that his sister Dunya is about to agree to a loveless marriage in order to escape the advances of her employer, his disgust for the world becomes unbounded, and his feelings of rebellion and revenge push him closer and closer to the edge of the precipice. A masterpiece of psychological insight, Dostoevsky's 1866 novel features some of its author's most memorable characters - from the temperamental protagonist Raskolnikov to the amoral sensualist Svidrigailov and the immoral lawyer Luzhin. Presented here in a sparkling new translation by Roger Cockerell, Crime and Punishment is a towering work in Russian nineteenth-century fiction and a landmark of world literature.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Daisy Miller: Annotated Edition (Alma Classics 101 Pages)
When the young American Frederick Winterbourne meets his compatriot Daisy Miller in the garden of a grand hotel in Switzerland, he is struck by her beauty, but slightly unsettled by her open ways and her flirtatiousness. Undeterred by this and by his aunt’s disapproval, he invites her to join him in a jaunt to a nearby castle, little suspecting that this will set in train a sequence of events that promises to be a source of heartache and disappointment for him, and threatens to compromise his own social acceptability. One of Henry James’s most enduringly popular works, Daisy Miller, here published in its 1909 version, incorporating the author’s final revisions, is a masterly, psychologically nuanced dissection of social mores and a merciless critique of convention and staid respectability.
£7.15
Alma Books Ltd Pygmalion
When professor of phonetics Henry Higgins wagers with Colonel Pickering that he could teach even a gutter-mouthed flower seller how to speak like a duchess, little does he expect that his social experiment will be riddled with difficulties, and that behind her cockney parlance the girl in question, Eliza Doolittle, has a mind, ideas and aspirations of her own. Things come to a crux when the creature starts to rebel against her creator – and the scene is set for a play that questions the class system, social appearances and the role of women in society. Universally regarded as Shaw’s most successful work, Pygmalion – here presented in its definitive 1941 version, with footnotes indicating the textual variants from the first volume edition of 1916 – has spawned a great number of adaptations, among them the famous 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady, and shows ancient myth’s undiminished ability to find new incarnations in modern life.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd The Red Badge of Courage
On a cold morning, at daybreak, the 304th New York Regiment is waiting to engage with the Confederate army. Among the soldiers is young Henry Fleming, who has enlisted against his mother’s wishes and is now shaken by a sense of fear and regret at the prospect of battle. But when the confrontation begins and, fearing for his life, he escapes from the field, other feelings – above all guilt and shame for deserting and for having retreated without a wound – pierce his heart and eventually force him back into the fray. Although its author never experienced the horrors of the Civil War at first hand, The Red Badge of Courage has often been praised for its realism and the authenticity of its settings and battle scenes, as well as for the nuanced psychology of its protagonist’s internal struggles. Hailed as one of the greatest American novels ever written, it is as fresh today as it was when it was first published over a century ago.
£7.15
Alma Books Ltd Selected Poetry: Annotated Edition
During his short and restless life, Percy Bysshe Shelley produced a great number of poems, three verse plays and numerous prose works, as well as many essays in which he propounded his philosophical views and radical political ideas. These, together with his highly unconventional itinerant life and his literary connections, make him one of the most important and intriguing figures in British Romanticism. This volume provides a generous selection of his poetry, from the sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ to famous lyrics such as ‘Ode to the West Wind’ and ‘Lines Written among the Euganean Hills’, to the longer poems of his maturity, Adonais and Epipsychidion, all thoroughly annotated and presented in chronological order.
£8.50
Alma Books Ltd The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily
A wonderful story for children and an allegory for adults about the absurdity of war, presented here with an introduction and guide to the text by Lemony Snicket. Starving after a harsh winter, the bears descend from the mountains in search of food and invade the valley below, where they face fierce opposition from the army of the Grand Duke of Sicily. After many battles, scrapes and dangers, the bears' reign is established over the land, but their victory comes at a price.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd The Life of Castruccio Castracani
"Rising from humble beginnings as a foundling, Castruccio Castracani came to prominence as one of the most powerful and shrewd warlords in Italy. Indeed, Machiavelli argues, so great was his vigour and charisma that - had he not been prevented by his untimely death - he might have surpassed in fame the great generals of antiquity and brought all the territories of Italy under his sole dominion. Written in Machiavelli's characteristically lucid and terse style, Life of Castruccio Castracani is not only a key text in understanding the development of the author's ideas on leadership and good statesmanship that would find fuller expression in The Prince, but also a revealing account of the political ferment and fractious factionalism of fourteenth-century Italy. This edition is accompanied by selected passages from Machiavelli's Florentine Histories and a detailed map with historical notes."
£7.15
Alma Books Ltd Tales from Russian Folklore: New Translation
Towards the middle of the nineteenth century, following the example of the Brothers Grimm in Germany, Alexander Afanasyev embarked on the ambitious task of sifting through the huge repository of tales from Russian folklore and selecting the very best from written and oral sources. The result, an eight-volume collection comprising around 600 stories, is one of the most influential and enduringly popular books in Russian literature. This large selection from Afanasyev’s work, presented in a new translation by Stephen Pimenoff, will give English readers the opportunity to discover one of the founding texts of the European folkloristic tradition. Displaying a vast array of unforgettable characters, such as the Baba-Yaga, Ivan the Fool, Vasilisa the Fair and the Firebird, these tales – by turns adventurous, comical and downright madcap – will enchant readers for their raw beauty and constant ability to surprise and excite.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd The Secret Agent
The shop owner Adolf Verloc, member of an anarchist group and secret agent for a foreign government, is summoned to meet Mr Vladimir, the country’s ambassador, who asks him to carry out a terrorist attack at a famous London landmark. Verloc has misgivings, but Mr Vladimir knows how to make people do what he wants, and when the plan goes wrong, it is Verloc – as well as his young wife, Winnie – who must deal with the consequences. A story of espionage, intrigue and corruption based on a real-life attempted terrorist attack in Victorian London, The Secret Agent was one of literature’s first political thrillers, and is widely considered to be among Conrad’s most compelling works.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Finnegans Wake: With an introduction by Dr Sam Slote of Trinity College Dublin
As he was finishing Finnegans Wake, Joyce proclaimed, “I have discovered I can do anything with language I want.” Indeed, with his last book, which took him seventeen years to write, Joyce takes literary modernism to new territories by harvesting from as many as eighty different languages to create a wordscape that is both precise and impressionistic, a work that is intellectual, avant-garde, but also sad, funny, earthy and brimming with humanity. This edition includes an introduction by Dr Sam Slote of Trinity College Dublin.
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Alma Books Ltd Selected Plays: Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest – Annotated Edition
Between 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a playwright who fearlessly mocked the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian society and took gleeful delight in appearing to trivialize its most sacred institutions. With its premiere on Valentine’s Day 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest – a hilarious comedy of mistaken identities and coruscating language – was a phenomenal success, but its run was cut short prematurely by Wilde’s court case and subsequent incarceration, and the play was not published until 1899, after Wilde had been released from prison. Also including the powerful Salome, originally written in French and banned by the British censor, this collection displays Wilde at his provocative and witty best, and demonstrates why he was a playwright who delighted audiences and infuriated critics in equal measure.
£8.50
Alma Books Ltd Sakhalin Island
In 1890, the thirty-year-old Chekhov, already knowing that he was ill with tuberculosis, undertook an arduous eleven-week journey from Moscow across Siberia to the penal colony on the island of Sakhalin. Now collected here in one volume are the fully annotated translations of his impressions of his trip through Siberia and the account of his three-month sojourn on Sakhalin Island, together with his notes and extracts from his letters to relatives and associates. Highly valuable both as a detailed depiction of the Tsarist system of penal servitude and as an insight into Chekhov’s motivations and objectives for visiting the colony and writing the exposé, Sakhalin Island is a haunting work which had a huge impact both on Chekhov’s career and on Russian society.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd Transformation
Having frittered away his family’s fortune in Paris, the profligate Guido, driven by his ungovernable passions, is forced out of his native Genoa and harbours plans for revenge. After a mighty storm, he sees a mysterious, misshapen creature approaching from the sea, with whom he makes an infernal bargain to exchange bodies, with momentous consequences. First published in 1831 and here presented with the supernatural stories ‘The Evil Eye’ and ‘The Mortal Immortal’, the chilling Gothic tale ‘Transformation’ is a paragon of the genre by the author of Frankenstein.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Humiliated and Insulted: New Translation
First published in 1861, Humiliated and Insulted plunges the reader into a world of moral degradation, childhood trauma, unrequited love and irreconcilable relationships. At the centre of the story are a young struggling author, an orphaned teenager and a depraved aristocrat, who not only foreshadows the great figures of evil in Dostoevsky’s later fiction, but is a powerful and original presence in his own right. This new translation catches the verve and tumult of the original, which – in concept and execution – affords a refreshingly unfamiliar glimpse of the author.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd A Perfect Hoax
Travelling salesman Enrico Gaia decides to play a trick on the conceited ageing littérateur Mario Samigli: he dupes him into thinking that a representative of a prestigious Viennese publishing house wants to commission a German translation of a long-forgotten novel Samigli had written and published at his own expense forty years ago. This leads the old man to reach new heights of self-delusion, spurred on by Gaia’s succession of ruses. In this tragicomic study of deception and disappointment, Italo Svevo – who himself was an undiscovered writer until his old age – parodies elements of his own life and offers an insightful psychological portrait of a person who has lost touch with reality.
£7.15
Alma Books Ltd The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Novellas: New Translation: Newly Translated and Annotated – Also includes ‘Asya’ and ‘First Love’
Driven to his deathbed by an incurable disease, the thirty-year-old impoverished gentleman Chulkaturin decides to write a diary looking back on his short life. After describing his youthful disillusionment and his family’s fall from grace and loss of status, the narrative focuses on his love for Liza, the daughter of a senior civil servant, his rivalry with the dashing Prince N. and his ensuing humiliation. These pages helped establish the archetype of the “superfluous man”, a recurring figure in nineteenth-century Russian literature. First published in 1850, ‘The Diary of a Superfluous Man’ was initially censored by the authorities, as some of its passages were deemed too critical of Russian society. This volume also includes two other masterly novellas, also touching on the theme of disappointed love: ‘Asya’ and ‘First Love’.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Leaves of Grass: Annotated Edition (Great Poets series)
First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman’s lifetime ambition to create a new voice that could capture the spirit and vibrancy of the young American nation, while celebrating at the same time “Nature without check with original energy”. Famously written in free verse and brimming with sensuous imagery and an unbridled love of nature and life in all its forms, and containing celebrated poems such as the ebullient ‘Song of Myself’ – described by Jay Parini as the greatest American poem ever written – and the elegiac ‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’, Leaves of Grass is not only the finest achievement of a highly unique poet, but a founding text for American literature and modern poetry. Considered one of the most influential poets in American literature and a pioneer of free verse, Walt Whitman (1819–92) was also a prolific writer of essays and articles. Controversial in its time, his sprawling collection Leaves of Grass is regarded as his magnum opus.
£9.04