Search results for ""everyman""

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for FictionEveryman is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret and stoicism.The novel takes its title from a classic of early English drama, whose theme is the summoning of the living to death.The fate of Roth's everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age when he is stalked with physical woes.The terrain of this powerful novel is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.

Read more less

Everyman is successful, popular and riding high when Death comes calling. Forced to abandon the life he has built, he embarks on a last, frantic search to recruit a friend, anyone, to speak in his defence. But Death is close behind, and time is running out.One of the great primal, spiritual myths, Everyman asks whether it is only in death that we can understand our lives. A cornerstone of English drama since the 15th century, this new adaptation by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy was presented at the National Theatre, London, in April 2015.

Read more less

Everyman and Mankind are morality plays which mark the turn of the medieval period to the early modern, with their focus on the individual. Everyman follows a man's journey towards death and his efforts to secure himself a life thereafter, whilst Mankind shows a man battling with temptation and sin, often with great humour. Both texts are modernised here and edited to the highest standards of scholarship, with full on-page commentaries giving the depth of information and insight associated with all Arden editions. The comprehensive, illustrated introduction argues that the plays signal the birth of the early modern consciousness and puts them in their historic and religious contexts. An account is also given of the staging and performance history of the plays and their critical history and significance. With a wealth of helpful and incisive commentary this is the finest edition of the plays available.

Read more less

Wonderful collection of nonsense verse, from Chesterton to Dahl, Lear to Carroll. With beautitul, original illustrations, both full colour and black & white.

Read more less

Includes the ever popular "If", along with the best of Kipling's powerful, fluent poetry.

Read more less

Praised for his verbal inventiveness, image-making power and almost pagan metaphysics, Dylan Thomas's poems are visions of creation and morality.

Read more less

R. S. Thomas was a major figure in the landscape of contemporary poetry - attested by his Nobel Prize for Literature nomination. His poetry, coloured by personal experience of rural Wales, is stark but passionate.

Read more less

Both major novelist and major poet, with a distinctive off-beat and intensely personal style, Hardy is a modern writer born out of his time.

Read more less

Gillian Avery, historian of children's books and novelist whose first book THE WARDEN'S NEICE has become a modern classic of children's literature, has made a very personal selection of favourite poems. If children like them as much as she does, then (she says) they will stay in the mind long after their readers have grown out of childhood. Her taste is for the Augustan rather than the Romantic writers, but her choice of over two hundred and fifty pieces ranges widely, from ballads to Ted Hughes, from Ben Jonson to Noel Coward. The illustrations are taken from the books of natural history made by Thomas Bewick, the celebrated English wood engraver.

Read more less

A selection of poems by William Cowper, edited by Michael Bruce

Read more less

God's creations of man in a lyrical dramatization; Noah's cantankerous and hilariously funny wife refusing to leave without her friends; the Massacre of the InnocentsMiracle Plays were a popular form of entertainment throughout the Middle Ages, and part of the poetic and dramatic tradition on which Shakespeare drew. Everyman discovers what you can't take with you when you go. He beseeches in turn friends, family (one pleads 'cramp in my toe'), possessions ('I follow no man in such voyages'), and finally falls back on moral and religious values.This is the most comprehensive paperback edition available and includes an introduction and extensive notes.

Read more less

Faced with death's certainty-and the uncertainty of the time of its coming, particularly in a historical period of widespread plague and other afflictions-as well as the inevitability of the hereafter, what is one to do? Everyman speaks to this dilemma. . . . The protagonist is one who, because he has laid up treasures on earth, has been in a position to do good deeds, but he has been very lax about it and instead has pursued enjoyment and wealth, the latter hoarded instead of being shared with the poor and needy. . . . Now he must, as the medieval mystics knew, endure the solitariness of leaving behind all that has given him comfort in this world. . . . This facing page translation of this Continental play will be useful to all students of theater.

Read more less

The companion volume to Goddesses in Everywoman reveals the powerful inner patterns, or archetypes, that shape men's personalities, careers, and personal relationships-offering a insights into Greek mythology, Jungian archetypal psychology, and into themselves and the people in their lives. A Jungian analyst, Dr. Bolen introduces our inner patterns in the guise of eight archetypal gods. From the authoritarian, power-seeking gods (Zeus, Poseidon) to the gods of creativity (Apollo, Hephaestus) to the sensual Dionysis, Dr. Bolen shows men how to identify their ruling gods, how to decide which to cultivate and which to overcome, and how to tap the power of these enduring archetypes in order to enrich and strengthen their lives. She stresses the importance of understanding which gods you are attracted to and which are incompatible with your expectations, uncovers the origins of the often-difficult father-son relationship, and explores society's deep conflict between nurturing behavior and the need to foster masculinity. In Gods in Everyman, Dr. Bolen presents us with a compassionate and lucid male psychology that will help all men and women to better understand themselves and their relationships with their fathers, their sons, their brothers and their lovers.

Read more less

Should economists remain as detached scholars, pursuing their research to the satisfaction of themselves and fellow academics? Or should they try to educate their fellow men and women in economic ideas, hoping to have an impact on economic policy? In this Occasional Paper, Professor Daniel B. Klein addresses these issues, concluding that if economists want to be influential in policy-making, they must be willing to communicate with the 'Everyman'. Scholasticism is valuable in encouraging high research standards, but it has been carried too far in the economics profession, to the detriment of research and teaching which are relevant to policy. Five well-known economists - John Flemming, Charles Goodhart, Israel Kirzner, Deirdre McCloskey and Gordon Tullock - then comment on Klein's paper.

Read more less

Completing IronFit’s “triathlon trilogy” alongside Be IronFit and IronFit Secrets for Half Iron-Distance Success, this is a “go-to,” time-efficient training guide for the Standard and Sprint-distance triathlons, which are the most accessible and achievable distances for time-crunched athletes. The Standard Distance is the original triathlon configuration: a 1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, and 10 km run (0.9 mile swim, 24.8 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run). The Sprint Distance usually includes a 750 meter swim, 20 km bike, and 5 km run (Half mile swim, 12.4 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run). And there are duathlon equivalents of both triathlon races. These Short Course distances are the “everyman” races of the sport, and Don and Melanie Fink offer their time-efficient IronFit® training approach to them here in this book.

Read more less

'All I want is to be a success. That's all I ask.' Failing salesman Joe has a dream - or rather an outrageous fantasy. Because holed up in his trailer Joe comes up with a jaw-dropping plan that will stamp out sexual harassment in the workplace and make his fortune. Win-win? As he turns his life around, Lightning Rods takes us to the very top of corporate America.

Read more less

'Imagine Evelyn Waugh meets Nancy Mitford, with some Jilly Cooper thrown in, and you have this splendid romp ... Hilarious, escapist bliss' YOU ‘Delights from start to finish’ Mail on Sunday ‘Irresistible’ Guardian ‘Sheer escapist bliss’ Nigella Lawson ‘Pure joy’ India Knight, Sunday Times Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize For Comic Fiction The Earls of Trelawney have inhabited the same castle for 800 years – but recent generations have been better at spending than making money. Now living in isolated penury, unable to communicate with each other or the rest of the world, the family are running out of options. Three unexpected events will hasten their demise: the sudden appearance of a new relation, an illegitimate, headstrong, beautiful girl; an unscrupulous American hedge fund manager determined to exact revenge; and the crash of 2008. Deliciously escapist and gloriously funny, House of Trelawney is a novel about family and forgiveness, chaos and crisis – and finding yourself in the most unexpected ways.

Read more less

Death still comes to Everyman, but this study of three twentieth-century German plays shows the harder challenge of living without salvation in an age of war and unprecedented mass destruction. Death comes to everyone, and in the late-medieval morality play of Everyman the familiar skeleton forces the universalized central figure to come to terms with this. Only his inner resources, in the forms of Good Deeds and Knowledge, ensure that he repents and is redeemed. Three important twentieth-century German plays echo Everyman - Toller's Hinkemann, Borchert's The Man Outside, and Frisch's The Arsonists/Firebugs - but the unprecedented scale of killing in the First and Second World Wars changed the view of death, while in the Cold War the nuclear destruction literally of everyone became a possibility. Brian Murdoch traces the heritage of Everyman in the three plays in terms of dramatic effect, changes in the image of Death, and especially the problem of living with existential guilt. Death, now over-fed, still has to be faced, but Everyman has the harder problem of living with the awareness of human wickedness without the possibility of salvation. All three plays have tended to be viewed in their specific historical contexts, but by viewing them less rigidly and as part of a long dramatic tradition, Murdoch shows that all present a message of lasting and universal significance. They pose directly to the theater audience questions not just of how to cope with death, but how to cope with life.

Read more less

'Truly infectious' Guardian Appa and Amma have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their triumph is short lived. Their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and the reason soon becomes clear: a secretly filmed video of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and nearly everyone they know has seen it. The ensuing war - with Sreenath and Anita on one side and their families on the other - becomes a news sensation, emblematic of a wider generational struggle. The novel is narrated by Sreenath's younger brother, just as eager to rebel against conventional morality. But to keep his family together he will have to compromise his integrity and, in doing so, bring buried tensions between him and his brother to the surface. Full of dark comedy and insight about shame and the online generation, this is a poignant story about now told by a narrator who will beguile and surprise you.

Read more less

THE MANOR HOUSE MURDER MYSTERY AS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT . . . DETECTIVE ROGER LECARRE IS BACK!!!'What's better than a good crime novel? I'll tell you - a spoof crime novel, by the absurdly funny and clever Fergus Craig'MIRANDA HART'We all need more laughs like this'AISLING BEADetective Roger LeCarre. Scourge of crime. Guardian of Exeter. Amateur squash player. And now, party guest at Powderham, the manor house owned by mysterious billionaire tech genius Eli Quartz.It is a small and unconventional gathering: the Bishop, a fading radio star, a desperate aristocrat, the aging butler and his absurdly beautiful daughter - and Detective Roger LeCarre. Then a snowstorm blows in and the group realise they are trapped.And when, completely against expectations for this kind of situation, someone winds up dead, it's obvious who must solve the crime. Obvious, but for the fact the murder weapon was in Detective Roger LeCarre's hand, and the body was at his feet...From the creator of BBC2's Martin Fishback comes the second Detective Roger LeCarre crime fiction parody, daring to go where so many other crime novels have gone before.

Read more less

Welcome to Kyrzbekistan, winner of Most Corrupt Country 2011 and 2012. A place where anyone can be happy - as long they aren't poor, ill, foreign, a pedestrian, or in any way interested in the truth. A country that takes fake news and false promises to new levels. Expelled from school, Ellis Dau has been forced to help his father out at the Chronicle, the last bastion of free speech in this strange world. But when the country's power supply fails and dark voices threaten the Chronicle's future, Ellis finds himself in an unlikely fight for freedom.'I loved this rollercoaster of a ride into a corrupt, fictitious country that feels only too hideously real' Deborah Moggach, author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Read more less

SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic FictionSHORTLISTED for the Comedy Women in Print Prize AN OLD LOVE. A STUCK DOOR. AND THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE . . .THE FUNNIEST ROM COM OF THE YEAR!COSMOPOLITAN'S BEST NEW GOOD BOOK TO READ'Joyful' STYLIST'Hilarious' WOMAN'The year's most original romcom' ELLE'Proper laugh-out-loud stuff' FABULOUS MAGAZINE'Stuffed full of belly laughs and nostalgia' RED'A dream read' i_______They'd like to be going out.Instead they're stuck in . . .Best friends Ellen and Alexa have always been close.Until one fateful morning when they get locked in their attic with hapless housemate Jack and Alexa's date from the night before, Ben.With no way out, hangovers and the hours crawling by, it seems best friends can get too close for comfort.Especially when Ellen realises she already knows Ben - perhaps rather better than Alexa does . . .Fans of Dolly Alderton, Beth O'Leary and Mhairi McFarlane will LOVE this oh-so relatable tale of love, landlords and what can happen behind locked doors_______AS SEEN IN GRAZIASEE WHAT EVERYONE IS SAYING ABOUT THE LOCK IN:'This will have you both cringing and crying with laughter' WOMAN'S WEEKLY'A funny, joyful hug of a book! ' Cressida McLaughlin'An immaculately plotted romcom' i'A hilarious debut' EVENING STANDARD'I LOVED this book . . . I highly recommend The Lock In' CARRIE HOPE FLETCHER'Funny and compelling from page one' LUCY VINE, author of Hot Mess'Beautifully written, warm and fun' Laura Kay, author of The Split'I cannot recommend this book enough!' 5***** READER REVIEW'Made me smile, laugh, cringe and inwardly cheer' 5***** READER REVIEW

Read more less

'Truly infectious' Guardian 'A sparkling debut, full of tenderness and mischief. It's as if Roth and Narayan had a baby' Aatish Taseer It is a day of triumph for Appa and Amma, who have driven home a shiny new Honda Civic to show off to their neighbours in Blue Hills housing colony. But their eldest son Sreenath is behaving strangely, and it soon becomes clear why: a secretly filmed video of Sreenath and his girlfriend Anita has been posted to a porn site, and nearly everyone they know has seen it. The ensuing war - with Sreenath and Anita on one side and their families on the other - becomes a news sensation, emblematic of a wider generational struggle. The novel is narrated by Sreenath's younger brother, who is twenty years old and eager to escape his hometown and embrace his brother's rebellious spirit. But to keep his family together he will have to compromise his integrity and, in doing so, bring buried tensions between him and his brother to the surface. Full of dark comedy and insight about Indian society, shame and the online generation, this is a poignant story about now told by a narrator who will beguile and surprise you.

Read more less

Lizzie Vogel's story continues in Reasons to be Cheerful, the brilliantly comic sequel to Nina Stibbe's hilarious books Man at the Helm and Paradise Lodge.WINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION WINNER OF THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 'I read all of Reasons To Be Cheerful in one glorious gulp' CAITLIN MORAN***** Teenager Lizzie Vogel has a new job as a dental assistant. This is not as glamorous as it sounds. At least it means mostly getting away from her alcoholic, nymphomaniacal, novel-writing mother. But, if Lizzie thinks being independent means sex with her boyfriend (he prefers bird-watching), strict boundaries (her boss keeps using her loo) or self-respect (surely only actual athletes get fungal foot infections?) she's still got a lot more growing up to do.From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a brilliantly funny and heartbreaking story of growing up and finding the independence you might not actually want . . .*****'Funny, charming, odd-in-the-best-way and gorgeously uplifting! A delight from start to finish' MARIAN KEYES 'Pitch perfect vintage comedy' GUARDIAN 'Lives up to its title' SUNDAY TIMES 'Joyful. Stibbe's comedy probes what it means to become an adult' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Loved it! I so love Lizzie. She is brave and kind and funny and totally original' KATIE FFORDE 'Comedy gold . . . Reasons To Be Cheerful is just the read you need right now' STYLIST 'Nina Stibbe is an author of such effortless wit that she could turn a shopping list into a bestseller' WOMEN AND HOMENINA STIBBE'S NEW NOVEL ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD IS AVAILABLE NOW

Read more less

There are many anthologies of love poems but friendship has proved a more elusive theme. Yet it is no less important. Like the Everyman Love Poems and Erotic Poems, to which it is a companion, the present selection draws on the literature of many periods and languages to illuminate aspects of friendship, ranging from social acquaintance through personal devotion to estrangement and antipathy. The tone ranges from comic to elegiac and there is certainly something here for everyone. The volume is divided thmatically into sections: What are Friends?; The Pleasure of Friendship; Good Neibours; Social Life; Dumb Chums; Portraits; Poets Together; Strangers; Absent Friends and Looking Back

Read more less

Aesop is believed to have lived in the sixth century B.C., a slave on the Greek island of Samos. His ability to teach lessons in morality through story has made his name synonymous with the genre of 'fable'. In the witty and entertaining tales attributed to him sly foxes, wicked wolves, industrious ants, and others, provide a commentary on human behaviour while the storyteller recommends the virtues of common sense and worldly wisdom. The Fables had already been popular for centuries before Roger L'Estrange published a new English translation in 1692, with the declared intention of making a comprehensive selection addressed to children. Everyman reprints his text, together with Stephen Gooden's superb engravings which were first published in 1936 in a limited edition.

Read more less

Chinua Achebe is considered the father of African literature in English, the writer who 'opened the magic casements of African fiction' for an international readership. Following the 50th anniversary of the publication of his ground-breaking Things Fall Apart, Everyman republish Achebe's first and most famous novel alongside No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God, under the collective title The African Trilogy.In Things Fall Apart the individual tragedy of Okonkwo, 'strong man' and tribal elder in the Nigeria of the 1890s is intertwined with the transformation of traditional Igbo society under the impact of Christianity and colonialism. In No Longer at Ease, Okonkwo's grandson, Obi, educated in England, returns to a civil-service job in colonial Lagos, only to clash with the ruling elite to which he now believes he belongs. Arrow of God is set in the 1920s and explores the conflict from the two points of view - often, but not always, opposing - ofEzuelu, an Igbo priest, and Captain Winterbottom, a British district officer. In spare and lucid prose,Achebe tellsa universal tale of personal and moral struggle in a changing world which continues to resonate in Africa today and has captured the imaginations of readers everywhere.

Read more less

Everyone knows Pinocchio, the walking, talking wooden puppet carved from a table leg. Pinocchio, an endearing scamp, is always getting himself into trouble. But it isn't the sort of trouble most kids get into. Skiving off school, he is kidnapped by a puppeteer, robbed by a Cat and Fox, and persuaded to visit an earthly paradise where naughty children have perpetual fun - and turn into donkeys. Sold to a circus, then to a man who tries to drown him for his donkey-skin, he miraculously turns back into a puppet and goes in search of his 'father' (whom he must rescue from the belly of a giant dogfish ...). Throughout these manic adventures he is haunted by the ghost of a Talking Cricket he has crushed to death for giving good advice, and watched over by his personal guardian fairy. All the while, Pinocchio dreams of becoming a real boy. Told with wit and humour, his story is also a moral fable about making the right choices, and what it is to be a loving human being.Pinocchio is an astonishing work of fantasy which has been toned down and sentimentalized over the years, not least by the Walt Disney film. Everyman returns to a beautifully illustrated early translation of 1916 which captures the vivid inventiveness of Collodi's original.

Read more less

Tacitus was the greatest historian of the Roman empire. Born in about AD 55, he served as administrator and leading senator. This career gave him an intimate view of the empire at its highest levels, experience brought to bear on his writing.His major works are the Annals and the Histories, both of which have come down to us incomplete. Between them, they cover a period of about 80 years, from the death of the first emperor, Augustus, to the death of Domitian in 96AD. In addition, Tacitus also composed two short historical books or essays, the Agricola (about his father-in-law, a distinguished provincial governor) and the Germania, an account of the tribes beyond the Rhine.Tacitus is a brilliant narrator and master stylist who had ample material for his story in the dramatic, violent and often bloody events of the first century. His portraits - especially those of Tiberius, Nero, and Nero's immediate circle - are unforgettable, his scene-setting masterly, his psychological analysis as acute as any novelist. He is also a fierce critic of the decadence and corruption which marked struggles for the imperial succession. As Robin Lane Fox writes in his brilliant introduction, 'Above all Tacitus was supremely wary of the distortions and "spin" of official announcements. He had no illusions about the capacities of presidential, one-man rule.' Napoleon disliked him, not surprisingly.Everyman reprints the classic translation by A.J. Church and W.J. Brodribb, with extensive notes considerably revised and updated by Dr Eleanor Cowan.

Read more less

The language of flowers is as old as language itself. In the earliest poetry familiar plants were used to represent simple emotions, ideas, or states of mind: love, hope, despair, fidelity, solitude, beauty, mortality. Over time these associations entwined with myth and legend, with religious symbolism, folk and herbal lore. By the early 19th century the 'Language of Flora' had become increasingly refined, especially in England and America, where sentimental flower books listing flower meanings and illustrating them with verse were perennial bestsellers. The Everyman Language of Flowers without sacrificing the charm of its Victorian predecessors aims to provide extended, updated and rather more robust floral anthology for the 21st century, presenting poetry from ancient Greece to contemporary Britain and America, and spanning the world from Cuba to Korea, Russia to Zimbabwe. Here are Rumi and Rilke on the rose; Herrick and Louise Glück on the lily; Chaucer, Emily Dickinson and Jon Silkin on the daisy; Mary Robinson and Ted Hughes on the snowdrop; Lorenzo de Medici, John Clare and Alice Oswald on the violet; Hugo and Roethke on carnations; Ovid and Goethe on poppies; Blake and Eugenio Montale on the sunflower; Christina Rossetti on heartsease and forget-me-nots; Emily Brontë on harebells and heather, Seamus Heaney on lupins, Pasternak on night-scented stock... Eastern cultures, rich in flower associations, are well represented: there are Tang poems celebrating chrysanthemums and peonies, Zen poems about orchids and lotus flowers, poems about jasmine and marigolds from India, roses, tulips and narcissi from Persia, the Ottoman empire and the Arabic world. Flowers are arranged by season, with roses and lilies in a section of their own. In a final section poets comment directly or indirectly on the language of flowers itself. The book concludes with a selected glossary drawn from several celebrated Victorian collections.

Read more less

The first three volumes of Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL (the western empire) were published by Everyman in 1993. Volumes 4-6 complete the set which is now available for the first time in many years. This year is the bicentenary of Gibbon's death, which has been widely noticed in the press, but even after two hundred years his book is still an authoritative work on Roman history. What is more, it remains wonderfully readable: witty, elegant and intriguing, full of the author's own personality. The six-volume Everyman edition - the only complete one now available-prints the entire text of the book with all Gibbon's own notes, later editorial commentaries, maps, tables, descriptive tables of contents, indices, appendices and two magisterial essays on the author and his work by Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Read more less

Completing the 8 volume Everyman Signet Shakespeare contains Shakespeare series, this final volume contains Shakespeare's four Last Plays - THE TEMPEST, PERICLES, THE WINTER'S TALE AND CYMBELINE. The beautifully produced, single-column text of the plays, with the Signet footnotes, is supplemented with bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespear's life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Professor Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.

Read more less

This collection of eight French contes collected by Charles Perrault in the last decade of the seventeenth century, contains perhaps the most famous fairy stories of all time - 'Cinderella', 'The Sleeping Beauty', 'Puss in Boots', 'Blue Beard' and of couse the eponymous 'Little Red Riding Hood'. It quickly became the standard version of stories on these themes, was translated into innumerable languages and then re-entered the oral tradition of most European countries, particularly England. The Everyman edition contains the classic Heath Robinson illustrations from 1921.

Read more less

Fantasy, mystery, war and love - it's all here in the magical trilogy His Dark MaterialsThis BEAUTIFUL GIFT collection features ALL THREE titles in the award-winning trilogy: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and THE AMBER SPYGLASSThe Amber SpyglassWill and Lyra, whose fates are bound together by powers beyond their own worlds, have been violently separated. But they must find each other, for ahead of them lies the greatest war that has ever been - and a journey to a dark place from which no one has ever returned . . .Northern LightsLyra Belacqua lives half-wild and carefree among the scholars of Jordan College, with her daemon familiar always by her side. But the arrival of her fearsome uncle, Lord Asriel, draws her to the heart of a terrible struggle - a struggle born of Gobblers and stolen children, witch clans and armoured bears.The Subtle KnifeLyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld - Cittàgazze, where soul-eating Spectres stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. But she is not without allies: twelve-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another's, has also stumbled into this strange new realm.On a perilous journey from world to world, Lyra and Will uncover a deadly secret: an object of extraordinary and devastating power. And with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat - and the shattering truth of their own destiny.

Read more less

Felix Salten (Author) Salten was born Siegmund Salzmann on 6 September 1869 in Pest, Austria-Hungary.His best remembered work is Bambi (1923). A translation in English was published by Simon & Schuster in 1928, and became a great success. In 1933, he sold the film rights to the American director Sidney Franklin for only $1,000, and Franklin later transferred the rights to the Walt Disney Studios, which formed the basis of the animated film Bambi (1942).Life in Austria became perilous for Jews during the 1930s. In Germany, Adolf Hitler had Salten's books banned in 1936.Felix Salten died on 8 October 1945, at the age of 76.Kurt Wiese (Illustrator) KURT WIESE (18871974) was a German-born book illustrator, who wrote andillustrated twenty children's books and illustrated another three hundred for other authors. He moved to the United States in 1927, and his first big success was with the illustrations for the English transla

Read more less

Since its publication in 1842, Dead Souls has been celebrated as a supremely realistic portrait of provincial Russian life and as a splendidly exaggerated tale; as a paean to the Russian spirit and as a remorseless satire of imperial Russian venality, vulgarity, and pomp. As Gogol's wily antihero, Chichikov, combs the back country wheeling and dealing for "dead souls"--deceased serfs who still represent money to anyone sharp enough to trade in them--we are introduced to a Dickensian cast of peasants, landowners, and conniving petty officials, few of whom can resist the seductive illogic of Chichikov's proposition. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessible the full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humour, and delight in human oddity and error.

Read more less

Raymond Chandler’s first three novels, published here in one volume, established his reputation as an unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction. The Big Sleep, Chandler’s first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, a private detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the 1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralysed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail and murder. In Farewell, My Lovely, Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, a murder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentially deadly women. In The High Window, Marlowe searches the California underworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in the tangled affairs of a dead coin collector. In all three novels, Chandler’s hard-edged prose, colourful characters, vivid vernacular, and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, establish his enduring claim to the heights of his chosen genre.

Read more less

In the comic masterpiece which established him one of the greatest writers in the English language, Naipaul follows the fortunes of Mr Biswas, the outsider who refuses to conform to the customs of his grander in-laws whose house he lives in. Finally finding a house of his own, he triumphs over the smaller minds who would repress him.

Read more less

In what remains after more than a century the greatest study of American political life, Tocqueville describes American society and accounts for its nature and its conflicts in an historical analysis of the nation's origins among different parties of European settlers. Brilliantly written and vividly illustrated with vignettes and portraits, this is also more than an exploration of one society at one time. Tocqueville's assessment of America is as relevant as it ever was, and his explanation of how democratic societies work can illuminate our own nation now.

Read more less

In this classic of American literature, Thoreau gives an account of his two years experience of the 'simple life' in the woods, telling how he sought and found material and spiritual sustenance in the solitude of the cabin which he built for himself on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts.

Read more less

This is the only novel that Conrad set in London, and it communicates a profoundly ironic view of human affairs. The story is woven around an attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1894. Verloc, (a Russian spy who is also working for the police) is ostensibly a member of an anarchist group in Soho.

Read more less

Kafka was an obsessive writer who produced a huge volume of stories, novels, diaries and letters in his brief lifetime. The present volume includes all his available shorter fiction in a new collection edited and introduced by Gabriel Josipovici. The stories, which range from tiny fragments to substantial narratives, have been arranged both to illuminate one another and to illustrate Kafka's evolution as a writer - which, as Professor Josipovici shows, is more complex and radical than often thought. The extensive prefatory essay is an introduction not only to the stories but also to Kafka's work as a whole.

Read more less