Search results for ""alma books ltd""

The Village, Ivan Bunin's first full-length novel, is a bleak and uncompromising portrayal of rural life in south-west Russia. Set at the time of the 1905 Revolution and centring on episodes in the lives of a landowner and his self-educated peasant brother, the book follows characters sunk so far below the average of intelligence as to be scarcely human. A triumph of bitter realism, Bunin's cruel, lyrical prose reveals the pettiness, violence and ignorance of life on the land, foreshadowing the turbulences of Russia in the twentieth century.

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Invited to an extravagantly lavish party in a Long Island mansion, Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who has just settled in the neighbouring cottage, is intrigued by the mysterious host, Jay Gatsby, a flamboyant but reserved self-made man with murky business interests and a shadowy past. As the two men strike up an unlikely friendship, details of Gatsby's impossible love for amarried woman emerge, until events spiral into tragedy. Regarded as Fitzgerald's masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of American literature, The Great Gatsby is a vivid chronicle of the excesses and decadence of the Jazz Age, as well as a timeless cautionary critique of the American dream.

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A major work by one of France’s most important authors of the twentieth century, London Bridge is a riotous novel about the London underworld during the First World War. Picking up where its predecessor Guignol’s Band left off, Céline’s narrator recounts his disastrous partnership with an eccentric Frenchman intent on financing a trip to Tibet by winning a gas-mask competition; his uneasy relationship with London’s pimps and whores and their common nemesis, Inspector Matthew of Scotland Yard; and, most scandalous of all, his affair with a colonel’s daughter. Written in Céline’s trademark style – a headlong rush of slang, brusque observation and quirky lyricism, delivered in machine-gun bursts of prose and ellipses – London Bridge recreates the dark days during the Great War with sordid verisimilitude and desperate hilarity.

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First published in 1932, Journey to the End of the Night was immediately acclaimed as a masterpiece and a turning point in French literature. Told in the first person by Celine's fictional alter ego Bardamu, the novel is loosely based on the author's own experiences during the First World War, in French colonial Africa, in the USA and, later, as a young doctor in a working-class suburb in Paris. Celine's disgust with human folly, malice, greed and the chaotic state in which man has left society lies behind the bitterness that distinguishes his idiosyncratic, colloquial and visionary writing and gives it its force.

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This Side of Paradise charts the life of Amory Blaine, an ambitious young man loosely based on Fitzgerald himself, as he moves from his well-heeled Midwest home to study at Princeton and then starts frequenting the circles of high society as an aspiring writer. Experiencing failure and frustration in love and in his career, Blaine finds his youthful enthusiasm gradually giving way to disillusionment, cynicism and a life of dissolution. A critical account of its own era, introducing many themes which would be developed in later works, Fitzgerald’s first novel was an instant critical and commercial success, propelling him into the limelight as a literary celebrity.

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The heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations and distractions of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the attractive but turbulent Gloria, and the couple soon discover the dangerous flip side of a life of glamour and debauchery.

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"Odyssey, a volume of twenty-one stories aimed at young adults, offers a variety of takes on the theme of travelling – at times funny and playful, at others dramatic and poignant – covering a wide range of themes relevant to teenagers across Europe such as coming of age, sexuality, migration, identity and displacement. Whether you’re after realism or escapism, tales about inner cities, sunny holidays or sci-fi ventures into the future, this book will have something for everyone. Hay Festival is delighted to present Aarhus 39, a two-volume collection of the best emerging writers for young readers from across wider Europe. Three of among Europe’s best loved children’s authors – Matt Haig (UK), Kim Fupz Aakeson (Denmark) and Ana Cristina Herreros (Spain) – have selected thirty-nine writers under the age of forty, and invited them to write an original story on the theme of “journey”. These new stories, together with the specially commissioned illustrations that accompany them, are a celebration of great new writing for young people and reflect issues facing them in contemporary Europe. Reading stories of other people’s lives and journeys extends understanding and empathy to new generations."

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In 1930s Greater London, Shirley is a talented ballerina who dreams of becoming a principal dancer at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet Company. Yet one summer, on the way back from staying with her grandparents in France, she meets a handsome young man, Alan, for a fleeting moment and her life changes for ever. Finding him becomes an obsession for Shirley and now she longs to fulfill her dreams in the ballet simply so that he might see her name in lights and know where to find her. With the outbreak of the Second World War, and those she loves in danger, Shirley’s priority becomes to help in the war effort, but with Alan appearing once more in her life, and the war threatening to part them for a second time, she knows that she cannot cope if she were to lose him again.

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Quest, a volume of seventeen stories aimed at children, will whisk you away from dark bedrooms to new dimensions and fantasy realms, via the Russian countryside and modern Rome. You'll encounter talking field mice, invisible friends, flying kraiks, white elephants, runaway books and wardrobes that act as magic portals. Hopping across all sorts of genres and showcasing authors from all over Europe - from the Basque country and Cyprus to Iceland and the Czech Republic - this book is certain to broaden horizons and engage the reader in all kinds of fun. Hay Festival is delighted to present Aarhus 39, a two-volume collection of the best emerging writers for young readers from across wider Europe. Three of among Europe's best loved children's authors - Matt Haig (UK), Kim Fupz Aakeson (Denmark) and Ana Cristina Herreros (Spain) - have selected thirty-nine writers under the age of forty, and invited them to write an original story on the theme of "journey". These new stories, together with the specially commissioned illustrations that accompany them, are a celebration of great new writing for young people and reflect issues facing them in contemporary Europe. Reading stories of other people's lives and journeys extends understanding and empathy to new generations.

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Lorina, a young schoolgirl, is led by a black rabbit through a wood to a magical land. There she finds a a race of green people, who are all overworked, starving and subjected to the toxic fumes billowing out of a nearby castle. She decides to gain access to the castle on behalf of the poor green people, and within its walls she meets the “insiders”, selfish creatures who hoard all the resources and treat the outsiders as slaves. Her quest leads her to encounter the bureaurat, the superviper, the farmadillo and, eventually, the awful Piggident himself. Wonderfully illustrated by Chris Riddell, The Castle of Inside Out is an unforgettable and hilarious tale of adventure, set in a world where injustice and arrogance are widespread and must be countered by its courageous and compassionate heroine.

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Grubb, the young apprentice at Alistair Grim's Odditorium (a flying house of mechanical wonders) finds himself on the run, as all of London is convinced that Alistair Grim is a villain. Grim, however, has come up with a plan to defeat the real villain: the evil Prince Nightshade, who wants the Odditorium's power source for himself. Desperate to clear their master's name and save the world, Grubb and the rest of the Odditorium's crew set off on a perilous underwater adventure to the mythical realm of Avalon. The object of their quest? The legendary sword Excalibur, the only blade powerful enough to pierce Prince Nightshade's suit of magical armour. Along the way, Grubb and his friends must confront a murderous banshee, sea monsters, and a witch with a grudge against Alistair Grim. But that's not all, and Grubb soon learns that their fate was written long ago in an Avalonian prophecy that not even Alistair Grim could have predicted.

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It is late August 1939: Britain is on the brink of war, and preparations are under way to evacuate London’s children to the countryside. When twelve-year-old Tilly and her best friend Rosy find out that they will not be able to take their beloved dog and cat with them – and that, even worse, their pets will, along with countless other animals, be taken to the vet to be put down – they decide to take action. The two girls come up with the idea of hiding them in a derelict hut in the woods and, when other children find out and start bringing their rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters, their secret den turns into an emergency zoo. Inspired by real events during the Second World War, Miriam Halahmy’s novel is a touching tale of courage, resourcefulness and camaraderie in desperate times, as well as a stirring defence of animal welfare.

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Phaedrus - a character familiar to readers of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' - is sailing down the Hudson River when he meets Lila Blewitt, an unapologetically sexual, psychologically unstable woman whom a mutual friend warns him against. But Phaedrus is drawn to her physically, and interested in her intellectually, finding her a culture of one in whom he discerns an unexpected Quality. Sailing with him to Manhattan, where her mental state deteriorates further, Lila promps Phaedrus to explore conflicts of values, such as those between Native Americans and Europeans, or between the insane and the normal.

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"This collection brings together the four plays that feature Ionesco’s everyman protagonist Jean Bérenger. In ‘The Killer’, he comes across a “radiant city”, an ideal civilization which is being terrorized by a killer, whom he tries to help apprehend. In ‘Rhinoceros’, he is the only person in a provincial town who is not affected by a condition that turns its victims into the eponymous horned beast. In ‘Exit the King’, he is the powerful King Bérenger the First, who refuses to accept that he is dying. And in ‘A Stroll in the Air’ he acquires the capacity of flight and sees another world lying beyond the clouds. While each play in the Bérenger cycle is unique, they are all prime examples of Ionesco’s conception of the theatre of the absurd, and touch on themes that preoccupied the author throughout his career, such as mortality, alienation, freedom and the evils of Fascism. This volume constitutes a perfect introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most original and influential playwrights."

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First published in 1963 and representing Burroughs’s literary breakthrough in the UK, Dead Fingers Talk is, in the words of Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris, “a prophetic work of haunting power”, and is perhaps the most commercial and accessible of his works. Combining new material with selections from Naked Lunch and his cut-up novels The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded, the book is also a fascinating precursor to remix and mash-up forms in art and music, which owe much to Burroughs’s influence. This newly edited edition of Dead Fingers Talk, based on the restored text of the novel, will delight all Burroughs fans and lovers of experimental literature, and offer a new insight into the artistic process of one of the most original and influential writers of the twentieth century.

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The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realizes that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her refusal to embrace her mother's ladylike ways. Her romantic intrigues lead her to an early marriage, but when the war between the Union and the Southern States breaks out and she is left a young widow, Scarlett's life is turned upside down, and she finds herself embroiled, together with the world surrounding her, in a long struggle for survival. Both a coming-of-age tale and a historical epic, Gone with the Wind is regarded as one of the great American novels, and is perhaps one of the most popular stories in the Western canon. Famously inspiring the iconic 1939 Oscar-winning film starring Vivien Leigh as Scarlett and Clark Gable as the rakish but cynical Rhett Butler, it is Margaret Mitchell's only published novel, and a living testament to the irrepressible resilience of the American spirit.

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