Search results for ""alma""
Alma Books Ltd Three Novellas: New Translation
One of Tolstoy’s last published works of fiction, The Devil revolves around the young landowner Yevgeny’s irrepressible lust for Stepanida, a sensual peasant woman. Even when he gets married to a respectable upper-class lady, he finds himself unable to put an end to his encounters with Stepanida, and becomes increasingly consumed by guilt and helplessness in the face of his urges. In some ways comparable to the controversial Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil shows Tolstoy at his most salacious, and addresses the conflicts between desire, social norms and personal conscience. Also included in this volume is Family Happiness, one of Tolstoy’s earliest works, an entertaining and cynical account of marriage from the perspective of a disillusioned wife, and A Landowner’s Morning.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Diaries of Adam and Eve: Annotated Edition
Mark Twain's gloriously funny Diary of Adam and Eve, which John Updike described as a paradigm of the relations between sexes, is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous episode of the Bible. By giving a voice to Adam and Eve, and by hitting all the notes on the literary scale - from the intimate to the comical, from the journalistic to the idyllic - Twain displays the brilliance and wit for which he is rightly considered one of the greatest satirists of all time.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Diaboliad and Other Stories: New Translation
In Bulgakov’s ‘Diaboliad’, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the Main Central Depot of Match Materials, and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior, responsible for his dismissal. His quest through the labyrinth of Soviet bureaucracy takes on the increasingly surreal dimensions of a nightmare. This early satirical story, reminiscent of Gogol and Dostoevsky, was first published in 1924 and incurred the wrath of pro-Soviet critics. Along with the three other stories in this volume, which also explore the themes of the absurd and bizarre, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the artistic development of the author of The Master and Margarita.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd New Arabian Nights: Annotated Edition
Stevenson published this collection of his early fiction in 1882, after the pieces had appeared in various magazines. The first half features two popular detective-story cycles, The Suicide Club and The Rajah’s Diamonds, which deal with a macabre secret society and the intrigues and escapades involving exotic jewels. The second half brings together unrelated pieces, including the seminal ‘The Pavilion on the Links’ – described by Conan Doyle as the first short story in the world – which is set in a cottage surrounded by quicksand and tells the story of two old friends who become rivals for the affection of a woman. An eclectic, entertaining compilation, New Arabian Nights represented a milestone in Stevenson’s creative development and confirmed his reputation as one of the finest storytellers in the English language.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Mrs Dalloway
As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two characters unfold. One of Virginia Woolf's most famous novels, Mrs Dalloway is a triumph of experimentation, a cornerstone of Modernism and a subtle examination of love, freedom, mental illness and the female condition in society.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Tales of Terror and Mystery
While he is now mostly associated with his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle was also celebrated for the many masterful tales he wrote outside of that cycle. In this collection, first published in 1922, he compiled various pieces of short fiction which fall into the categories of horror and detective fiction, two genres for which he has become a byword. These eclectic, captivating tales - dealing with topics such as mysterious jungles in the sky, seventeenth-century torture techniques, a bloodthirsty Brazilian cat and a train mysteriously disappearing between two stations - showcase Arthur Conan Doyle at his creative best.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd The Theatre and Its Double (Annotated Edition): contains extra documents relating to the work
First published in 1938, The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays detailing Antonin Artaud’s radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’, the collection analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides some suggestions on a physical-training method for actors and actresses, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Smoke: New Translation
On his way back to Russia after some years spent in the West, Grigory Mikhailovich Litvinov, the son of a retired official of merchant stock, stops over in Baden-Baden to meet his fiancee Tatyana. However, a chance encounter with his old flame, the manipulative Irina - now married to a general and a prominent figure in aristocratic expatriate circles - unearths feelings buried deep inside the young man's heart, derailing his plans for the future and throwing his life into turmoil.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd All The Sad Young Men
Published a year after The Great Gatsby, this short-story collection showcases many of the celebrated novel’s themes, as well as its unique writing style. Two of the most famous tales, the beautifully elegiac ‘The Rich Boy’ and ‘Winter Dreams’, deal with wealthy protagonists – the old-money Anson Hunter and the self-made man Dexter Green – as they come to terms with lost love, while ‘Absolution’, in which a boy confesses to a priest, was initially written as a background piece to The Great Gatsby. Also containing ‘The Baby Party’, ‘Rags Martin-Jones and the Pr–nce of W–les’, ‘The Adjuster’, ‘Hot and Cold Blood’, ‘The Sensible Thing’ and ‘Gretchen’s Forty Winks’ – all of which describe in various ways the 1920s society that Fitzgerald himself inhabited – All the Sad Young Men is a masterpiece of twentieth-century American fiction.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd A Young Doctor's Notebook: New Translation
In this collection of short stories, drawing heavily from the author's own experiences as a medical graduate on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Bulgakov describes a young doctor's turbulent and often brutal introduction to his practice in the backward village of Muryovo. Using a sharply realistic and humorous style, Bulgakov reveals his doubts about his own competence and the immense burden of responsibility, as he deals with a superstitious and poorly educated people struggling to enter the modern age. This acclaimed collection contains some of Bulgakov's most personal and insightful observations on youth, isolation and progress.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd The Suitcase
Several years after emigrating from the USSR, the author discovers the battered suitcase he had brought with him gathering dust at the back of a wardrobe. As he opens the suitcase, the items he finds inside take on a riotously funny life of their own as Dovlatov inventories the circumstances under which he acquired them. A poplin shirt evokes a story of courtship and marriage, a pair of boots calls up the hilarious conclusion to an official banquet, two pea-green crêpe socks bring back memories of his attempt to become a black-market racketeer, while a double-breasted suit reminds him of when he was approached by the KGB to spy on a Swedish writer. Imbued with a comic nostalgia and overlaid with Dovlatov’s characteristically dark-edged humour and wry power of observation, The Suitcase is a profoundly human, delightfully ironic novel from one of the finest satirists of the twentieth century.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Exercises in Style
On a crowded bus at midday, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated, the first man takes it. Later, in another part of town, the man is spotted again, while being advised by a friend to have another button sewn onto his overcoat. Exercises in Style retells this apparently unremarkable tale ninety-nine times, employing a variety of styles, ranging from sonnet to cockney to mathematical formula. Too funny to be merely a pedantic thesis, this virtuoso set of themes and variations is a linguistic rustremover, a guide to literary forms and a demonstration of imagery and inventiveness.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Rudin: New Translation
Dmitry Rudin, a high-minded gentleman of reduced means, arrives at the estate of Darya Mikhailovna, where his intelligence, eloquence and conviction immediately make a powerful impression. As he stys on longer than intended, Rudin exerts a strong influence on the younger generation, and Darya's daughter, Natalya, falls in love with him. But circumstances soon will show whether Rudin has the courage to act on his beliefs, and whether he can live ip to the image he has created for himself.
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd The Horror Handbook
What happens to a vampire when he dies? How does somebody become a werewolf? How can you protect yourself from witches? All of these questions and more are answered in this book, which will finally give you all the information you ever wanted to know about ghosts, zombies, monsters and all kinds of creepy-crawly creatures that give us the heebie-jeebies. Full of tips, anecdotes and trivia – and delightfully illustrated by Axel Scheffler – Paul van Loon’s Horror Handbook is a fun and fascinating reference book for all fans of scary stories and things that go bump in the night.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Space on Earth
Have you ever looked up into the sky and wondered about space, astronomy and the universe? Perhaps you have. But you’ve probably never looked around you – at the sunglasses you wear or the selfies people take – and thought about space. The truth is, there is more of space on earth than you realize... Full of amazing facts about everyday innovations inspired by space travel and sections on the people who brought them to us, Space on Earth is an entertaining and fascinating look at space and the untold relationship with the planet we live on, helping children not only to feel the awe and wonder of the universe, but also to understand the reasons why space is relevant to us here on Earth.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd How to Get Rid of a Vampire (Using Ketchup, Garlic Cloves and a Bit of Imagination)
Zazie has just received a beautiful new notebook, and decides to keep a diary. Brimming with imagination, she writes down her impressions of her cat Roudoudou, her awful cousin Lucas and her new teacher, Mr Labat – who, with his pale skin and blood-red lips, must surely be a vampire! In order to save her life and those of her classmates, Zazie must find a way to get rid of Mr Labat – and what better way than by following the advice found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula… Sparkling, funny and a bit wacky, How to Get Rid of a Vampire (Using Ketchup, Garlic Cloves and a Bit of Imagination) is as entertaining and original as its brave and loveable heroine.
£7.78
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.
£9.99
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.
£9.04
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 Little Women
The four March sisters - Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy - live in financial hardship in New England with their mother, while their father has been drafted to fight in the Civil War. The girls embark on a series of adventures and endure a number of unexpected misfortunes - experiences that allow their personalities to emerge: Meg sensible and outgoing, Jo literary and boyish, Beth musical and shy, and Amy artistic and selfish - but the bonds holding together the March family remain unbroken.Initially written as a novel for girls, Little Women is now regarded as an all-time American classic for all readers, inspiring generations of women writers and giving rise to many adaptations. ABOUT THE SERIES: Alma Classics Junior series of illustrated classics includes some of the greatest books ever written for younger readers and new translations of unjustly neglected international works. Our aim is to give our list an international feel and offer young readers to opportunity to connect with other cultures and literatures - this applies not only to the titles we chose but also to the illustrators we commission - so that we can bring a bit of novelty into the canon of British children's literature. All children's classics contain 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 Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens's second novel is the tale of a young orphan who faces the gruelling conditions of a Victorian workhouse before finding himself sucked into the criminal underworld of London. Teeming with unforgettable characters such as the villainous Fagin, the virtuous Nancy and the brutal Bill Sikes, Oliver Twist combines dark humour, elements of melodrama and social polemic. At once a ferocious indictment of the author's era and a timeless story of coming of age, this classic has enthralled readers and inspired countless adaptations and imitations since it was first published in 1838.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Written in Water
On 17th September 1820, accompanied by his friend Joseph Severn, John Keats left London for Italy on board the Maria Crowther in a desperate bid to restore his health. Anguished at the thought of having to part, possibly for ever, from his fiancée and his friends, troubled by money worries and broken in body and mind, the young poet launched on his last journey on earth with both a sense of hope and a deep foreboding that his efforts would be in vain. Despite Keats's own assertion that by then he no longer felt a citizen of the world and was leading a posthumous life, his final five months were filled with events of great biographical interest, and deserve to be examined much more carefully. Using exclusively primary sources and first-hand accounts, Keats's editor and translator Alessandro Gallenzi has pieced together all the available material adding newly discovered and previously unpublished documents to help the reader follow the poet step by step from his departure and tumultu
£12.99
Alma Books Ltd Catastrophe and Other Stories
This volume brings together twenty of the best stories written by Dino Buzzati - author of the celebrated novel The Tartar Steppe and one of the most original voices in twentieth-century literature - stories which show the Italian master's taste for the bizarre and the humorous, and for exploring the darker recesses of the human psyche. From `The Collapse of the Baliverna', where a man is racked with guilt at the thought that he might have been responsible for the loss of many lives, to `The Epidemic', which describes the spread of a "state influenza" contracted only by people who don't step into line with the government, and `Terror at the Scala', where the higher echelons of Milan society are gripped with the fear of an impending revolution - these stories show how strange and unexpected events can creep into everyday life and draw ordinary people towards mystery, disquiet and, ultimately, catastrophe.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Lyrics: Volume 1 (1813-17): 1
The founding father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin has exerted - through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, his plays, his short stories and his narrative poetry - a long-lasting influence well beyond the borders of his motherland. A slightly lesser-known, but by no mean less important aspect of his writing is his vast production of shorter verse, a genre at which he excelled and arguably still remains unsurpassed. This volume, part of Alma's series of the complete poetic works of Alexander Pushkin, collects the poems Pushkin wrote while still a young student at the mperial Lyceum in Tsarkoe Selo and includes such early gems as `The Tear', `The Singer' and `Note on a Hospital Wall', each presented in a verse translation opposite the original Russian text. Enriched with notes, pictures and an appendix on Pushkin's life and works, this will be essential reading for anyone wishing to delve deeper into the Russian bard's genius.
£9.99
Alma Books Ltd The Last Day of a Condemned Man
A first-person diary of a prisoner's final day before being executed for an unspecified crime, Victor Hugo's poignant tale vividly conveys the mental anguish of a man confronted with the intransigent mechanism of justice, as his mind seeks refuge in recollections from his past and philosophical musings on his inevitable fate. As relevant today as when it was first published in 1829, The Last Day of a Condemned Man is an eloquent plea for compassion and a masterpiece of realist fiction. This edition includes the Preface to the 1832 edition of the book, a manifest of Hugo's personal opinions, 'A Comedy about a Tragedy' and 'Claude Gueux', an early example of "true crime" fiction.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd The Crack-up
Compiled and published after Fitzgerald's death by his friend, the prominent critic and editor Edmund Wilson, The Crack-Up is a collection of writings that chronicle the author's state of mind and personal perspective on events, fellow writers and public figures of the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to articles and essays such as the celebrated title piece, this volume includes a selection of Fitzgerald's notebooks, which - as well as being a repository of anecdotes and witty lines - provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the novelist's creative process, with passages that would be reworked into his fiction.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd True Story, Lucius, or the Ass
True Story, Lucian’s best-known and most entertaining work, is a parody of the tall stories of fantastic journeys narrated by famous poets and historians. With his trademark wit and humour, Lucian informs his readers that he means to tell nothing but lies and impossibilities, and warns them not to believe a word he says. The result is a comical masterpiece that influenced Western literature throughout the centuries, and works such as Gulliver’s Travels and The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Lucius, or the Ass, a satirical novel charting the adventures of a young man who has been transformed into a donkey, is usually attributed to Lucian and is thought to be a source of Apuleius’s Golden Ass.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd Childhood, Boyhood, Youth: New Translation: Newly Translated and Annotated
This trilogy of short novels, taken as a whole, recounts the young narrator’s early life up to his university days, each episode told through the perceptions, points of view and emotions felt by the protagonist at the time. Based on Tolstoy’s own life and experiences, this fictionalized account of a young man growing into the world combines anecdote with frank personal assessment and philosophical extrapolation, as the author’s Stendhalian take on the confessional genre confronts and blurs the notions of reality and imagination. Tolstoy’s first published work, which launched him on a successful writing career, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth – besides offering an early display of his storytelling and stylistic abilities – provides the reader with invaluable insight into the personal and literary development of one of the greatest writers of all time."
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd Idomeneo
Mozart wrote Idomeneo when he was twenty-four years old, and the opera was described by Albert Einstein as ‘one of those works that even a genius like Mozart could write only once in his life’. It is one of most astonishing achievements of an altogether astonishing career. In this newly commissioned guide, Julian Rushton explains the special nature of the music in a detailed analysis of its themes and development, while Nicholas Till places the opera in its context as an expression of the Enlightenment. Gary Kahn explores the performance history of an opera which, although largely ignored for over a hundred and fifty years, has now taken its place as part of the international operatic repertoire. A selection of the unique letters between Mozart and his father written during the opera’s composition is also included.
£12.00
Alma Books Ltd Pen in Hand: Reading, Rereading and other Mysteries
How can other people like the books we don’t like? What benefit can we get from rereading a work? Can we read better? If so, how? These and many other questions, ranging from the field of writing to that of reading and translation, are given a comprehensive answer in a series of stimulating and challenging literary essays that will be a perfect read for all book explorers and practitioners of the pen. After delighting us with his novels and many volumes of non-fiction, Tim Parks – who is not only an acclaimed author and a translator, but also a celebrated literary essayist – gives us a book to enjoy, savour and, most importantly, reread.
£14.99
Alma Books Ltd Good to be God
Using the credit card and identity of a handcuffs salesman, professional failure Tyndale Corbett arrives in Miami for a law enforcement conference to discover the joys of luxury hotels and above all the delight of being someone else, someone successful.
£8.50
Alma Books Ltd White Truffles in Winter
White Truffles in Winter imagines the world of the remarkable French chef Auguste Escoffier, who changed the way we eat through his legendary restaurants at the Savoy and the Ritz. A man of contradictions – kind yet imperious, food-obsessed yet rarely hungry – Escoffier was also torn between two women: the famous, beautiful and reckless actress Sarah Bernhardt and his wife, the independent and sublime poet Delphine Daffis. In the last year of his life, he returns to Delphine, who requests a dish in her name in the same way as he has honoured Bernhardt, Queen Victoria and many others. But how can even the best chef in the world define the complexity of love on a single plate? N.M. Kelby brings us the sensuality of food and love amid a world on the verge of war in this work that shimmers with beauty and longing.
£10.15
Alma Books Ltd Psammead Trilogy
A great collection to include Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet. All the books contain extra material for your readers, a glossary and a test yourself section.
£20.67
Alma Books Ltd Eclipse – Concrete Poems
In this volume of typographical (or “concrete”) poems, Alan Riddell weaves words and the very letters they’re made of into shapes and patterns that heighten or, in some cases, completely undermine the professed message of the pieces. When Eclipse was first published in 1972, concrete poetry was still a relatively new art form, and this book was the first substantial one-man collection to be published in Britain. Now, almost fifty years since its inception, this volume provides a unique perspective on this cutting-edge technique.
£9.15
Alma Books Ltd The Wall
First published in 1939, a few years before his most influential works in theatre and philosophy, The Wall was Sartre’s first and only collection of short fiction. The title piece tells the story of a prisoner during the Spanish Civil War, on the eve of his execution by a firing squad, who is told he will be spared if he can betray the whereabouts of a fellow Republican. This leads him to question his cause and his loyalty, as the mental torment that he and two other inmates endure unfolds in unflinching detail. This collection, which also includes ‘The Bedoom’, ‘Herostratus’ and ‘Intimacy’ – short psychological tales in which individuals grapple with questions of madness, sexuality and death – as well as ‘The Childhood of a Leader’, the extended chronicle of a young man’s emotional deterioration and embrace of Fascism, provides a fascinating and accessible introduction to the author who would become the figurehead of Existentialism.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd The New Dress and Other Stories
As Mabel Waring takes off her cloak and steps into the drawing room of Clarissa Dalloway, she immediately realizes that something is not right: her pale-yellow silk dress, which she has had specially made for the occasion, is clearly old-fashioned, dowdy and out of place. Everyone seems to be looking at her in dismay or mocking her appearance. Crushed at once by her insecurity, Mabel is pervaded by a sense of selfloathing, and feels utter revulsion for the social world she has tried so hard to impress. Written in 1924 and perhaps intended for inclusion in Mrs Dalloway, a book Woolf was working on at the time, The New Dress is here accompanied by most of the short stories she published in her lifetime, as well as six posthumously published pieces that share the milieu and some of the characters of her celebrated novel. Together, they reveal their author as one of the finest practitioners in the field of short fiction.
£9.04
Alma Books Ltd Incest
When the immoral libertine Monsieur de Franval marries and fathers a daughter, he decides to inculcate in her a sense of absolute freedom, an unconventional education that involves the two becoming secret lovers. But Franval's virtuous, God-fearing wife becomes suspicious and confronts him, setting off a tragic chain of events. Part of Sade's The Crimes of Love cycle, this shocking tale - which was among the writings banned for publication until the twentieth century - tests the limits of morality and portrays the disastrous consequences of freedom and pleasure.
£7.78
Alma Books Ltd Between the Acts
It is a variable early summer's day, and there is an unusual bustle in the grounds of Pointz Hall, a country house in a remote village in the very heart of England. The local community is all astir, intent on putting the finishing touches to preparations for the annual pageant, which is to be performed there that evening. Among the medley of attendees are Mr Oliver, the owner of the house, the flirtatious Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge, who is rumoured to be homosexual, the troubled married couple Giles and Isa, as well as the eccentric spinster Miss La Trobe, the author of the pageant - an ambitious journey through England's past and literature. Highly symbolic, and dealing with many of the themes that were most dear to Virginia Woolf, such as the condition of the individual in the current of history, sexual ambiguity and the tension between life and art, Between the Acts was the author's final novel, offering a tantalising glimpse of the direction her fiction might have taken.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd The Raven and Other Poems: Fully Annotated Edition with over 400 notes. It contains Poe's complete poems and three essays on poetry
The undisputed pioneer of the horror, detective and science-fiction genres, Edgar Allan Poe was an accomplished poet as well as a celebrated writer of short stories. The present edition contains all of his works in verse, from the major poems of his maturity – such as his famous ballads ‘The Raven’ and ‘Lenore’ – to those he published in his youth and those that were collected immediately after his premature death in 1849. Also included in this volume is a selection of Poe’s essays on poetical composition and prosody, revealing that poetry was at the core of the American master’s vision of literature – something also demonstrated by the significant and enduring body of work he left behind in this field.
£8.42
Alma Books Ltd The House of Mirth
An impoverished member of the privileged high society of old New York, Lily Bart is beautiful and socially agreeable, but she is almost thirty and still unmarried. Now she is keen to secure a wealthy husband to confirm her status, but the debts she contracts at the card table, her reduced circumstances and the constant gossip she attracts from malevolent tongues through her heedless behaviour and faux pas make her prospects look bleak. As suitor after suitor appears and fades away, and she is drawn further and further down a spiral of loneliness and unhappiness, she realizes that she is just one step away from losing everything she has. Published in 1905 to immediate critical and commercial success, Edith Wharton’s enduringly popular novel of manners is a brilliant evocation of the economic and social changes wrought by the Gilded Age, as well as a universal satire on the constraints and follies of upper-crust conventions.
£7.78