Search results for ""author edwin muir""

Born on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887, Edwin Muir settled in various parts of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century - from Glasgow, to Austria and Czechoslovakia throughout to 1920s, 1930s and again after the war. Muir's poetry bears oblique witness to the most traumatic years and events of this century, and is haunted by the symbolic 'fable' which he longed to find beneath the surface 'story' of mere events, as he came to terms with his own nature amidst the terror and confusion of the European maelstrom. As Seamus Heaney has written: 'Muir's poetic strength revealed itself in being able to co-ordinate the nightmare of history with that place in himself where he had trembled with anticipation . . . His simultaneous at-homeness and abroadness is exemplary.'

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Edwin Muir - POOR TOM, J.F. Hendry - FERNIE BRAE, Gordon M. Williams - FROM SCENES LIKE THESE, Tom Gallacher - APPRENTICE. Growing Up in the West presents four very different and memorably vivid accounts of what it was to be young and growing up in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, from the 1930s to the 1960s.Poor Tom tells of a young man's struggle to come to terms with the slow death of his brother in the city slums of a culturally impoverished Scotland. Fernie Brae celebrates the growth and education of a sensitive in a novel reminiscent of Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Gordon Williams's novel tells a grimmer story as its young protagonist eventually succumbs to a culture of drink and violence where the harshness of life on the land sits next to industrial sprawl: 'From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs.' Set in the Clydeside shipyards, the wryly observant and humorous style of Apprentice strikes a happier note from the 1960s.

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The complete novels of one of the greatest German writers of all time, collected together in one literary masterpiece.Kafka’s characters are victims of forces beyond their control, estranged and rootless citizens deceived by authoritarian power. Filled with claustrophobic description and existential profundity, Kafka has been compared to a literary Woody Allen.In The Trial Joseph K is relentlessly hunted for a crime that remains nameless. The Castle follows K in his ceaseless attempts to enter the castle and to belong somewhere.In Amerika Karl Rossmann also finds himself isolated and confused when he is 'packed off to America by his parents'. Here, ordinary immigrants are also strange, and 'America' is never quite as real as it seems. THE CLASSIC TRANSLATION BY WILLA AND EDWIN MUIR

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'One of the few great and perfect works of poetic imagination written during this century' Elias CanettiWITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ADAM THIRWELLOne morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect. His family is understandably perturbed and he finds himself an outsider in his own home. In 'Metamorphosis' and the other famous stories included here, Kafka explores the confusing nature of human experience with sly wit and compelling originality.

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'He is the greatest German writer of our time. Such poets as Rilke or such novelists as Thomas Mann are dwarfs or plaster saints in comparison to him' Vladimir NabokovThe story of K. and his arrival in a village where he is never accepted, and his relentless, unavailing struggle with authority in order to gain entrance to the castle that seems to rule it. K.'s isolation and perplexity, his begging for the approval of elusive and anonymous powers, epitomises Kafka's vision of twentieth-century alienation and anxiety.

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‘It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary’Rediscover Kafka's classic work of psychological horror. The Trial is the terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. A nightmare vision of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the insanity of twentieth-century totalitarianism has resonated with readers for generations.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PHILLIPE SANDS

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