The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him disrespect and a dramatic encounter with a prostitute. Seen by many as the first existentialist novel and showcasing the best of Dostoevsky's dry humour, Notes from Underground was a pivotal moment in the development of modern literature and has ... |
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer charts the escapades of a thirteen-year-old boy growing up on the banks of the Mississippi. Testing the patience of his aunt Polly, the bold and sharp-witted Tom Sawyer frequently skips school in search of excitement, and the scrapes he gets into with his friend Huckleberry Finn range from innocent japes to more serious events such as the witnessing of a murder. One of the most popular and influential American novels, Mark Twain's masterpiece is at the same time a highly entertaining romp which celebrates youth and freedom and a more profound investigation of his times, touching on ... |
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Controversial, scandalous, erudite and funny, Ulysses is undisputedly a landmark of twentieth-century modernism. It charts one day - 16th June 1904 - in the lives of three inhabitants of Dublin: the advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, the artist Stephen Dedalus and Bloom's wife Molly. Their peregrinations, thoughts and encounters form the basis of the narrative, which becomes a celebration of all human experience through the lives of specific individuals in a specific place at a specific time. Ulysses is both an experimental novel and a book intimately concerned with the events of modern life. A lively repository of ... |
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A mysterious murder near Esher, a gruesome delivery of two human ears packed in coarse salt, the disappearance of secret submarine plans, the sudden descent into madness of two brothers - these are only some of the apparently unsolvable cases contained in this volume, which the great sleuth, assisted by his trusted friend Doctor Watson, is challenged to clear up with the aid of his sagacity and unrivalled analytical skills. Published a quarter of a century after the first book of Holmes adventures, and including the famous titular story His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes, this collection shows the detective&# ... |
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"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Blind, broken by the death of his wife and bitterly disappointed by the Restoration, Milton dictated his sweeping biblical epic Paradise Lost to a series of helpers. While the struggle between God and Satan rages across the cosmos, the human tragedy of Adam and Eve - the temptation and fall - is movingly depicted in language unsurpassed in its musicality and beauty. A staggering and audacious undertaking - seeking, in Milton's words, to justify the ways of God to men - Paradise Lost has been revered since its initial publication, inspiring writers from Mary ... |
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Dorian Gray is having his picture painted by Basil Hallward, who is charmed by his looks. But when Sir Henry Wotton visits and seduces Dorian into the worship of youthful beauty with an intoxicating speech, Dorian makes a wish he will live to regret: that all the marks of age will now be reflected in the portrait rather than on Dorian's own face. The stage is now set for a masterful tale about appearance, reality, art, life, truth, fiction and the burden of conscience. Oscar Wilde's only full-length novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a lasting gem of sophisticated wit and playfulness, which brings together ... |
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When the corpse of Sir Charles Baskerville is found on the grounds of his Dartmoor estate next to a mysterious animal footprint, thoughts turn to a fabled family curse: that of a hellhound set out to avenge a crime committed by one of Sir Charles’s ancestors. As the only surviving heir of the Baskervilles is terrified for his safety, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are called in to investigate. The most famous novel in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes cycle, The Hound of the Baskervilles is a masterpiece of terror, suspense and mystery which has enthralled readers young and old since it was first published in 1902. ... |
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Based on lectures given at Cambridge colleges and first published by the Hogarth Press in 1929, A Room of One's Own is an extended essay about the predicament of female writers and a stirring call for autonomy and recognition. As well as settling scores with reactionary critics and laying the foundations of a history of women's literature, the text is also a triumph of imagination, with a celebrated passage envisaging the fate of a fictional sister of Shakespeare's. A seminal, widely studied feminist polemic that touches on both literature and politics, A Room of One's Own is essential reading for those ... |
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After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital - from greed, murder and nihilism to passion, vanity and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his openness and understanding, Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky, who wrote that in the character of Prince Myshkin he hoped to portray a wholly virtuous man, shows the workings of ... |
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This thesis is the result of research on the 13th-century dream journal of the Buddhist monk Myōe (1173 - 1232), founder and principal of Kōzan-ji temple (⾼⼭寺) in Kyoto. Why are the dream records of this Buddhist monk so important? Myōe was an influential priest in his time. However, his dream records, known under the title Yumeki 夢記, had not been accorded much attention in the past. Yet in recent years, a thorough study of the Kōzan-ji Temple's art collection has revealed evidence concerning their value in understanding the metaphysical world of this monk, as ... |
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An immersive entertainment experience unlike any other, A Song of Ice and Fire has earned George R. R. Martin - dubbed the American Tolkien by Time magazine - international acclaim and millions of loyal readers. Now the monumental saga gets the royal treatment it deserves, with each book wrapped in bound leather-cloth covers and packaged together in an elegant display case. This one-of-a-kind boxed set includes: A Game of Thrones A Clash of Kings A Storm of Swords A Feast for Crows A Dance with Dragons The ultimate collector's item for fans of the epic fantasy series that inspired HBO's Game ... |
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This book is the result of several journeys from Sofia to Prague in the 1990s. It's based on the notes I kept during my travels. The borders had just opened, people were emigrating en masse, I stayed behind. That was my first time leaving the prison of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and I traveled by bus. A journey out into the world and into myself. I discovered Prague, though the search for myself continues. Sometimes Prague is here, sometimes it is there, and the same is true for Sofia."Where would you like to go? Out into the world. It's not a question of the direction, but of the journey itself, ... |
