Books in the Seagull World Literature series

The Austrian playwright, novelist, and poet Thomas Bernhard (1931-89) is acknowledged as one of the major writers of our time. This collection includes seven stories that capture Bernhard's distinct darkly comic voice and vision - often compared to Kafka and Musil - commenting on a corrupted world.

A biography of Franz Liszt (1811-86) whose extraordinary career as a composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist - whose incomparable skill and personal charisma dazzled audiences all over Europe, from London and Paris to Berlin, Moscow, and even Constantinople - made him the nineteenth-century equivalent of a modern international pop star.

One night in the middle of winter, as deep snow covers the mountains and forests of Austria, a doctor is crossing a ridge from Traich to Foding to see a patient. He stumbles over a body in the darkness and fears it is a corpse. But it's not a corpse at all - in fact, it's wooden-legged Victor Halfwit, collapsed, but still very much alive.

Lakshmibai, the Queen of Jhansi, a legendary Indian heroine, led her troops against the British in the uprising of 1857, which is widely described as the first Indian War of Independence. This work traces the history of the growing resistance to the British, while building a picture of Lakshmibai as a complex, spirited, full-blooded woman.