Books published by Alma Books Ltd

This authorized biography sheds light on the person behind the politician. 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 David Cameron, Barack Obama or Vladimir Putin.

A new translation of Robert Musil's first novel, a fresco of psychoanalysis, philosophy, eroticism, snobbery, sado-masochism and schoolboy humour, a hothouse of alternately repressed and unchained desires that prefigure the carnage of both World Wars.

Part of Alma Classics Evergreens series, this new edition of Frankenstein contains pictures and an extensive section on Shelley's life and works.

New verse translation by prize-winning translator with facing Italian text, part of Alma Classics Evergreen series. Includes an extensive section on Dante's life and works.

Recently adapted for BBC Television, The Ladies' Paradise evokes the giddy pace of Paris's transition into a modern city and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the end of the century.

Introducing the first in a long line of underground's characters, Poor People, Dostoevsky's first full-length work of fiction, is a poignant, tragi-comic tale which foreshadows the greatness of his later novels.

A novel about the celebration of the transience of life, the eternal difficulty of love and a hilarious riff on our 21st-century infatuation with movies and the superhero solution.

Provides a detailed portrait of provincial nineteenth-century life. Adhering to a naturalist approach, this book eschews many of the characteristics of the author's other novels of the "Rougon-Macquart" cycle - such as a pronounced polemical agenda or a gritty subject matter - offering instead a lyrical tale of love and innocence.

An unjustly forgotten masterpiece of Russian literature that inspired one of Freud's most important essays, Leonardo also offers an illuminating snapshot of the society of the period - beset with intrigue and religious and social tension.

Both an addition to the Stendhalian canon and a pioneering work of the travel-writing genre, Travels in the South of France provides an illuminating perspective on this popular region and the phenomenon of tourism in general.

At once nostalgic for a bygone more innocent age and foreshadowing the turbulences of the twentieth century, Bunin's narrative is a triumph of bitter realism, shot through with the author's classical style and precision of language.

A remarkable nineteenth-century account of Istanbul - which begins with a dazzling description of the city gradually appearing through the fog as the author's ship approaches the harbour - Constantinople expertly combines personal anecdote, breathtaking visual observation and entertaining historical information.

An extraordinary tale of France's greatest chef, his loves and a country on the brink of war.

First full-length biography to explore the life of the first woman to be commissioned as an officer in the Serbian army and the only British woman to enlist as a soldier in World War I

Born out of the author's own experiences as a young InterRail traveller, this modern picaresque novel is a celebration of a Europe without boundaries, the joy of being young and the infinite, unpredictable paths we can go down during our lives.

Frida Leider, the greatest Wagnerian soprano of the pre-war period, has a permanent place in operatic history. In this, her own memoirs, Leider recreates the fascinating operatic world of her day and her association with many great musical figures of the twentieth century.

The memoirs of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, one of the twentieth century's greatest impressarios who reigned for ten years at La Scala in Milan before going on to spend twenty-seven years with the Met in New York.

H.F. Garten's fascinating study into the role of dramaturgy in the works of Wagner.

A historical play dramatizing the life of one of Scotland's greatest heroes, William Wallace.

Pauline Garcia Viardot, the daughter of the famous singer and composer Manuel Garcia and younger sister of the celebrated Malibran, was a singer of genius and a woman of outstanding intellect. The first biography of Viardot not only recreates the drama of the prima donna's own life, but perfectly captures the scintillating brilliance of nineteenth-

This fascinating portrait provides a colourful picture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life in four capitals, combining musical and literary history with an account of the social life of the period.