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Although Plato's celebrated work of philosophy describes a society which to some seems the ideal human community and to others like a totalitarian nightmare, it also raises enduring questions about politics, art, education and the general conduct of life.
Homer's Odyssey is one of the supreme masterpieces of Western literature. Of this much acclaimed translation by Robert Fitzgerald, George Steiner has written, 'Fitzgerald is taking his place beside Chapman and Pope in the unbroken lineage of English Homeric translations...it has an economy and soar of a poet'. Introduced by Seamus Heaney
Henrik Pontoppidan (Author) Henrik Pontoppidan (1857¿1943) was a Danish novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1917 for his 'authentic descriptions of present-day life in Denmark'. The son of a rural minister, he moved to Copenhagen as a young man and eventually earned his living as a journalist and writer. He is best known for the sweeping social novels he wrote between 1890 and the 1920s, which 'reflect the social, religious and political struggles of the time.'Naomi Lebowitz (Translator) Naomi Lebowitz is Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St Louis and the author of books on Ibsen, Kierkegaard and Svevo.
All Quiet on the Western Front is a captivating novel written by the renowned author, Erich Maria Remarque. This book, published by Everyman in 2018, is a profound exploration of the genre of war literature. It paints a vivid picture of the physical and mental stress experienced by soldiers during World War I. The narrative is filled with poignant details that reflect the author's deep understanding of the human condition during times of conflict. This book is not only a literary masterpiece but also a historical document that offers readers a glimpse into the past. Published by Everyman, this edition of All Quiet on the Western Front is a must-read for those interested in war literature and history.
Everyone knows Pinocchio, the walking, talking wooden puppet carved from a table leg. Sold to a circus, then to a man who tries to drown him for his donkey-skin, he miraculously turns back into a puppet and goes in search of his 'father' (whom he must rescue from the belly of a giant dogfish ...).
Includes "Things Fall Apart", "No Longer at Ease", and "Arrow of God". In "Things Fall Apart" the individual tragedy of Okonkwo, 'strong man' and tribal elder in the Nigeria of the 1890s is intertwined with the transformation of traditional Igbo society under the impact of Christianity and colonialism.
In the five novels by Ireland's greatest comic writer we can explore the full range of his invention, from the multi-layered madness of At Swim-Two-Birds to the piercing realism of The Hard Life and the surreal logic of The Third Policeman.
The story of a half-caste boy, part Indian part Irish who journeys throughout the subcontinent with an aged lama in search of religious enlightenment, the nominal plot revolves around the Great Game: the struggle between Britian and Russia for control of Afghanistan.
Very Good Jeeves! (1930) is a collection of eleven short stories starring Bertie Wooster in eleven alarming predicaments from which he has to be rescued by his peerless gentleman's gentleman.
When the eminent naturalist Charles Darwin returned from South America on board the H.M.S Beagle in 1836, he brought with him the notes and evidence which would form the basis of his landmark theory of evolution of species by a process of natural selection.
The trouble which begins with Gussie Fink-Nottle wandering the streets of London dressed as Mephistopheles reaches its awful climax in his drunken speech to the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School.
In what remains after more than a century the greatest study of American political life, Tocqueville describes American society and accounts for its nature and its conflicts in an historical analysis of the nation's origins among different parties of European settlers.
One of Hemingway's finest novels, A FAREWELL TO ARMS was published in 1929 when the author was at the height of his power, It draws on his own experiences serving with the Italins in World War One when he was severely wounded in action and awarded the Croce de Guerra.
THE SECOND SEX is a hymn to human freedom and a classic of the existentialist movement. In the forty years since its publication De Beauvoir's then revolutionary thesis - that the subordination of women is not a fact of nature but the product of social conditioning has become part of our everyday thinking.
In this classic of American literature, Thoreau gives an account of his two years' experience of the 'simple life' in the woods, telling how he sought and found material and spiritual sustenance in the solitude of the cabin which he built for himself on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts.
The fable of the scientist who creates a man-monster is one of the best known horror stories ever. It has fascinated readers ever since it was first published in 1818.
From such an innocent beginning Wodehouse weaves a comic tale of suspense and romance involving one of his most distinctive early heroes, Ronald Eustace Psmith, monocled wit and devil-may-care boulevardier. Unusually for Wodehouse, this is not only a light comedy but also an adventure story in which crime and even gun-play drive the plot.
Conrad's foresight and his ability to pluck the human adventure from complex historical circumstances were such that his greatest novel, Nostromo - though over one hundred years old - says as much about today's Latin America as any of the finest recent accounts of that region's turbulent political life.
A lost inheritance, a rags-to-riches journey from vagabondage in the mountains of central Asia to an imperial throne in India, warrior-poet Babur's life was one of adventure and endurance against the odds. Descended from both Genghis Khan and Timur, Babur came to the throne of a small principality at the age of eleven; ten years of warfare later, he would lose it for ever to Uzbek invaders. A lucky break led to the capture of Kabul, from which he carved out a new state for himself in Afghanistan. Just over twenty years later, he was ready for the biggest throw of all - no less than an invasion of India. He recorded his own story pretty much as it happened with startling immediacy and a winning frankness: it was the crowning achievement of a rich tradition of Islamic autobiography.There is history and politics here aplenty, but what is most striking about Babur's memoirs is the man they reveal - ambitious but modest and self-critical, deeply attached to friends and family, homesick amongst the treasures of India, sensitive to the beauties of nature and extremely fond of a party. He paints a fascinating portrait of a sophisticated and cultured Persian-Turkic society. As violent for political ends as many a European Renaissance ruler, Babur could order a massacre and return home to write a ghazal. Everywhere he went he created beautiful gardens. There are insights into the role of women in such a society; of Babur's several wives, but particularly the older women of his family, who commanded respect and exercised considerable influence. Four years after his Indian conquest, Babur swore to give his own life if his eldest son recovered from a dangerous illness. Humayun pulled through, and in a few months Babur was dead. But he had laid the foundations of the greatest, wealthiest and most populous of the world's Muslim-ruled empires.
Based around the pivotal WWII battle of Stalingrad (1942-3), where the German advance into Russia was eventually halted by the Red Army, and around an extended family, the Shaposhnikovs, and their many friends and acquaintances, Life and Fate recounts the experience of characters caught up in an immense struggle between opposing armies and ideologies. Nazism and Communism are appallingly similar, 'two poles of one magnet', as a German camp commander tells a shocked old Bolshevik prisoner. At the height of the battle Russian soldiers and citizens alike are at last able to speak out as they choose, and without reprisal - an unexpected and short-lived moment of freedom. Grossman himself was on the front line as a war correspondent at Stalingrad - hence his gripping battle scenes, though these are more than matched by the drama of the individual conscience struggling against massive pressure to submit to the State. He knew all about this from experience too. His central character, Viktor Shtrum, eventually succumbs, but each delay and act of resistance is a moral victory. Though he writes unsparingly of war, terror and totalitarianism, Grossman also tells of the acts of 'senseless kindness' that redeem humanity, and his message remains one of hope. He dedicates his book, the labour of ten years, and which he did not live to see published, to his mother, who, like Viktor Shtrum's, was killed in the holocaust at Berdichev in Ukraine in September 1941.
Set in the early decades of the twentieth century, Independent People is a masterly realist novel evoking in rich detail a family and a rural community struggling to survive in the starkest of landscapes.
Novelist and travel writer V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He studied at Oxford University, after graduation moving to London to work for the BBC. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas (also in Everyman's Library), The Enigma of Arrival and In a Free State, which won the Booker Prize. His works of non-fiction include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief and The Masque of Africa. In 1990 Naipaul received a knighthood and in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 2018.
He adopted many poetic forms, and this anthology includes graceful and witty lyrics, verse letters to friends in the Horatian mode, a number of devotional poems, and a variety of important discursive poems on literary and political themes, including An Essay on Criticism, Windsor-Forest, and An Essay on Man.
The language of flowers is as old as language itself. This book aims to provide an updated floral anthology for the 21st century, presenting poetry from ancient Greece to contemporary Britain and America, and spanning the world from Cuba to Korea, Russia to Zimbabwe. It concludes with a selected glossary drawn from several Victorian collections.
The story of Robin Hood, said Roger Lancelyn Green can never die, nor cease to fire the imagination. Roger Lancelyn Green has used as his sources the ballads, romances and plays, as well as the literary retellings of Noyes, Tennyson, Peacock and Scott.
Features an inventor who travels to the remote future where he finds both love and terror.
Around the year 117 AD, the Ninth Legion, stationed at Eburacum - modern day York - marched north to suppress a rebellion of the Caledonian tribes, and was never heard of again. During the 1860s, a wingless Roman Eagle was discovered during excavations at the village of Silchester in Hampshire, puzzling archaeologists and scholars alike.
Philip's yearning for adventure takes him to Germany and later Paris where he tries to make his mark as an artist before returning to London to study medicine. Here, a tortured and one-sided love affair with Mildred, a vulgar yet irresistible waitress, changes the course of his life for ever.
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