One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us hisfirst cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched,interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essentialcharacter. A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turningfrom the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring tastein music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . Astruggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failingmarriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted,underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe thatplastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whosetutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . . Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of thetwo—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, inone way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment ofreckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes justeluding their grasp. An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable fo
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Virginia Woolf said of EmilyBronte that her writing could "make the wind blow and the thunderroar," and so it does in Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw,Heathcliff, and the windswept moors that are the setting of theirmythic love are as immediately stirring to the reader of today asthey have been for every generation of readers since the novel wasfirst published in 1847. With an introduction by KatherineFrank.
From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains ofthe Day" "comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born inearly-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age ofnine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, morethan twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in Londonsociety; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him famehas done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents'alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthinecity of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own,painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyondrecognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficultto trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful andpsychologically acute, When We Were Orphans" "offers a profoundmeditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibilityof avenging one's past.
In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul,"one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spanscontinents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiographyand a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian . . . abrilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life andwork."--New York Times.
(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.
Portnoy's Complaint "n." after Alexander Portnoy (1933- )] Adisorder in which strongly-felt ethical and altruistic impulses areperpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of aperverse nature. Spielvogel says: 'Acts of exhibitionism,voyeurism, fetishism, auto-eroticism and oral coitus are plentiful;as a consequence of the patient's "morality," however, neitherfantasy nor act issues in genuine sexual gratification, but ratherin overriding feelings of shame and the dread of retribution,particularly in the form of castration.' (Spielvogel, O. "ThePuzzled Penis," "Internationale Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse,"Vol. XXIV, p. 909.) It is believed by Spielvogel that many of thesymptoms can be traced to the bonds obtaining in the mother-childrelationship. With a new Afterword by the author for the 25thAnniversary edition.
Mild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is anageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living aplacid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with hisfriend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to finedining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and adedication to the collection of antiques. When these relativesbecome aware of the true value of his art collection, however,their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls awayas they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man'sinheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion toCousin Bette, the darkly humorous "Cousin Pons" is among of thelast and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urbansociety: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing considerationof human nature.
High school senior Tyler Miller used to be the kind of guy who faded into the background—average student, average looks, average dysfunctional family. But since he got busted for doing graffiti on the school, and spent the summer doing outdoor work to pay for it, he stands out like you wouldn’t believe. His new physique attracts the attention of queen bee Bethany Milbury, who just so happens to be his father’s boss’s daughter, the sister of his biggest enemy—and Tyler’s secret crush. And that sets off a string of events and changes that have Tyler questioning his place in the school, in his family, and in the world. In Twisted, the acclaimed Laurie Halse Anderson tackles a very controversial subject: what it means to be a man today. Fans and new readers alike will be captured by Tyler’s pitchperfect, funny voice, the surprising narrative arc, and the thoughtful moral dilemmas that are at the heart of all of the author’s award-winning, widely read work.
Adorno's frank and open challenge to directness, and the avoidance of language that 'gives itself over either to the market, to balderdash, or to the predominating vulgarity', is as timely today as it ever has been.
WHEN ALEXANDRA RAFFERTY was a girl,something unspeakably cruel happened to her on a summer afternoon.Only her father knew about it-or so she thought.Now a forensic photographer for the Miami P.D.,Alexandra remains haunted by that horrible day,and it colors all of her relationships.Stan,her emotionally estranged and loutish husband,drives a Brinks armored car and has his own mind-bending agenda.Her now-aging,not-altogether-there father is growing mire dependent and less dependable.And her work photographing crime scenes has become a life-consuming obsession. Now Alexandra is about to get caught up in a gruesome series of rape-muredrs that seem to speak to her long-hidden past.But before she can understand the killer's mes-sage,her life spins out of control,sending her on the run-from her husband,from the crooks after him,from a surprisingly persistent boyfriend,and from a killer who's bent on making sure Alexandra won't live long enough to translate his words.
The best-known novellas and stories of one of the seminalwriters of the twentieth century. Included are "The Judgment, " "ACountry Doctor, " and "A Hunger Artist." New Foreword by AnneRice.
The Unconsoled is at once a gripping psychological mystery, awicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study ofa man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control. Thesetting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renownedpianist, has come to give the most important performance of hislife. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic andinfuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital cluesto his own past. In The Unconsoled Ishiguro creates a work that isitself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant withhumanity and wit. "A work of great interest and originality....Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all hisown...frankly fantastic and] fiercer and funnier thanbefore."--"The New Yorker"
From one of the 20th century's great writers comes one of thefinest autobiographies of our time. Speak, Memory was firstpublished by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence andthen assiduously revised and republished in 1966. The Everyman'sLibrary edition includes, for the first time, the previouslyunpublished "Chapter 16"--the most significant unpublished piece ofwriting by the master, newly released by the Nabokov estate--whichprovided an extraordinary insight into Speak, Memory. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilizedfamily, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror,education in England, and émigré life in Paris and Berlin. TheNabokovs were eccentric, liberal aristocrats, who lived a lifeimmersed in politics and literature on splendid country estatesuntil their world was swept away by the Russian revolution when theauthor was eighteen years old. Speak, Memory vividly evokes avanished past in the inimitable prose of Nabokov at his best.
In this bestselling compilation of essays, written in theclear-eyed, uncompromising language for which he is famous, Orwelldiscusses with vigor such diverse subjects as his boyhoodschooling, the Spanish Civil War, Henry Miller, Britishimperialism, and the profession of writing.
This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems which are nowgenerally regarded as Shakespeare's, excluding the Sonnets. Itcontains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and theTurtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. Theintroduction to the two long narrative poems examines their placewithin the classical and Renaissance European traditions, an issuewhich also applies to The Phoenix and the Turtle. John Roe analysesthe conditions in which the collection was produced, and weighs theevidence for and against Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover'sComplaint and the much-debated question of its genre. Hedemonstrates how in his management of formal tropes Shakespeare,like the best Elizabethans, fashions a living language out ofhandbook oratory. This updated edition contains a new introductorysection on recent critical interpretations and an updated readinglist.
In this funny and chilling novel, the setting is a small town inthe 1940s Midwest, and the subject is the heart of a wounded andferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacableAmerican moralists whose andquot; goodnessandquot; is a terribledisease. When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholicfailure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has beentrying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately meansdestroying herself in the process. With his unerring portraits ofLucy and her hapless, childlike husband, Roy, Roth has created anuncompromising work of fictional realism, a vision of provincialAmerican piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once pitilessand compassionate.
A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler andhis reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. Awonderful, wonderful book.
A stunning novel by the widest-read Arab writer currentlypublished in the U.S. The age of Nasser has ushered in enormoussocial change, and most of the middle-aged and middle-class sonsand daughters of the old bourgeoisie find themselves trying torecreate the cozy, enchanted world they so dearly miss. One night,however, art and reality collide--with unforeseencircumstances.
The final volume in the Everyman's Library Charles Dickenscollection: the timeless story of everyone's favorite misanthrope,Ebenezer Scrooge, together with four more of Dickens's Christmastales and with Arthur Rackham's classic illustrations. No holidayseason is complete without the story of tightfisted Mr. Scrooge, ofhis long-suffering and mild-mannered clerk, Bob Cratchit, of Bob'skindhearted lame son, Tiny Tim, and of the Ghosts of ChristmasPast, Present, and Future. First published in 1843, "A ChristmasCarol "was republished in 1852 in a new edition with four otherChristmas stories--"The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, TheBattle of Life, " and "The Haunted Man." These beloved talesrevived the notion of the Christmas "spirit"--and have kept italive ever since.
"Time" Magazine Best American Novel (1993) In this fiendishlyimaginative book (which may or may not be fiction), Philip Rothmeets a man who may or may not be Philip Roth. Because "someone"with that name has been touring Israel, promoting a bizarre reverseexodus of the Jews. Roth is intent on stopping him, even if thatmeans impersonating his own impersonator. With excruciatingsuspense, unfettered philosophical speculation, and a cast ofcharacters that includes Israeli intelligence agents, Palestinianexiles, an accused war criminal, and an enticing charter member ofan organization called Anti-Semites Anonymous, Operation Shylockbarrels across the frontier between fact and fiction, seriousnessand high comedy, history and nightmare.
Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has alwaystried to make the best books ever written available to the greatestnumber of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorialfeatures that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from thecrowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introductionto the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or hislife and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a conciseplot summary. All books published since 1993 have also beencompletely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarityand ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; avibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great textswith beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature mustbe Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers theseextensive materials at a price that competes with the mostinexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks havedurable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial an
"One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, athrenody of hope deceived and deferred but never extinguished;a play suffused with tenderness for the whole humanperplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab ofbeauty and pain."
