The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, AHouse for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired byNaipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentiethcentury's finest novels. In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fightingagainst destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only toface a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to anotherafter the drowning death of his father, for which he isinadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he cancall home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family onwhom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on anarduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him andpurchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy ofmanners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s questfor autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.

"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."

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today asit on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous livesof a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, fromthe 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her“potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirationsand struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who isfilled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequentdestinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight tosurvive in a world of violence and danger. Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novelabout love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is,raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.” Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books thatcomplete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights,Expensive Peo

A vibrant, new complete Shakespeare that brings readers closerthan ever before possible top Shakespeare's plays as they werefirst acted. The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Editioninvites readers to rediscover Shakespeare-the working man of thetheater, not the universal bard-and to rediscover his plays as*s to be performed, not works to be immortalized. Combiningthe freshly edited texts of the Oxford Edition with livelyintroductions by Stephen Greenblatt and his co-editors, glossariesand annotations, and an elegant single-column page (that of theNorton Anthologies), this complete Shakespeare invites contemporaryreaders to see and read Shakespeare afresh. Greenblatt's fullintroduction creates a window into Shakespeare world-the culture,demographics, commerce, politics, and religion of early-modernEngland-Shakespeare's family background and professional life, theElizabethan industries of theater and printing, and the subsequentcenturies of Shakespeare textual editing.

Gathered together in one hardcover volume: three timeless novelsfrom the founding father of science fiction. The first great novelto imagine time travel, "The Time Machine" (1895) follows itsscientist narrator on an incredible journey that takes him finallyto Earth's last moments--and perhaps his own. The scientist whodiscovers how to transform himself in "The Invisible Man" (1897)will also discover, too late, that he has become unmoored fromsociety and from his own sanity. "The War of the Worlds"(1898)--the seminal masterpiece of alien invasion adapted by OrsonWelles for his notorious 1938 radio drama, and subsequently byseveral filmmakers--imagines a fierce race of Martians whodevastate Earth and feed on their human victims while theirvoracious vegetation, the red weed, spreads over the ruined planet.Here are three classic science fiction novels that, more than acentury after their original publication, show no sign of losingtheir grip on readers' imaginations.

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.

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.

Renaissance England’s great tragedy of intellectual overreaching is as relevant and unsettling today as it was when first performed at the end of the sixteenth century. This edition provides newly edited texts of both the 1604 (A-Text) and 1616 (B-Text) versions of the play, each with detailed explanatory annotations. "Sources and Contexts" includes a generous selection from Marlowe’s main source, The Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus, along with contemporary writings on magic and religion (including texts by Agrippa, Calvin, and Perkins) that establish the play’s intellectual background. This volume also reprints early documents relating to the writing and publication of the play and to its first performances, along with contemporary comments on Marlowe’s scandalous reputation. Twenty-five carefully chosen interpretations—written from the eighteenth century to the present—allow students to enrich their critical understanding of the play. These diverse critical essays in

Louisa May Alcott's beloved tale about Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amyis presented in a beautiful Everyman's Library Children's Classicsedition. The story of the four sisters' dreams, quarrels, andromances are brought to vivid life in this edition that featuresfull cloth binding in bold, bright colors; silk ribbon marker andheadband; two-color illustrated endpapers and illustrationsthroughout. A brief biography of Alcott is also included.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Three classic crime novels by amaster of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for thefirst time. Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, PatriciaHighsmith's hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing--noteven murder-- to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself theopulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself tobe a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbinglysympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmithnavigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley's deadly and sinistergames, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into themind of a man utterly indifferent to evil. The Talented Mr.RipleyIn a chilling literary hall of mirrors, Patricia Highsmithintroduces Tom Ripley. Like a hero in a latter-day Henry Jamesnovel, is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a prodigal youngAmerican back to his wealthy father. But Ripley finds himself veryfond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him--exactly likehim.

Hermann Hesse's classic novel "Siddhartha" has delighted,inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, andthinkers. Though set in a place and time far removed from theGermany of 1922, the year of the book's debut, the novel is infusedwith the sensibilities of Hesse's time, synthesizing disparatephilosophies-Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Westernindividualism-into a unique vision of life as expressed through oneman's search for meaning. It is the story of the quest ofSiddhartha, a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life ofprivilege and comfort to seek spiritual fulfillment and wisdom. Onhis journey, Siddhartha encounters wandering ascetics, Buddhistmonks, and successful merchants, as well as a courtesan namedKamala and a simple ferryman who has attained enlightenment.Traveling among these people and experiencing life's vitalpassages-love, work, friendship, and fatherhood-Siddharthadiscovers that true knowledge is guided from within. SusanBernofsky's magnificent new translation br

This new collection of Sandburgs finest and most representativepoetry draws on all of his previous volumes and includes fourunpublished poems about Lincoln. The Hendricks comprehensiveintroduction discusses how Sandburgs life and beliefs colored hiswork and why it continues to resonate so deeply with americanstoday. Edited and with an Introduction by George and WilleneHendrick.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The most perfect of Jane Austen'sperfect novels begins with twenty-one-year-old Emma Woodhousecomfortably dominating the social order in the village of Highbury,convinced that she has both the understanding and the right tomanage other people's lives-for their own good, of course. Herwell-meant interfering centers on the aloof Jane Fairfax, thedangerously attractive Frank Churchill, the foolish if appealingHarriet Smith, and the ambitious young vicar Mr. Elton-and endswith her complacency shattered, her mind awakened to some of life'smore intractable dilemmas, and her happiness assured. Jane Austen'scomic imagination was so deft and beautifully fluent that she coulduse it to probe the deepest human ironies while setting before us adazzling gallery of characters-some pretentious or ridiculous, someadmirable and moving, all utterly true.

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.

Booker Prize Finalist "Wickedly funny." --"The New York Times"Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint, where theWindsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover areactually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really aremerry. This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman,seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a "destination" wheretourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di'sgrave, and even Harrod's (conveniently located inside the tower ofLondon). Martha Cochrane, hired as one of Sir Jack's resident"no-people," ably assists him in realizing his dream. But when thisland of make-believe gradually gets horribly and hilariously out ofhand, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England. JulianBarnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophicalinquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticityand nationality.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" isthe great comic masterpiece of Russian literature-a satirical andsplendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.Gogol hoped to show the world "the untold riches of the Russiansoul" in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensianswarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs,conniving petty officials-all of them both utterly lifelike andalarmingly larger than life. Setting everything in motion is thewily antihero, Chichikov, the trafficker in "dead souls"-deceasedserfs who still represent profit to those clever enough to trade inthem. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winningtranslators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessiblethe full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, anddelight in human oddity and error.

The Secret Agent is the unsurpassed ancestor of a long seriesof twentieth-century novels and films which explore the confused motives that lie at the heart ofpolitical terrorism. In its use of powerful psychological insightto intensify narrative suspense, it set the terms by whichsubsequent works in its genre were created. Conrad was the firstnovelist to discover the strange in-between territory of thepolitical exile, and his genius was such that we still have notruer map of that region's moral terrain than his story of aterrorist plot and its tragic consequences for the guilty andinnocent alike. Introduction by Paul Theroux

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be amodel cou-ple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young childrenand a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too youngand started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. AndApril never saw herself as a housewife.Yet they have always livedon the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner.But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, RichardYates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritualbirthright, betraying not only each other, but their bestselves.

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.