Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story ofthe young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexualmisadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents.Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity,young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzyingreversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures. Although Kafka never visited America, images of its vastlandscape, dangers, and opportunities inspired this saga of the"golden land." Here is a startlingly modern, fantastic andvisionary tale of America "as a place no one has yet seen, in ahistorical period that can't be identified," writes E. L. Doctorowin his new foreword. "Kafka made his first novel from his ownmind's mythic elements," Doctorow explains, "and the research datathat caught his eye were bent like light rays in a field ofgravity."

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Naguib Mahfouz's magnificentepic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for thefirst time. The Nobel Prize--winning writer's masterwork is theengrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain'soccupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.The novels of "The Cairo Trilogy" trace three generations of thefamily of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, whorules his household with a strict hand while living a secret lifeof self-indulgence. "Palace Walk" introduces us to his gentle,oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija,and his three sons-the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolutehedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal.Al-Sayyid Ahmad's rebellious children struggle to move beyond hisdomination in "Palace of Desire," as the world around them opens tothe currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoilbrought by the 1920s. "Sugar Street" brings Mahfouz's vividtapestr

FROM THE WORLD FAMOUS ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, THE FIRSTAUTHORITATIVE, MODERNIZED, AND CORRECTED EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’SFIRST FOLIO IN THREE CENTURIES. Skillfully assembled by Shakespeare’s fellow actors in 1623,the First Folio was the original Complete Works. It is arguably themost important literary work in the English language. But startingwith Nicholas Rowe in 1709 and continuing to the present day,Shakespeare editors have mixed Folio and Quarto texts, graduallycorrupting the original Complete Works with errors and conflatedtextual variations. Now Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s mostaccomplished Shakespearean scholars, have edited the First Folio asa complete book, resulting in a definitive Complete Works for thetwenty-first century. Combining innovative scholarship with brilliant commentary andtextual analysis that emphasizes performance history and values,this landmark edition will be indispensable to students, theaterprofessionals, and general readers alik

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) If William Shakespeare hadnever written a single play, if his reputation rested entirely uponthe substantial and sterling body of nondramatic verse he leftbehind, he would still hold the position he does in the hierarchyof world literature. The strikingly modern ?sonnets-intimate,baroque, and expansive at once; the invigorating narratives drawnfrom classical subjects; and the flawless lyricism represented by apoem like "The Phoenix and the Turtle"-permanently deepen ourunderstanding of the multiplicity and extravagant energy of ourgreatest poet.

Seventeen interlinked tales by the winner of the 1988 NobelPrize for Literature follow such themes as betrayal, intrigue,obsessive love, social injustice, reincarnations, and wrongsrighted or made worse. Reprint. K.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Shakespeare's four greatesttragedies were written in a remarkably short period of time,between 1598 and 1606. "Hamlet," "Othello," "Macbeth," and "KingLear" are each so singular an achievement that any rereading ofthem reinforces the awe and almost idolatrous worship that thismost uncanny of the world's great writers invariably inspires. Inthese four plays, Shakespeare engages the problem that is centralto tragedy and crucial to any human community--the problem ofviolence and revenge--on an unprecedented scale. No other literarytexts have been more instrumental in deepening our knowledge ofourselves as individuals and as a civilization. This authoritativeedition of the plays is supplemented with footnotes,bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare's life andtimes, and a substantial introduction in which Tony Tannerdiscusses each play individually while setting each in context.

" A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum ' because he could see no more." But to its residents thisderelict corner of Trinidad' s capital is a complete world, whereeverybody is quite different from everybody else. There' s Popo thecarpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build " the thing withouta name." There' s Man-man, who goes from running for public officeto staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bullywith glass tear ducts. There' s the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrallto her monstrous husband. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S.Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighborsconstruct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhoviancompassion.Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed- butprecociously observant- neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a workof mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy andanarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence’s forgotten novel, is apassionate tale of longing and sexual defiance, of devastation anddestitution. Alvina Houghton, the daughter of a widowed Midlands draper, comesof age just as her father’s business is failing. In a desperateattempt to regain his fortune and secure his daughter’s properupbringing, James Houghton buys a theater. Among the travelingperformers he employs is Ciccio, a sensual Italian who immediatelycaptures Alvina’s attention. Fleeing with him to Naples, she leavesher safe world behind and enters one of sexual awakening, desire,and fleeting freedom.

Women In Love, the book Lawrence considered his best, waswritten during World War I, and while that conflict is nevermentioned in the novel, a sense of background danger, of lurkingcatastrophe, continually informs its drama of two couplesdynamically engaged in a struggle with themselves, with each other,and with life's intractable limitations. Lawrence was a powerful,prophetic writer, but in addition he brought such delicacy to histreatment of the human and natural worlds that E. M. Forster'sclaim that he was the greatest imaginative novelist of ourgeneration does him too little justice rather than too much.

V. S. Naipaul’s legendary command of broad comedy and acutesocial observation is on abundant display in these classic works offiction–two novels and a collection of stories–that capture therhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressivesubtlety and humor. The Suffrage of Elvira is Naipaul’s hilarious take on anelectoral campaign in the back country of Trinidad, where thecandidates’ tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernaturalsabotage. The eponymous protagonist of Mr. Stone and the KnightsCompanion is an aging Englishman of ponderously regular habitswhose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage andunanticipated professional advancement. And the stories in AFlag on the Island take us from a Chinese bakery inTrinidad–whose black proprietor faces bankruptcy until he takes aChinese name–to a rooming house in London–where the genteellandlady plays a nasty Darwinian game with her budgerigars.Unfailingly stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here isthe wo

Introduction by David Ellis The struggle for power at theheart of a family in conflict, the mysteries of sexual initiation,and the pain of irretrievable loss are the universal motifs withwhich D. H. Lawrence fashions one of the world's most originalautobiographical novels. Gertrude Morel is a refined woman whomarried beneath her and has come to loathe her brutal,working-class husband. She focuses her passion instead on her twosons, who return her love and despise their father. Trouble beginswhen Paul Morel, a budding artist, falls in love with a young womanwho seems capable of rivaling his mother for possession of hissoul. In the ensuing battle, he finds his path to adulthoodtragically impeded by the enduring power of his mother's grasp.Published on the eve of World War I, SONS AND LOVERS confirmedLawrence's genius and inaugurated the controversy over his explicitwriting about sexuality and human relationships that would followhim to the end of his career.

A collection of the short stories of the Nobel Prize-winningauthor of Palace Walk represents thirty years of work andfeatures tales of the citizens of Cairo, who struggle to surviveamid the city's poverty. Reprint. PW. K.

Joyce Carol Oates's Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. In "A Garden of Earthly Delights,"Oates presents one of her most memorable heroines, Clara Walpole,the beautiful daughter of Kentucky-born migrant farmworkers.Desperate to rise above her haphazard existence of violence andpoverty, determined not to repeat her mother's life, Clarastruggles for independence by way of her relationships with fourvery different men: her father, a family man turned itinerantlaborer, smoldering with resentment; the mysterious Lowry, whorescues Clara as a teenager and offers her the possibility of love;Revere, a wealthy landowner who provides Clara with stability; andSwan, Clara's son, who bears the psychological and spiritual burdenof his mother's ambition. A masterly work from a writer with "theuncanny ability to give us a cinemascopic vision of her America"("National Review"), "A Garden of Earthly Delights "is the openingstanza i

Nabokov's first novel. A tale of youth, first love andnostalgia. In a Berlin rooming house, a vigorous young officerpoised between his past and his future relives his first loveaffair.

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.

Almayer’s Folly, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is a tale ofpersonal tragedy as well as a broader meditation on the evils ofcolonialism. Set in the lush jungle of Borneo in the late 1800s, ittells of the Dutch merchant Kaspar Almayer, whose dreams of richesfor his beloved daughter, Nina, collapse under the weight of hisown greed and prejudice. Nadine Gordimer writes in herIntroduction, “Conrad’s writing is lifelong questioning . . . Whatwas ‘Almayer’s Folly’? The pretentious house never lived in? Hisobsession with gold? His obsessive love for his daughter, whoseprogenitors, the Malay race, he despised? All three?” Conradestablished in Almayer’s Folly the themes of betrayal, isolation,and colonialism that he would explore throughout the rest of hislife and work.