Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of thegreatest modern writers presented in attractive, accessiblepaperback editions. “It was Nabokov’s gift to bring paradise wherever he alighted.”—John Updike, The New York Review of Books Novelist, poet, critic, translator, and, above all, a peerlessimaginer, Vladimir Nabokov was arguably the most dazzling prosestylist of the twentieth century. In novels like Lolita, Pale Fire,and Ada, or Ardor, he turned language into an instrument ofecstasy. Vintage Nabokov includes sections 1-10 of his most famous andcontroversial novel, Lolita; the stories “The Return of Chorb,”“The Aurelian,” “A Forgotten Poet,” “Time and Ebb,” “Signs andSymbols,” “The Vane Sisters,” and “Lance”; and chapter 12 from hismemoir Speak, Memory.
Inspired by the long-standing affair between Frieda, Lawrence'sGerman wife, and an Italian peasant who eventually became her thirdhusband, Lady Chatterley's Lover is the story of ConstanceChatterley, who, while trapped in an unhappy marriage to anaristocratic mine owner whose war wounds have left him paralyzedand impotent, has an affair with Mellors, the gamekeeper. FrankKermode calls the book Lawrence's "great achievement" and Anais Nindescribes it as "artistically . . . his best novel." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classics edition includes the tran* of thejudge's decision in the famous 1959 obscenity trial that allowedthe novel to be published in the United States.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a novel that is itself thesubject of one of literature's most enduring mysteries. The storyrecounts the troubled romance of Rosa Bud and the book's eponymouscharacter, who later vanishes. Was Drood murdered, and if so bywhom? All clues point to John Jasper, Drood's lugubrious uncle, whocoveted Rosa. Or did Drood orchestrate his own disappearance? AsCharles Dickens died before finishing the book, the ending isintriguingly ambiguous. In his Introduction, Matthew Pearlilluminates the 150-year-long quest to unravel" "The Mystery ofEdwin Drood and lends new insight into the novel, the literarymilieu of 1870s England, and the private life of Charles Dickens.This Modern Library edition includes new endnotes and a fulltran* of "The Trial of John Jasper for the Murder of EdwinDrood," the 1914 mock court case presided over and argued by thelikes of G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Now diehardfans, new readers, and armchair detectives have another opportunityto solve the mys
Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerablewoman poet in England before the twentieth century. No reading ofnineteenth century poetry can be complete without attention to thisprolific and popular poet. Rosetti's inner life dominates herpoetry, exploring loss and unattainable hope. Her divine poems havea freshness and toughness of thought, while many of her love poemsare erotic, and as often express love for women as for men. Thevaried threads of Rossetti's concerns are drawn together in what isperhaps her greatest poem, the strange and ambiguous 'GoblinMarket.304'.
An exciting new edition of the complete works of Shakespearewith these features: Illustrated with photographs from New YorkShakespeare Festival productions, vivid readable readableintroductions for each play by noted scholar David Bevington, alively personal foreword by Joseph Papp, an insightful essay on theplay in performance, modern spelling and pronunciation, up-to-dateannotated bibliographies, and convenient listing of keypassages.
In many ways this is a wonderful novel with interesting,alive, characters. The medical aspects are absorbing and relevant,and the plot, the story, is grandiose, immense, and fascinating.Before you read the book, read the author's acknowledgements at theend. Irving's grandfather was a leading gynecologist, and he hadhis medical facts checked by experts. (There are other interestingtidbits in the acknowledgements.) John Irving is obviously a masternovelist and he has lavished intense energy and creativity on thisbook. I just cannot help carping a bit. My qualm is that the"political" aspects are all a little too pat and comforting. Amongthe many characters we have the active, involved, and livelycripple (opps, sorry, I mean "differently abled person"); theabusive husband; the dignified, poor but honest negroes; thelovable orphans; the tough but ultimately gentle and sexuallyconfused lesbian; the sad but dedicated and kindly illegalabortionists; and so on. For anyone other than a devoutanti-abortion
Called out of retirement to serve as the new president`s national security adviser jack ryan quickly realizes that the prolbems of peace are fully as comples as those of ear enemies have become friends ,friends enemies and even the form of conflict has changed ,when one of those new enemies readies a strike not only at america`s territory ,but at the heart of her economy ,it is ryan who must somehow prepare an untested president to meet the challenge. for there is a debt of honour to be paid-and the price will be terrifyingly high……
A man wakes up to find himself lying on the ground in a railway station, his mind stripped bare of all recollection. He has no idea how he got there. He does not even know his own name. Convinced he is a drunken down and out, it isn't until a newspaper reporter about a satellite launch catches his eye that he begins to suspect all is not what it seems...The year is 1958 and America is about to launch its first satellite in a desperate attempt to match the Soviet Sputnik and regain the lead in the space race. As Luke Lucas gradually unravels the mystery of his amnesia, he realizes that his fate is bound up with that of the rocket that stands ready on launch pad 26B at cape Canaveral. As he relearns the story of his life, he uncovers long-kept secrets about his wife, his best friend and the woman he once loved more than life itself... Code to Zero,from the bestselling author of The Pillars of the Earth and The Third Tivin,deals with one of the most ruthlessly contested arenas of the Cold War.Where ea
Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not havemuch in the way of great expectations between his terrifyingexperience in a graveyard with a convict named Magwitch and hishumiliating visits with the eccentric Miss Havisham's beautiful butmanipulative niece, Estella, who torments him until he is elevatedto wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettablecharacters, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainablelove, and all of the happiness money can't buy. Great Expectationshas the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for anovel in the English language, according to John Irving, and J.Hillis Miller declares, Great Expectations is the most unified andconcentrated expression of Dickens's abiding sense of the world,and Pip might be called the archetypal Dickens hero.
This is the magical story of Santiago, a shepherd boy who dreams of travelling the world to seek the most wonderful treasures known to man. From his home in Spain, he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and, from there, into the Egyptian desert, where a fateful encounter with the alchemist awaits him. Coelho's fascinating storytelling, with its mixture of spiritualily, magical realism and folklore, makes The Alchemist a story that will delight any reader and inspire us all to follow our dreams.
经由这部20世纪的情爱经典,读者可以踏上战前法国知识分子心灵的黑暗之旅。 彼时,欧洲正疯狂滑向法西斯主义的深渊。正值西班牙内战,亨利 托普曼离开巴黎的病床,前往巴塞罗那,在那里见证了加泰罗尼亚大罢工。让他进退维谷的三个女人这时也来到了巴塞罗那:拉扎尔,马克思主义犹太人和政治活动家,如果被捕,她可能被佛朗哥政权迫害;蒂尔媞(多萝西娅),无节制的酒精沉迷者,她是托普曼的性伴侣;格耶妮,一个年轻女子,在巴黎期间,她曾照料发高烧的托普曼。 作为巴塔耶公开的政治作品之一,它将暴力、权力和死亡结成可怖的一体,同时探索性作为一种颠覆力量的模棱两可。
A Newbery Honor Book, this witty and wise fictive diary of a 13th-century English girl, according to PW, "introduces an admirable heroine and pungently evokes a largely unfamiliar setting." Ages 12-up. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
在线阅读本书 Wilde, glamorous and notorious, more famous as a playwright orprisoner than as a poet, invites readers of his verse to meet anunknown and intimate figure. The poetry of his formative yearsincludes the haunting elegy to his young sister and the grievinglyric at the death of his father. The religious drama of hisromance with Rome is captured here, as well as its resolution inhis renewed love of ancient Greece. He explores forbidden sexualdesires, pays homage to the great theatre stars and poets of hisday, observes cityscapes with impressionist intensity. His finalmasterpiece, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, tells the painful story ofhis own prison experience and calls for universal compassion. Thisedition of Wilde's verse presents the full range of his achievementas a poet.
Slaughterhous-Five is one of the world's great anti-warbooks. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, BillyPilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of ourown fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraidto know.
Hugely admired by Tolstoy, David Copperfield is the novel thatdraws most closely from Charles Dickens's own life. Its eponymoushero, orphaned as a boy, grows up to discover love and happiness,heartbreak and sorrow amid a cast of eccentrics, innocents, andvillains. Praising Dickens's power of invention, Somerset Maughamwrote: andquot; There were never such people as the Micawbers,Peggotty and Barkis, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick, UriahHeep and his mother. They are fantastic inventions of Dickens'sexultant imagination...you can never quite forget them.andquot;This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes a newIntroduction by Pulitzer Prize finalist David Gates, in addition tonew explanatory notes.
When Sir Francis Drake returned to England in 1580, manyquestions concerning his momentous voyage were left unanswered—hisjournals were impounded and his men were forbidden, on pain ofdeath, to divulge where they had been. Drawing on newly uncoveredevidence, geographer and maritime historian Samuel Bawlfmasterfully reconstructs Francis Drake’s historic round-the-worldexpedition, exploring the drama surrounding the voyage and offeringintriguing insights into life at sea in the sixteenth century. Butit is Bawlf’s assertion of Drake’s whereabouts in the summer of1579 that gives the book even greater originality: from anintensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certaintythat Drake sailed all the way to Alaska—much farther than anyonehas heretofore imagined—thereby rewriting the history ofexploration in North America.
Beowulf is the longest surviving poem of Anglo-Saxon England. Beowulf, a young warrior of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, in his time of need. He first fights the hellish Grendel, then struggles with Grendel's no less fearsome mother in her hall beneath the cold waters of the mere. More than fifty years later Beowulf, now king of the Geats, must face his final challenge in the shape of a huge and terrifying dragon. But Beowulf is not just an adventure story. Other tales of war, feuding, and loss in less mythical worlds are interwoven with the main plot in such a way as to force readers to ask questions about the heroic code; equally thought-provoking are the juxtaposition of virtuous and vicious characters, the presence of some women who are helpless victims and others who exert a strong influence on men, and above all the fact that the characters are pagan while the poet is clearly (though not insistently) Christian. Marc Hudson's thoughtful modern English version combines readab
Robert Prentice has spent all his life attempting to escape hismother's stifling presence. His mother, Alice, for her part,struggles with her own demons as she attempts to realize her dreamsof prosperity and success as a sculptor. As Robert goes off tofight in Europe, hoping to become his own man, Richard Yatesportrays a soldier in the depths of war striving to live up to hisheroic ideals. With haunting clarity, Yates crafts an unforgettableportrait of two people who cannot help but hope for more even aslife challenges them both.
Twenty-two-year-old Karla is thrilled to be hired as anentertainer on the Sound of Music cruise ship where the rum punchis 80 percent Kool-Aid, the ice sculp- tures are plastic, and her"fake it till you make it" M.O. seems adventuresome. Karla is lessthrilled when her new boyfriend, Jack, suggests that they form asinging duo on land, but by now faking enthusiasm has become a wayof life. She and Jack buy backing tracks, crib lyrics from theradio, and embark on a not-as-glamorous-as-it-should-be careerperforming in the luxury hotel bars of the Middle East and China.But after a thousand and one nights on the road, Karla and Jackfind themselves struggling to keep their act both personal andprofessional together. Funny, fast-paced, and incisive, A Thousandand One Nights captures the performances, large and small, we useto make it through life.
"A GOLD MINE FOR SCHOLARS." *Deidre Carmody The New York TimesNow, in this extraordinary literary uncovering, the original firsthalf of Mark Twain's American masterpiece is available for thefirst time ever to a general readership. Lost for more than acentury, the passages reinstated in this edition reveal a noveleven more controversial than the version Twain published in 1885and provide an invaluable insight into his creative process. Abreakthrough of unparalleled impact, this comprehensive edition ofan American classic is the final rebuttal in the tireless debate of"what Twain really meant." " A] MASTERLY RESTORATION . . . I wishthis new version of Huckleberry Finn would be distributed to allthe nation's classrooms as the basic text and lead to a badlyneeded reconsideration of the questions it raises." *James A.McPherson Chicago Tribune "THOUGHTFULLY RESPECTS TWAIN'SINTENTIONS." *Gary Lee Stonum The Cleveland Plain Dealer With aForeword and Addendum by Victor Doyno "From the Paperbackedition."
The hero of Charlotte Bronte's first novel escapes a drearyclerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher inBelgium. There, however, his entanglement with the sensuous butmanipulative Zoraide Reuter, complicates his affections for apenniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.Also included in this edition is Emma, Charlotte Bronte's last,unfinished novel. Both works are drawn from the original Clarendontexts. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable editionof this title.