The blind energies and defiant acts that bring an ambitiousmanto power can also destroy him. This is the theme thatThomas Hardyexplores through his greatest and mosttragic hero: MichaelHenchard, the driven grain merchant of Casterbridge. From hisdrunken sale of his wife and baby at a county fair to hissubjugation of a farming village, Henchard's life is an epicattempt to bring the world to heel as he hides, even from himself,all vestiges of emotionalvulnerability. Combining the suspense of amystery with the poetry of the most powerful English novels, TheMavyor of Casterbridge is a masterpiece of psychological insightand profound tragedy.
The series of which this title forms a part examines the wayin which all the major editions of Shakespeare's plays have beeninterpolated by a series of editors who have been systematicallychanging Shakespeare's texts from the 18th century onwards. Thistext looks at "Measure for Measure". --This text refers to anout of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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
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.
Edith Wharton's masterpiece brings to life the grandeur and hypocrisy of a gilded age. Set among the very rich in 1870s New York, it tells the story of Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to marry virginal socialite May Welland, when he meets her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, a woman unbound by convention and surrounded by scandal. As all three are drawn into a love triangle filled with sensuality, subtlety, and betrayal, Archer faces a harrowing choice between happiness and the social code that has ruled his life. The resulting tale of thwarted love is filled with irony and surprise, struggle and acceptance. Recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize for fiction ever awarded to a woman, this great novel paints a timeless portrait of "society" still unmatched in American literature—an arbitrary, capricious social elite that professes inviolable standards but readily abandons them for greed and desire.
Upon its publication in 1857, "Little Dorrit" immediatelyoutsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of WilliamDorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughterand helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progressof the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction,David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift fromwhich Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, hisnear-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense ofthe ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance." This ModernLibrary Paperback Classic is set from the text of the 1857edition.
(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.
In this classic collision of the New World with Old Europe,James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy,tragedy, romance, and melodrama.
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.
This 19th-century author created "some of the most colorful andhaunting fiction of his century" ( Kirkus Reviews ). And withhis special blend of comedy, social commentary, and fantasy, hepaved the way for Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
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.
To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich,perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complexcharacters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious Americangirls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeanspopulate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which representthe author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitionsof evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to thestartling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In TheJungle, the mysterious tumings of human behavior are skillfully andcoolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master ofpsychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists ofmodern English literature.
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"
Sparkling with mischief, jumping with youthful adventure, MarkTwain's Tom Sawyer is one of the most splendid re-creations ofchildhood in all of literature. It is a lighthearted romp, full ofhumor and warmth. It shares with its sequel, Huckleberry Finn, notonly a set of unforgettable characters--Tom, Huck, Aunt Polly andothers--but a profound understanding of humanity as well. Throughsuch hilarious scenes as the famous fence-whitewashing incident,Twain gives a portrait--perceptive yet tender--of a humanityrendered foolish by his own aspirations and obsessions. Written asmuch for adults as for young boys and girls, Tom Sawyer is the workof a master storyteller performing in his shirt sleeves, using hisbest talents to everyone's delight.
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.
Known as a "feast of language," this is one of the bard'searliest comedies, in which four bachelors who have dedicatedthemselves to chastity and scholarly pursuits soon encounter thewomen of their dreams.
