In this powerful book we enter the world of Jurgis Rudkus, ayoung Lithuanian immigrant who arrives in America fired with dreamsof wealth, freedom, and opportunity. And we discover, with him, theastonishing truth about "packingtown," the busy, flourishing,filthy Chicago stockyards, where new world visions perish in ajungle of human suffering. Upton Sinclair, master of the"muckraking" novel, here explores the workingman's lot at the turnof the century: the backbreaking labor, the injustices of"wage-slavery," the bewildering chaos of urban life. The Jungle, astory so shocking that it launched a government investigation,recreates this startling chapter if our history in unflinchingdetail. Always a vigorous champion on political reform, Sinclair isalso a gripping storyteller, and his 1906 novel stands as one ofthe most important -- and moving -- works in the literature ofsocial change. --This text refers to an alternate Mass MarketPaperback edition.
Pronounced obscene when it was first published in 1915, " TheRainbow" is the epic story of three generations of the Brangwens, aMidlands family. A visionary novel, considered to be one ofLawrence's finest, it explores the complex sexual and psychologicalrelationships between men and women in an increasinglyindustrialized world. "Lives are separate, but life iscontinuous--it continues in the fresh start by the separate life ineach generation," wrote F. R. Leavis. "No work, I think, haspresented this perception as an imaginatively realized truth morecompellingly than "The Rainbow.""
This major collection contains all of Doris Lessing's shortfiction, other than the stories set in Africa, from the beginningof her career until now. Set in London, Paris, the south of France,the English countryside, these thirty-five stories reflect thethemes that have always characterized Lessing's work: the bedrockrealities of marriage and other relationships between men andwomen; the crisis of the individual whose very psyche is threatenedby a society unattuned to its own most dangerous qualities; thefate of women.
在线阅读本书 The magnificent, timeless drama is the world's most famous tale of"star-crossed lovers." The young, unshakable love of Juliet andRomeo defies the feud that divides their families—the Capulets andMontagues—as their desperate need to be together, their secretmeetings, and finally their concealed marriage drive them towardtragedy. A masterwork that has long captured the hearts ofaudiences, this romantic tragedy has become part of the literaryheritage of all peoples in all nations.
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."
Set in the magical Wessex landscape so familiar from ThomasHardy’s early work, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is uniqueamong his great novels for the intense feeling that he lavishedupon his heroine, Tess, a pure woman betrayed by love. Hardy pouredall of his profound empathy for both humanity and the rhythms ofnatural life into this story of her beauty, goodness, and tragicfate. In so doing, he created a character who, like Emma Bovary andAnna Karenina, has achieved classic stature.
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.
"The Star Rover" is the story of San Quentin death-row inmateDarrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life--and longstretches in a straitjacket--by withdrawing into vivid dreams ofpast lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and anEnglishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment ofJack London's friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author's mostcomplex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in hisIntroduction, "The Star Rover" is "written with energy and force,brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality andbeauty." This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the textof the first American edition, published in 1915.
Random's Modern Library is reproducing this Hardy standard as atie-in to a Masterpiece Theater presentation and offering a qualityhardcover for a reasonable price. Copyright 1998Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out ofprint or unavailable edition of this title.
With his family’s claim to the throne uncertain, Henry seeksto secure his position by turning the country’s attention abroad.But when his outnumbered army is trapped at Agincourt, disasterseems inevitable. Shakespeare probes notions of leadership andpower in this iconic depiction of England’s charismatic warriorking. Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and EricRasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars,this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts andauthoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Eachplay includes an Introduction as well as an overview ofShakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and currentproductions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, anddesigners; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; achronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-whiteillustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible edition
In this classic novel by John Updike, we return to a characteras compelling and timeless as Rabbit Angstrom: the inimitable HenryBech. Famous for his writer's block, Bech is a Jew adrift in aworld of Gentiles. As he roams from one adventure to the next, heviews life with a blend of wonder and cynicism that will make youlaugh with delight and wince in recognition.
From her humble beginnings as the daughter of a countrysideblacksmith, Emy Lyon went on to claim the undying love of navalhero Admiral Nelson, England’s most famous native son. She servedas model and muse to eighteenth-century Europe’s most renownedartists, and consorted with kings and queens at the royal court ofNaples. Yet she would end her life in disgraced exile, pennilessand alone. In this richly drawn portrait, Flora Fraser maps thespectacular rise and fall of legendary eighteenth-century beautyEmma, Lady Hamilton—as she came to be called—a woman of abundantaffection and overwhelming charm, whose eye for opportunity wasrivaled only by her propensity for overindulgence and scandal.Wonderfully intimate and lavishly detailed, Beloved Emma brings to life the incomparable Lady Hamilton and the politics,passions, and enchantments of her day.
Because of its frank treatment of human sexuality and itsunflinching fatalism, Jude the Obscure aroused such a stormof controversy upon its publication in 1895 that, partly inresponse, Thomas Hardy abandoned the art of novel-writingaltogether and devoted the rest of his life to poetry. Though wehave come a long way in our social attitudes in the ensuingcentury, nothing about Hardy's masterpiece has lost its power toshock us and disturb our dreams.
From the first tee to the nineteenth hole, here's a collection of above-par cartoons and comic strips featuring favorite cartoon characters on the links, in the rough, and out of luck when it comes to the game of golf!
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.
Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleepswith a different virgin, executing her next morning. To end thisbrutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter,Shahrazad, begins to tell the king tales of adventure, love, richesand wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes andhunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of thevoyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba's outwitting a band of fortythieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequenceof stories will last 1,001 nights.
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.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Evelyn Waugh's 1934 novel is abitingly funny vision of aristocratic decadence in England betweenthe wars. It tells the story of Tony Last, who, to the irritationof his wife, is inordinately obsessed with his Victorian Gothiccountry house and life. When Lady Brenda Last embarks on an affairwith the worthless John Beaver out of boredom with her husband, shesets in motion a sequence of tragicomic disasters that reveal Waughat his most scathing. The action is set in the brittle social worldrecognizable from Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, darkened anddeepened by Waugh's own experience of sexual betrayal. As Tony isdriven by the urbane savagery of this world to seek solace in thewilds of the Brazilian jungle, "A Handful of Dust " demonstratesthe incomparably brilliant and wicked wit of one of the twentiethcentury's most accomplished novelists.
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.
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.
