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.
(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.
In this extraordinary literary debut third-generationhomesteader Judy Blunt describes her hardscrabble life on theprairies of eastern Montana in prose as big and bold as thelandscape. On a ranch miles from nowhere, Judy Blunt grew up with cattle andsnakes, outhouse and isolation, epic blizzards and devastatingprairie fires. She also grew up with a set of rules and rolesprescribed to her sex long before she was born, a chafing set ofstrictures she eventually had no choice but to flee, taking alongthree children and leaving behind a confused husband and the onlylife she’d ever known. Gritty, lyrical, unsentimental and wise, Breaking Clean is at once informed by the myths of the Westand powerful enough to break them down.
Anchor proudly presents a new omnibus volume of threenovels--previously published separately by Anchor--by NaguibMahfouz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Assembled here isa collection of Mahfouz's artful meditations on the vicissitudes ofpost-Revolution Egypt. Diverse in style and narrative technique,together they render a rich, nuanced, and universally resonantvision of modern life in the Middle East. The Beggar is a complex tale of alienation and despair. In theaftermath of Nasser's revolution, a man sacrifices his work andfamily to a series of illicit love affairs. Released from jail inpost-Revolutionary times, the hero ofThe Thief and the Dogs blamesan unjust society for his ill fortune, eventually bringing himselfto destruction. Autumn Quail is a tale of moral responsibility,isolation, and political downfall about a corrupt bureaucrat who isone of the early victims of the purge after the 1952 revolution inEgypt.
(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
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.
This complete collection includes all the published stories ofEudora Welty. There are forty-one stories in all, including theearlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The GoldenApples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previouslyuncollected stories. With a Preface written by the Authorespecially for this edition.
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.
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.
(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 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.
With passion, wit, and good common sense, the celebrated poetMary Oliver tells of the basic ways a poem is built-meter andrhyme, form and diction, sound and sense. Drawing on poems fromRobert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, Oliver imparts anextraordinary amount of information in a remarkably short space."Stunning" (Los Angeles Times). Index.
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.
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.
These beautifully crafted poems - by turns dark, playful,intensely moving, tender, and intimate - make up Margaret Atwood'smost accomplished and versatile gathering to date, " setting footon the middle ground / between body and word." Some draw onhistory, some on myth, both classical and popular. Others, morepersonal, concern themselves with love, with the fragility of thenatural world, and with death, especially in the elegiac series ofmeditations on the death of a parent. But they also inhabit acontemporary landscape haunted by images of the past. Generous,searing, compassionate, and disturbing, this poetry rises out ofhuman experience to seek a level between luminous memory and therealities of the everyday, between the capacity to inflict and thestrength to forgive.
Phaedra is consumed with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson.Believing her husband dead, she confesses her love to him and isrebuffed. When her husband returns alive, Phaedra convinces himthat it was Hippolytus who attempted to seduce her. In hisinterpretation, Racine replaced the stylized tragedy withhuman-scale characters and actions. Introduction by RichardWilbur.
Joseph Epstein demonstrates time and again his talent fortaking nearly any subject and polishing it into a gem of sparklingwit and fascination. In Narcissus Leaves the Pool, he displays hissignature verve and charm in sixteen agile, entertaining pieces.Among his targets in this collection are name-dropping, talentversus genius, the cult of youthfulness, and the informationrevolution.
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) "Mrs. Dalloway "chronicles aJune day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken upwith running minor errands in preparation for a party and that ispunctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she hasnever met. In giving an apparently ordinary day such immenseresonance and significance-infusing it with the elemental conflictbetween death and life-Virginia Woolf triumphantly discovers herdistinctive style as a novelist. Originally published in 1925,"Mrs. Dalloway "is Woolf's first complete rendering of what shedescribed as the "luminous envelope" of consciousness: a dazzlingdisplay of the mind's inside as it plays over the brilliant surfaceand darker depths of reality. This edition uses the text of theoriginal British publication of "Mrs. Dalloway," which includeschanges Woolf made that never appeared in the first or subsequentAmerican editions.
Nabokov's third novel, The Defense, is a chilling story ofobsession and madness. As a young boy, Luzhin was unattractive,distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and anobject of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refugefrom the anxiety of his everyday life. His talent is prodigious andhe rises to the rank of grandmaster--but at a cost: in Luzhin' sobsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants the world ofreality. His own world falls apart during a crucial championshipmatch, when the intricate defense he has devised withers under hisopponent's unexpected and unpredictabke lines of assault.
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.
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.
