The protagonist of Orhan Pamuk's fiendishly engaging novel islaunched into a world of hypnotic texts and (literally) Byzantineconspiracies that whirl across the steppes and forlorn frontiertowns of Turkey. And with The New Life, Pamuk himself vaults fromthe forefront of his country's writers into the arena of worldliterature. Through the single act of reading a book, a youngstudent is uprooted from his old life and identity. Within days hehas fallen in love with the luminous and elusive Janan; witnessedthe attempted assassination of a rival suitor; and forsaken hisfamily to travel aimlessly through a nocturnal landscape oftraveler's cafes and apocalyptic bus wrecks. As imagined by Pamuk,the result is a wondrous marriage of the intellectual thriller andhigh romance. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun.

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.

From a Turkish writer who has been compared with Borges,Nabokov, and DeLillo comes a dazzling novel that is at once acaptivating work of historical fiction and a sinuous treatise onthe enigma of identity and the relations between East and West. Inthe 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice toNaples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople There hefalls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja--"master"--a manwho is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slaveinstructs his master in Western science and technology, frommedicine to pyrotechnics. But Hoja wants to know more: why he andhis captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledgeof each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchangeidentities. Set in a world of magnificent scholarship andterrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricatelypatterned triumph of the imagination. Translated from the Turkishby Victoria Holbrook.

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, theChrist-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in atangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept womanNastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with thecorrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty,goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moralemptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnetttranslation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought byGarnett’s drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much aspossible the syntactical structure of the original.

Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times.

The dramatic concluding months of The Wars of the Rosesprovide the setting for Shakespeare’s incomparable saga of powerand intrigue. 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: CompleteWorks. Each play includes an Introduction as well as anoverview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past andcurrent productions based on interviews with leading directors,actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about thework; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; andblack-and-white illustrations. Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers,these modern and accessible editions set a new standard inShakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Hailed as one of Joseph Conrad's finest literary achievements,this is the story of a young man unwittingly caught in thepolitical turmoil of pre-Revolutionary czarist Russia. A grippingnovel that ultimately questions our capacity for moral strength andthe depths of human integrity. This new edition includes commentaryand a reading group guide.

As a student in college, David Kepesh styles himself " a rakeamong scholars, a scholar among rakes." Little does he realize howprophetic this motto will be-- or how damning. For as Philip Rothfollows Kepesh from the domesticity of childhood into the vastwilderness of erotic possibility, from a me nage a trois in Londonto the throes of loneliness in New York, he creates a supremelyintelligent, affecting, and often hilarious novel about the dilemmaof pleasure: where we seek it; why we flee it; and how we struggleto make a truce between dignity and desire.

Shakespeare became famous as a dazzling poet before most peopleeven knew that he wrote plays. His sonnets are the Englishlanguage's most extraordinary anatomy of love in all itsdimensions-desire and despair, longing and loss, adoration anddisgust. To read them is to confront morality and eternity in thesame breath. Produced under the editorial supervision of JonathanBate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today's most accomplishedShakespearean scholars, The Sonnets and Other Poems includes all ofShakespeare's sonnets, the long narrative poems "Venus and Adonis"and "The Rape of Lucrece," and several other shorter works.Incorporating definitive texts and authoritative notes from WilliamShakespeare: Complete Works, this unique volume also includes anexpanded Introduction by Jonathan Bate that places the poems inliterary and historical context and illuminates their relationshipto Shakespeare's dramatic writing. Also featured are key factsabout the individual selections; an index of the first lines of thesonnets; a chron

The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romanticexpressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and redroses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful incommunicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in thefoster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and heronly connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings.Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go,Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through theflowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with amysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in herlife. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from herpast, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for asecond chance at happiness.

"The Age of Innocence," one of Edith Wharton's mostrenowned novels and the first by a woman to win the Pulitzer Prize,exquisitely details the struggle between love and responsibilitythrough the experiences of men and women in Gilded Age New York.The novel follows Newland Archer, a young, aristocratic lawyerengaged to the cloistered, beautiful May Welland. When May'sdisgraced cousin Ellen arrives from Europe, fleeing her marriage toa Polish Count, her worldly, independent nature intrigues Archer,who soon falls in love with her. Trapped by his passionlessrelationship with May and the social conventions that forbid arelationship with Ellen, Archer finds himself torn betweenpossibility and duty. Wharton's profound understanding of hercharacters' lives makes the triangle of Archer, May, and Ellen cometo life with an irresistible urgency. A wry, incisive look at theways in which love and emotion must negotiate the complex rules ofhigh society, "The Age of Innocence" is one of Wharton's finest,most illuminative w

One of the last plays Shakespeare penned on his own, TheWinter’s Tale is a transcendent work of death and rebirth,exploring irrational sexual jealousy, the redemptive world ofnature, and the magical power of art. 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 editions from the Royal ShakespeareCompany set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for thetwenty-first century

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day forbeauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, andbrown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for theblond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her tofinally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowlystarts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. Apowerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity,Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions aboutrace, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that havealways characterized her writing.

George Eliot's last and most unconventional novel isconsidered by many to be her greatest. First published ininstallments in 1874-76, "Daniel Deronda" is a richly imagined epicwith a mysterious hero at its heart. Deronda, a high-minded youngman searching for his path in life, finds himself drawn by a seriesof dramatic encounters into two contrasting worlds: the Englishcountry-house life of Gwendolen Harleth, a high-spirited beautytrapped in an oppressive marriage, and the very different lives ofa poor Jewish girl, Mirah, and her family. As Deronda uncovers thelong-hidden secret of his own parentage, Eliot's moving andsuspenseful narrative opens up a world of Jewish experiencepreviously unknown to the Victorian novel.

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.

After traveling the world to exotic lands, Alexandra, Jane,and Sukie–now widowed but still witches–return to the Rhode Islandseaside t own of Eastwick, “the scene of their primes,” site oftheir enchanted mischief more than three decades ago. DiabolicalDarryl Van Horne is gone, and what was once a center of license andliberation is now a “haven of wholesomeness” populated by hockeymoms and househusbands acting out against the old ways of their ownabsent, experimenting parents. With spirits still willing but fleshweaker, the three women must confront a powerful new counterspellof conformity. In this wicked and wonderful novel, John Updike isat his very best–a legendary master of literary magic up to his olddelightful tricks.

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubbyLondon bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rentedroom, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "moneyworld" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind ofsecurity symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits inevery middle-class British window.

This is a fully annotated edition of all the poems which are nowgenerally regarded as Shakespeare's, excluding the Sonnets. Itcontains Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, The Phoenix and theTurtle, The Passionate Pilgrim, and A Lover's Complaint. Theintroduction to the two long narrative poems examines their placewithin the classical and Renaissance European traditions, an issuewhich also applies to The Phoenix and the Turtle. John Roe analysesthe conditions in which the collection was produced, and weighs theevidence for and against Shakespeare's authorship of A Lover'sComplaint and the much-debated question of its genre. Hedemonstrates how in his management of formal tropes Shakespeare,like the best Elizabethans, fashions a living language out ofhandbook oratory. This updated edition contains a new introductorysection on recent critical interpretations and an updated readinglist.

A national bestseller, Snobbery examines the discriminatingqualities in all of us. With dishy detail, Joseph Epstein skewersall manner of elitism in contemporary America. He offers his archobservations of the new footholds of snobbery: food, fashion,high-achieving children, schools, politics, being with-it,name-dropping, and much more. Clever, incisive, and immenselyentertaining, Snobberyexplores the shallows and depths of statusand taste -- with enviable results.