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.

Tragic tale of a retarded man and the friend who loves and tries to protect him.

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.

A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler andhis reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. Awonderful, wonderful book.

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.

Joyce Carol Oates’s Wonderland Quartet comprises fourremarkable novels that explore social class in America and theinner lives of young Americans. As powerful and relevant today asit on its initial publication, them chronicles the tumultuous livesof a family living on the edge of ruin in the Detroit slums, fromthe 1930s to the 1967 race riots. Praised by The Nation for her“potent, life-gripping imagination,” Oates traces the aspirationsand struggles of Loretta Wendall, a dreamy young mother who isfilled with regret by the age of sixteen, and the subsequentdestinies of her children, Maureen and Jules, who must fight tosurvive in a world of violence and danger. Winner of the National Book Award, them is an enthralling novelabout love, class, race, and the inhumanity of urban life. It is,raves The New York Times, “a superbly accomplished vision.” Them is the third novel in the Wonderland Quartet. The books thatcomplete this acclaimed series, A Garden of Earthly Delights,Expensive Peo

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.

In his widely acclaimed new collection of stories, JulianBarnes addresses what is perhaps the most poignant aspect of thehuman condition: growing old. The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of theirlives–some with bitter regret, others with resignation, and othersstill with defiant rage. Their circumstances are just as varied astheir responses. In 19th-century Sweden, three brief conversationsprovide the basis for a lifetime of longing. In today’s England, aretired army major heads into the city for his regimentaldinner–and his annual appointment with a professional lady namedBabs. Somewhere nearby, a devoted wife calms (or perhaps torments)her ailing husband by reading him recipes. In stories brimming with life and our desire to hang on to it oneway or another, Barnes proves himself by turns wise, funny, clever,and profound–a writer of astonishing powers of empathy andinvention.

Bestselling author Iris Chang takes on her largest subject yet in The Chinese in America，the extraor-dinary history of one the fastet-growing ethnic groups in the United States.In an epic story that spans150 years and continues to the present day，Chang tells of a people's search for a better life-the determination of the Chinese to forge an identity and a destiny in a strange land，to help build their adopted country，and，often against great obstacles，to find success. In the course of her narrative，Chang chronicles the many accomplishments in America of Chinese immigrants and their descendants:building the transcontinental railroad，working on southern plantations after the Civil War，fighting racist and exclusionary laws，walking the racial tighrope between black and white，contributiing to major scientific and technological advances，expanding the lit-erary canon，and influencing the way we think about racial and ethnic groups.At the heart of her book are the stories of individuals-the

The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone inEngland, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a storywhere past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan'sdevastation in the wake of World War II.

When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne,everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. Butwhen Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with talesof a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girlhidden within it, he has been changed forever. In his restlesssearch for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there,Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losingeverything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration andadult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries thereader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal ofdesperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentiethcentury: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bankofficer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defendhimself against a charge about which he can get no information.Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy ofthe excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness oftotalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chillingtruth for generations of readers. This new edition is based uponthe work of an international team of experts who have restored thetext, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create aversion that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproducesthe distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that isas full of energy and power as it was when it was firstwritten.

Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on thecondescending patronage of her socially superior relatives inParis: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philanderingBaron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentfulof their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love withplans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire toexact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of theHulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice."Cousin Bette" is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexualpassion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping,bourgeois society of 1840s Paris. The culmination of the Comediehumaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of hisgreatest triumphs as a novelist.

This collection, unique to the Modern Library, gathers seven ofDostoevsky's key works and shows him to be equally adept at theshort story as with the novel. Exploring many of the same themes asin his longer works, these small masterpieces move from the tenderand romantic White Nights, an archetypal nineteenth-centurymorality tale of pathos and loss, to the famous Notes from theUnderground, a story of guilt, ineffectiveness, and uncompromisingcynicism, and the first major work of existential literature. AmongDostoevsky's prototypical characters is Yemelyan in The HonestThief, whose tragedy turns on an inability to resist crime.Presented in chronological order, in David Magarshack's celebratedtranslation, this is the definitive edition of Dostoevsky's beststories.

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.

Revised introduction; new chronology and further reading Translated with an Introduction by Paul Turner.

No matter what the occasion, this collection of poems is theperfect gift to cheer up a friend or family member. Here, in thiscompact volume, are 100 poems written by the world's greatestpoets, some inspiring, some hilarious, and all memorable. Eachdelightful poem is preceded by an illuminating headnote. Among thepoems included are classics, such as Schiller's "Ode to Joy,"Wordsworth's "My Heart Leaps Up," Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life,"and Dickinson's "'Hope is the Thing with Feathers." This collectionincludes many more captivating works that take as theirexhilarating theme the limitless possibilities of human existence.Whether it's through inspired nonsense or insightful commentary,these poems will leave readers feeling happier and enriched forhaving read them.

"One of the most noble and moving plays of our generation, athrenody of hope deceived and deferred but never extinguished;a play suffused with tenderness for the whole humanperplexity; with phrases that come like a sharp stab ofbeauty and pain."