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.

Dread, yearning, identity, intrigue, the lethal chemistrybetween secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism–these are the elementsthat Orhan Pamuk anneals in this masterful, disquieting novel. Anexiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorncity of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave ofsuicides among religious girls forbidden to wear theirhead-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his memories of the radiantIpek, now recently divorced. Amid blanketing snowfall and universal suspicion, Ka finds himselfpursued by figures ranging from Ipek’s ex-husband to a charismaticterrorist. A lost gift returns with ecstatic suddenness. Atheatrical evening climaxes in a massacre. And finding god may bethe prelude to losing everything else. Touching, slyly comic, andhumming with cerebral suspense, Snow is of immense relevance to ourpresent moment.

This textbook series provides concise and lucidintroductions to major works of literature, from classicalantiquity to the twentieth century. Each book provides closereading of the text, as well as giving a full account of itshistorical, cultural and intellectual background, a discussion ofits influence, and further reading. --This text refers to anout of print or unavailable edition of this title.

JOHN UPDIKE IS "A STYLIST OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, capable ofilluminating the sublime in the mundane, thereby elevating all ofhuman experience."--Chicago Tribune Toward the End of Time "is the journal of a 66-year-old man, BenTurnbull . . . [which] reveals not only the world but thewanderings of his wits. . . . So what if he jumps from a UnitedStates in the next century, disintegrating after a war with China,to ancient Egypt, or to virtual reality? So what if charactersappear and disappear like phantoms in a dream? . . . Turnbull'sjournal is like Walden gone haywire. . . . If Ben's ruthlessness isevenhanded, so is his alarming intelligence; it falls on everyscene, person, object, and thought in the book, giving it an eerieambiance." --The New York Times Book Review "A BOOK AIMED NOT TO RESOLVE BUT TO AROUSE A READER'S WONDER . .. Vintage Updike: marital angst worked out against the chillybackdrop of privilege, rendered with a lyricism and insight and eyefor detail reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen." --Th

In his triumphant new novel, Ian McEwan, the bestsellingauthor of "Atonement, "follows an ordinary man through a Saturdaywhose high promise gradually turns nightmarish. Henry Perowne-aneurosurgeon, urbane, privileged, deeply in love with his wife andgrown-up children-plans to play a game of squash, visit his elderlymother, and cook dinner for his family. But after a minor trafficaccident leads to an unsettling confrontation, Perowne must setaside his plans and summon a strength greater than he knew he hadin order to preserve the life that is dear to him.

In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over thecourse of his illustrious career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understandthe chemistry of his] passion" for the word. From musings onPtolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on theexperimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's luminousintelligence and encyclopedic knowledge are on dazzling displaythroughout. And when he reveals his own ambitions andsuperstitions, his authorial anxieties and fears, one feels like asecret sharer in the garden of literature to which he so oftenalludes. Remarkably accessibleand unfailingly stimulating, this collection exhibits the diversityof interests and the depth of knowledge that have made Eco one ofthe world's leading writers.

Book De*ion At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, anda brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red is atransporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue ofsixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominentcontemporary Turkish writers. The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artistsin the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of hisrealm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style.But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, thiscommission is a dangerous proposition indeed. The ruling elitetherefore mustn’t know the full scope or nature of the project, andpanic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears. Theonly clue to the mystery–or crime? –lies in the half-finishedilluminations themselves. Part fantasy and part philosophicalpuzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to theintersection of art, religion, love, sex and power. Translated from th

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" isthe great comic masterpiece of Russian literature-a satirical andsplendidly exaggerated epic of life in the benighted provinces.Gogol hoped to show the world "the untold riches of the Russiansoul" in this 1842 novel, which he populated with a Dickensianswarm of characters: rogues and scoundrels, landowners and serfs,conniving petty officials-all of them both utterly lifelike andalarmingly larger than life. Setting everything in motion is thewily antihero, Chichikov, the trafficker in "dead souls"-deceasedserfs who still represent profit to those clever enough to trade inthem. This lively, idiomatic English version by the award-winningtranslators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky makes accessiblethe full extent of the novel's lyricism, sulphurous humor, anddelight in human oddity and error.

In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacherGeorge Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone withhis teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his songrow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life.Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and hisown relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur one of John Updike'smost brilliant and unusual novels.

In Theatre, W. Somerset Maugham–the author of the classicnovels Of Human Bondage and Up at the Villa–introduces us to JuliaLambert, a woman of breathtaking poise and talent whose looks havestood by her forty-six years. She is one of the greatest actressesEngland–so good, in fact, that perhaps she never stopsacting. It seems that noting can ruffle her satin feathers, until a quietstranger who challenges Julia's very sense of self. As a result,she will endure rejection for the first time, her capacity as amother will be affronted, and her ability to put on whatever faceshe desired for her public will prove limited. In Theatre, Maughamsubtly exposes the tensions and triumphs that occur when acting andreality blend together, and–for Julia–ultimately reverse.

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.

"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."

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Though James Joyce began thesestories of Dublin life in 1904 when he was twenty-two and completedthem in 1907, their unconventional themes and language led torepeated rejections by publishers and delayed publication until1914. In the century since, his story "The Dead" has come to beseen as one of the most powerful evocations of human loss andlonging that the English language possesses; all the other storiesin "Dubliners" are as beautifully turned and as greatly admired.They remind us once again that James Joyce was not only modernism'schief innovator but also one of its most intimate and poeticwriters. In this edition the text has been revised in keeping withJoyce's wishes, and the original versions of "The Sisters,""Eveline," and "After the Race" have been made available in anappendix, along with Joyce's suppressed preface to the 1914 editionof "Dubliners."

GRAHAM SWIFT was born in l 949 and iS theauthor of eight acclaimed novels and a collection of shortstories；his most recent work iS Making an Elephant,a book ofessays，portraits，poetry and reflections on his life in writing．WithWaterland he won the Guardian Fiction Prize(1 983)，and with LastOrders the Booker Prize(1 996)．Both novels have since been madeinto films．Graham Swirl’S work has appeared in over thirtylanguages．

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.

In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul,"one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spanscontinents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiographyand a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian . . . abrilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life andwork."--New York Times.

The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduouslyilluminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literaryallusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface,introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.

Ian McEwan’s symphonic novel of love and war, childhood andclass, guilt and forgiveness provides all the satisfaction of abrilliant narrative and the provocation we have come to expect fromthis master of English prose. On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Talliswitnesses a moment’s flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia,and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhoodfriend. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives–togetherwith her precocious literary gifts–brings about a crime that willchange all their lives. As it follows that crime’s repercussionsthrough the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close ofthe twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on everyconceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as agenuine masterpiece.

(Book Jacket Status: Not Jacketed) Introduction by JohnBayley