Every year, Ceyala "Lala" Reyes' family--aunts, uncles,mothers, fathers, and Lala's six older brothers--packs up threecars and, in a wild ride, drive from Chicago to the LittleGrandfather and Awful Grandmother's house in Mexico City for thesummer. Struggling to find a voice above the boom of her brothersand to understand her place on this side of the border and that,Lala is a shrewd observer of family life. But when she startstelling the Awful Grandmother's life story, seeking clues to howshe got to be so awful, grandmother accuses Lala of exaggerating.Soon, a multigenerational family narrative turns into a whirlwindexploration of storytelling, lies, and life. Like the cherished"rebozo," or shawl, that has been passed down through generationsof Reyes women, Caramelo is alive with the vibrations of history,family, and love.

Gulliver's Travels is one of the most popular works of fiction published in England in the eighteenth century, and one of the best satires ever written. This new Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1726 text, the version that textual scholars now maintain should be the basis for all modern editions of the work. It is accompanied by extensive textual annotations and a dozen illustrations.

" A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum ' because he could see no more." But to its residents thisderelict corner of Trinidad' s capital is a complete world, whereeverybody is quite different from everybody else. There' s Popo thecarpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build " the thing withouta name." There' s Man-man, who goes from running for public officeto staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bullywith glass tear ducts. There' s the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrallto her monstrous husband. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S.Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighborsconstruct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhoviancompassion.Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed- butprecociously observant- neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a workof mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy andanarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

Since the original, prewar translation there has been nocompletely new rendering of the French original into English. Thistranslation brings to the fore a more sharply engaged, comic andlucid Proust. IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME is one of the greatest, mostentertaining reading experiences in any language. As the greatstory unfolds from its magical opening scenes to its devastatingend, it is the Penguin Proust that makes Proust accessible to a newgeneration. Each book is translated by a different, superbtranslator working under the general editorship of ProfessorChristopher Prendergast, University of Cambridge.

(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."

Hermann Hesse's classic novel "Siddhartha" has delighted,inspired, and influenced generations of readers, writers, andthinkers. Though set in a place and time far removed from theGermany of 1922, the year of the book's debut, the novel is infusedwith the sensibilities of Hesse's time, synthesizing disparatephilosophies-Eastern religions, Jungian archetypes, Westernindividualism-into a unique vision of life as expressed through oneman's search for meaning. It is the story of the quest ofSiddhartha, a wealthy Indian Brahmin who casts off a life ofprivilege and comfort to seek spiritual fulfillment and wisdom. Onhis journey, Siddhartha encounters wandering ascetics, Buddhistmonks, and successful merchants, as well as a courtesan namedKamala and a simple ferryman who has attained enlightenment.Traveling among these people and experiencing life's vitalpassages-love, work, friendship, and fatherhood-Siddharthadiscovers that true knowledge is guided from within. SusanBernofsky's magnificent new translation br

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, an intrepid and eccentric adventurer,transferred his passion for flying to the written word by writingseveral classics of aviation literature, including "Southern Mail"and "Night Flight". Based on Saint-Exupery's trail-blazing flightsfor the French airmail service over the Sahara and later, theAndes, these two novels evoke the tragic courage and nobility ofthe airborne pioneers who took enormous risks, flying in opencock-pits in planes that were often fragile and unstable.

"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760), also known by the title of"The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners inChinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "The Debtof Tears" is the fourth, it charts the glory and decline of theillustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with thefortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters,Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour,realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects theritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and abovethe novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another planeof existence a theme, which affirms the Buddhist belief in asupernatural scheme of things.

(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.

Written when Hemingway was at the height of his creativepowers, the stories in "Winner Take Nothing" glow with the mark ofhis unique talent. Hunters, wives, old men of wisdom, waiters,fighters, women loved, women lost: they are all here, living on theraw edge, making love, facing the inevitable reality of death. Thecharacters, the dialogue, the settings, the remarkable insightcould have come only from Hemingway's imagination. As anintroduction to his work, or as an overview of the themes hedeveloped at greater length in his novels, it is a stunninglysuccessful collection.

V. S. Naipaul’s legendary command of broad comedy and acutesocial observation is on abundant display in these classic works offiction–two novels and a collection of stories–that capture therhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressivesubtlety and humor. The Suffrage of Elvira is Naipaul’s hilarious take on anelectoral campaign in the back country of Trinidad, where thecandidates’ tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernaturalsabotage. The eponymous protagonist of Mr. Stone and the KnightsCompanion is an aging Englishman of ponderously regular habitswhose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage andunanticipated professional advancement. And the stories in AFlag on the Island take us from a Chinese bakery inTrinidad–whose black proprietor faces bankruptcy until he takes aChinese name–to a rooming house in London–where the genteellandlady plays a nasty Darwinian game with her budgerigars.Unfailingly stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here isthe wo

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has cor-rected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations. New to the Fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind this beloved work. Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are in-cluded, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A. Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and criti-cal reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role Victorian Christianity plays in the novel

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) In his first and still mostwidely read novel, James Joyce makes a strange peace with thetraditional narrative of a young man's self-discovery by respectingits substance while exploding its form, thereby inaugurating aliterary revolution. Published in 1916 when Joyce was al?ready atwork on "Ulysses," "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" isexactly what its title says and much more. In an exuberantlyin?ventive masterpiece of subjectivity, Joyce portrays his alterego, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Dublin and struggling throughreligious and sexual guilt toward an aesthetic awak?ening. In parta vivid picture of Joyce's own youthful evolution into one of thetwentieth century's greatest writers, it is also a moment in theintellectual history of an age.

With this new translation and selection, the unique inventiveness of Andersen's genius is revealed. At a time when children's stories were formal, moral and didactic, Hans Christian Andersen revolutionized the genre, giving an anarchic twist to traditional folklore and creating a huge number of utterly original stories that sprang directly from his imagination. From the exuberant early stories such as "The Emperor's New Clothes", through poignant masterpieces such as "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling", to the darker, more subversive later tales written for adults, the stories included here are endlessly experimental, both humorous and irreverent, sorrowful and strange.

Whilst her grotesque and demanding grandmother retires to bed,Erendira still has floors to wash, sheets to iron, and a peacock tofeed. The never-ending chores leave the young girl so exhaustedthat she collapses into bed with the candle still glowing on anearby table - and is fast asleep when it topples over...Eighthundred and seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifteen pesos,her grandmother calculates, is the amount that Erendira must repayher for the loss of the house. As she is dragged by her grandmotherfrom town to town and hawked to soldiers, smugglers and traders,Erendira feels herself dying. Can the love of a virgin save theyoung whore from her hell?

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.

The "Guermantes Way," in this the third volume of "In Searchof Lost Time," refers to the path that leads to the Duc and Duchessde Guermantes's chateau near Combray. It also represents thenarrator's passage into the rarefied "social kaleidoscope" of theGuermantes's Paris salon, an important intellectual playground forParisian society, where he becomes a party to the wit and mannersof the Guermantes's drawing room. Here he encounters nobles,officers, socialites, and assorted consorts, including Robert deSaint Loup and his prostitute mistress Rachel, the Baron deCharlus, and the Prince de Borodino. For this authoritativeEnglish-language edition, D. J. Enright has revised the lateTerence Kilmartin's acclaimed reworking of C. K. Scott Moncrieff'stranslation to take into account the new definitive French editionsof "A la recherche du temps perdu" (the final volume of these neweditions was published by the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in1989).

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, David Martin makes his living by writing sensationalist novels. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at an unsolved mystery. Then he receives a letter from a reclusive French editor who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike any other - a book with the power to change hearts and minds. But as David begins the work, he realises that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home...

This new translation is for the contemporary reader. Specifically commissioned for stage production, it rings easily on the modern ear and yet retains fidelity to Sophocles' original, avoiding the archaisms of other translations. The text is accompanied by a wealth of carefully chosen background materials and essays. Among the background materials are selections from Homer's Odyssey, Thucydides' account of the plague, and Euripides' Phoenissae. The best of ancient and modern criticism is represented, permitting discussion from many points of view: psy-chological, religious, anthropological, dramatic, and literary. Under the topic "Religion and Psychology" are included writings on the Oedipus myth by Martin P. Nilsson, Meyer Fortes, Gordon M. Kirk-wood, Thalia Phillies Feldman, and Sigmund Freud. The authors of the selections in literary criticism are Aristotle, C. M. Bowra, R. C.Jebb, S. M. Adams, A. J. A. Waldock, Albin Lesky, Werner Jaeger, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Jones, D. W. Lucas, Bernard M. W. Kno

"The Story of the Stone (c. 1760)", also known by the title of"The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners inChinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "TheWarning Voice" is the third, it charts the glory and decline of theillustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with thefortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters,Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour,realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects theritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and abovethe novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another planeof existence - a theme which affirms the Buddhist belief in asupernatural scheme of things.

Wishing she could enjoy the freedoms and pleasures so casuallyenjoyed by ordinary women, orthodox rabbi's daughter Rachelanticipates her arranged marriage and imagines what her life willbe like. Reprint.

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 Metamorphosis and Other Stories," by Franz Kafka, is partof the ""Barnes and Noble Classics" "series, which offers qualityeditions at affordable prices to the student and the generalreader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages ofcarefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable featuresof "Barnes and Noble Classics": New introductions commissioned fromtoday's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authorsChronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and culturalevents Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations,parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, andfilms inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Studyquestions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectationsBibliographies for further reading Indices and Glossaries, whenappropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed tosuperior specifications; some include illustrations of historicalinterest. "Barnes and Noble Classics "pulls together