Carti in categoria Literature & Biography

Saki is perhaps the most graceful spokesman for Englands Golden Afternoon - the slow and peaceful years before the First World War. Although, like so many of his generation, he died tragically young, in action on the Western Front, his reputation as a writer continued to grow long after his death. The stories are humorous, satiric, supernatural, and macabre, highly individual, full of eccentric wit and unconventional situations. With his great gift as a social satirist of his contemporaryupper-c...

Robinson Crusoe runs away from home to join the navy. After a series of adventures at sea, he is shipwrecked in a devastating storm, and finds himself alone on a remote desert island. He remains there many years, building a life for himself in solitude, until the day he discovers another mans footprint in the sand...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DefoeI walkd about on the shore, lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapt up in the contemplation of my deliverance ... reflecting upon all my comrades that were drownd, and that there should not be one soul savd but my self ... Who has not dreamed of life on an exotic isle, far away from civilization? Here is the novel which has inspired countless imitations by lesser writers, none of which equal the power and ...

An exploration of race from one of the twentieth centurys primary chroniclers of the African American experience.Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on br...

The first book in his award-winning Rabbit series, John Updikes Rabbit, Run contains an afterword by the author in Penguin Modern Classics.Its 1959 and Harry Rabbit Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence - stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Penn...

Its 1969, and the times are changing. America is about to land a man on the moon, the Vietnamese war is in full swing, and racial tension is on the rise. Things just arent as simple as they used to be - at least, not for Rabbit Angstrom. His wife has left him with his teenage son, his job is under threat and his mother is dying. Suddenly, into his confused life - and home - comes Jill, an eighteen-year-old runaway who becomes his lover. But when she invites her friend to stay, a young black radi...

Its 1979 and Rabbit is no longer running. Hes walking, and beginning to get out of breath. Thats OK, though - it gives him the chance to enjoy the wealth that comes with middle age. Its all in place: hes Chief Sales Representative and co-owner of Springer motors; his wife, at home or in the club, is keeping trim; he wears good suits, and the cash is pouring in. So why is it that he finds it so hard to accept the way that things have turned out? And why, when he looks at his family, is he haunted...

Its 1989, and Harry Rabbit Angstrom is far from restful. Fifty-six and overweight, he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail. His family, too, are giving him cause for concern. His son Nelson is a wreck of a man, a cocaine addict with shattered self-respect. Janice, his wife, has decided that she wants to be a working girl. And as for Pru, his daughter-in-law, she seems to be sending out signals to Rabbit that he knows he should ignore, but somehow cant. He h...

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. His account of his experience, and his vision for all that psychedelics could offer to mankind, has influenced writers, artists and thinkers around the world.The unabridged text of The Doors o...

Elizabeth Bennet is young, clever and attractive, but her mother is a nightmare and she and her four sisters are in dire need of financial security and escape in the shape of husbands. The arrival of nice Mr Bingley and arrogant Mr Darcy in the neighbourhood turns all their lives upside down in this witty drama of friendship, rivalry, enmity and love.

The Penguin English Library Edition of Pride and Prejudice by Jane AustenNo sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ...When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved ...

Professor Timofey Pnin, late of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously perched at the heart of an American campus. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting of new ones; the search for a suitable boarding house; and the trials of taking the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he has yet to master.Wry, intelligent and moving, Pnin reveals the absur...

The Penguin English Library Edition of Persuasion by Jane AustenHer attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth; and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effectPersuasion, Jane Austens last novel, is a moving, masterly and elegiac love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. It tells the story of Anne Elliot, who, persuaded to break off her engagement to the man she loved because he was not successful enough, has never forgo...

Develop your personal skills by understanding how to create a good presentation, with strategies to ensure success. Includes solutions to key issues from how to organise your ideas properly to communicating clearly and dealing with your audience, 5-minute fixes and high-impact techniques, plus a simple self-assessment exercise to help monitor progress Follow as a complete course, or dip in and out of topics of particular interest Pocket-sized - take it wherever life takes you...

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, Pale Fire, is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shades editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the Great Beaver, Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should. Nabokovs darkly witty, richly inventive masterwork is a suspe...

During the Second World War Roald Dahl served in the RAF and suffered horrific injuries in an air crash in the Libyan desert. Drawing on his own experience as a fighter pilot, Dahl crafted these ten spine-tingling stories: of air battles in the sky; of the nightmare of being shot down; of the infectious madness of conflict; and of the nervy jollity of the Mess and Ops room. Dahl brilliantly conveys the bizarre reality of a wartime pilots daily existence, where death is a constant companion and l...

In 1914 Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee farm. Instantly drawn to the land, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation failed. Karen Blixen was forced to return to Denmark in 1931 and it was there that she wrote this classic account of her experiences. A poignant farewell to her beloved farm, Out of Africa describes her strong friendships with the people of her area, her affection for the landscape and animals, and great love for the adventurer Denys Fi...

When Joel Knoxs mother dies, he is sent into the exotic unknown of the Deep South to live with a father he has never seen. But once he gets there, everyone is curiously evasive when Joel asks to see his father. Truman Capotes first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a brilliant, searching study of homosexuality set in a shimmering landscape of heat, mystery and decadence.

Equally tragic, joyful and comical, Gabriel Garcia Marquezs masterpiece of magical realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a seamless blend of fantasy and reality, translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa in Penguin Modern Classics.Gabriel Garcia Marquezs great masterpiece is the story of seven generations of the Buendia family and of Macondo, the town they have built. Though little more than a settlement surrounded by mountains, Macondo has its wars and disasters, even its wonders and m...

Pitching an extraordinary battle between cruel authority and a rebellious free spirit, Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest is a novel that epitomises the spirit of the sixties. This Penguin Classics edition includes a preface, never-before published illustrations by the author, and an introduction by Robert Faggen.Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medica...