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Alma/Oneworld
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After spending several years in a sanatorium recovering from an illness that caused him to lose his memory and ability to reason, Prince Myshkin arrives in St Petersburg and is at once confronted with the stark realities of life in the Russian capital — from greed, murder and nihilism to passion, vanity and love. Mocked for his childlike naivety yet valued for his openness and understanding, Prince Myshkin finds himself entangled with two women in a position he cannot bring himself to resolve. Dostoevsky, who wrote that in the character of Prince Myshkin he hoped to portray a wholly virtuous man, shows the workings of the human mind and our relationships with others in all their complex and contradictory nature. Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, from the beautiful, self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna to the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin and the radical student Ippolit, The Idiot is one of Dostoevsky's most personal and intense works of fiction presented here in a new translation. |
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When a stray dog dying on the streets of Moscow is taken in by a wealthy professor, he is subjected to medical experiments in which he receives various transplants of human organs. As he begins to transform into a rowdy, unkempt human by the name of Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, his actions distress the professor and those surrounding him, although he finds himself accepted into the ranks of the Soviet state. A parodic reworking of the Frankenstein myth and a vicious satire of the Communist revolution and the concept of the New Soviet man, A Dog's Heart was banned by the censors in 1925 and circulated only in samizdat form. Nowadays this hugely entertaining tale has become very popular in Russia, and has inspired many adaptations across the world. |
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Considered one of the most influential authors of twentieth century Russian Literature, Ivan Bunin's Dark Avenues is the culmination of a life's work which unrelentingly questioned of the political doxa whilst taking his poetic mastery of language to dark new heights. Written between 1938 and 1944 and set in the context of a disintegrating Russian culture, this collection of short fiction centres around dark, erotic liaisons told with a rich, elegaic poetics which probes the artistic limits of depicting desire. A prolific writer and fierce political activist, Bunin became the first Russian to win the Nobel prize for Literature in 1933 and was highly influential on his contemporary Russian emigres, Checkov and Nabokov. The Dark Avenues is the zenith of his work and one of the most important Russian texts to come out of the twentieth century. |
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The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him disrespect and a dramatic encounter with a prostitute. |
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Originally conceived by its author as an entertaining story for Alice Liddell, the daughter of an Oxford dean, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the fantastic tale of the young Alice's encounters with the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts, has captured the imaginations of young and old throughout the world since it was first published in 1865. In addition to the vivid and unforgettable characters, it is the book's experimental style, linguistic inventiveness and myriad of jokes and puzzles that account for the timeless fascination it inspires. |
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In 1864, Lewis Carroll sent Alice's Adventures under Ground, a handwritten and illustrated manuscript, as a gift to Alice Liddell, the daughter of his Oxford dean. This formed the basis for Carroll's Alice in Wonderland — introducing timeless characters such as Alice, the White Rabbit, the Queen of Hearts and the Gryphon — although it differs considerably from the later work, with the author himself approving its publication in 1886. Alice's Adventures under Ground provides an enchanting glimpse into Carroll's imaginative process, and deserves to be ranked as a classic for all ages in its own right. |
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When Tudy's first husband tragically dies, she takes up the offer of Tom, a family friend, to pay for her to go study in France. As she and her benefactor become close, she agrees to marry him in Provence later that year. But as the wedding approaches, Tom discovers that his fiancee has become involved with Riccard, a dashing French pilot and his near-double. A tale of broken trust and infidelity based on Zelda Fitzgerald's own dalliance with a French pilot, 'Image on the Heart' is here presented with other lesser-known stories written by Fitzgerald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which develop many of the themes found in his novels and his more famous works of short fiction. |
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Sara, the American wife of a French aristocrat, has had two encounters with her compatriot Cedric Killian, one a youthful idyll in North Carolina and the other during the First World War, when he was a soldier about to go to battle. When, years later and after the death of her husband, Cedric contacts her out of the blue, Sara finds herself eager to see him again — against the wishes of her in-laws — and to find out the secret of this man she loves yet knows so little about. A poignant tale of thwarted love, The Intimate Strangers explores many of Fitzgerald's favourite themes, such as the constraints of social pressure on romance and the American fascination for Old Europe. This volume also includes other lesser-known stories he wrote from the mid-1930s until the end of his life, revealing new facets to the author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night. |
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Over the last fifteen years of his life, Tolstoy collected and published the maxims of some of the world's greatest masters of philosophy, religion and literature, adding his own contributions to various questions that preoccupied him in old age, such as faith and existence, as well as matters of everyday life. Banned in Russia under Communism, A Calendar of Wisdom was Tolstoy's last major work, and one of his most popular both during and after his lifetime. This new translation by Roger Cockrell will offer today's generation of readers the chance to discover, day by day, these edifying and carefully selected pearls of wisdom. |
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Mark Twain's gloriously funny Diary of Adam and Eve, which John Updike recently described as a paradigm of the relations between sexes, is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous biblical story. By giving a voice to Adam and Eve, and by hitting all the notes on the literary scale — from the intimate to the comical, from the journalistic to the idyllic — Twain displays the brilliance and wit for which he is rightly considered one of the greatest satirists of all time. |
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When the Selfish Giant decides to build a wall around his garden to prevent the children from playing in it, it becomes barren and stuck in perpertual winter. It takes a wonderful event and the heart of a young boy for him to realize the error of his ways. A classic tale for children, The Selfish Giant is presented here with all of Oscar Wilde's other fairy stories — The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Devoted Friend, The Remarkable Rocket, The Young King, The Birthday of the Infanta, The Fisherman and His Soul and The Star-Child — brought to life by Philip Waechter's bright and imaginative illustrations. |
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«Leo Tolstoy's most personal novel, Anna Karenina scrutinizes fundamental ethical and theological questions through the tragic story of its eponymous heroine. Anna is desperately pursuing a good, «moral» life, standing for honesty and sincerity. Passion drives her to adultery, and this flies in the face of the corrupt Russian bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, the aristocrat Konstantin Levin is struggling to reconcile reason with passion, espousing a Christian anarchism that Tolstoy himself believed in.» |
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«Fathers and Children», arguably the first modern novel in the history of Russian literature, shocked readers when it was first published in 1862 — the controversial character of Bazarov, a self-proclaimed nihilist intent on rejecting all existing traditional values and institutions, providing a trenchant critique of the established order. Turgenev's masterpiece investigates the growing nihilist movement of mid-nineteenth-century Russia — a theme which was to influence Dostoevsky and many other European writers — in a universal, and often hilarious, story of generational conflict, and the clash between the old and the new.» |
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In Bulgakov's Diaboliad, the modest and unassuming office clerk Korotkov is summarily sacked for a trifling error from his job at the First Central Depot for the Materials for Matches, and tries to seek out his newly assigned superior Kalsoner, responsible for his dismissal. His quest through the labyrinth of Soviet bureaucracy takes on the increasingly surreal dimensions of a nightmare. This early satirical story, reminiscent of Gogol and Dostoevsky, was first published in 1924 and incurred the wrath of pro-Soviet critics. Along with the three other stories in this volume which also feature explorations of the absurd and bizarre, it provides a fascinating glimpse into the artistic development of the author of Master and Margarita. |
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Filled with dreams of pursuing a career as a poet, the young Alexander Aduev moves from the country to St Petersburg, where he takes up lodgings next to his uncle Pyotr, a shrewd and world-weary businessman. As his ideals are challenged by disappointment in the fields of love, friendship and poetical ambition, Alexander must decide whether to return to the homely values he has left behind or adapt to the ruthless rules and morals of city life. Told in the author's trademark humorous style and presented in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, The Same Old Story — Goncharov's first novel, preceding his masterpiece Oblomov by twelve years — is a study of lost illusions and rude spiritual awakening in the modern world. |
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As a Fabian and lifelong socialist, Shaw believed that economic inequality was a poison destroying every aspect of our lives. Family affections and relations between the sexes were perverted by it. From Parliament to eduction our institutions were corrupted at the root by pecuniary interest. Idealism, integrity and piecemeal attempts at political reform were all futile in the face of the gross injustice built into our economic system. And because a capitalist economy could never function smoothly, private property was not merely a form of robbery, but robbery with violence. |
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Tolstoy knew as he was writing Hadji Murat, his last work of fiction, that it would not be published in his lifetime, and so gave an uncompromising portrayal of the Russians' faults and the nature of the rebels' struggle. In the process, he shows a mastery of style and an understanding of Chechnya that still carries great resonance today. Hadji Murat, one of the most feared and venerated mountain chiefs in the Chechen struggle against the Russians, defects from the Muslim rebels after feuding with his ruling Imam, Shamil. Hoping to protect his family, he joins the Russians, who accept him but never put their trust in him — and so Murat must find another way to end the struggle. |
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«Having crash-landed in the Sahara desert, a pilot comes across a young boy who introduces himself as the «Little Prince» and tells him the story of how he grew up on a tiny asteroid before travelling across the galaxies and coming to Earth. His encounters and discoveries, seen through childlike, innocent eyes, give rise to candid reflections on life and human nature. First published in 1943 and featuring the author's own watercolour illustrations, The Little Prince has since become a classic philosophical fable for young and old, as well as a global publishing phenomenon, selling tens of millions of copies worldwide and being translated into dozens of languages.» |
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