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Showing 1 - 19 of 19 items
By Joel Rotenberg, Stefan Zweig. 1982
2009 PEN Translation Prize FinalistThe logic of capitalism, boom and bust, is unremitting and unforgiving. But what happens to human…
feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post-World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine's rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same.Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig's haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master's achievement.By José Tomás de Cuéllar. 2017
Un volumen que re ne dos de las novelas m s destacadas del gran novelista mexicano del…
siglo XIX Jos Tom s de Cuellar Edici n a cargo de Belem Clark de Lara y Ana Laura Zavala D az investigadoras del Seminario de Edici n Cr tica de Textos del Instituto de Investigaciones Filol gicas de la UNAM y especialistas en la literatura mexicana del siglo XIX Chucho repugnaba la acentuaci n varonil y combat a en su fisonom a la venida de esas l neas que deciden el aspecto viril En Historia de Chucho el Ninfo Jos Tom s de Cu llar evidencia las desastrosas consecuencias morales y sociales del deterioro de las costumbres de la sociedad de su tiempo que produc a ni os como Chucho mimados en extremo y entregados s lo al culto desmedido de la belleza y la superficialidad Completa el volumen la novela corta Los fuere os en la que Facundo relata con el humor y la agudeza cr tica que lo caracteriz las peripecias y dificultades que enfrenta una familia del interior de la rep blica en una ciudad de M xico en pleno proceso de modernizaci nBy Peter Quinn, William L. Riordan. 1995
Plunkitt of Tammany HallA Series of Very Plain Talks on Very Practical PoliticsWilliam L. Riordan "Nobody thinks of drawin' the…
distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft." This classic work offers the unblushing, unvarnished wit and wisdom of one of the most fascinating figures ever to play the American political game and win. George Washington Plunkitt rose from impoverished beginnings to become ward boss of the Fifteenth Assembly District in New York, a key player in the powerhouse political team of Tammany Hall, and, not incidentally, a millionaire. In a series of utterly frank talks given at his headquarters (Graziano's bootblack stand outside the New York County Court House), he revealed to a sharp-eared and sympathetic reporter named William L. Riordan the secrets of political success as practiced and perfected by him and fellow Tammany Hall titans. The result is not only a volume that reveals more about our political system than does a shelfful of civics textbooks, but also an irresistible portrait of a man who would feel happily at home playing ball with today's lobbyists and king makers, trading votes for political and financial favors. Doing for twentieth-century America what Machiavelli did for Renaissance Italy, and as entertaining as it is instructive, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is essential reading for those who prefer twenty-twenty vision to rose-colored glasses in viewing how our government works and why. With an Introduction by Peter Quinnand a New AfterwordBy Curt Leviant, Sholom Aleichem. 1995
One of the most beloved and prolific writers of Yiddish literature, Sholom Aleichem (1859–1916) produced a wealth of wonderful stories…
that combine traditional Jewish oral humor with Western literary tradition. For years a living legend, he wrote enduring gems of fiction, eleven of which are included in this entertaining collection.The master storyteller brilliantly recaptures the joy and tribulations of Jewish life in such tales as "Geese," "At the Doctor's," "Three Widows," "The Passover Eve Vagabonds," "On America," "Someone to Envy," "Three Calendars," "The Ruined Passover," the title story, and two others. Introduced and ably translated by Curt Leviant, these tales sparkle with wit, wisdom, and a warm humanity that will appeal to a wide audience of readers, especially those with an interest in Jewish cultural life.By Margaret Jull Costa, Benjamin Moser, Lúcio Cardoso, Robin Patterson. 2016
Lúcio Cardoso's 1959 novel-a true modern classic-tells the story of a traditional family's slippage into social and moral decline. Employing…
a variety of narrative devices-including letters, diaries, memoirs, statements, confessions, and accounts penned by the various characters-the author weaves a complex and thoroughly engaging tale, hauntingly brought to life by a prose style unique in Brazilian literature.By Larissa Volokhonsky, Richard Pevear, Ivan Turgenev, Richard Nelson. 2014
"Pevear and Volokhonsky are at once scrupulous translators and vivid stylists of English."-The New YorkerOne week before her thirtieth birthday,…
the simple life of dutiful wife and mother Natalya is upended when the arrival of her son's charming new tutor unleashes a whirlwind of love, lust, and jealousy. This revelatory new translation by renowned playwright Richard Nelson along with Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky-the foremost contemporary translators of classic Russian literature, including the best-selling Oprah's Book Club selection, Anna Karenina-marks the second of a series of translations of important Russian plays to be published over the next ten years.Richard Nelson's many plays include Rodney's Wife, Goodnight Children Everywhere, Drama Desk-nominated Franny's Way and Some Americans Abroad, Tony Award-nominated Two Shakespearean Actors, and James Joyce's The Dead (with Shaun Davey), for which he won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. His The Apple Family: Scenes from Life in the Country will be published by Theatre Communications Group in early 2014.Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have produced acclaimed translations of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, and Mikhail Bulgakov. Their translations of The Brothers Karamazov and Anna Karenina won the 1991 and 2002 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prizes. Pevear, a native of Boston, and Volokhonsky, of St. Petersburg, are married to each other and live in Paris.By Herman Graf, Robert Louis Stevenson. 2018
The Best Short Works of One of English Literature’s Most Masterful Storytellers Collected in a Single Volume Known mostly for…
his seminal full-length works, such as the famous classics Treasure Island and Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterful short fiction is often overshadowed. Now these pioneering works in the English short story tradition are presented here, collected in a single volume. Including the beloved novella "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which G. K. Chesterton called “a double triumph,” and “The Merry Men,” as well as stories like “The Suicide Club” and “The Rajah’s Diamond” from the acclaimed 1882 collection New Arabian Nights, The Greatest Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson immerses you in Stevenson’s extraordinary worlds—thrilling tales of pure adventure and suspense, glorious evocations of the beauty of the Scottish countryside, and characters painted with the same vigor and energy as his most well-known creations. Showcasing his brilliant and lucid prose, his dramatic skill, and his perfect sense of pace that made him a celebrity during his time and a landmark author in the history of English literature, Stevenson’s enduring stories continue to capture the imagination of the contemporary reader and rightly belong to popular mythology today.By Sam Selvon. 2020
The humorous yet poignant novel of West Indian migrant life in London that adds an iconic voice to the growing…
Caribbean canonA Penguin ClassicSet in London in the 1960's, when the UK encouraged its Commonwealth citizens to emigrate as a result of the post-war labor shortage, The Housing Lark explores the Caribbean migrant experience in the "Mother Country" by following a group of friends as they attempt to buy a home together. Despite encountering a racist and predatory rental market, the friends scheme, often comically, to find a literal and figurative place of their own. Will these motley folks, male and female, Black and Indian, from Trinidad and Jamaica, dreamers, hustlers, and artists, be able to achieve this milestone of upward mobility? Unique and wonderful, comic and serious, cynical and tenderhearted, The Housing Lark poses the question of whether their "lark," or quixotic idea of finding a home, can ever become a reality. Kittitian-British novelist and playwright Caryl Phillips contributes a foreword, while postcolonial literature scholar Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual introduction.By Tawfiq Al-Hakim. 2012
The celebrated, revolutionary novel from a pioneering Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim, now for the first time in Penguin Classics with…
a foreword by Egyptian writer Alaa Al-AswanyFirst published in Arabic in 1933, Egyptian playwright and novelist Tawfiq Al-Hakim's Return of the Spirit follows a patriotic young Egyptian and his extended family as they grapple with the events leading up to the 1919 Egyptian revolution. Though often cited as an apprenticeship novel in the vein of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man with a touch of failed romance a la Goethe's Sorrow of Young Werther, Al-Hakim's classic is most recognized for being a trailblazing political novel that illustrates the way one man's spiritual awakening ties to a political awakening of a nation. While enthusiasm for the book was stifled in the mid-20th century due to a shift in Egyptian government rule, the 2011 Tahrir revolution in Egypt caused it to be examined anew as a strong expression of nationalist solidarity and an exposé of the heritage-stripping power of Western colonialism that resonates with 21st-century Egyptians. Return of the Spirit is considered Al-Hakim's most important novel despite writing more plays than novels, and his adept understanding of class and culture within Egyptian society has cemented his place as one of the country's most celebrated writers and cultural critics.Robinson Crusoe, an adventure tale that fascinated such thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, and J. M. Coetzee,…
has been an international best-seller for three hundred years. An adventure tale involving cannibals, pirates, and shipwrecks, it embodies economic, social, political, and philosophical themes that continue to be relevant today. Moreover, the notion of isolation on a deserted island and a fascination with survival continue to be central to countless popular cinema and television programs. This edition of the novel with its introduction, line notes, and full bibliographical notes provides a uniquely scholarly presentation of the novel. There has been no other edition like it. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.By Joseph Zobel. 1997
The semi-autobiographical, Caribbean novel that explores shifting race relations in early twentieth-century colonial Martinique, with a foreword by Martinican author…
Patrick ChamoiseauA Penguin ClassicFollowing in the tradition of Richard Wright's Black Boy, Joseph Zobel's semi-autobiographical 1950 novel Black Shack Alley chronicles the coming-of-age of José, a young boy grappling with issues of power and identity in colonial Martinique. As José transitions from childhood to young adulthood and from rural plantations to urban Fort-de-France on a quest for upward mobility, he bears witness to and struggles against the various manifestations of white supremacy, both subtle and overt, that will alter the course of his life. His ally in this struggle is his grandmother, M'man Tine, who fights her own weariness to release at least one child from the plantation village, a dirt street lined with the shacks of sugarcane workers. Zobel's masterpiece, the basis for the award-winning film Sugar Cane Alley directed by Euzhan Palcy, is a powerful testament to twentieth-century life in Martinique, with a foreword by award-winning Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau.By Ida Simons. 2014
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows…
are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families".After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period.Translated from the Dutch by Liz WatersBy Baroness Orczy. 1913
Baroness Orczy's classic tale of adventure during the French Revolution. Also available as an unabridged audiobook, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.Paris,…
1792. The Terror has begun. Every day, scores of the French nobility are delivered to the guillotine. Trapped in the capital, they have no way of escape. But rumours abound of a league of young English gentlemen who are risking their lives to spirit French aristocrats away to safety across the Channel. Led by a man known only as the 'Scarlet Pimpernel', they leave no trace behind them save a single note. Determined to stop them, ruthless spymaster Chauvelin travels to England and embarks on a quest to uncover the identity of their leader, forcing the Scarlet Pimpernel and his men to summon all their courage and wits to evade capture and stay alive.PRAISE FOR THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL"Anyone who feels that their outward manner is but a travesty of their inner self can hardly fail to respond to THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL" - Independent"The Baroness Orczy invented the "masked avenger" genre of fiction - the swashbuckling hero of dual identity. Her progeny include Zorro, Superman, The Lone Ranger and many others." - Audiofile MagazineBy Baroness Orczy. 2018
A brand new, unabridged recording of Baroness Orczy's classic tale of adventure, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt.Paris, 1792. The Terror has…
begun. Every day, scores of the French nobility are delivered to the guillotine. Trapped in the capital, they have no way of escape. But rumours abound of a league of young English gentlemen who are risking their lives to spirit French aristocrats away to safety across the Channel. Led by a man known only as the 'Scarlet Pimpernel', they leave no trace behind them save a single note. Determined to stop them, ruthless spymaster Chauvelin travels to England and embarks on a quest to uncover the identity of their leader, forcing the Scarlet Pimpernel and his men to summon all their courage and wits to evade capture and stay alive. (P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton LimitedBy Editors of Canterbury Classics, A. J. Odasso. 2018
A fine collection of classic novels, short stories, poems, and essays from distinguished women writers. Women writers have been making…
their voices heard for centuries, but their works were not always taken seriously. Over time, as women gained more social and political freedom, these works have reemerged as subjects that are considered to be worthy of closer study. Classic Works from Women Writers is a collection of more than thirty novels, short stories, poems, and essays by prominent and lesser-known female writers since the 17th century. Included in this volume are groundbreaking works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first Hercule Poirot novel; Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” and her follow-up essay; and poetry from the likes of Christina Rossetti, Amy Lowell, and Sara Teasdale. The words of these authors offer a multitude of perspectives on different issues that affect not only women but the wider world as well.By Ida Simons. 2014
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows…
are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families".After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period.Translated from the Dutch by Liz WatersThe perfect Christmas gift full of warmth and nostalgia, for fans of ITV's Emmerdale, and readers who love heartwarming and…
heartbreaking stories set during World War II.Britain is at war once again and the families of Emmerdale are trying their best to cope with a new way of life.Rationing has been introduced across the country, two million more men have been called up for service, and blackouts, evacuees and military training camps have become the norm. In Beckindale, three young women are about to find their lives changed forever...Annie Pearson is working on Emmerdale Farm, while her love, Edward Sugden is at the front line. Lily Dingle has found purpose in joining the ATS, though she may get more than she bargained for. And Meg Warcup, now teaching at the local school, has taken in two children evacuated from Hull. They've adjusted to their new way of life until one day a German plane comes crashing down in the village... and changes everything in the village of Beckindale.The third novel in the Emmerdale series transports us to the Yorkshire Dales in the midst of World War II, exploring the lives of Emmerdale's much-loved families. Will the nation's favourite village overcome adversity to deal with the loves and lives lost?By Ida Simons. 2014
It is the middle of the roaring twenties, and Gittel is living The Hague with her parents, whose blazing rows…
are the traditional preserve of Sundays and public holidays. What luck, then, that Gittel is Jewish, and must submit to "the double helping of public holidays that is the lot of Jewish families".After every matrimonial slanging match, Gittel's mother runs off to her parents' home in Antwerp - with her daugher in tow. Much to her delight, Gittel makes the acquaintance of the well-to-do Mardell family, who allow her to practise on their Steinway. Gittel feels that she is taken seriously by Mr Mardell, the head of the household, and by thirty-year-old Lucie, whom she adores. When these friendships turn out to be nothing but an illusion, Gittel learns her first lessons about trust and betrayal. Her second comes soon after, when her father, whose talents for business leave much to be desired, attempts to make a quick killing in Berlin on the eve of the Wall Street Crash.Though this intimate portrayal of familial strife is set in the shadow of the Holocaust, Simons says little about the horror that awaits her characters, yet she succeeds in giving the reader the sense that the novel is about more than a young girl's loss of innocence. In a fluid, almost casual style, she has written a masterly and timeless ode to a relatively carefree interlude in a dark and dramatic period.Translated from the Dutch by Liz WatersThe perfect Christmas gift full of warmth and nostalgia, for fans of ITV's Emmerdale, and readers who love heartwarming and…
heartbreaking stories set during World War II.Britain is at war once again and the families of Emmerdale are trying their best to cope with a new way of life.Rationing has been introduced across the country, two million more men have been called up for service, and blackouts, evacuees and military training camps have become the norm. In Beckindale, three young women are about to find their lives changed forever...Annie Pearson is working on Emmerdale Farm, while her love, Edward Sugden is at the front line. Lily Dingle has found purpose in joining the ATS, though she may get more than she bargained for. And Meg Warcup, now teaching at the local school, has taken in two children evacuated from Hull. They've adjusted to their new way of life until one day a German plane comes crashing down in the village... and changes everything in the village of Beckindale.The third novel in the Emmerdale series transports us to the Yorkshire Dales in the midst of World War II, exploring the lives of Emmerdale's much-loved families. Will the nation's favourite village overcome adversity to deal with the loves and lives lost?