For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

    Mikhail Bulgakov was flung into the depths of freezing rural Russia which, in 1916-17, was still largely unaffected by such novelties as the motor car, the telephone or electric light. How his alter-ego copes (or fails to cope) with the new and often appalling responsibilities of a lone doctor in a vast country practice — on the eve of Revolution — is described in Bulgakov's delightful blend of candid realism and imaginative exuberance.

    - lines 95-98The Hollow Men (1925) is a poem by T. S. Eliot, divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English". It follows the otherworldly journey of the spiritually dead. These "hollow men" are broken, lost souls. They fail to transform their motions into actions, conception to creation, desire to fulfillment. They did not put any good or evil into the world so they cannot move on into the afterlife.

    This satirical novel tells the story of the surgical transformation of a dog into a man, and is an obvious criticism of Soviet society, especially the new rich that arose after the Bolshevik revolution.

    This collection has more than twenty-five selections, including such important statements as "Modern Fiction" and "The Modern Essay."

    It is set in Kiev during the Russian revolution and tells the story of the Turbin family and the war's effect on the middle-classes (not workers). The story was not seen as politically correct, and thereby contributed to Bulgakov's lifelong troubles with the Soviet authorities. It was, however, a well-loved book, and the novel was turned into a successful play at the time of its publication in 1967.

    

    In it we meet Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter, who were betrothed as children and raised as brother and sister. Now, in the heedlessness of youth, they become lovers, unaware that their ardor will forge the first link in a chain of murder, exile, and disgrace.Soaringly romantic and psychologically nuanced, Undset's novel is also a meticulous re-creation of a world split between pagan codes of retribution and the rigors of Christian piety--a world where law is a fragile new invention and manslaughter is so common that it's punishable by fine.

    Surrounded by jealous & hateful enemies, Süß helps the Duke create a corrupt state that involves them both in immense wealth & power.

    First published in Norway as two books in 1924 and 1925, the author collaborated with Minnesotan Lincoln Colcord on the English translation.The novel follows a Norwegian family's struggles as they try to make a new life as pioneers in the Dakota territory. Rølvaag is interested in psychology and the human cost of empire building, at a time when other writers focused on the glamor and romance of the West. The book reflects his personal experiences as a settler as well as the immigrant homesteader experience of his wife’s family. Both the grim realities of pioneering and the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind are captured in depictions of snow storms, locusts, poverty, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, the difficulty of fitting into a new culture, and the estrangement of immigrant children who grow up in a new land. It is a novel at once palpably European and distinctly American.Giants in the Earth was turned into an opera by Douglas Moore and Arnold Sundgaard; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951.

    DuBois, Locke has constructed a vivid look at the new negro, the changing African American finding his place in the ever shifting sociocultural landscape that was 1920s America. With poetry, prose, and nonfiction essays, this collection is widely praised for its literary strength as well as its historical coverage of a monumental and fascinating time in the history of America.

    Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.

    It is a hybrid of love story, tragedy, and farce, with a protagonist who sweet-talks teaspoons, flirts with important politicians, plays maidservant to young boys, and uses a passerby’s mouth as an ashtray. Walser’s novel spoofs the stiff-upper-lipped European petit bourgeois and its nervous reactions to whatever threatens the stability of its worldview.

    Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.

    On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, 'An American Tragedy' stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.Based on an actual criminal case, 'An American Tragedy' was the inspiration for the film 'A Place in the Sun', which won six Academy Awards and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff.

    Before the Law was published in Kafka's lifetime, first in the 1915 New Year's edition of the independent Jewish weekly Selbstwehr, then in 1919 as part of the collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor). The Trial, however, was not published until 1925, after Kafka's death.

    Osip Mandelstam has in recent years come to be seen as a central figure in European modernism. Though known primarily as a poet, Mandelstam worked in many styles: autobiography, short story, travel writing, and polemic. Mandelstam's biographer, Clarence Brown, presents a collection of the poet's prose works that illuminates his far-ranging talent and places him within the canon of European modernism.This volume includes Mandelstam's "The Noise of Time, " a series of autobiographical sketches; "The Egyptian Stamp, " a novella echoing Gogol and Dostoevsky; "Fourth Prose, " and the famous travel memoirs "Theodosia" and "Journey to Armenia."

    Scott Fitzgerald's third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. This exemplary novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story is of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his new love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.(back cover)

    The history of Tolerance (or the lack thereof) in the history of man as described by one of the best popular historians of all time

    Though originally denounced as pornographic, Kvachi's tale is one of the great classics of twentieth-century Georgian literature -- and a hilarious romp to boot.

    A chronicle of a crumbling civilization during the era when the republic disintegrated and was replaced by despotism, his Letters portray a world dominated by characters who have since acquired almost mythic status - including Pompey, Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony. Whether describing the vagaries of war, the collapse of Roman society, his beloved republic, or his own personal domestic dramas, all compellingly reflect the complex personality of an honourable and selfless man whose refusal to compromise ultimately cost him his life.

    He found in the fabric of familiar episodes new shades of meaning, new configurations of character and intent. He brought a poetic imagination to the task of reconstructing a live tradition for Americans, and the result is a genuinely consistent and integrated expression of the American inheritance. Williams did not invent the native conscience, but he rediscovered it, often in the more remote gestures of history, and has here given it enduring stature in prose."In the American Grain is a fundamental book, essential if one proposes to come to terms with American literature." -- Times Literary Supplement

    After many years in the attic, a doll who fears that she will never again be loved by a child is transformed by her animal friends.

    Collected over the centuries from India, Persia, and Arabia, and ranging from adventure fantasies, vivacious erotica, and animal fables, to pointed Sufi tales, these stories provided the daily entertainment of the medieval Islamic world at the height of its glory. No one knows exactly when a given story originated, and many circulated orally for centuries before being written down; but in the process of telling and retelling, they were modified to reflect the general life and customs of the Arab society that adapted them—a distinctive synthesis that marks the cultural and artistic history of Islam.

    

    This volume brings together his major dramatic achievements, including The White Guard, Madame Zoyka, Flight, Molière, Adam and Eve and The Last Days.Bulgakov is a much-studied author by schools, colleges and universities.

    The happiness of meeting, the sadness of separation, the agony of longing and waiting, and the perfection of love in absence—Manhae's gift was to give these moments their due in terms both subtle and surprisingly evocative. Long a cultural hero in Korea, Manhae—whose work can be compared to that of Rumi and even Pablo Neruda—finally receives his proper audience in the West.

    This series has been completely updated to meet the needs of today's A-level and undergraduate students. Written by established literature experts, 'York Notes Advanced' introduce students to sophisticated analysis, a range of critical perspectives and wider contexts.

    Exploring the tension between body and spirit, Crevel’s meditation is a vivid personal journey through illusion and disillusion, secret desire, memory, the possibility and impossibility of life, sensuality and sexuality, poetry, truth, and the wilderness of the imagination. The narrator’s Romantic mind moves from evocative tales and sensations to frank confessions, making the reader a confidant to this great soul trapped in an awkward-fitting body. A Surrealist Proust.

    Written in 1925, On Resistance to Evil by Force is one of the most important tracts composed by white émigré philosopher Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin.

    Even if we restrict ourselves to European – or even Western European – literary production, English-speaking readers will often be unable to read books by French or German authors, French-speaking readers will have difficulty with the works of British authors, and so forth. Unless, of course, someone actually produces a translation. In the field of the supernatural – or to use a more general and mostly continental term, the "fantastic" – literature, a number of masters have left their indelible imprint. Names such as Bram Stoker, M. R. James, E. F. Benson, H. P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and (fortunately) many others, readily spring to mind, from the Anglo-Saxon world alone; outside that language-sphere, however, and of much the same stature, we find authors such as Claude Seignolle, Gérard de Nerval, Erckmann-Chatriam, Guy de Maupassant, Thomas Owen and of course Jean Ray.Jean Ray (Jean-Raymond-Marie De Kremer, 1887-1964 ; aka John Flanders, etc.) was a prolific Belgian author whose pen left us a varied oeuvre, ranging from journalism to adventure stories for youngsters and including a large number of gems of the fantastic, not least the well-known novel Malpertuis, which was adapted to the cinema in 1971 by Harry Kümel. Despite De Kremer's well deserved prestige among French and Belgian audiences – although part of his texts were originally written in Flemish, the "Jean Ray" fantastic and supernatural were in French and have appeared largely during the Second World War: Le Grand Nocturne (1942), La Cité de l'Indicible Peur, Malpertuis, Les Cercles de L'Epouvante (all 1943), Les Derniers Contes de Canterbury (1944) and Le Livre des Fantômes (1947) – the work of Jean Ray is still far from well known by Anglo-Saxon audiences. A couple of published anthologies rapidly went out of stock, preventing new generations of readers from getting acquainted with it.That is a great pity indeed, since few writers have succeeded in creating the same ambiance of suffocating anguish, often with more than a touch of the surrealistic, than the old master from Ghent. His stories range from the straight, classic supernatural tale (Le Guardien du Cimetière) to the macabre (Dents d'or), the bizarre (La Scolopendre) and even science-fiction (Le Formidable Secret du Pôle). Whether or not already familiar with the writings of Jean Ray, this new collection of short stories will not fail to impress, enchant and excite readers interested in weird fiction. And those who meet the author for the first time will have the gratification of discovering a true master of the genre. An indispensable volume for any cognoscenti of the fantastic.ContentsIntroduction by António MonteiroThe Story of the WûlkhI Have killed Alfred HeavenrockThe Inn of SpectresMerry-Go-RoundThe Black MirrorThe Graveyard GuardianThe Man Who DaredThe Night at CamberwellCousin PasserouxThe Head of Mr. RambergerThe Bench and the DoorIn the Fenn MarshesBetween Two GlassesThe Monsters at the WindowThe White BeastThe Horrifying PresenceRounde Dance at KoenigsteinThe Formidable Secret of the PoleHouse for SaleThe ChoucrouteM. Wohlmut and Franz BenschneiderThe Night at PentovilleGod, You and I . . .The Moustiers PlateThe Prettiest Little Girl in the WorldThe Wedding of Mademoiselle BonvoisinThe Tesseract

    It includes London and The Vanity of Human Wishes among other poems, and many of his essays for the Rambler and Idler. The prefaces to his edition of Shakespeare and his famous Dictionary, together with samples from the texts, are given, as well as selections from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, the Lives of the Poets and Rasselas in its entirety. There is also a substantial representation of lesser-known prose, and of his poetry, letters, and journals.

    Selections cover a wide range of dialects and genres, from an early Northumbrian form of Caedmon's Hymn and ninth-century Kentish charters to the complete texts of The Dream of the Rood and Wulfstan's Address to the English, with ample literary and historical notes.