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Twenty Prose Poems by Charles Baudelaire
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Man's Fate
André Malraux - 1933
As a study of conspiracy and conspirators, of men caught in the desperate clash of ideologies, betrayal, expediency, and of free will, Andre Malraux's novel remains unequaled.Translated from the French by Haakon M. Chevalier
Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Thief
Maurice Leblanc - 1907
The poor and innocent have nothing to fear from him; often they profit from his spontaneous generosity. The rich and powerful, and the detective who tries to spoil his fun, however, must beware. They are the target of Arsene’s mischief and tomfoolery. A masterful thief, his plans frequently evolve into elaborate capers, a precursor to such cinematic creations as Ocean’s Eleven and The Sting. Sparkling with amusing banter, these stories—the best of the Lupin series—are outrageous, melodramatic, and literate.13 stories: The Arrest of Arsène Lupin Arsène Lupin in Prison The Escape of Arsène Lupin The Mysterious Railway Passenger The Queen's Necklace Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late Flashes of Sunlight The Wedding-ring The Red Silk Scarf Edith Swan-neck On the Top of the Tower Thérèse and Germaine At the Sign of Mercury
Les Liaisons dangereuses
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - 1782
The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able a judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward's introduction explodes myths about Laclos's own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context.
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
Joseph Bédier
The story of the Cornish knight and the Irish princess who meet by deception, fall in love by magic, and pursue that love in defiance of heavenly and earthly law has inspired artists from Matthew Arnold to Richard Wagner. But nowhere has it been retold with greater eloquence and dignity than in Joseph Bédier’s edition, which weaves several medieval sources into a seamless whole, elegantly translated by Hilaire Belloc and Paul Rosenfeld.
The Holy Terrors
Jean Cocteau - 1929
Written in a French style that long defied successful translation - Cocteau was always a poet no matter what he was writing - the book came into its own for English-language readers in 1955 when the present version was completed by Rosamond Lehmann. It is a masterpiece of the art of translation of which the Times Literary Supplement said: "It has the rare merit of reading as though it were an English original." Miss Lehmann was able to capture the essence of Cocteau's strange, necromantic imagination and to bring fully to life in English his story of a brother and sister, orphaned in adolescence, who build themselves a private world out of one shared room and their own unbridled fantasies. What started in games and laughter became for Paul and Elisabeth a drug too magical to resist. The crime which finally destroyed them has the inevitability of Greek tragedy. Illustrated with twenty of Cocteau's own drawings.
Sphinx
Anne Garréta - 1986
1962) is a lecturer at the University of Rennes II and research professor of literature and Romance studies at Duke University. She joined the Oulipo in 2000, becoming the first member to join born after the Oulipo was founded. Garréta won France's prestigious Prix Médicis in 2002, awarded each year to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent," for her novel Pas un jour.Emma Ramadan is a graduate of Brown University and received her master's in literary translation from the American University of Paris. Her translation of Anne Parian's Monospace is forthcoming from La Presse. She is currently on a Fulbright Fellowship for literary translation in Morocco.
Voyage Around My Room: Selected Works of Xavier de Maistre
Xavier de Maistre - 1825
The result was a discursive, mischievous memoir, his classic Voyage Around My Room. De Maistre's literary output began with his Voyage (1794) and ended with its sequel, Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room (1825), with a few shorter pieces in between. In addition to the Voyage and Expedition, this Selected Works includes the compelling dialogue "The Leper of the City of Aosta" (1811) and a "Preface" by Xavier's better-known older brother, the reactionary Joseph de Maistre.
Promise at Dawn
Romain Gary - 1960
Alone and poor, she fights fiercely to give her son the very best. Gary chronicles his childhood with her in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera. And he recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in the Second World War. But above all, he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his very life, their secret and private planet, their wonderland "born out of a mother's murmur into a child's ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love." A romantic, thrilling memoir that has become a French classic.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room
Gaston Leroux - 1907
When her locked door is finally broken down by her father and a servant, they find the woman on the floor, badly hurt and bleeding. No one else is in the room. There is no other exit except through a barred window. How did the attacker escape?First published in 1907, this intriguing and baffling tale is a classic of early 20th-century detective fiction. At the heart of the novel is a perplexing mystery: How could a crime take place in a locked room which shows no sign of being entered? Nearly a century after its initial publication, Leroux's landmark tale of foul play, deception, and unbridled ambition remains a blueprint for the detective novel genre. Written by the immortal author of The Phantom of the Opera, this atmospheric thriller is still a favorite of whodunit fans everywhere."The finest locked room tale ever written." — John Dickson Carr, author of The Hollow Man.