A translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, Lomb worked in 16 languages for state and business concerns in her native Hungary. She achieved further fame by writing books on languages, interpreting, and polyglots.Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, first published in 1970, is a collection of anecdotes and reflections on language learning. Because Dr. Lomb learned her languages as an adult, after getting a PhD in chemistry, the methods she used will thus be of particular interest to adult learners who want to master a foreign language.

    Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

    Suitable for both undergraduates and the general reader, an introduction clarifies the historical background to this masterpiece of French literature. It examines the ways in which the complexities of biography, literary transformation and the structural importance of its many themes may be approached and appreciated. The text is supported by full explanatory notes and frequent translations.

    It is set after the First World War and features Peter Blakeney, a descendant of the Scarlet Pimpernel (Percy Blakeney). The action is mainly set amongst the disaffected Hungarian nobility in Transylvania, allowing Orczy to draw on her knowledge of Hungarian history and politics. Pimpernel and Rosemary is the final novel in the Scarlet Pimpernel Series.

    The Guns of Avalon... Sign of the Unicorn... The Hand of Oberon... AND the long anticipated final book, The Courts of Chaos - in a handsome two volume set.Amber is the one real world, casting infinite reflections of itself - Shadow worlds that can be manipulated by those of royal Amberite blood. Unfortunately, the royal family is torn by jealousies and suspicions. And the disappearance of the clan patriarch, Oberon, has intensified the conflicts by leaving Amber's throne apparently up for grabs.The CHRONICLES begin in a hospital on the Shadow Earth, where a man is recovering from a freak auto accident. Since he is also suffering from amnesia, and has been for some time, he has no idea that he's Prince Corwin of Amber - until his memory receives a succession of jolts:He meets a sister who speaks in riddles of plots and counterplots... and a brother who abruptly involves him in a life-and-death battle against pursuers from a fearful Shadow world.He discovers a deck of tarot-like cards, with himself, his sister, and strangers whom he guesses to be other relatives, pictured on their faces. Only lingering amnesia keeps him from grasping the full significance of the find: the cards are the Greater Trumps of Amber, used by his family to communicate across vast distances, and transport one another through Shadows in an instant.Then comes the most shattering jolt of all... Corwin's confrontation with an intricate design created by a master manipulator of reality - the Pattern. By walking the Pattern, those of the blood royal gain the ability to control Shadows. But the slightest hesitation or misstep during the trial means death.As Corwin sets foot upon that coldly glowing inscription, memories come flooding back to him... more and more with each step. And finally, knowing his true identity, he acknowledges his true ambition - and resolves that the crown of Amber will be his.But unknown to Corwin, there are dark forces massing against Amber... and before too long he will discover just how great a burden a king's crown can be...

    Earwitness is one of Canetti's most fascinating works. Instead of writing a novel about the modern world, he chose to portray fifty exemplars of the human species--each a paradigm of a certain kind of behavior. The characters range from "The Submitter," society's victim, through "The Fun Runner," a sort of empty jet-set figure, to such persona as "The Tablecloth Lunatic," a woman who is always angry and is obsessed with cleanliness and order, and "The Beauty-Newt," who believes only in aestheticism. Earwitness is wicked, on-target satire, and is also a very wise work of social portraiture.

    Verging from tragic to comic, the overriding theme of the poetry is love, in its many guises. Chaucer tells of his passion for reading, which allows him to eavesdrop on a "parliament of birds" on St Valentine’s Day; he tells how he, as an inveterate reader, forsakes his books on the first of May to wander into the fields; he complains of being short of money; and he complains to his scribe for copying his verses badly. All in all, in the course of the poetry he reveals a lot about himself, and does so throughout in an engaging and civilized manner.

    Called up by the army, he soon found himself hundreds of miles away, advancing on Russian lines—or perhaps on his own lines—and facing relentless rifle and artillery fire. Badly wounded, he returned to normal life, which now struck him as unspeakably strange. He had witnessed, he realized, the end of a way of life, of a whole world.Published here for the first time in any language, this extraordinary reminiscence is a deeply moving addition to the literature of the terrible war that defined the shape of the twentieth century.

    After the men in her family joined the resistance, she fled with the women and children to the capital, Kabul, and so began a life of day-to-day struggle in her war-torn country. A life that includes a period living in the harsh conditions of a Pakistani refugee camp, being forced into a marriage to pay off her brother's gambling debts, selling her body and begging for the money to feed her growing family, an attempted suicide, and an unsuccessful endeavour to leave Afghanistan for Iran after the Taliban seized control of her country. Told truthfully and with unflinching detail to writer and documentary-maker Siba Shakib, and incorporating some of the shocking experiences of Shirin-Gol's friends and family members, this is the story of the fate of many of the women in Afghanistan. But it is also a story of great courage, the moving story of a proud woman, a woman who did not want to be banished to a life behind the walls of her house, or told how to dress, who wanted an education for her children so that they could have a chance of a future, to live their lives without fear and poverty. .

    Anna Andrianova is a trite poet and disastrous parent. Heading a household dominated by women, she can cling to the myth of the all-powerful yet suffering Russian matriarch. Challenging that myth is her headstrong daughter Alyona, a woman with appalling judgment and several illegitimate children, who both needs Anna and hates her.

    A Quiet Life is narrated by Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old woman. Her father is a famous and fascinating novelist; her older brother, though severely brain damaged, possesses an almost magical gift for musical composition; and her mother's life is devoted to the care of them both. Ma-chan and her younger brother find themselves emotionally on the outside of this oddly constructed nuclear family. But when her father accepts a visiting professorship from an American university, Ma-chan finds herself suddenly the head of the household and at the center of family relationships that she must begin to redefine.

    Set in the tumultuous first century A.D., between the year of Christ’s death and the outbreak of the Jewish War, Captivity recounts the adventures of the feeble-bodied, bookish Uri, a young Roman Jew.Frustrated with his hapless son, Uri’s father sends the young man to the Holy Land to regain the family’s prestige. In Jerusalem, Uri is imprisoned by Herod and meets two thieves and (perhaps) Jesus before their crucifixion. Later, in cosmopolitan Alexandria, he undergoes a scholarly and sexual awakening—but must escape a pogrom. Returning to Rome at last, he finds an entirely unexpected inheritance.Equal parts Homeric epic, brilliantly researched Jewish history, and picaresque adventure, Captivity is a dramatic tale of family, fate, and fortitude. In its weak-yet-valiant hero, fans will be reminded of Robert Graves’ classics of Ancient Rome, I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Restless Books will publish the first English edition of this important, 1,100-page work in four installments in 2015.Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson“György Spiró presents a theory in novelistic form about the interwovenness of religion and politics, lays bare the inner workings of power, and gives insight into the art of survival…. This book is an incredible page turner; it reads easily and avidly like the greatest bestsellers while also going as deep as the greatest thinkers of European philosophy.”—Aegon Literary Award 2006 jury recommendation“A novel of education and a novel of adventure that brings to life ancient Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem with a vividness of detail that is stunning. Spiró’s prose is crisp and colloquial, the kind of prose that aims for precision rather than literary thrills. A serious and sophisticated novel that is also engrossing and highly readable is a rare thing. Captivity is such a novel.”—Ivan Sanders, Columbia University“Impossibly engrossing from the very first page…. Building on a huge volume of reference material, the novel rings true from both a historical and a literary point of view.”—Magda Ferch, Magyar NemzetBorn in 1946 in Budapest, award-winning dramatist, novelist, and translator György Spiró has earned a reputation as one of postwar Hungary’s most prominent and prolific literary figures. He teaches at ELTE University of Budapest, where he specializes in Slavic literatures.Tim Wilkinson gave up his job in the pharmaceutical industry to translate Hungarian literature and history. He is the primary translator of Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész. Wilkinson’s translation of Kertész’s Fatelessness won the PEN Club/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize in 2005.

    Three of his dragoons, involved with him in different capacities, remember him and help the reader piece together the realities behind the man and his death.One was a distant relative, one his orderly, and the third who had been a jockey in his stable before the war, had also been his wife's secret lover.

    With the Final Solution at its terrible apex and tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews being sent to Auschwitz every month, the two men agreed to allow 1,684 Jews to leave for Switzerland by train. In other manoeuvrings, Kastzner may have saved another 40,000 Jews already in the camps. Kasztner was later judged for having "sold his soul to the devil." Prior to being exonerated, he was murdered in Israel in 1957.Part political thriller, part love story and part legal drama, Porter's account explores the nature of Kasztner -- the hero, the cool politician, the proud Zionist, the romantic lover, the man who believed that promises, even to diehard Nazis, had to be kept. The deals he made raise questions about moral choices that continue to haunt the world today.

    But there was another dimension to Donne's life and writing that, if less well known, is no less profound and beautiful. Born into an aristocratic Catholic family, Donne joined the Church of England at the age of twenty-one out of fear of persecution. At the age of forty-three, he gave up his preoccupations with secular prestige and devoted himself utterly to religion. It was eight years later when, battered with fever, the deaths of his beloved wife, several of his children, and many dear lifelong friends, he composed Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. There is both trauma and great drama in this extended meditation on the meaning of mortality, the possibility of salvation, and the true nature of the passage of eternal life. With a new introduction by poet and biographer Andrew Motion, one of the most revered books of Christian devotion speaks to us again of the higher aspirations of man and the always-present possibility of a relationship with God. This long out of print edition also contains Donne's last sermon, "Death's Duel" as well as the short colorful biography of him written by his contemporary Izaak Walton.