Their heart-breaking stories make Dr Zhivago one of the greatest romantic books, and films, of the century.

    On April 4, 1942, Maresyev's Polikarpov I-16 was shot down near Staraya Russa, then occupied by Nazi Germany. Maresyev survives the crash but is badly wounded. Despite his injuries, and after a grueling 18-day struggle to return to Soviet-controlled territory, he is rescued and cared for by villagers from a collective farm before being transferred to a hospital. Eventually both his legs are amputated below the knee. Desperate to return to his career as a fighter pilot, Maresyev undergoes nearly a year of therapy and exercise to master the control of his prosthetic devices, and returns to flying in June 1943. During his recovery, he is inspired by the thought of his girlfriend and the support of his fellow patients. By the war's end, Maresyev had completed 86 combat flights and shot down 11 German warplanes. In 1943 he was awarded the Golden Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest military decoration of the USSR. In 1944, Maresyev joined the Communist Party and two years later retired from the army. Eventually he became a member of Supreme Soviet. On a side note, the book was made into an opera by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev and premiered in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) on December 3, 1948.

    In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocence—at least of the crime of which they stand accused. But The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state. Marked by the deep humanity and generous spirit of its author, the legendary anarchist and exile Victor Serge, it is also a classic twentieth-century tale of risk, adventure, and unexpected nobility to sit beside Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and André Malraux's Man's Fate.

    Yee, a powerful political figure who works for the Japanese occupational government. As these two move deftly between Shanghai’s tea parties and secret interrogations, they become embroiled in the complicated politics of wartime — and in a mutual attraction that may be more than what they expected. Written in lush, lavish prose, and with the tension of a political thriller, Lust, Caution brings 1940s Shanghai artfully to life even as it limns the erotic pulse of a doomed love affair.

    Zhivago for its portrayal of Stalin's Russia, Generations of Winter is the romantic saga of the Gradov family from 1925 to 1945.

    There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas’ epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.Robin Buss’s lively English translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas’s original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

    Scott Fitzgerald is known for his novels, but in his lifetime, his fame stemmed from his prolific achievement as one of America's most gifted story writers. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," a witty and fantastical satire about aging, is one of his most memorable stories. In 1860 Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life -- he goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse. This strange and haunting story embodies the sharp social insight that has made Fitzgerald one of the great voices in the history of American literature.

    It is this loss of faith, together with his vulnerability and disequilibrium, his pronounced sense of evil, his desperate challenge to established values and beliefs, that carries Kleist more forcefully than Goethe or Schiller across the gap between the eighteenth century and today.