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The Living Corpse by Leo Tolstoy


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Envy


Yury Olesha - 1927
    Andrei is a model Soviet citizen, a swaggeringly self-satisfied mogul of the food industry who intends to revolutionize modern life with mass-produced sausage. Nikolai is a loser. Finding him drunk in the gutter, Andrei gives him a bed for the night and a job as a gofer. Nikolai takes what he can, but that doesn't mean he's grateful. Griping, sulking, grovelingly abject, he despises everything Andrei believes in, even if he envies him his every breath.Producer and sponger, insider and outcast, master and man fight back and forth in the pages of Olesha's anarchic comedy. It is a contest of wills in which nothing is sure except the incorrigible human heart.Marian Schwartz's new English translation of Envy brilliantly captures the energy of Olesha's masterpiece.A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS ORIGINAL

Forever Flowing


Vasily Grossman - 1970
    The main story is simple: released after thirty years in the Soviet camps, Ivan Grigoryevich must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. But in a novel that seeks to take in the whole tragedy of Soviet history, Ivan’s story is only one among many. Thus we also hear about Ivan’s cousin, Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, and Pinegin, the informer who got Ivan sent to the camps.Then a brilliant short play interrupts the narrative: a series of informers steps forward, each making excuses for the inexcusable things that he did—inexcusable and yet, the informers plead, in Stalinist Russia understandable, almost unavoidable.And at the core of the book, we find the story of Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells about her eager involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932–33, which led to the deaths of three to five million Ukrainian peasants. Here Everything Flows attains an unbearable lucidity comparable to the last cantos of Dante’s Inferno.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich


Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - 1962
    The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison SalisburyThis unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.

The Complete Plays of Shakespeare & Commentaries


William Shakespeare
    - Over 300 pages of additional biographical and historical materials- Over 14 critical essays from leading Shakespeare scholars from Yale University on various aspects of Shakespeare's life and literary legacy - Fully Kindle enabled with fully interactive table of contents, Kindle MasterLink technology, Kindle Text-to-Speech (Audiobook) enabled, Kindle Lending Technology enabledTABLE OF CONTENTSILLUSTRATIONSThe Complete TragediesTitus AndronicusRomeo and JulietThe Life and Death of Julius CaesarHamlet, Prince of DenmarkTroilus and CressidaOthello, the Moor of VeniceKing LearThe Tragedy of MacbethThe Life of Timon of AthensThe Tragedy of Antony and CleopatraThe Tragedy of CoriolanusThe Complete HistoriesThe Life and Death of King JohnThe Life and Death of Richard the SecondThe First part of King Henry the FourthThe second part of King Henry the FourthThe Life of King Henry the FifthThe First part of King Henry the SixthThe Second part of King Henry the SixthThe Third part of King Henry the SixthThe Life of King Henry the EighthThe Life and Death of Richard the ThirdThe Complete ComediesAll’s Well That Ends WellAs You Like ItThe Comedy of ErrorsLove’s Labour ’s LostMeasure for MeasureThe Merry Wives of WindsorThe Merchant of VeniceA Midsummer Night’s DreamMuch Ado About NothingThe Taming of the ShrewTwelfth Night or, What You WillThe Two Gentlemen of VeronaThe Complete RomancesPericles, Prince of TyreCymbelineThe Winter’s TaleThe TempestHISTORY, BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICAL ESSAYS ON SHAKESPEARE:- AN OUTLINE OF SHAKESPEARE'S LIFE- ENGLISH DRAMA BEFORE SHAKESPEARE- THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER- ELIZABETHAN LONDON- SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS- THE SEQUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE's PLAYS- SHAKESPEARE'S DEVELOPMENT AS A DRAMATIST- THE CHIEF SOURCES OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS- HOW SHAKESPEARE GOT INTO PRINT- THE PLAYS OF THE FIRST PERIOD—IMITATION AND EXPERIMENT- THE PLAYS OF THE SECOND PERIOD—COMEDY AND HISTORY- THE PLAYS OF THE THIRD PERIOD—TRAGEDY- THE PLAYS OF THE FOURTH PERIOD—ROMANTIC TRAGI-COMEDY- FAMOUS MISTAKES AND DELUSIONS ABOUT SHAKESPEAREEXCERPT"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,Who is already sick and pale with grief!"- Romeo and Juliet WHY BUY BOOKS FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION FOR KINDLE EDITION?All COMPLETE WORKS COLLECTION Kindle Books are priced as low as possible in order to offer unbelievable value and hours of reading pleasure for Kindle readers.

Sofia Petrovna


Lydia Chukovskaya - 1965
    Sofia is a Soviet Everywoman, a doctor's widow who works as a typist in a Leningrad publishing house. When her beloved son is caught up in the maelstrom of the purge, she joins the long lines of women outside the prosecutor's office, hoping against hope for any good news. Confronted with a world that makes no moral sense, Sofia goes mad, a madness which manifests itself in delusions little different from the lies those around her tell every day to protect themselves. Sofia Petrovna offers a rare and vital record of Stalin's Great Purges.

Plain Tales from the Hills


Rudyard Kipling - 1888
    Most of the stories it includes had already appeared in the Civil and Military Gazette they were written before he reached the age of 22; and they show a remarkably precocious literary talent. His vignettes of life in Brittish India a hundred years ago give vivid insight into Anglo-India at work and play, into a barrack-room life, and into the character of Indians themselves.

Getting Married


George Bernard Shaw - 1908
    From Shaw we have a "marital" play of talk, not action -- but talk that seems to come from the best debating society; it's more of a dialogue than a play. But the talk is always stimulating and entertaining. Shaw is not concerned with marriage as an activity; he is focused on marriage as an institution.

Wessex Tales


Thomas Hardy - 1888
    But this great novelist began and ended his writing career as a poet. In-between, he wrote a number of books that many readers find emotionally-wrenching, but which are considered among the classics of 19th Century British literature, including Far from the Madding Crowd, and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Readers will experience Hardy's uncompromising, unsentimental realism in Wessex Tales, and for those seeking a taste of the Dorset poet and novelist, they represent an ideal start.

Rain and Other South Sea Stories


W. Somerset Maugham - 1921
    Somerset Maugham led many lives, including that of a doctor in London's slums, a successful playwright and novelist, an agent for British Intelligence during World War I, and a world traveler. In 1917, he took the first of many voyages to the Pacific Islands and the Far East, where his keen sense of observation found inspiration for some of his finest writing.Rain and Other South Sea Stories features one of Maugham's most famous tales, concerning the clash between a missionary and a prostitute. "Rain" was adapted for the stage and filmed on three separate occasions, its leading character portrayed by Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford, and Rita Hayworth. This collection also includes "Macintosh," a psychological study of the competition between two officials; "The Fall of Edward Barnard," a tale of social rebellion that foreshadows The Razor's Edge; "The Pool," a portrait of a marriage between people from different cultures; and other compelling stories of life in the tropics.

The Gilded Age


Mark Twain - 1873
    and the wild speculation schemes that exploded across the nation in the years that followed the Civil War, The Gilded Age gave this remarkable era its name. Co-written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, this rollicking novel is rife with unscrupulous politicians, colorful plutocrats, and blindly optimistic speculators caught up in a frenzy of romance, murder, and surefire deals gone bust. First published in 1873 and filled with unforgettable characters such as the vainglorious Colonel Sellers and the ruthless Senator Dilsworthy, The Gilded Age is a hilarious and instructive lesson in American history.Introduction by Ron PowersIncludes Newly Commissioned Endnotes

And Quiet Flows the Don


Mikhail Sholokhov - 1928
    "The Quiet Don") is 4-volume epic novel by Russian writer Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov. The 1st three volumes were written from 1925 to '32 & published in the Soviet magazine October in 1928–32. The 4th volume was finished in 1940. The English translation of the 1st three volumes appeared under this title in 1934. The novel is considered one of the most significant works of Russian literature in the 20th century. It depicts the lives & struggles of Don Cossacks during WWI, the Russian Revolution & Russian Civil War. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The authorship of the novel is contested by some literary critics & historians, who believe it wasn't entirely written by Sholokhov. However, following the discovery of the manuscript, the consensus is that the work is, in fact, Sholokhov’s.

Five by Fitzgerald: Classic Stories of the Jazz Age


F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1922
    Includes the following stories: Head and Shoulders, Bernice Bobs Her Hair, Dalyrimple Goes Wrong, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame


Victor Hugo - 1831
    Shaped by a profound sense of tragic irony, it is a work that gives full play to Victor Hugo's brilliant historical imagination and his remarkable powers of description.

Jamilia


Chingiz Aitmatov - 1958
    The story recounts the love between his new sister-in-law Jamilia and a local crippled young man, Daniyar, while Jamilia's husband, Sadyk, is away at the front during World War II.Based on clues in the story, it takes place in northwestern Kyrgyzstan, presumably Talas Province. The story is backdropped against the collective farming culture which was early in its peak in that period.Chingiz Aïtmatov was born in Kyrgyzstan in 1928. His work appeared in over one hundred languages, and received numerous awards, including the Lenin Prize. He was the Kyrgyz ambassador to the European Union, NATO, UNESCO and the Benelux countries.Translated by James Riordan.

Moscow to the End of the Line


Venedikt Erofeev - 1969
    On the way he bestows upon angels, fellow passengers, and the world at large a magnificent monologue on alcohol, politics, society, alcohol, philosophy, the pains of love, and, of course, alcohol.