Walker Percy «The Last Gentleman» — похожие книги

This elegantly written account of a young man's search for signs of purpose in the universe is one of the great existential texts of the postwar era and is really funny besides. Binx Bolling, inveterate cinemaphile, contemplative rake and man of the periphery, tries hedonism and tries doing the right thing, but ultimately finds redemption (or at least the prospect of it) by taking a leap of faith and quite literally embracing what only seems irrational.

This elegantly written account of a young man's search for signs of purpose in the universe is one of the great existential texts of the postwar era and is really funny besides.…

Dr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin.

Dr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value…

One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English pontiff was Hadrian the Fourth," he declares. "The present English pontiff is Hadrian the Seventh. It pleases Us; and so, by Our own impulse, We command."Hadrian is conceived in the image of his creator, Fr. Rolfe, whose aristocratic pretensions (he called himself Baron Corvo), religious obsession, and anarchic and self-aggrandizing sensibility have made him known as one of the great English eccentrics. Fr. Rolfe endured a lifetime of indignities and disappointments. However, in the hilarious and touching pages of this, his finest novel, he triumphs.

One day George Arthur Rose, hack writer and minor priest, discovers that he has been picked to be Pope. He is hardly surprised and not in the least daunted. "The previous English…

This collection of four stories, "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, what Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell me a Riddle," had become an American classic. Since the title novella won the O. Henry Award in 1961, the stories have been anthologized over a hundred times, made into three films, translated into thirteen languages, and - most important - once read, they abide in the hearts of their readers.

This collection of four stories, "I Stand Here Ironing," "Hey Sailor, what Ship?," "O Yes," and "Tell me a Riddle," had become an American classic. Since the title novella won…

Set in the rural French town in Burgundy that would also form the backdrop to the bestselling "Suite Francaise, Fire in the Blood" is the story f Silvio, his cousin's wife Helene, her second husband, Francoise, and of the truths, deaths, marriages, children, houses and mills that bind them with love and hatred, deception and betrayal.

Set in the rural French town in Burgundy that would also form the backdrop to the bestselling "Suite Francaise, Fire in the Blood" is the story f Silvio, his cousin's wife Helene,…

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs - Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the litigating fiend; Sir Kit, the brutal husband and gambling absentee; and Sir Condy, the lovable and improvident dupe of Thady's own son, Jason.

With this satire on Anglo-Irish landlords Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverly (1814). She also changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicted the rise of the Irish Catholic Bourgeoisie.

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice…

Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. These are tales from the golden age of the great storytellers presenting evocative snapshots from that bygone era while at the same time providing engaging entertainment and stimulation for the modern reader.

All emotions are catered for in the offerings by Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, H.G.Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Mrs Gaskell, O Henry, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Wilike Collins, Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Charles Lamb. Through their words the rich pageant of yesterday springs to vibrant life. Each story has its own introduction and there is a set of informative notes. This volume is ideal reading for the student as well as those who relish a good tale well told.

Short Stories from the Nineteenth Century is a wonderful collection of classic stories specially selected and introduced by David Stuart Davies. These are tales from the golden…

The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' fiction "The Library," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths.

This new edition of Labyrinths, the classic representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's biographical and critical essay, a poignant tribute by André Maurois, and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new introduction bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century.

The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature…

Edith Wharton (1862—1937) was an American novelist and short story writer. Her works show the lives of people of the late nineteenth century, the times of decline in American history. She was the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921. Wharton also was familiar with many famous people of the time, including President Theodore Roosevelt. "Bunner Sisters" is a novel that takes place in a run-down neighborhood of New York City. The two Bunner sisters, young Evelina and the ever Ann Eliza, keep a small shop selling artificial flowers and simple things like buttons, trims, and ribbons. Their life is boring and unrewarding, but they manage to keep it going with their dedication and love. However, their life changes after the birthday gift of a clock that draws attention a mysterious clockmaker Herbert Ramy. .

Edith Wharton (1862—1937) was an American novelist and short story writer. Her works show the lives of people of the late nineteenth century, the times of decline in American…

On a blustery November day the King children and Sara, the Story Girl, come up with a great idea that will help them endure the dreary winter season. They will publish a magazine of their thoughts and adventures. From "Personals" and "Fashion Notes" to an etiquette column and stories of the most interesting happenings in Carlisle, Our Magazine is simply the most entertaining and delightful publication anyone in town has ever read. But seasons pass, and nothing is forever--and soon it will be time for the Story Girl to leave her good friends on Prince Edward Island, friends with whom she has walked the golden road of youth.

On a blustery November day the King children and Sara, the Story Girl, come up with a great idea that will help them endure the dreary winter season. They will publish a magazine…

Jack London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone.

BROWN WOLF: She had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud. She sent a questing glance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard trees.

Jack London (born John Griffith Chaney, January 12, 1876 - November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning…

Robert Walser is an overwhelmingly original author with many ardent fans: J.M. Coetzee ("dazzling"), Guy Davenport ("a very special kind of whimsical-serious-deep writer"), and Hermann Hesse ("If he had a hundred thousand readers, the world would be a better place"). Charged with compassion, and an utterly unique radiance of vision, Walser is as Susan Sontag exclaimed "a truly wonderful, heart-breaking writer."

The Assistant is his breathtaking 1908 novel, translated by award-winning translator Susan Bernofsky. Joseph, hired to become an inventor's new assistant, arrives one rainy Monday morning at Technical Engineer Karl Tobler's splendid hilltop villa: he is at once pleased and terribly worried, a state soon followed by even stickier psychological complexities. He enjoys the beautiful view over Lake Zurich, in the company of the proud wife, Frau Tobler, and the delicious savory meals. But does he deserve any of these pleasures? The Assistant chronicles Joseph's inner life of cascading emotions as he attempts, both frantically and light-heartedly, to help the Tobler household, even as it slides toward financial ruin. Tobler demands of Joseph, "Do you have your wits about you?!" And Joseph's wits are in fact all around him, trembling like leaves in the breeze—he is full of exuberance and despair, all the raptures and panics of a person "drowning in obedience."

Robert Walser is an overwhelmingly original author with many ardent fans: J.M. Coetzee ("dazzling"), Guy Davenport ("a very special kind of whimsical-serious-deep writer"), and…

Switch off those TVs, kill your mobiles and settle down with the most controversial book ever written. Once denounced as 'wicked', 'sordid', 'cheap' 'moral filth', PEYTON PLACE was the top read of its time and sold millions of copies worldwide. Way before TWIN PEAKS, SURVIVOR or BIG BROTHER, the curtains were twitching in the mythical New England town of Peyton Place, and this soapy story exposed the dirty secrets of 1950s small-town America: incest, abortion, adultery, repression and lust. Take a peek ...

Switch off those TVs, kill your mobiles and settle down with the most controversial book ever written. Once denounced as 'wicked', 'sordid', 'cheap' 'moral filth', PEYTON PLACE…

This classic 1949 novella about the violent expulsion of Palestinian villagers by the Israeli army has long been considered a high point in Hebrew literature, as it has also given rise to fierce controversy over the years. Published just months after the end of the 1948 war (in which the author fought) the book--as famous for Yizhar's haunting, lyrical style as for its wrenchingly honest soldier's-eye view of the brutality of that war and, perhaps, all wars--has never before been translated into English. De Lange and Dweck's rendering captures with force Yizhar's unflinching portrait of Israel's primal scene. An absolute must for anyone interested in Middle Eastern literature and history.

This classic 1949 novella about the violent expulsion of Palestinian villagers by the Israeli army has long been considered a high point in Hebrew literature, as it has also given…

A choral novel on the hopes, disillusionments and betrayals of family life in Mexico. A rich Catholic rancher wants his four sons to become priests, while the boys themselves have other plans; a bereaved mother explains her daughter's life to the man who killed her; three daughters meet up around their father's coffin for the first time in ten years; a middle-aged couple meet by chance on a cruise-ship and wonder if they were once young lovers. The result is a picture of contemporary Mexico seen through a violently fragmented narrative, not unlike the internationally successful film Amores Perros.The stories are punctuated by a chorus, commenting as if in a Greek tragedy, crudely and unsentimentally on the underbelly of modern Mexican life, offering a raw but richly textured glimpse of the inequalities of that society - street children, junkies, dead rock icons, the ideal wife, a honeymoon gone wrong, a child suicide, a man faking his death and beginning a new life - that throw the middle-class dramas of the linked stories into harsh relief. Happy Families is a dramatic polyphony of the many conflicting strands of Latin America and the modern urban world.

A choral novel on the hopes, disillusionments and betrayals of family life in Mexico. A rich Catholic rancher wants his four sons to become priests, while the boys themselves have…

Barbara Pym is a master at capturing the subtle mayhem that takes place in the apparent quiet of the English countryside. Fifty-something sisters Harriet and Belinda Bede live a comfortable, settled existence. Belinda, the quieter of the pair, has for years been secretly in love with the town's pompous (and married) archdeacon, whose odd sermons leave members of his flock in muddled confusion. Harriet, meanwhile, a bubbly extrovert, fends off proposal after proposal of marriage. The arrival of Mr. Mold and Bishop Grote disturb the peace of the village and leave the sisters wondering if they'll ever return to the order of their daily routines. Some Tame Gazelle, first published in Britain nearly 50 years ago, was the first of Pym's nine novels.

Barbara Pym is a master at capturing the subtle mayhem that takes place in the apparent quiet of the English countryside. Fifty-something sisters Harriet and Belinda Bede live a…

`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'

The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these `odd' women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs and experiencing little comfort or pleasure in their lives. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister's marriage that the novel reserves its most sinister critique.

With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society's ambivalence towards its own period of transition. The Odd Women is a novel engaged with all the major sexual and social issues of the late-nineteenth century. Judged by contemporary reviewers as equal to Zola and Ibsen, Gissing was seen to have produced an `intensely modern' work and it is perhaps for this reason that the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.

*Introduction *Textual Note *Bibliography *Chronology *Explanatory Notes *Map

`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'

The idea of the superfluity of unmarried…

Occupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the motivations and emotions of the enemy, Steinbeck uncovers profound and often unsettling truths both about war and human nature.

Occupied by enemy troops, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the…

In this 1931 Dada-inspired work, the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, the eponymous anti-hero stumbles across the Trojan Horse and climbs inside. His journey takes him through a mental jungle, offering an unforgettable look at the dark side of the American dream.

In this 1931 Dada-inspired work, the first novel of the author of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, the eponymous anti-hero stumbles across the Trojan Horse and climbs…

In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. With a surgeon’s skill, Connell cuts away the middle-class security blanket of uniformity to expose the arrested development underneath—the entropy of time and relationships lead Mrs. Bridge's three children and husband to recede into a remote silence, and she herself drifts further into doubt and confusion. The raised evening newspaper becomes almost a fire screen to deflect any possible spark of conversation. The novel is comprised of vignettes, images, fragments of conversations, events—all building powerfully toward the completed group portrait of a family, closely knit on the surface but deeply divided by loneliness, boredom, misunderstandings, isolation, sexual longing, and terminal isolation. In this special fiftieth anniversary edition, we are reminded once again why Mrs. Bridge has been hailed by readers and critics alike as one of the greatest novels in American literature.

In Mrs. Bridge, Evan S. Connell, a consummate storyteller, artfully crafts a portrait using the finest of details in everyday events and confrontations. With a surgeon’s skill,…

In spite of the amplified disclaimer: ""Note: This story is a fiction. Neither its characters nor the situations in which they are involved are intended to represent any persons now living or dead (or both)"", there will be no question whom The Symbol represents. And it is primarily this factor, the implicit identification, and yes, the explicit sex, which ensures that it will be read with a fascinated avidity. Indeed, with or without the stammer, it is M-M-monogrammed throughout from the opening scene when Wanda Emmaline Kelly etc. attempts to verbalize in her limited vocabulary to Dr. Rubenstein, a laconic figure staring, staring at a blank page on his clipboard. Wanda, orphaned at two, was placed in foster homes, raped by a roomer at nine, married at sixteen to a Navy boy, and towards the end of the war decided to promote her natural endowment as a sex goddess. Then there are the men--the marriages--Buck, the football player, gauche and faithful and loving; Calvin the ""high powered intellectual"" painter from New York where she spends some time with him and The Method and in a mental hospital; and always the paradoxes of the girl who could create an image but never find an identity, who could project sex and never reciprocate it, all the way through the long scenes from Oh Daddy to Daddy O, liquor, drugs, the couch which failed her as much as the bed, until the long out.... Bessie's book certainly never manages to capture that duende-star quality, but it does have the Harlow hook down to some of its more tasteless moments. As such The Symbol seems like as axiomatic commercial reality which will probably perform from the top of the list.

In spite of the amplified disclaimer: ""Note: This story is a fiction. Neither its characters nor the situations in which they are involved are intended to represent any persons…

A fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty in Oscar Wilde’s fascinating gothic tale.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only full-length novel, is the enduringly eerie story of a naïve and irresistible young man lured by decadent Lord Henry Wotton into a life of depravity. Though Dorian is steeped in sin, his face remains perfect, unlined as years pass—while only his portrait, locked away, reveals the blackness of his soul. This timeless tale of Gothic horror and fable, reveling in the unabashed hedonism and cynical wit of its characters, epitomizes Wilde’s literary revolt against the proprieties of the Victorian era.

Sharing this volume with The Picture of Dorian Gray are Wilde’s clever and sophisticated story “Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime” and two of his delicate fairy tales, “The Happy Prince” and “The Birthday of the Infanta.”

A fashionable young man sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty in Oscar Wilde’s fascinating gothic tale.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde’s only full-length novel,…