Literary Classics

By Herodotus

Herodotus isn't just often called the `father of history', as Cicero referred to as him, but additionally the daddy of ethnography; in addition to charting the historic historical past to the Persian Wars, his interest additionally activates widespread digression at the cultures of the peoples he introduces. whereas a lot of the knowledge he supplies has proved to be astonishingly exact, he additionally entertains us with pleasant stories of one-eyed males and gold-digging ants. This readable new translation is supplemented with expansive notes that supply readers the historical past that they should savor the e-book in depth.

Carolyn Dewald is affiliate Professor of Classics on the collage of Southern California. Robin Waterfield is a special translator whose model of Plato's Republic has been defined because the most sensible available'.

By Bertolt Brecht

The great individual of Szechwan is certainly one of Bertolt Brecht's most well liked works. while 3 gods come to earth looking for a completely sturdy individual, they stumble upon Shen Teh, a goodhearted yet penniless prostitute, who deals them preserve. Rewarded with sufficient cash to open a tobacco store, “Angel of the Slums” Shen Teh quickly turns into so crushed by means of the calls for of individuals looking advice that she invents a male adjust ego, “Tobacco King” Shui Ta, to deal ruthlessly with the company of dwelling in an evil international.

The reliable individual of Szechwan is a masterpiece of minimalist layout and magnificence that shines a gentle on human nature and social mores.

By C. P. Snow

7th within the Strangers and Brothers sequence, it is a novel of clash exploring the area of the good Anglo-Jewish banking households among the 2 international Wars.

Charles March is inheritor to 1 of those households and is starting to make a reputation for himself on the Bar.

When he needs to alter his lifestyle and do whatever worthwhile he's compelled right into a quarrel along with his father, his relatives and his faith.

By Victor Hugo

This beneficiant, different collection of poems by means of one among France's best-loved and such a lot reviled poets is gifted with dealing with originals, targeted notes, and a full of life creation to the author's lifestyles and paintings.

Steven Monte provides greater than 80 poems in translation and within the unique French, taken from the earliest poetic guides of the 1820's, via collections released in the course of exile, to works released within the years following Hugo's demise in 1883. The creation presents precious history information regarding Hugo's existence and paintings, the choice, and what's occupied with translating a poet whose easy rhymes are important to the poetry's energy. exact notes behind the amount provide information regarding the poems and their publishing and ancient contexts. this is often an excellent advent to a poet whose paintings, for all its renown, is still for Anglophone readers undiscovered

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Retail caliber AZW3.

In 1921 F. Scott Fitzgerald used to be twenty-five and heralded because the so much promising author of his iteration, as a result of the luck of his first novel This aspect of Paradise. lately married to the woman of his goals, the previous Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald outfitted upon his surprising prosperity with the gorgeous and the Damned, a cautionary story of reckless ambition and squandered expertise set amid the glitter of Jazz Age ny.

The novel chronicles the connection of Anthony Patch, a Harvard-educated, aspiring author, and his attractive younger spouse, Gloria. whereas they look forward to Anthony’s grandfather to die and move his hundreds of thousands directly to them, the younger couple enjoys an unending string of events, touring, and extravagance. starting with the pop and poo of existence itself, the gorgeous and the Damned speedy evolves right into a scathing chronicle of a demise marriage and a hedonistic society during which attractiveness is all too fleeting.

A fierce parable concerning the illusory caliber of goals, the intractable nature of truth, and the smash wrought through time, the gorgeous and the Damned eerily anticipates the dissipation and decline that will come to the Fitzgeralds themselves prior to the last decade had run its path.

By Charles Dickens

In 1836 the 23-year-old Dickens used to be invited by way of his publishers to put in writing `a per 30 days something' illustrated by way of carrying plates. hence the Pickwick membership was once born: its intended `papers' soom outgrew their origins and have become a brilliantly comedian novel, nonetheless between Dicken's hottest works.

By C. P. Snow

It's the onset of global struggle II within the 5th within the Strangers and Brothers sequence.

A crew of Cambridge scientists are engaged on atomic fission. yet there are effects for the lads who're stricken by it.
Hiroshima additionally explanations combined own reactions.

By Willa Cather

El padre de Lucy Gayheart, relojero y director de los angeles banda municipal del pueblo de Haverford, ha costeado con ilusión y esfuerzo l. a. educación mu-sical de su hija en Chicago. Ésta es una joven good, impulsiva y brillante que empieza a ganarse los angeles vida dando clases de piano. Un día le surge l. a. oportunidad de acompañar al famoso barítono Clement Sebastian, un hom-bre mucho mayor que ella y algo cansado de los angeles vida, pero a quien el contacto con los angeles juventud parece traer una nueva y melancólica primavera. los angeles diferencia de edad y posición, y sobre todo de experiencia, no impide a Lucy aferrarse a una «promesa luminosa» que está convencida de que acabará haciéndose realidad… aunque para ello tenga que renunciar a Harry Gordon, el «gran hombre del Oeste» que ha sido su pretendiente desde los angeles infancia. «A algunas personas les afecta lo que sucede con su vida o con sus propiedades, mientras que para otras es el destino lo que se cruza en sus sentimientos y en sus pensamientos… el destino y nada más»: estas palabras condensan el clima de Lucy Gayheart (1935), una de las últimas novelas de Willa Cather. En ella sus grandes temas –la oposición entre valores rústicos y urbanos, l. a. tragedia que acecha a l. a. inocencia, el arte como conflictiva forma de elevación– se conjugan en una depurada historia de amor escrita con el sello de l. a. madurez.

"He had turn into the dandy of the unpredictable."

A quest for brand spanking new sensations--and an avowed wish to shock--possessed the Decadent writers of fin-de-siècle Paris. certainly, the years 1880-1900 observed a unprecedented, hothouse flowering of expertise, that produced the most unique, stylized, and cerebral literature within the French language. dying and Eros hang-out those pages, and a polymorphous perversity by means of turns hilarious and frightening. Their tales teem with addicts, maniacs, and murderers as they try to outdo one another.

This extraordinary choice by way of Stephen Romer-whose translations brilliantly trap the classy wit and black humor of the originals--brings jointly 36 of the easiest decadent stories from the French fin-de-siècle, together with paintings via famous writers reminiscent of Maupassant, Lorrain, Mirbeau, and Villiers in addition to lesser identified figures similar to Léon Bloy, Jean Richepin, and the Belgian Georges Rodenbach. Romer's enticing advent offers an entire context for the tales, underscoring the relevant literary, philosophical, clinical, and political traits of the time, which fed into their authors' loathing of the fashionable global, and the invention of the subconscious.

The booklet additionally contains biographical notes at the authors and explanatory notes to explain cultural references, plus a chronology of the most important guides and major occasions of the period.

About the Series: For over a hundred years Oxford World's Classics has made on hand the broadest spectrum of literature from around the world. every one cheap quantity displays Oxford's dedication to scholarship, delivering the main actual textual content plus a wealth of alternative worthy beneficial properties, together with specialist introductions via best professionals, voluminous notes to explain the textual content, updated bibliographies for extra learn, and masses extra.

By Li Yu

Ce classique de l'érotisme est aussi l'un des plus célèbres romans chinois. Ecrit au XVIIe siècle par un conteur de génie, esprit libre et persifleur, il raconte les apprentissages érotiques d'un lettré libertin qui, professant un individualisme jouisseur, multiplie les aventures et les intrigues amoureuses. Insatiable, il accumule les conquêtes et des prouesses érotiques d une virtuosité infrequent. Il subira pour elles une opération chirurgicale.

En dépit de sa réputation scandaleuse, ce livre est un véritable roman d aventures, une oeuvre classique et ambitieuse, pleine d'humour et d'ironie. Il résume dans son ton souriant et désabusé comme dans sa lucidité incisive son flair à comprendre tous les forms d'humanité, une expérience de l. a. vie.