Formerly India's most corrupt tourist guide, Raju-just released from prison- seeks refuge in an abandoned temple. Mistaken for a holy man, he plays the part and succeeds so well that God himself intervenes to put Raju's newfound sanctity to the test. Narayan's most celebrated novel, The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor.
A plane crashes on a desert island. The only survivors are a group of school boys. At first they enjoy their freedom and celebrate the absence of grown-ups. But the sense of disorder begins to affect them and irrational fears take over.The world of cricket, homework, classes and all the extracurricular activities in school seems to be a faraway dream against the more pressing reality of sheer survival-and the appearance of a terrifying beast who haunts their dreams. Violence takes over, the group is broken into factions, each determined to wipe out th other. What Golding tries to show in the novel is that violence is built into our system, into our genes and in our blood, and that age has little to do when the innate violence would erupt.
This collection of 100 of O Henry's finest stories is a showcase for the sheer variety of one of America's best and best-loved short story writers The variety of the stories is amazing; O Henry is as at home describing life south of the Rio Grande as he is chronicling the activities and concerns of 'the four million' ordinary citizens who inhabited turn-of-the-century New York. They are marked by coincidence and surprise endings as well as the compassion and high humour that have made O Henry's stories popular for the last century.
Aristophanes, a native Athenian and the leading exponent of Greek comedy, was born c. 450 BCE. Today forty-three of his plays are known by title; eleven survive. The most famous of these is the whimsical fantasy Lysistrata.A perennial classroom and stage favorite as well as the basis of Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, the play is as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago. The premise is simplicity itself: to end the Peloponnesian War, women decide to withhold sex from their husbands until the fighting stops.The play is by turns raucous, bawdy, frantic, and funny. David Mulroy's exciting new translation retains the original's verse format, racy jokes, and vibrancy-setting it apart from previous efforts, which are typically reproduced as prose or depart from meaning and meter. His introduction offers a concise summary of Aristophanes' life and social milieu, including a brief overview of the Peloponnesian War, which took place during the playwright's lifetime. The appendices include guides on translating meter and Greek pronunciation for aspiring thespians.
Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece, The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Maksim Gorky was a Soviet author and founder of the socialist realism literary method. He was also a political activist who spent several lengthy stays in Capri and Italy. Gorky traveled throughout his native land and at one point became friends with Lenin. His travels overwhelmed him with the vastness and beauty of his country and they also made him sharply aware of the ignorance and poverty of its people. This novel tells the story of the common proletariat who protested against the czar and the capitalists which eventually led to the October Revolution. Pelageya is the wife of a factory worker who ignores the political upheaval in her country in favor of caring for her personal life. She represents hundreds of workers who are concerned with living their lives. Her son Pavel takes a different path and joins the revolution inspiring many Russians who were living under a capitalistic society in Russia. Gorky saw the "mother country" as supporting her children as they fought for their rights.
BOOKS
"One of the most delightful and enduring classics of children's literature, The Secret Garden by Victorian author Frances Hodgson Burnett has remained a firm favorite with children the world over ever since it made its first appearance. Initially published as a serial story in 1910 in The American Magazine, it was brought out in novel form in 1911. The plot centers round Mary Lennox, a young English girl who returns to England from India, having suffered the immense trauma by losing both her parents in a cholera epidemic. However, her memories of her parents are not pleasant, as they were a selfish, neglectful and pleasure-seeking couple. Mary is given to the care of her uncle Archibald Craven, whom she has never met. She travels to his home, Misselthwaite Manor located in the gloomy Yorkshire, a vast change from the sunny and warm climate she was used to. When she arrives, she is a rude, stubborn and given to stormy temper tantrums. However, her nature undergoes a gradual transformation when she learns of the tragedies that have befallen her strict and disciplinarian uncle whom she earlier feared and despised. Once when he's away from home, Mary discovers a charming walled garden which is always kept locked. The mystery deepens when she hears sounds of sobbing from somewhere within her uncle's vast mansion. The kindly servants ignore her queries or pretend they haven't heard, spiking Mary's curiosity. The Secret Garden appeals to both young and old alike. It has wonderful elements of mystery, spirituality, charming characters and an authentic rendering of childhood emotions and experiences. Commonsense, truth and kindness, compassion and a belief in the essential goodness of human beings lie at the heart of this unforgettable story. It is the best known of Frances Hodgson Burnett's works, though most of us have definitely heard of, if not read, her other novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. The book has been adapted extensively on stage, film and television and translated into all the world's major languages. In 199
The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of family life and the conflict between men and women.As time winds its way through their lives, the Ramsays face, alone and simultaneously, the greatest of human challenges and its greatest triumph—the human capacity for change.
A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction. Though the least typical of the author’s novels, A Tale of Two Cities still underscores many of his enduring themes—imprisonment, injustice, social anarchy, resurrection, and the renunciation that fosters renewal.
Seven Deaths in Seven Days and Nights of Apocalyptic Terror.The year is 1327. The place is a wealthy abbey. And the crimes committed here are beyond the wildest imaginings. It will be the task of English Brother William of Baskerville to decipher secret symbols and dig into the eerie labyrinth of abbey life to unravel the mystery. His tools: logic, intelligence, wit, and a ferocious curiosity. His enemy: a murderer with the awesome features of the Antichrist...
This beautiful Penguin Classics clothbound edition of Tolstoy's great novel is translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs, and with an afterword by Orlando Figes.At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In War and Peace, Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur.Anthony Briggs's superb translation combines stirring, accessible prose with fidelity to Tolstoy's original, while Orlando Figes's afterword discusses the novel's vast scope and depiction of Russian identity. This edition also contains appendices, notes, a list of prominent characters and maps.
Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is the classic manual on the art of living, and one of the wonders of the world. In eighty-one brief chapters, the Tao Te Ching looks at the basic predicament of being alive and gives advice that imparts balance and perspective, a serene and generous spirit. This book is about wisdom in action. It teaches how to work for the good with the effortless skill that comes from being in accord with the Tao (the basic principle of the universe) and applies equally to good government and sexual love; to child rearing, business, and ecology.
Title: Think and Grow Rich <>Binding: Mass Market Paperback <>Author: NapoleonHill <>Publisher: BallantineBooks
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Tired of their servitude to man, a group of farm animals revolt and establish their own society, only to be betrayed into worse servitude by their leaders, the pigs, whose slogan becomes: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Published in 1945, this powerful satire of the Russian Revolution under Stalin remains as vivid and relevant today as it was on its first publication.
