Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  The Great Gatsby

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  Considered one of the greatest American novels ever written, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional towns of West Egg and East Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story of the book primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession to reunite with his ex-lover, the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway sees through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval and excess, creating a portrait of the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.

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  The Pit

  Alexander Kuprin

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  Alexander Kuprin prefaced his novel The Pit about the lives of early 20th century Russian prostitutes as follows, "I know many people will find this novel amoral and inappropriate, but nevertheless I dedicated it from the bottom of my heart to mothers and young people." 
  Indeed, the novel's publication was followed by an explosion of outrage. The "good" society accused Kuprin of slander and forever exiled him from its sitting rooms, charity auctions, and holiday balls. Progressive intellectuals winced and shuddered, but could not help admitting Kuprin had a point. As with the works of Marquis de Sade and George Sand, parents hid copies of the book from their children. But those who wanted to read the book found the way. Whether hated or admired, forbidden or applauded - one thing was certain: Kuprin's beautifully written, brutally realistic, vivid, and poignant novel left no one indifferent. 
  Gender inequality and sex trade are still alive today, in our world of supersonic speeds and instant information exchange, hidden behind the latest and greatest political, social, and technological innovation. Strip away the details of the era, and Kuprin's novel suddenly becomes very modern and topical, filled with archetypes that still exist today, and thought-provoking ideas that are bound to send your mind reeling.

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  Whose Names Are Unknown

  Sanora Babb

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  Sanora Babb' s long-hidden novel  Whose Names Are Unknown  tells an intimate story of the High Plains farmers who fled drought dust storms during the Great Depression. Written with empathy for the farmers'  plight, this powerful narrative is based upon the author' s firsthand experience. This clear-eyed and unsentimental story centers on the fictional Dunne family as they struggle to survive and endure while never losing faith in themselves. In the Oklahoma Panhandle, Milt, Julia, their two little girls, and Milt' s father, Konkie, share a life of cramped circumstances in a one-room dugout with never enough to eat. Yet buried in the drudgery of their everyday life are aspirations, failed dreams, and fleeting moments of hope. The land is their dream. The Duanne family and the farmers around them fight desperately for the land they love, but the droughts of the thirties force them to abandon their fields. When they join the exodus to the irrigated valleys of California, they discover not the promised land, but an abusive labor system arrayed against destitute immigrants. The system labels all farmers like them as worthless " Okies"  and earmarks them for beatings and worse when hardworking men and women, such as Milt and Julia, object to wages so low they can' t possibly feed their children. The informal communal relations these dryland farmers knew on the High Plains gradually coalesce into a shared determination to resist. Realizing that a unified community is their best hope for survival, the Dunnes join with their fellow workers and begin the struggle to improve migrant working conditions through democratic organization and collective protest.

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  Ulysses

  James Joyce

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  Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature 
  Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). 
  Few first editions generate more excitement among traders in rare books than Ulysses. Since the novel's debut, many experts have reinterpreted surviving drafts to produce revised texts, but this edition remains the one that Joyce himself reviewed and corrected prior to the initial publication. Thus, this volume represents the version truest to the author's vision.

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  Gate of the Hundred Sorrows The...

  Rudyard Kipling

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  This story was first published in the Civil and Military Gazette on September 26th 1884, when Kipling was not yet nineteen, and collected in Plain Tales from the Hills in 1888, and in subsequent editions of this collection. It was his first short story to be published - a tour de force that set a standard which - with a few lapses - he maintained for the rest of his life.The tale is presented as a monologue by Gabral Misquitta, a half-caste opium addict, six weeks before his death. It describes the life of the opium den, and of the opium smokers, in the Coppersmith's Gully near the mosque of Wazir Khan. In the end, all life for them revolves around the 'black smoke'. There is nothing else.

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  The System of Dr Tarr &...

  Edgar Allan Poe

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  Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe) was born in Boston Massachusetts on January 19th 1809 and was orphaned at an early age.  Taken in by the Allan family his education was cut short by lack of money and he went to the military academy West Point where he failed to become an officer.   
   
  His early literary works were poetic but he quickly turned to prose. He worked for several magazines and journals until in January 1845 ‘The Raven’ was published and became an instant classic.   
   
  Thereafter followed the works for which he is now so rightly famed as a master of the mysterious and macabre.    
   
  Edgar Allan Poe died at the early age of 40 in 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland

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