Editorial: Charles River Editors
Nicholas Nickleby is one of Charles Dickens' classics, and has been adapted for film, TV, and theatre numbers times. Heraklion Press has included a linked table of contents for easy navigation.
Olive Schreiner's landmark novel, a South African classic, takes place in the rural Karoo towards the end of the 19th century. The Story of an African Farm evokes the bleakness and beauty of the arid landscape, which forms the backdrop for the stories of Lyndall and Waldo, unlikely soul mates whose lives reflect their frustrated quest for a better reality and their dreams of self-fulfillment. Originally published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron, the novel caused a sensation when its author was revealed to be a woman. Victorian readers were intrigued by the novel's forthright feminism and sensitivity to all forms of oppression. An informative introduction by literary scholar Cherry Clayton discusses the literary, cultural and philosophical background to the novel.Ver libro
Two brothers in post-war Japan experience an ideological conflict when they reunite at their family home in this philosophical novel by a Nobel laureate. The Silent Cry follows two brothers who return to their ancestral home, a village in densely forested Western Japan. After decades of separation, the reunited men are each preoccupied by their own personal crises. One brother grapples with the recent suicide of his dearest friend, the birth of his disabled son, and his wife’s increasing alcoholism. The other brother sets out to incite an uprising among the local youth against the disintegration of the community’s culture and economy due to the imposing franchise of a Korean businessman nicknamed the “Emperor of the Supermarkets.” Both brothers live in the shadow of the mysteries surrounding the untimely deaths of their older brother and younger sister, as well as their great-grandfather’s political heroism. When long-kept family secrets are revealed, the brothers’ strained bond is pushed to its breaking-point and their lives are irrevocably changed . . . Considered Oe’s most essential work by the Nobel Prize committee, The Silent Cry is as powerfully relevant today as it was when first published in 1967. Praise for The Silent Cry “[The Silent Cry] allows us a glimpse of Oe’s narrative mastery.” —Nobel Prize citation “Somehow—and this is what gives his art such unquestionable stature—Oe manages to smuggle a comic thread in all this tragedy.” —Independent (UK) “A new pinnacle in post-war Japanese fiction.” —Yukio Mishima “Oe, in the range of hope and despair he covers, seems to me to have in him a touch of Dostoevsky.” —Henry Miller “Oe is dense, analytical, with a highly modern self-consciousness, though there’s real nostalgia here for the dying traditions of pre-Westernized supermarket culture. A picture of fragmenting identity and social breakdown as brutalizing as the 20th century itself.” —Kirkus ReviewsVer libro
Cymbeline, also known as The Tragedie of Cymbeline or Cymbeline, King of Britain, is a play by William Shakespeare set in Ancient Britain (c. 10–14)[a] and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobeline. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify Cymbeline as a romance or even a comedy. Like Othello and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While the precise date of composition remains unknown, the play was certainly produced as early as 1611. Cymbeline, the Roman Empire's vassal king of Britain, once had two sons, Guiderius and Arvirargus, but they were stolen twenty years earlier as infants by an exiled traitor named Belarius. Cymbeline discovers that his only child left, his daughter Imogen (or Innogen), has secretly married her lover Posthumus Leonatus, a member of Cymbeline's court. The lovers have exchanged jewellery as tokens: Imogen with a bracelet, and Posthumus with a ring. Cymbeline dismisses the marriage and banishes Posthumus since Imogen — as Cymbeline's only child — must produce a fully royal-blooded heir to succeed to the British throne. In the meantime, Cymbeline's Queen is conspiring to have Cloten (her cloddish and arrogant son by an earlier marriage) married to Imogen to secure her bloodline. The Queen is also plotting to murder both Imogen and Cymbeline, procuring what she believes to be deadly poison from the court doctor. The doctor, Cornelius, is suspicious and switches the poison with a harmless sleeping potion. The Queen passes the "poison" along to Pisanio, Posthumus and Imogen's loving servant — the latter is led to believe it is a medicinal drug. No longer able to be with her banished Posthumus, Imogen secludes herself in her chambers, away from Cloten's aggressive advances. Although the play is named Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus' struggle between the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism, and friendship. Among the most significant works William Shakespeare: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Orpheus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, The Tempest, Venus and Adonis, Antony and Cleopatra, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and many more.Ver libro
The Fall of the House of Usher was published in 1839, and written by the American master of the Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe. This is the classic gothic tale of a family identified with their house; an ailing sister and a neurotic brother live in the middle of a desolate wasteland in a house that has been in their family for centuries. Now, they are the last of the line and the sister is dying and the brother feels he cannot survive her. He enlists a friend to come and stay at the House of Usher and when his sister dies, terrible things ensue.Ver libro
In 1923, an American named Delapore, the last descendant of the De la Poer family, moves to his ancestral estate in England following the death of his only son during World War I. To the dismay of nearby residents, he restores the estate, called Exham Priory. After moving in, Delapore and his cat frequently hear the sounds of rats scurrying behind the walls. Upon investigating further, and through recurring dreams, Delapore learns that his family maintained an underground city for centuries, where they raised generations of "human cattle"-some regressed to a quadrupedal state-to supply their taste for human flesh. This was stopped when Delapore's ancestor killed his entire family in their sleep and left the country in order to end the horror, leaving the remaining human livestock and a surviving relative to be devoured by the rats inhabiting the city's cesspits. Maddened by the revelations of his family's past, a hereditary cruelty, and his anger over his son's death, Delapore attacks one of his friends in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him while rambling in a mixture of Middle English, Latin, and Gaelic, before devolving into a cacophony of animalistic grunts. He is subsequently subdued and placed in a mental institution. At least one other investigator, Thornton, has gone insane as well. Soon after, Exham Priory is destroyed and the investigators decide to cover up the existence of the underground city. Delapore maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls", who ate the man. He continues to be plagued by the sound of rats in the walls of his cell.Ver libro
On October 2nd, 1872, in the game room at the Reform Club in London, Mr. Phileas Fogg made a wager that he could go around the world in eighty days. Twenty thousand pounds were to be won, or lost, upon his return. Mr. Fogg assured his five companions he would meet them in the very same room at a quarter before 9p.m. on December 21st and collect his winnings. Fogg's frantic race against time, and the final outcome of this race, makes for a thrilling, unforgettable tale that has a permanent place among the greatest of adventure stories.Ver libro
