Publisher: Merkaba Press
Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day.
Set in the wild forests between the British and French colonies in the mid-18th-century wars, The Last of the Mohicans brims with action. Hawk-eye, first of the tough but honourable heroes of the frontier, leads a mixed band on a perilous journey. In the course of their experiences, all are tested to the utmost. Hawk-eye and Chingachgook reveal true courage, Heyward shows doggedness and Magua proves treacherous. Uncas, last of the Mohicans, emerges as their saviour - but too late to save Cora, the heroine.Show book
A. J. Alan's delicious narrative of a strange adventure on a cold winter night in Norfolk. The narrator is spending a night in an unfamiliar bungalow on the Norfolk Broads. He hears the sound of a car outside, and on investigation finds a young woman whose vehicle has broken down. Attempts to fix the car fail, but they flag down a milk lorry which offers the lady a lift to Norwich, while the broken car is wheeled into the narrator's garage for the night.After the two have set off in the milk lorry, the narrator checks over the car again, only to discover the dead body of a man on the rear seat. This is bad enough...but events only get weirder from here....Show book
Netochka Nezvanova - a 'Nameless Nobody' - tells the story of a childhood dominated by her stepfather, a failed musician who believes he is an obscured genius. When she is rescued by a high society family, the abuse against Netochka's psyche continues more subtly, condemning her to remain an outsider - a solitary spectator of a glittering society. Conceived as part of a novel on a grand scale, Netochka Nezvanova remained unfinished after Dostoyevsky was exiled to Siberia for 'revolutionary activities' in 1849. With its depiction of the suffering, loneliness, madness and sin that affect both rich and poor in St Petersburg, it contains the great themes that were to dominate his later novels.Show book
"The Ambassadors" is a novel written by Henry James, first published in 1903. The novel is considered one of James's major works and is often cited as a masterpiece of psychological realism. It revolves around the central character, Lambert Strether, an American who is sent to Europe by his wealthy fiancée to retrieve her wayward son, Chad Newsome. Strether's mission becomes more complicated as he becomes entangled in the complex relationships and social dynamics of the European expatriate community.Show book
Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis's classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that 'good reading', like moral action or religious experience, involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: 'in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself'. Crucial to his notion of judging literature is a commitment to laying aside expectations and values extraneous to the work, in order to approach it with an open mind. Amid the complex welter of current critical theories, C. S. Lewis's wisdom is valuably down-to-earth, refreshing and stimulating in the questions it raises about the experience of reading.Show book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. The stories are set in a forest in India; one place mentioned repeatedly is "Seonee" (Seoni), in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. A major theme in the book is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli, echoing Kipling's own childhood. The theme is echoed in the triumph of protagonists including Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and The White Seal over their enemies, as well as Mowgli's. Another important theme is of law and freedom; the stories are not about animal behaviour, still less about the Darwinian struggle for survival, but about human archetypes in animal form. They teach respect for authority, obedience, and knowing one's place in society with "the law of the jungle", but the stories also illustrate the freedom to move between different worlds, such as when Mowgli moves between the jungle and the village. Critics have also noted the essential wildness and lawless energies in the stories, reflecting the irresponsible side of human nature. The Jungle Book has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media. Critics such as Swati Singh have noted that even critics wary of Kipling for his supposed imperialism have admired the power of his storytelling. The book has been influential in the scout movement, whose founder, Robert Baden-Powell, was a friend of Kipling's. Percy Grainger composed his Jungle Book Cycle around quotations from the book.Show book
