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  Great Expectations

  Charles Dickens

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  Great Expectations is Charles Dickens's thirteenth novel. It is his second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. Great Expectations is a Bildungsroman or a coming-of-age novel, and it is a classic work of Victorian literature. It depicts the growth and personal development of an orphan named Pip. The novel was first published in serial form in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. 
  In October 1861, Chapman and Hall published the novel in three volumes. Dickens originally intended Great Expectations to be twice as long, but constraints imposed by the management of All the Year Round limited the novel's length. The novel is collected and dense, with a conciseness unusual for Dickens. According to G. K. Chesterton, Dickens penned Great Expectations in "the afternoon of [his] life and fame." It was the penultimate novel Dickens completed, preceding Our Mutual Friend. It is set among the marshes of Kent and in London in the early to mid-1800s. The novel contains some of Dickens most memorable scenes, including its opening, in a graveyard, when the young orphan Pip is accosted by the escaped convict, Abel Magwitch. 
  Great Expectations is a graphic book, full of extreme imagery, poverty, prison ships ("the hulks"), barriers and chains, and fights to the death. Upon its release, Thomas Carlyle spoke of "All that Pip's nonsense." Later, George Bernard Shaw praised the novel as "All of one piece and consistently truthful." Dickens felt Great Expectations was his best work, calling it "a very fine idea," and was very sensitive to compliments from his friends: "Bulwer, who has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken by the book.

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  The Call of the Wild

  Jack London

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  The Call of the Wild is a novel by Jack London published in 1903. The story is set in the Yukon during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush—a period in which strong sled dogs were in high demand. The novel's central character is a dog named Buck, a domesticated dog living at a ranch in the Santa Clara Valley of California as the story opens. Stolen from his home and sold into service as sled dog in Alaska, he reverts to a wild state. Buck is forced to fight in order to dominate other dogs in a harsh climate. Eventually he sheds the veneer of civilization, relying on primordial instincts and learned experience to emerge as a leader in the wild. The terrible, never relenting work of pulling sleds in sub-freezing temperatures combined with little food and rest quickly killed any dog not extremely tough. It almost kills Buck but his fierce determination to survive finally brings him through.

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  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

  Mark Twain

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  In the sequel to Tom Sawyer, his sidekick Huckleberry Finn takes centre stage. 
   
  Innocent and well-intentioned, Huck is brought face to face with the reality of slavery in the southern states as he helps his friend Jim escape to freedom.

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  The Iliad

  Homer

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  "The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to the poet Homer, thought to have been composed in the 8th century BCE. The poem primarily focuses on the Trojan War and is specifically centered around the wrath of the Greek hero Achilles, whose rage is one of the epic's main themes. "The Iliad" encompasses high drama, heroic feats, and deep philosophies about honor, fate, and the human condition. It is considered one of the cornerstones of Western literature and has been translated into numerous languages over the centuries.

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  A Midsummer Night's Dream

  William Shakespeare

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  Сomedy A Midsummer's Night Dream is a wonderful piece of work written by a genius English playwright William Shakespeare. Three very amusing stories tightly connected with each other fascinate the reader with a numerous love adventures. The reason for that is a potion of a forest spirit Puck. William Shakespeare is the author of the world famous sonnets and plays Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, as well as comedies Twelfth Night, A Midsummer's Night Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and As You Like It. William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright, the works of the great English poet have been on top of the world theatre stages for some centuries already.

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  At the Edge of the Night

  Friedo Lampe

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  Banned by the Nazis, the haunting novel At the Edge of the Night (Am Rande der Nacht), by the German writer Friedo Lampe, is a work of magic realism. This poignant book, beautifully translated by Simon Beattie, was, in Lampe’s own words, ‘born into a regime where it could not breathe’; he hoped that one day it might rise again. It evokes the sensations and impressions of a sultry September evening on the waterfront of Bremen, with its charm and tenderness, squalor and lust. The plot contains a stream of images with many characters: children, old and young people, men and women, townsfolk, performers, students and sailors. Its depiction of raw reality was unacceptable to the Nazis: the book was seized by them in December 1933 and withdrawn from sale.
  At the Edge of the Night is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that offers a unique perspective on the experience of the Second World War. Lampe’s prose is lyrical and evocative, and his characters are complex and multi-dimensional. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the war or the human experience of conflict. It drew praise from Hermann Hesse, who first read it in 1933 and said that ‘what struck us at the time... as so beautiful and powerful has not paled, it has withstood; it proves itself with the best, and captivates and delights just as then’.

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