Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

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  Four Novels - The Square...

  Marguerite Duras

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  A collection of four short novels by the renowned, Prix Goncourt–winning author of The Lover. 
   
  Long acknowledged as one of the most important literary figures in France, Marguerite Duras has garnered worldwide praise for her work, from the acclaimed screenplay Hiroshima Mon Amour to the best-selling novel The Lover. 
   
  In these four short novels, Duras demonstrates her remarkable ability to create an emotional intensity and unity by focusing on the intimate details of the relationships among only a few central characters. From the park bench couple in “The Square” (1955) to the double love triangle in “10:30 on a Summer Night” (1960), each novel probes the depths and complexities of human emotion, of love and of despair. Exceptional for their range in mood and situation, these four novels beautifully showcase the poetic sensability that is uniquely Duras.

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  The Kiss

  Anton Chekhov

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  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born on 29th January 1860 in Taganrog, on the south coast of Russia.  
   
  His family life was difficult; his father was strict and over-bearing but his mother was a passionate story-teller, a subject Chekhov warmed to. As he later said; ‘our talents we got from our father, but our soul from our mother’.  
   
  At school Chekhov was distinctly average. At 16 his father mis-managed his finances and was declared bankrupt. His family fled to Moscow. Chekhov remained and eked out a living by various means, including writing and selling short sketches to newspapers, to finish his schooling. That completed and with a scholarship to Moscow University obtained he rejoined his family. 
   
  He was able to help support them by selling satirical sketches and vignettes of Russian lifestyles and gradually obtained further commissions. In 1884, he qualified as a physician and, although it earned him little, he often treated the poor for free, he was fond of saying ‘Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.’ 
   
  His own health was now an issue as he began to cough up blood, a symptom of tuberculosis.  Despite this his writing success enabled him to move the family into more comfortable accommodation.  
   
  Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories which included many, many classics including ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Lady with a Dog’.  His collection ‘At Dusk’ won him the coveted Pushkin Prize when was only 26.  
   
  He was also a major playwright beginning with the huge success of ‘Ivanov’ in 1887.   
   
  In 1892 Chekhov bought a country estate north of Moscow. Here his medical skills and money helped the peasants tackle outbreaks of cholera and bouts of famine. He also built three schools, a fire station and a clinic.  It left him with less time for writing but the interactions with real people gained him detailed knowledge about the peasantry and their living conditions for his stories.  
   
  His most famous work, ‘The Seagull’ was received disastrously at its premiere in St Petersburg. It was later restaged in Moscow to highlight its psychological aspects and was a huge success. It led to ‘Uncle Vanya’, ‘The Three Sisters’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’.  
   
  Chekhov suffered a major lung hemorrhage in 1897 while visiting Moscow. A formal diagnosis confirmed tuberculosis and the doctors ordered changes to his lifestyle.  
   
  Despite a dread of weddings the elusive literary bachelor quietly married the actress Olga Knipper, whom he had met at rehearsals for ‘The Seagull’, on 25th May 1901. 
   
  By May 1904 with his tuberculosis worsening and death imminent he set off for the German town of Badenweiler writing cheerful, witty letters to his family and assuring them his health was improving.  
   
  On 15th July 1904 Anton Chekhov died at Badenweiler.  He was 44.

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  Work Death and Sickness

  Leo Tolstoy

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  Leo Tolstoy was one of the most famous Russian writers and thinkers esteemed as one of the greatest writers in the world.In the legend "Work, Death, and Sickness" Leo Tolstoy  speculates on the problem of people's happiness. South American Indians believed, that God made men so that they don't need to work.  But people were not happy, they had quarreled with each other. To bring them together, God made it impossible for people to live without working. They must  build houses, and grow plants, to not suffer  from cold and hunger. But people lived worse than before. They worked not all together, but in groups. And every group struggled against other groups. Then God decided to make so that people didn't know when they would die. They should not spoil the time of life in struggles.But it remained as bad as before. The strongest submitted those who were weaker. How did this story end? Get acquainted with the legend "Work, Death, and Sickness", to know it!A SmartTouch Media production.

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  The August Fawn

  Richard King

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  In the late summer of 1978, Allen Ginsberg and Arthur Russell left the building they shared in New York City to spend a week together in the Catskill Mountains. The rest of this story is a work of fiction.

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  Two Tuppenny Ones Please

  Katherine Mansfield

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  Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction and a close associate of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. 
  "Two Tuppenny Ones, Please" is an evocative sketch of an overheard conversation between two women (and a bus conducter) on an omnibus during the First World War.

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  Appointment With Death

  Agatha Christie

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  Collins brings the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie, to English language learners. 
  Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language. Now Collins has adapted her famous detective novels for English language learners. These carefully abridged versions are shorter with the language targeted at learners of English. 
  Mrs Boynton, a cruel and hated woman, is found dead in the ancient city of Petra. Was it just a weak heart and too much sun that killed her, or has one of Mrs Boynton’s many victims found revenge? 
  By chance, the great detective Hercule Poirot has some useful information, but is it enough to find the killer? He has 24 hours to solve the case.

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