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  The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

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  The classic story of a man who ages backwards—and inspiration for the film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett—by the author of The Great Gatsby.   Penned by one of the greatest literary talents of the twentieth century, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button follows the adventures of a man born at the age of seventy, living his life in reverse. After achieving success in the military and in business, and becoming a husband and father, Benjamin goes on to attend college, prep school, and then—as his mind begins to deteriorate—kindergarten.   At once humorous and haunting, “Fitzgerald’s wonderfully simple story is a kind of conjuring trick, an exercise in forcing the impossible into the mundane. You end it both amused and slightly saddened. For the most curious thing about Benjamin Button’s life is how ordinary it seems. All the usual triumphs and miseries are there: it’s just that the start and end aren’t the same” (The Guardian).

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  Tropic Death

  Eric Walrond

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  Stories by “one of the Harlem Renaissance’s most original writers . . . Gothic surrealism that fascinates and repels with the intensity of a sunstroke” (David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author).   The only published work by Caribbean-born author Eric Walrond, Tropic Death was acclaimed by Langston Hughes for its “hard poetic beauty.” After having lived in Panama at one point during his early years, Walrond considered himself a spiritual native of the country, and in many of these stories, he portrays the diverse mix of workers who labored to build the Panama Canal. He also captures the beauty and danger of nature, especially the sun, in such tropical climates as Guiana and Barbados.   In “Drought,” a man grieves his dead daughter, while in “Panama Gold,” a tragic fire deprives a lonely woman of a chance at love. Two boys risk shark-infested waters to dive for coins thrown by tourists in “The Wharf Rats.” Seven more stories are included in the collection, which ends with the autobiographical “Tropic Death.”   “In prose . . . tough as the hanging vines from which monkeys leap and chatter, and as unsentimental as the blazing sun, ten intimate and body-touching pictures of the West Indies unroll themselves. There is nothing soft about this book. . . . The throbbing life and sun-bright hardness of these pages fascinate me. . . . And the ease and accuracy of Mr. Walrond’s West Indian dialects support one in the belief that he knows very well the people of who he writes.” —Langston Hughes, New York Herald Tribune Book Review   “A book which excites and disturbs, oppresses and enchants the reader.” —The New York Times Book Review

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  Heart of Darkness

  Joseph Conrad

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  Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa, by the story's narrator Charles Marlow. Marlow tells his story to friends aboard a boat anchored on the River Thames, London, England. This setting provides the frame for Marlow's story of his obsession with the ivory trader Kurtz, which enables Conrad to create a parallel between London and Africa as places of darkness.
  
  Central to Conrad's work is the idea that there is little difference between so-called civilised people and those described as savages; Heart of Darkness raises questions about imperialism and racism.
  
  Originally issued as a three-part serial story in Blackwood's Magazine to celebrate the thousandth edition of the magazine, Heart of Darkness has been widely re-published and translated into many languages. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Heart of Darkness sixty-seventh on their list of the hundred best novels in English of the twentieth century.

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