Classics World Literature

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales, a literary genre he so mastered that he himself has become as mythical as the tales he wrote. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories — called eventyrs, or "fantastic tales" — express themes that transcend age and nationality.

Un enregistrement exceptionnel : les cinq volumes des "Misérables", un des plus grands romans de la littérature française, enfin disponibles en livre audio. Jean Valjean, Cosette, les Thénardier, Gavroche, ou encore Javert sont autant de noms qui résonnent au-delà de l'histoire qui les a fait naître. Ces misérables sont décrits à la fois comme des archétypes du genre humain, mais aussi comme les produits d'une société génératrice de pauvreté, d'ignorance et de désespoir.

It's Carnival time and the Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint is celebrating with music, dance, and pageantry. Masked "Midnight Robbers" waylay revelers with brandished weapons and spellbinding words. To young Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen is simply a favorite costume to wear at the festival - until her power-corrupted father commits an unforgiveable crime. Suddenly, both father and daughter are thrust into the brutal world of New Half-Way Tree....

Pubblicato nell'aprile del 1950 e considerato l'opera piú bella di Pavese, "La luna e i falò" è il suo ultimo romanzo. Il protagonista, Anguilla, all'indomani della Liberazione, torna al suo paese delle Langhe dopo molti anni trascorsi in America e, in compagnia dell'amico Nuto, ripercorre i luoghi dell'infanzia e dell'adolescenza in un viaggio nel tempo, alla ricerca di antiche e sofferte radici. Storia semplice e lirica insieme, costruita come un continuo viavai tra il piano del passato e quello del presente, "La luna e i falò" recupera i temi civili della guerra partigiana.

Lu Xun (1881-1936) was born in Shaoxing, in the province of Zhejiang, China. He came from a scholar-official family and by the age of six had begun studying the ancient classics. Regarded as the founder of contemporary Chinese literature, Lu Xun used the pen as a weapon to wage an heroic struggle against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. The rich heritage he has left behind is a treasure in the literature of the Chinese people.

Bushido: The Soul of Japan is a seminal study on the way of the samurai by the Japanese educator Inazo Nitobe. From 1868, the beginning of the Meiji Era, Japan rapidly transformed itself from an isolated feudal society into a modern, industrialised nation state, influenced by Western philosophical and scientific ideas. Nitobe wrote Bushido in English to explain the samurai way to a western audience; it was later translated into Japanese.

In the 1880's, an American senator observes, with some perplexity, English country life and all of its social echelons. To add some spice along the way, we follow the romances and intrigues of the flirtatious Arabella Trefoil.

The Labyrinth of the World is about a fellow named Pilgrim who treks through the world in order to find the best way to live, aided by two guides: Mr. Ubiquitous and Mr. Delusion. Pilgrim finds much to be concerned about in the world. Ultimately, he finds something he had not planned upon in his journey: The Paradise of the Heart. This original pilgrim allegory was penned 55 years before Pilgrim's Progress. Find out how an educator and theologian, with real-life experience, penned a profound story that is still contemporary today.

It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in a car. Her Nonny cries every time her father's name is mentioned. And the two sides of her family aren?t speaking to each other!

In the second volume of Proust's great novel, the narrator emerges as an actor in the drama of his own life. Swann has now dwindled into a husband for his former mistress, Odette, and their daughter, Gilberte, becomes the adolescent narrator's playmate and tantalising love object. We move from Paris to the seaside town of Balbec, from ritualised social performances to midsummer spontaneity and from Gilberte to her successor Albertine.

"Cosette" est le deuxième tome des "Misérables". C'est aussi le prénom de l'enfant que Jean Valjean va devoir prendre sous sa protection, à la mort de sa mère Fantine, dont le tragique destin est lié à celui de l'ancien bagnard héroïque.

An essential classic, now available in Hindi.

This provocative addition to the best-selling Joshua series finds Joshua in post-9/11 America trying to unite Muslims, Jews, and Christians. His Arabic appearance and lack of ID prompt anti-terrorist agents to shadow him as he travels from D.C. to Beirut to Oslo in his quest to convince political and religious leaders to form a lasting peace.

From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.

Max Weber's best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day powerful and fascinating. Weber's highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West.

Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion, and prisoners eat, work, and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket, or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes.

The fortunes of the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys, of Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, are intimately connected with the national history that is played out in parallel with their lives. Balls and soirées alternate with councils of war and the machinations of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles with everyday human passions in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed. The prodigious cast of characters, both great and small, seem to act and move as if connected by threads of destiny as the novel relentlessly questions ideas of free will, fate, and providence.

Phileas Fogg, a gentleman of stringent and inflexible habits, proposes that he can circumvent the globe in 80 days. He wagers half of his fortune to this effect. But when a high profile bank robbery occurs, the dogged Detective Fix is convinced that Mr. Fogg is an audacious bank robber and that his entire "gentleman's wager" is a charade. Thus begins a wild battle of cat and mouse that takes the clever combatants around the world.

In the late 19th century, a cylinder crashes down near London. When George investigates, a Martian activates an evil machine and begins destroying everything in its path! George must find a way to survive a War of the Worlds.

This is the story of Kitty Fane, the adulterous wife of a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. When her husband discovers her deception, he exacts a terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic in China.