European Literature

A gripping and moving story of loss and love, of hatred and passion, and of horror and hope, set in Spain’s most evocative city during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the following decades. Ramon flees rural Andalucia for the apparent safety of Seville. In the city’s Triana district a flamenco dancer, Beatriz, faces a heart rending choice. And in northern Morocco, Izil reluctantly joins Franco’s invasion army to save his family from hunger. When a wealthy landowner becomes a key figure in Seville's oppressive government he seeks revenge, bringing despair. It seems all hope is ...

Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis' 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."

First published in 1925, The Painted Veil is an affirmation of the human capacity to grow, change, and forgive. Set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s, it is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to a remote region of China ravaged by a cholera epidemic.

At the opening of The Claverings (1866) the beautiful Julia Brabazon jilts her lover Harry Clavering in order to make a marriage of convenience with a wealthy but dissolute earl. Harry licks his wounds, leaves London to train as a civil engineer, and falls in love with his employer's daughter, to whom he soon becomes engaged. But when Julia returns unexpectedly as a wealthy widow, the flame of Harry's old love is rekindled.

This varied, well-chosen selection brings onto one audiobook the best of Dylan Thomas. Here is the legendary recording of "Under Milk Wood", with Richard Burton and Richard Bebb as narrators; but here also are two radio productions he wrote before that great classic, and though interesting in their own right, they show how "Under Milk Wood" grew gradually in his imagination.

Originally published in 1778, Evelina is Frances Burney's first and most beloved novel. It was a landmark in the development of the novel of manners and went on to influence such enduringly popular authors as Jane Austen. By turns hilarious and grim, witty and lyrical, the story follows young Evelina as she leaves the seclusion of her country home and enters into late eighteenth-century London society - both its pleasures and its dangers. Life in eighteenth-century England is vividly rendered as Evelina is educated in the ways of the world and, eventually, love.

Every woman wants to be Elizabeth Bennet Darcy - beautiful, gracious, universally admired, strong, daring and outspoken - a thoroughly modern woman in crinolines. And every woman will fall madly in love with Mr. Darcy - tall, dark and handsome, a nobleman and a heartthrob whose virility is matched only by his utter devotion to his wife. Their passion is consuming and idyllic - essentially, they can’t keep their hands off each other - through a sweeping tale of adventure and misadventure, human folly and numerous mysteries of parentage.

For some fifty years, in intriguing and ingenious fictions that reimagined the very form of the short story—from his 1935 debut with A Universal History of Iniquity through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, the enigmatic prose poems of The Maker, up to his final work in the 1980s, Shakespeare’s Memory—Jorge Luis Borges returned again and again to his celebrated themes: dreams, duels, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gauchos, knife fighters, tigers, and the elusive nature of identity itself.

The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labelled Borgesian.

The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are our oldest written sources for Norse mythology. When it comes to the norse myths, they are the closest thing we have to listening these stories as the vikings actually told them, around those ancient campfires so long ago. It is my hope that you will enjoy this collection, and that the two books will work in tandem to broaden and deepen your appreciation for these epic and mystical stories, and the enigmatic culture that spawned them.

En agosto de 1928, Manuel Chaves se embarca en un viaje en avión por Europa con la finalidad de escribir una serie de reportajes para el periódico del que es redactor jefe, Heraldo de Madrid. De Madrid a Bakú, pasando por Berlín y Leningrado: del Mediterráneo al Caspio. Chaves fue pionero en utilizar los adelantos técnicos de la época, como el avión, para ofrecer a sus lectores testimonios de primera mano sobre la situación política y social de algunos de los principales países europeos.

The Riviera means indulgence - if you’ve got money. For Sadie Reynolds, a down-on-her-luck student, the Riviera means dingy hostels and back streets. When a wrong turn puts her in jeopardy, the last thing she expects is to be saved by the most handsome stranger she’s ever locked eyes with. When she later wakes up in a luxury suite with a Mediterranean view, she’s in the tender care of her rescuer: Olivier Dumont, France’s most eligible bachelor, billionaire hotelier, and heir to the Dumont fashion fortune.

When Louis Trevelyan's young wife meets an old family acquaintance, his unreasonable jealousy of their friendship sparks a quarrel that leads to a brutal and tragic estrangement.

In 1900 Sardinia, a young woman’s remarkable talent with a needle earns her a position as a seamstress with a wealthy family. Inside this privileged world far different from her own humble beginnings, the skilled sewer quietly takes measurements, sketches designs, mends hems—and in the silence, hears whispered secrets and stories of all those around her.

"Sur la lecture" est un petit texte de Marcel Proust, qui servit de préface à la traduction du livre "Sésame et les lys" de Ruskin. Il propose une introduction à la lecture, par le biais de la description d'une journée d'enfance en compagnie d'un "livre préféré". Proust refuse de voir dans la lecture une communication avec le monde, un accès à l'extérieur, c'est au contraire la rencontre avec soi-même que met en place la confrontation avec les mots d'un autre.

All the delightful and bizarre inhabitants of Wonderland are here: the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat, the hooka-smoking Caterpillar and the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Ugly Duchess... and, of course, Alice herself - growing alternately taller and smaller, attending demented tea parties and eccentric croquet games, and observing everything with clarity and rational amazement.

"On allait là, chaque soir, vers onze heures, comme au café, simplement. Ils s'y retrouvaient à six ou huit, toujours les mêmes, non pas des noceurs, mais des hommes honorables, des commerçants, des jeunes gens de la ville ; et l'on prenait sa chartreuse en lutinant quelque peu les filles, ou bien on causait sérieusement avec Madame, que tout le monde respectait. Puis on rentrait se coucher avant minuit. Les jeunes gens quelquefois restaient."

He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus' classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: He gives his brother a story and a name - Musa - and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach.

Una novela vertiginosa sobre los límites del pensamiento y los delirios de la razón. Un inquietante tríptico sobre los sueños del siglo XX y las pesadillas del siglo XXI, MANIAC explora los límites de la razón trazando el camino que va desde los fundamentos de las matemáticas hasta los delirios de la inteligencia artificial.

"Comment on se marie" regroupe quatre courts récits d'Émile Zola, qui relèvent de l'étude de mœurs. Quatre mariages, quatre milieux sociaux différents et un seul regard. Si, chez les bourgeois, le mariage est une transaction financière, chez d'autres l'amour est possible. L'auteur montre les différences de modes de vie pour mieux laisser apprécier l'absolue similarité des rapports conjugaux, et l'inexorable défaite du mariage tel que le XIXe siècle l'imposait aux hommes et aux femmes.