Welsh Fiction

Découvrez l'ouvrage original de Rudyard Kipling. Sept récits constituent ce premier livre ; Mowgli est le héros de trois d'entre elles.

Even among the Celtic nations with their noble tradition of bards and story-tellers, the Welsh stand out for the sheer weight and number of their stories. Drawn from many sources including the great book of 'The Mabinogion1, traditional Celtic mythology, and local folklore this collection of tales has been adapted by popular children's author Faye Saxeby and brought to life in an enchantingly warm reading by the lovely Welsh actress Angharad Rees.

Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences.

"He Knew He Was Right" is an 1869 novel written by Anthony Trollope which describes the failure of a marriage caused by the unreasonable jealousy of a husband worsened by the stubbornness of a willful wife. A wealthy young English gentleman, Louis Trevelyan, visits the fictional Mandarin Islands, and becomes infatuated with Emily Rowley, the eldest daughter of the governor, Sir Marmaduke Rowley. The Rowleys accompany Trevelyan to London, where he marries Emily.

Under the Greenwood Tree, Hardy's second novel, was published in 1872 and became the first of his great series of Wessex novels. The book, subtitled A Rural Painting of the Dutch School, tells the endearing tale of a group of church musicians who accompany the hymns at the local Mellstock parish choir and we follow the fortunes of one of its member, Dick Dewy, who falls in love with the new school mistress, Fancy Day.

With a writer as prolific as Neil Gaiman, what do you check out next? Or, perhaps, where do you begin? Spanning Gaiman's career to date, this collection of groundbreaking, entrancing, endlessly imaginative fiction will answer those questions. Curated by Gaiman's devoted listeners around the world, The Neil Gaiman Reader: Selected Fiction includes excerpts from each of his five novels for adults - Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, Anansi Boys and The Ocean at the End of the Lane - and nearly 50 of his short stories.

First published in 1880, The Rebecca Rioter is a novel based on the notorious Rebecca Riots in South and West Wales in the early 19th century. The story tells the tale of Evan Williams, a young working-class man, struggling to come to terms with the injustice and social inequalities of the world he lives in. His rebellious actions during a time of "agrarian discontent" have dramatic consequences, not only for himself, but also inadvertently for the woman he loves. Amy Dillwyn (1845-1935) was born in Swansea and was a novelist, feminist, and pioneer industrialist.

One for the Trouble: Book Slam, Volume One is the first release from the UK’s premier literary event. Eighteen Book Slam alumni, from household names like Irvine Welsh and William Boyd to newcomers like Kate Tempest and Sophie Woolley, were approached to take a song title for inspiration for a new short story or poem. Some took this literally (Jon McGregor’s moving reimagining of A House’s 'Endless Art', for example); others suggestively....

When her father remarries, the honest, innocent Molly Gibson suddenly finds herself with a new stepsister, Cynthia, who is beautiful, worldly and impetuous. This would be more than enough to deal with, but the new wife is the deeply snobbish (and darkly secretive) Hyacinth. Thwarted love, scheming ambition and small-town gossip underlie the warmth, irony and brilliant social observation which link the relationships and the inevitable conflicts as profound change comes to rural England.

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

After her beloved grandmother Rozenn’s death, Morane is heartbroken to learn that her sister is the sole inheritor of the family home in Cornwall - while she herself has been written out of the will. With both her business and her relationship with her sister on the rocks, Morane becomes consumed by one question: what made Rozenn turn her back on her? When she finds an old letter linking her grandmother to Brittany under German occupation, Morane escapes on the trail of her family’s past. In the coastal village where Rozenn lived in 1941, she uncovers a web of shameful secrets.

The beautiful Miss Alison Brooke is the envy of London's 18th-century royal society. When villainy occurs, an unexpected hero comes to her aid. But rumors result, and Miss Brooke finds herself in the center of tawdry gossip. Her rescuer, Robert Anderson, Viscount Charmaine, is preoccupied with troubled finances, an ill father, and defense of the Crown. Problematically, Charmaine's best friend, Marquis Anthony Farrington, is clandestinely helping fund the American Revolution. Miss Brooke's large dowry tempts both men. Her father, however, wants his daughter to marry for love, not money.

Myles's courtroom testimony should have put Pryor, their one-eyed ringleader, behind bars after the bank robbery gone wrong, yet somehow Pryor got off scot-free while Myles served time. Now, upon his release, Myles decides he is done with his life of wrongdoing—a change that will only be possible if he can kill Pryor and turn over a new leaf. Pryor has other ideas, and the collision between these two deadly forces soon leaves the ex-con in critical condition, clinging to life in a hospital bed.

"A weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares." This is how Marlowe describes his journey into the Belgian Congo. And while Europeans go mad, Corporations turn tyrannous, and the legend of a great Ivory hunter is dangled before him, Marlowe observes everything with a keen eye, as we journey with him, into the Heart of Darkness. This audiobook also includes another short story featuring Marlowe, "Youth".

Blaire Macdonald weiß, was sie will. Ihr Ehemann gehört aber definitiv nicht dazu. Er ist der Bruder des Chiefs der Macdonalds – der Clan, unter dessen ...

Lucian Taylor, the hero, is damned either through contact with an erotically pagan "other" world or through something degenerate in his own nature, which he thinks of as a "faun". He becomes a writer, and when he moves to London he becomes trapped by the increasing reality of the dark imaginings of this creature within him, which become increasingly real. One of the first explorations in fiction of the figure of the doomed artist, who is biographically so much a part of the decadent 1890s.

"The Patrician" (1911) is a historical romance by John Galsworthy. Excerpt from the book: "Light, entering the vast room - a room so high that its carved ceiling refused itself to exact scrutiny - travelled, with the wistful, cold curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light, unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of history. For in this dining hall - one of the finest in England - the Caradoc family had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their existence.

Le capitaine Marlow raconte sa remontée d'un grand fleuve africain sur un vapeur jusqu'au "cœur des ténèbres", à la recherche d'un certain Kurtz.

In the village of Iping, a strange man arrives at a local inn wrapped in bandages. He refuses to leave his room where he is carrying out experiments to make himself invisible. The stranger's success has grave implications for everyone. When he realises that he cannot reverse the experiment, he is gradually driven insane.

Tom Jones is a splendid Hogarthian panorama of 18th-century English life and morals, encompassing both city and country, and comprising some of the greatest comic characters in British literature. First published in 1749, it was an instant success and has gone on to become a classic of its genre. Quite simply, there has never been anything like it.