Catalog Search Results
81) Siddhartha
Author
Summary
Siddhartha (first published in 1922) is a novel based on the early life of Buddha, inspired by the author's visit to India before the First World War. The novel is about the young Brahmin Siddhartha's search for self-realization. Disturbed by the contradictions between his comfortable life and the harsh reality around him, he takes to the life of a wanderer. But the shunning of all temptation in an ascetic life does not give him a sense of fulfillment...
Author
Summary
Alone—it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end. The Original 1897 Classic. A curious man, wearing a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and whose face is entirely swathed in bandages save for an obvious fake pink nose, walks into an English inn to the shock and horror of many of the townspeople. Beakers and chemicals in tow, the man demands his solitude. It’s strange enough as it is until...
84) Selected poems
Author
Summary
In his 1918 autobiographical essay, "A Negro Poet Writes," Claude McKay (1889–1948), reveals much about the wellspring of his poetry. "I am a black man, born in Jamaica, B.W.I., and have been living in America for the last years. It was the first time I had ever come face to face with such manifest, implacable hate of my race, and my feelings were indescribable ... Looking about me with bigger and clearer eyes I saw that this cruelty in different...
Author
Summary
Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; previously caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and...
Author
Summary
In this extraordinary essay, Virginia Woolf examines the limitations of womanhood in the early twentieth century. With the startling prose and poetic licence of a novelist, she makes a bid for freedom, emphasizing that the lack of an independent income, and the titular 'room of one's own', prevents most women from reaching their full literary potential.
88) The lost world
Author
Summary
In a rip-roaring journey of peril and adventure, four explorers find a lost prehistoric world in the remote wilds of South America. Huge pterodactyls rule the skies and the jungle beneath is home to lumbering stegosaurus, carnivorous dinosaurs and terrifying ape-men. If the adventurers can survive then fame and fortune almost certainly await them back in London, but in this dangerous land that defies all science and reason who knows what could happen....
Author
Summary
Imagine a plague so horrific, only forty percent of the population lived to tell the tale. Written as a first-person account of the world's most dangerous pandemic, the mysterious narrator bears witness to a society that has seemingly given up hope during terrifying times.
. From mounting death tolls, to horrific bodily ailments, contracting the Black Plague was considered a fate worse than death. Combining his own experiences within each of the...
Author
Summary
Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" is an enchanting and thought-provoking tale that transcends time and gender, offering a profound exploration of identity, self-discovery, and the limits of societal roles. The novel tells the story of Orlando, a young nobleman in the Elizabethan era who miraculously transforms into a woman and embarks on a centuries-long journey through history. Through Orlando's extraordinary adventures-from Shakespeare's court to modern-day...
91) Richard III
Author
Summary
Presents the original text of Shakespeare's play side by side with a modern version, with marginal notes and explanations and full descriptions of each character.
93) Antigone
Author
Summary
Publisher's description: Echoing through western culture for more than two millennia, Sophocles' play has been a touchstone of thinking about human conflict and human tragedy, the role of the divine in human life, and the degree to which men and women are the creators of their own destiny. This exciting new translation of the Antigone is both extremely faithful to the Greek and poetically striking and convincing.
Author
Summary
"This brilliant" sea adventure is "a powerful . . . meditation on . . . loyalty and betrayal, innocence and corruption, truth and deception" (Francine Prose, Elle)
After a hurricane destroys their Jamaican estate, the Bas-Thornton family send their children on a merchant ship back to England, hoping to restore them to a life of safety and comfort. But shortly after leaving Jamaica, the ship is seized by pirates and the children become unexpected...
Author
Summary
Sir Percy Blakeney lives a double life in the England of 1792: at home he is an idle fop and a leader of fashion, but abroad he is the Scarlet Pimpernel, a master of disguise who saves aristocrats from the guillotine. When the revolutionary French state seeks to unmask him, Percy's estranged, independent wife, Marguerite, unwittingly sets their agent on her husband's track. Percy's escapades, and Marguerite's daring journey to France to save him from...
96) The awakening
Author
Summary
The Awakening is a novel by Kate Chopin, first published in 1899. Set in New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast at the end of the 19th century, the plot centers on Edna Pontellier and her struggle between her increasingly unorthodox views on femininity and motherhood with the prevailing social attitudes of the turn-of-the-century American South. It is one of the earlier American novels that focuses on women's issues without condescension. It...
97) Mansfield Park
Author
Summary
When young Fanny Price comes to live with her aunt and uncle Bertram at Mansfield Park, it is because of the outcast state of her own parents. Her dreadful aunt and three cousins become her enemies, making her life miserable and causing Fanny to grow up quiet and shy. When the arrival of the Crawfords upsets the Bertram household, the young people become involved in dangerous plots to marry to better their station. Fanny has fallen in love with her...
98) The time machine
Author
Summary
Cuando un brillante inventor crea una máquina capaz de viajar en el tiempo, se embarca en un viaje al año 802701 d.C., sólo para descubrir un mundo futuro muy distinto del que jamás imaginó. En esta sociedad distópica, la humanidad ha evolucionado en dos clases distintas, los Eloi y los Morlocks, viviendo los primeros una existencia despreocupada y hedonista, mientras que los segundos se han convertido en criaturas brutas y nocturnas....
100) Romeo and Juliet
Author
Summary
Romeo and Juliet was the first drama in English to confer full tragic dignity on the agonies of youthful love. The lyricism that enshrines their death-marked devotion has made the lovers legendary in every language that possesses a literature.
