Search results

Childhood (Detstvo) appeared in 1852 and was Lev Tolstoy's first published work. Together with Boyhood (Otrochestvo) and Youth (Iunost') it forms a trilogy which, though fictional, is deeply rooted in Tolstoy's autobiography. As the first-person narrator grows out of childish innocence, he develops a growing awareness of the degree of deception inherent in adult behaviour and the extent to which he himself is increasingly capable of deception. Remarkable in its own right for its clear-sighted po...

Joseph Conrad is a largely enigmatic presence in his novels, but in A Personal Record he decided to introduce his readers to "the figure behind the veil". Almost equally revealing is The Mirror of the Sea, written in "tribute to the sea, its ships, and its men, to whom I remain indebted for so much which has gone to make me what I am". Both are full of Conrad's anecdotes and adventures about smuggling arms to Don Carlos, a claimant to the Spanish throne, and characters like the great-uncle who o...

During the last years of his life, Leo Tolstoy kept one book invariably on his desk, read and reread it to his family, and recommended it to all his friends: a compendium of wise thoughts gathered over the course of a decade from his wide-ranging readings in philosophy and religion, and from his own spiritual meditations. It was banned under the Communists, and only one volume, A Calendar of Wisdom, drawn largely from the writings of other famous thinkers, has been published before in English....

In the summer of 1886, shortly before his fifty-eighth birthday, Leo Tolstoy was seriously injured while working in the fields of his estate. Bedridden for over two months, Tolstoy began writing a meditation on death and dying that soon developed into a philosophical treatise on life, death, love, and the overcoming of pessimism. Although begun as an account of how one man encounters and laments his death and makes this death his own, the final work, On Life, describes the optimal life in which...

'How truth thickens and deepens when it migrates from didactic fable to the raw experience of a visceral awakening is one of the thrills of Tolstoy's stories'Sharon Cameron in her preface to The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other StoriesTolstoy wrote in many genres for different audiences. In this, the first of three volumes of his shorter fiction chosen and introduced by the critic Sharon Cameron, we see works originally written for children, like 'God Sees the Truth But Waits', and 'A Prisoner in t...

Although many teenagers these days would tell you there's nothing more exciting than being a vampire, Jerme Volt Ampere is not ready to embrace her destiny. Unfortunately this doesn't sit well with her 200-year old grandmother, with whom Jerne lives in the attic of an old house in Budapest. Budapest. Jerne Voltampere's grandmother doesn't look her age-- 284 years old. She is a vampire-- and wants her grandchild to follow the family tradition. Jerne writes children's books, but they are consider...

The most powerful and effective epic to have been written in Albanian for which no English translation exists. This is a unique resource for students and scholars of Balkan studies and comparative literature. "The Highland Lute" is the most powerful and influential epic to have been written in Albanian. Enormously popular when it appeared in the 1920s and 30s, it captivated the country with its vivid, archetypal characters and panoramic descriptions: the backdrop to Albania's historical battles...

Lord Jim (1900): Jim is one of Conrad's most complex creations, and Conrad explores, along the vast horizon of this gorgeous novel, the phenomena of shame, guilt, retribution -- and redemption. How right it is for our times!Originally published in 1904, Nostromo is considered by many to be Conrad's supreme achievement. Set in the imaginary South American republic of Costaguana, the novel reveals the effects of unbridled greed and imperialist interests on many different lives. V.S. Pritchett wrot...