Is falling in love the beginning...Or the end? In Ethan Wate's hometown there lies the darkest of secrets. There is a girl. Slowly, she pulled the hood from her head. Green eyes, black hair. Lena Duchannes. There is a curse. On the Sixteenth Moon, the Sixteenth Year, the Book will take what it's been promised. And no one can stop it. In the end, there is a grave. Lena and Ethan become bound together by a deep, powerful love. But Lena is cursed and on her sixteenth birthday, her fate will be decided. Ethan never even saw it coming. Don't miss the Warner Brothers and Alcon Entertainment blockbuster movie of Beautiful Creatures directed by Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) and featuring an all star cast including Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davies and hot young Hollywood talent Alice Englert, Alden Ehrenreich and Emmy Rossum. Praise for Beautiful Creatures: "This novel has been generating Twilight-level buzz". (Teen Vogue). About the authors: @kamigarciais a superstitious American southerner who can make biscuits by hand and pies from scratch! She attended George Washington University and is a teacher and reading specialist.She lives in Los Angeles, California with her family. @mstohlhas written and designed many successful video games, which is why her two beagles are named Zelda and Kirby. She has degrees from Yale and Stanford Universities in the US and has also studied in the prestigious creative writing department at UEA, Norwich. She lives in Santa Monica, California with her family. Also available in the Beautiful Creatures series: Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos and Beautiful Redemption. Don't miss the brand new Dangerous Creatures series, set in the world of Beautiful Creatures. Exclusive ebook novellas also available: Dream Dark Dangerous Dream.
The film version of the first Percy Jackson adventure is due to hit our screens in February 2010, and promises to be one of the big family adventure releases of the year. It is directed by Chris Columbus, stars Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman and Sean Bean, will no doubt feature amazing visual effects and promises to bring the books themselves to a far wider audience than they have already reached.
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories" is a collection of stories that emerged from a profound spiritual crisis, during which Leo Tolstoy believed that he had encountered death itself. This "Penguin Classics" edition is translated with an introduction by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks. These seven compelling stories explore, in very different ways, Tolstoy's preoccupation with mortality. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" is a devastating account of a man fighting his inevitable end, and asks the existential question: why must a good person be taken before his time? In "Polikushka", a light-fingered drunk's chance to prove himself has tragic repercussions, while "Three Deaths" depicts the last moments of an aristocrat, a peasant and a tree, and "The Forged Coupon" shows a seemingly minor offence that leads inexorably to ever more horrific crimes. And in three tales about soldiers, "After the Ball", "The Wood-felling" and "The Raid", Tolstoy portrays the brutality that all too often accompanies military life. The translations by Anthony Briggs, David McDuff and Ronald Wilks capture Tolstoy's powerful, vivid prose.This edition also includes a new introduction by Anthony Briggs discussing Tolstoy's breakdown and the effect this had on his writing, as well as a chronology, further reading and notes. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in central Russia. He led a life of wasteful idleness until 1851, when he travelled to the Caucasus and joined the army with his older brother, fighting in the Crimean war. After marrying Sofya Behrs in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878). In 1884 Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis, becoming an extreme moralist, rejecting the state, the church and private property. His last novel, "Resurrection" (1900), was written to raise money for the Doukhobor sect of Christian spiritualists. If you enjoyed "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", you might like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", also available in "Penguin Classics".
Beautiful, bored and bourgeoise, Sabina leads a double life inspired by her relentless desire for brief encounters with near-strangers. Fired into faithlessness by a desperate longing for sexual fulfilment, she weaves a sensual web of deceit across New York. But when the secrecy of her affairs becomes too much to bear, Sabina makes a late night phone-call to a stranger from a bar, and begins a confession that captivates the unknown man and soon inspires him to seek her out
"The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories" collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This "Penguin Classics" edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair with an introduction by James Dickey. "The Call of the Wild", London's masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada's Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog struggling to survive in a human society every bit as violent as the natural world. This volume of Jack London's famed stories of the North also includes "Batard", in which an abused dog takes revenge on his owner; and "Love of Life", in which an injured prospector, abandoned by his partner, must struggle home alone through the wilderness, stalked by a lone wolf. In his introduction, James Dickey probes London's strong personal and literary identification with the wolf-dog as a symbol and totem. Andrew Sinclair, London's official biographer and the volume's editor, provides a brief account of London's life as a sailor, desperado, socialist, adventurer and acclaimed author.Jack London (1876-1916) was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco, California. By the age of sixteen he had left school, worked in a canning factory, spent time as an oyster pirate and been a member of the Fish Patrol in the San Francisco Bay. In 1893 he joined a sealing cruise, which took him as far abroad as Japan. In 1896 he was caught up in the gold rush to the Klondike river in north-west Canada, which became the inspiration for "The Call of the Wild" (1903) and "White Fang" (1906). If you enjoyed "The Call of the Wild", you might like Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories", also available in "Penguin Classics".
Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" is a sprawling epic covering the impact of Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia on five different families. This "Penguin Classics" edition is translated with an introduction and notes by Anthony Briggs, with an afterword by Orlando Figes, author of "A People's Tragedy: Russian Revolution 1891-1924". At a glittering society party in St Petersburg in 1805, conversations are dominated by the prospect of war. Terror swiftly engulfs the country as Napoleon's army marches on Russia, and the lives of three young people are changed forever. The stories of quixotic Pierre, cynical Andrey and impetuous Natasha interweave with a huge cast, from aristocrats and peasants to soldiers and Napoleon himself. In "War and Peace", Tolstoy entwines grand themes - conflict and love, birth and death, free will and faith - with unforgettable scenes of nineteenth-century Russia, to create a magnificent epic of human life in all its imperfection and grandeur. Anthony Briggs' superb translation combines stirring, accessible prose with fidelity to Tolstoy's original, while Orlando Figes' afterword discusses the novel's vast scope and depiction of Russian identity.This edition also contains appendices, notes, a list of prominent characters and maps. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was born at Yasnaya Polyana, in central Russia. After marrying Sofya Behrs in 1862, Tolstoy settled down, managing his estates and writing two of his best-known novels, "War and Peace" (1869) and "Anna Karenina" (1878). In 1884 Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis, becoming an extreme moralist, rejecting the state, the church and private property. His last novel, "Resurrection" (1900), was written to raise money for the Doukhobor sect of Christian spiritualists. If you enjoyed "War and Peace", you might also like Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov". "A masterpiece...This new translation is excellent". (Anthony Beevor). "A book that you don't just read, you live". (Simon Schama).
In Iceland, the age of the Vikings is also known as the Saga Age. A unique body of medieval literature, the Sagas rank with the world's great literary treasures - as epic as Homer, as deep in tragedy as Sophocles, as engagingly human as Shakespeare. Set around the turn of the last millennium, these stories depict with an astonishingly modern realism the lives and deeds of the Norse men and women who first settled in Iceland and of their descendants, who ventured farther west to Greenland and, ultimately, North America. Sailing as far from the archetypal heroic adventure as the long ships did from home, the Sagas are written with psychological intensity, peopled by characters with depth, and explore perennial human issues like love, hate, fate and freedom.
Written in Berlin in 1934, "Invitation to a Beheading" contains all the surprise, excitement and magical intensity of a work created in two brief weeks of sustained inspiration. It takes us into the fantastic prison-world of Cincinnatus, a man condemned to death and spending his last days in prison not quite knowing when the end will come. Nabokov described the book as 'a violin in a void. The worldling will deem it a trick. Old men will hurriedly turn from it to regional romances and the lives of public figures ...The evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita ...But I know a few readers who will jump up, ruffling their hair'.
The semiautobiographical "Martin Eden" is the most vital and original character Jack London ever created. Set in San Francisco, this is the story of Martin Eden, an impoverished seaman who pursues, obsessively and aggressively, dreams of education and literary fame. London, dissatisfied with the rewards of his own success, intended Martin Eden as an attack on individualism and a criticism of ambition; however, much of its status as a classic has been conferred by admirers of its ambitious protagonist. Andrew Sinclair's wide-ranging introduction discusses the conflict between London's support of socialism and his powerful self-will. Sinclair also explores the parallels and divergences between the life of Martin Eden and that of his creator, focusing on London's mental depressions and how they affected his depiction of Eden.
His innovative thriller, as shocking now as when it was first published, the "Penguin Classics" edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror" is edited with an introduction by Robert Mighall. Published as a 'shilling shocker', Robert Louis Stevenson's dark psychological fantasy gave birth to the idea of the split personality. The story of respectable Dr Jekyll's strange association with the 'damnable young man' Edward Hyde; the hunt through fog-bound London for a killer; and the final revelation of Hyde's true identity is a chilling exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil. The other stories in this volume also testify to Stevenson's inventiveness within the Gothic tradition: "Olalla", a tale of vampirism and tainted family blood, and "The Body Snatcher", a gruesome fictionalisation of the exploits of the notorious Burke and Hare. This edition contains a critical introduction by Robert Mighall, which discusses class, criminality and the significance of the story's London setting. It also includes an essay on the scientific contexts of the novel and the development of the idea of the Jekyll-and-Hyde personality.Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was born in Edinburgh, the son of a prosperous civil engineer. Although he began his career as an essayist and travel writer, the success of "Treasure Island" (1883) and "Kidnapped" (1886) established his reputation as a writer of tales of action and adventure. Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing lent him a preoccupation with predestination and a fascination with the presence of evil, themes he explored in "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (1886), and "The Master of Ballantrae" (1893). If you enjoyed "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", you might like "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg", also available in "Penguin Classics". "Every bit as claustrophobic, creepy and chilling as when it first saw the light of day over a century ago". (Ian Rankin).
A heartaching portrayal of a woman faced by an impossible choice in the pursuit of happiness, Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" is edited with notes by Tim Dolin and an introduction by Margaret R. Higonnet in "Penguin Classics". When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive depiction of the wronged Tess and powerful criticism of social convention, "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", subtitled "A Pure Woman", is one of the most moving and poetic of Hardy's novels. Based on the three-volume first edition that shocked readers when first published in 1891, this edition includes as appendices: Hardy's Prefaces, the "Landscapes of Tess", episodes originally censored from the Graphic periodical version and a selection of the Graphic illustrations.Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), born Higher Brockhampton, near Dorchester, originally trained as an architect before earning his living as a writer. Though he saw himself primarily as a poet, Hardy was the author of some of the late eighteenth century's major novels: "The Mayor of Casterbridge" (1886), "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" (1891), "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1874), and "Jude the Obscure" (1895). Amidst the controversy caused by "Jude the Obscure", he turned to the poetry he had been writing all his life. In the next thirty years he published over nine hundred poems and his epic drama in verse, "The Dynasts". If you enjoyed "Tess of the D'Urbervilles", you might like Daniel Defoe's "Moll Flanders", also available in "Penguin Classics". "The greatest tragic writer among the English novelists". (Virginia Woolf).
Unkontrollierbaren Wutanfällen Die aufregenden Detektivabenteuer des wohl berühmtesten Bewohners der Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes, und seinem treuen Dr. Watson in vier Romanen und 56 Kurzgeschichten. Ein "Must-have" - nicht nur für ausgewiesene Fans des verschrobenen Amateur-Detektivs!
Ilya Ilyich Oblomov is a member of Russia's dying aristocracy a man so lazy that he has given up his job in the Civil Service, neglected his books, insulted his friends and found himself in debt. Too apathetic to do anything about his problems, he lives in a grubby, crumbling apartment, waited on by Zakhar, his equally idle servant. Terrified by the bustle and activity necessary to participate in the real world, Oblomov manages to avoid work, postpone change and finally risks losing the love of his life. Written with sympathetic humour and compassion, Oblomov made Goncharov famous throughout Russia on its publication in 1859, as readers saw in this story of a man whose defining characteristic is indolence, the portrait of an entire class in decline.
Part of "Penguin's" beautiful hardback "Clothbound Classics" series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. 'I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell. In the magical world of Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom, order is turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a tea-party; and, a chaotic game of chess makes a 7-year-old a Queen.
Sasha has returned to Paris, the city of both her happiest and most desperate moments. Her past lies in wait for her in cafes and bars, blurring all distinctions between nightmare and reality. When she is picked up by a young man, she begins to feel that she is still capable of desires.
"The Story of the Stone (c. 1760)", also known by the title of "The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners in Chinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "The Warning Voice" is the third, it charts the glory and decline of the illustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with the fortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters, Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour, realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects the ritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and above the novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another plane of existence - a theme which affirms the Buddhist belief in a supernatural scheme of things.
On the day of his wedding, Conrad, heir to the house of Otranto, is killed in mysterious circumstances. His calculating father Manfred fears that his dynasty will now come to an end and determines to marry his son's bride himself despite the fact he is already married. But a series of terrifying supernatural omens soon threaten this unlawful union, as the curse placed on Manfred's ancestor, who usurped the lawful Prince of Otranto, begins to unfold. First published pseudonymously in 1764, purporting to be an ancient Italian text from the time of the crusades, The Castle of Otranto is a founding work of Gothic fiction. With its compelling blend of sinister portents, tempestuous passions and ghostly visitations, it spawned an entire literary tradition and influenced such writers as Ann Radcliffe and Bram Stoker.
With their penetrating psychological insight and their emphasis on human dignity, respect and forgiveness, Dostoyevsky's early short stories contain the seeds of the themes that came to his major novels. "Poor Folk", the author's first great literary triumph, is the story of a tragic relationship between an impoverished copy clerk and a young seamstress, told through their passionate letters to each other. In "The Landlady", Dostoyevsky portrays a dreamer hero who is captivated by a curious couple and becomes their lodger. Mr. Prokharchin, inspired by a true story, is a sly comedy centring on an eccentric miser, and Polzunkov is a powerful character sketch which, in common with the other tales in this volume, questions the very nature of existence.
"The Gambler and Other Stories" is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's collection of one novella and six short stories reflecting his own life - indeed, "The Gambler", a story of a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian General, was written under a strict deadline so he could pay off his roulette debts. This volume includes "Bobok", the tale of a frustrated writer visiting a cemetery and enjoying the gossip of the dead; "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", the story of one man's plan to commit suicide and the troubling dream that follows, as well as "A Christmas Party and a Wedding", "A Nasty Story" and "The Meek One".
Published in 1782, just years before the French Revolution, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. At its centre are two aristocrats, former lovers, who embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While the Marquise de Merteuil challenges the Vicomte de Valmont to seduce an innocent convent girl, the Vicomte is also occupied with the conquest of a virtuous married woman. But as their intrigues become more duplicitous and they find their human pawns responding in ways they could not have predicted, the consequences prove to be more serious, and deadly, than Merteuil and Valmont could have guessed.
Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleeps with a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To end this brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king stories of adventure, love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled with princes and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits, tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba outwitting a band of forty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. The sequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.
In the summer of 1920 two men, both war survivors meet in the quiet English countryside. One is living in the church, intent upon uncovering and restoring an historical wall painting while the other camps in the next field in search of a lost grave. Out of their meeting, comes a deeper communion and a catching up of the old primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War.
In 1851, at the age of twenty-two, Tolstoy joined the Russian army and travelled to the Caucasus as a soldier. The four years that followed were among the most significant in his life, and deeply influenced the stories collected here. Begun in 1852 but unfinished for a decade, "The Cossacks" describes the experiences of Olenin, a young cultured Russian who comes to despise civilization after spending time with the wild Cossack people. Sevastopol Sketches, based on Tolstoy's own experiences of the siege of Sevastopol in 1854-55, is a compelling consideration of the nature of war, while Hadji Murat, written towards the end of his life, returns to the Caucasus of Tolstoy's youth to explore the life of a great leader torn apart by a conflict of loyalties. Written at the end of the nineteenth century, it is amongst the last and greatest of Tolstoy's shorter works.
Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of 'The Daily Beast', has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs. Algernon Stitch, he feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising little war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia.
Collection of some of the earliest cases, as they appeared in the Strand magazine in 1892 and 1893. First }PC{ edition, with a new introduction by Iain Pears, explanatory notes and full chronology.
More or less 150 years after Homer's Iliad, Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos, west off the coast of what is present Turkey. Little remains today of her writings, which are said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry - among them poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation and remembrance - that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse. This is a new translation of her surviving poetry.
Fading southern belle Blanche Dubois depends on the kindness of strangers and is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness.
Jorge Luis Borges was a literary spellbinder whose tales of magic, mystery and murder are shot through with deep philosophical paradoxes. This collection brings together many of his stories, including the celebrated "Library of Babel".
Susan Sontag's On Photography is a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject.Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the 'insatiability of the photographing eye' has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In these six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times'A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves' Washington Post'The most original and illuminating study of the subject' New YorkerOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.
When Betty Friedan produced "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963, she could not have realized how the discovery and debate of her contemporaries' general malaise would shake up society.Victims of a false belief system, these women were following strict social convention by loyally conforming to the pretty image of the magazines, and found themselves forced to seek meaning in their lives only through a family and a home. Friedan's controversial book about these women - and every woman - would ultimately set Second Wave feminism in motion and begin the battle for equality.This groundbreaking and life-changing work remains just as powerful, important and true as it was forty-five years ago, and is essential reading both as a historical document and as a study of women living in a man's world.
Beat movement icon and visionary poet, Allen Ginsberg broke boundaries with his fearless, pyrotechnic verse. This new collection brings together the famous poems that made his name as a defining figure of the counterculture. They include the apocalyptic 'Howl’, which became the subject of an obscenity trial when it was first published in 1956; the moving lament for his dead mother, 'Kaddish’; the searing indictment of his homeland, 'America’; and the confessional 'Mescaline’. Dark, ecstatic and rhapsodic, they show why Ginsberg was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century.
This is an all new version of the popular "Parallel Texts" series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original French and in English translation. Including stories by Bolanger, Cotnoir, Le Clezio and Germain, this volume gives a fascinating insight into French culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.
First paperback publication of this recently discovered first novella by Truman Capote, about a 17-year-old girl who has been left in New York while her parents spend the summer in Europe.
Collected here in Penguin Classics are two of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's shorter works, Notes from Underground and The Double, translated by Ronald Wilks with an introduction by Robert Louis Jackson. Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky's groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter irony, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the 'anthill' of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence 'underground'. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who looks exactly like him - his double, perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly tragicomic study of human consciousness. Ronald Wilks's extraordinary new translation is accompanied here by an introduction by Robert Louis Jackson discussing these pivotal works in the context of Dostoyevsky's life and times. This edition also contains a chronology, bibliography, table of ranks and notes on each work. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow. From 1849-54 he lived in a convict prison, and in later years his passion for gambling led him deeply into debt. His other works available in Penguin Classics include Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot and Demons. If you enjoyed Notes from Underground and The Double, you might like Dostoyevsky's Demons, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Notes from Underground, with its mood of intellectual irony and alienation, can be seen as the first modern novel ... That sense of meaninglessness of existence that runs through much of twentieth-century writing - from Conrad and Kafka, to Beckett and beyond - starts in Dostoyevsky's work' Malcolm Bradbury
From the bestselling author of "No Logo", Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" cracks open the secret history of our era to look at how from a privileged few are making millions from worldwide devastation. Around the world in Britain, the United States, Asia and the Middle East, there are people with power who are cashing in on chaos; exploiting bloodshed and catastrophe to brutally remake our world in their image. They are the shock doctors. Exposing these global profiteers, Naomi Klein discovered information and connections that shocked even her about how comprehensively the shock doctors' beliefs now dominate our world - and how this domination has been achieved. Raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed. "Packed with thinking dynamite ...a book to be read everywhere". (John Berger). "If you only read one non-fiction book this year, make it this one". ("Metro Books of the Year"). "There are a few books that really help us understand the present. The Shock Doctrine is one of those books". (John Gray, "Guardian")."A brilliant book written with a perfectly distilled anger, channelled through hard fact. She has indeed surpassed No Logo". ("Independent"). Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, author and filmmaker. Her first book was the international bestseller "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies", called 'a movement bible' by "The New York Times". "The Shock Doctrine" has been translated into more than twenty languages.
Homer's "Iliad" is the greatest and most influential epic poem ever written, telling of the tragic and bloody climax to the ten-year siege of Troy. This "Penguin Classics" edition was originally translated by E.V. Rieu, revised and updated with an introduction and notes by Peter Jones and D.C.H. Rieu. One of the foremost achievements in Western literature, Homer's "Iliad" tells the story of the darkest episode in the "Trojan War". At its centre is Achilles, the greatest warrior-champion of the Greeks, and his refusal to fight after being humiliated by his leader Agamemnon. But when the Trojan Hector kills Achilles' close friend Patroclus, he storms back into battle to take revenge - even though he knows this will ensure his own untimely death. Interwoven with this tragic sequence of events are powerfully moving descriptions of the ebb and flow of battle, of the domestic world inside Troy's besieged city of Ilium, and of the conflicts between the Gods on Olympus as they argue over the fate of mortals. E.V. Rieu's acclaimed translation of "The Iliad" was one of the first titles published in "Penguin Classics", and now has classic status itself.For this edition, Rieu's text has been revised, and now a new introduction and notes by Peter Jones complement the original introduction. Seven Greek cities claim the honour of being the birthplace of Homer (c. 8th-7th century BC), the poet to whom the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey are attributed. "The Iliad" is the oldest surviving work of Western literature, but the identity - or even the existence - of Homer himself is a complete mystery, with no reliable biographical information having survived. If you enjoyed the "Iliad", you might like Homer's "Odyssey", also available in "Penguin Classics".
