Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "money world" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind of security symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits in every middle-class British window.
I have noticed that sometimes I frighten people; what they really fear is themselves. They think it is I who scare them, but it is the dwarf within them, the ape-faced manlike being who sticks up his head from the depths of their souls.
P r Lagerkvist's richly philosophical novel The Dwarf is an exploration of individual and social identity. The novel, set in a time when Italian towns feuded over the outcome of the last feud, centers on a social outcast, the court dwarf PIccoline. From his special vantage point Piccoline comments on the court's prurience and on political intrigue as the town is gripped by a siege. Gradually, Piccoline is drawn deeper and deeper into the conflict, and he inspires fear and hate around him as he grows to represent the fascination of the masses with violence.
ONE OF THE GREATEST AMERICAN SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
In 1955, with this short story collection, Flannery O'Connor firmly laid claim to her place as one of the most original and provocative writers of her generation. Steeped in a Southern Gothic tradition that would become synonymous with her name, these stories show O'Connor's unique, grotesque view of life-- infused with religious symbolism, haunted by apocalyptic possibility, sustained by the tragic comedy of human behavior, confronted by the necessity of salvation.
With these classic stories-- including "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Good Country People," "The Displaced Person," and seven other acclaimed tales-- O'Connor earned a permanent place in the hearts of American readers.
"Much savagery, compassion, farce, art, and truth have gone into these stories. O'Connor's characters are wholeheartedly horrible, and almost better than life. I find it hard to think of a funnier or more frightening writer." -- Robert Lowell
"In these stories the rural South is, for the first time, viewed by a writer who orthodoxy matches her talent. The results are revolutionary." -- The New York Times Book Review
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was born in Savannah, Georgia. She earned her M.F.A. at the University of Iowa, but lived most of her life in the South, where she became an anomaly among post-World War II authors-- a Roman Catholic woman whose stated purpose was to reveal the mystery of God's grace in everyday life. Her work-- novels, short stories, letters, and criticism-- received a number of awards, including the National Book Award.
National Book Award Winner in poetry. Charles Baudelaire's 1857 masterwork, translated into English by acclaimed poet Richard Howard, along with the original French text.
Scandalous in its day for its portrayals of sex, love, death, the corrupting and oppressive power of the modern city and lost innocence, Les Fleurs Du Mal remains powerful and relevant for our time. In "Spleen et id al," Baudelaire dramatizes the erotic cycle of ecstacy and anguish--of sexual and romantic love. "Tableaux Parisiens" condemns the crushing effects of urban planning on a city's soul and praises the city's anti-heroes including the deranged and derelict. "Le Vin" centers on the search for oblivion in drink and drugs. The many kinds of love that lie outside traditional morality is the focus of "Fleurs du Mal" while rebellion is at the heart of "R volte." The voice of Baudelaire lives in this masterful translation. "Richard Howard, generally esteemed as the finest American translator from the French of the postwar era, offers a new version of this masterpiece," wrote The Washington Post. "It is the English edition to acquire."
Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, it is the story of a soul's long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role on this earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple's role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt--a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love affair with the beautiful courtesan Kamala, the temptation of success and riches, the heartache of struggle with his own son, to final renunciation and self-knowledge.
The name "Siddhartha" is one often given to the Buddha himself--perhaps a clue to Hesse's aims in contrasting the traditional legendary figure with his own conception, as a European (Hesse was Swiss), of a spiritual explorer.
This collection combines stories set in Welty's special province, the rural South, with stories having a European locale. This gives a wider range to her fiction and demonstrates the remarkable talent of one of the finest short-story writers of our time. "Humorous, piquant, graceful" (Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Sewanee Review).
This journal follows the church year from Advent to Advent, reflecting on its seasons and spiritual rhythms reflected in the life of the church and the author's own life.
In three "immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion" (The Sunday Herald Times London]), Simone de Beauvoir draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises.
Enthralling as faction, suffused with de Beauvoir's remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best.
