European Literature

"This story is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place introduce are as nothing.

The Man of Property, the first novel in Galsworthy's epic social satire The Forsyte Saga, introduces us to Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and prominent man of his important family. Accustomed to getting whatever he wants, he sets his sights with absolute determination on the beautiful Irene in spite of her pennilessness and her indifference to him.

Ce texte de Rousseau, paru initialement dans l'"Encyclopédie", souvent délaissé, voire tout à fait méconnu au profit du "Contrat social", occupe pourtant toute sa place dans l'œuvre laissée par le philosophe. À ses yeux, l'économie a en charge la bonne administration des questions d'ordre public comme l'éducation, la propriété, l'impôt.

Cambridge professor and renowned historian Anthony Pagden covers a vast subject in a compact package with Peoples and Empires. This wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating work examines the origins and history of the West with terse, efficient prose. With a captivating narration by Robert O'Keefe, listeners will find this work enjoyable and utterly absorbing.

Les proverbes sont une véritable sagesse populaire. Ils sont le fruit de centaines d'années d'histoires, de légendes, de spiritualité d'un peuple. Transmis oralement pendant des siècles, leur vérité et leur simplicité nous parlent immédiatement. Ces proverbes visent à donner accès à un peuple, une culture populaire, dans un format accessible à tous. Un proverbe est plus qu'une phrase anodine, ce peut être un trait d'esprit, un résumé d'une pensée complexe, une maxime, une ouverture sur une réflexion plus profonde.

Theodora: Actress, prostitute, mistress, feminist. And Byzantine Empress of the civilized world. Stephen: Handsome Syrian boy, wizard's apprentice, palace eunuch. And Secretary to the Empress. How does this unlikely pair become such allies that one day Empress Theodora asks Stephen to write her biography? From a very young age, Theodora, daughter of a circus bearkeeper in Constantinople, sets her sights well above her station in life. Her exquisite beauty sets her apart on stages and in the eyes of men.

Joseph Goebbels, born in 1897, aspired to be an author, obtained a PhD from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined the Nazi Party in 1924, After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry quickly gained and exerted controlling supervision over the news media, arts, and information in Germany.

In a magisterial work, Jaan Puhvel unravels the prehistoric Indo-European origins of the traditions of India and Iran, Greece and Rome, of the Celts, Germans, Balts, and Slavs. Utilizing the methodologies of historical linguistics and archaeology, he reconstructs a shared religious, mythological, and cultural heritage. Separate chapters on individual traditions as well as on recurrent themes—god and warrior, king and virgin, fire and water—give life to Comparative Mythology as both a general introduction and a detailed reference.

"Elles étaient au nombre de douze. Douze méduses qui plongèrent parmi les bulles éclairées au néon dans l'aquarium. Leurs tentacules flottant comme des fourreaux de fantômes." Dans les rues serpentines du Vieux-Nice, Rosa déambule au bras de son fils, Lino. Ensemble ils rêvent de posséder un hôtel dans lequel un immense aquarium accueillerait des méduses. À peine dix-neuf ans d'écart, ils forment un duo inséparable. Jusqu'au jour où Lino est arrêté et emprisonné pour le meurtre d'un enfant. Pour Rosa, l'innocence de son fils est incontestable.

Тошнота – это суть бытия людей, застрявших «в сутолоке дня». Людей – брошенных на милость чуждой, безжалостной, безотрадной реальности. Тошнота – это невозможность любви и доверия, это – попросту – неумение мужчины и женщины понять друг друга. Тошнота – это та самая "другая сторона отчаяния", по которую лежит Свобода.

Voici l'histoire du dernier des hommes qui parlait la langue des serpents, de sa sœur qui tomba amoureuse d'un ours, de sa mère qui rôtissait compulsivement des élans, de son grand-père qui guerroyait sans jambes, de son oncle qu'il aimait tant, d'une jeune fille qui croyait en l'amour, d'un sage qui ne l'était pas tant que ça, d'une paysanne qui rêvait d'un loup-garou, d'un vieil homme qui chassait les vents, d'une salamandre qui volait dans les airs, d'australopithèques qui élevaient des poux géants, d'un poisson titanesque las de ce monde et de chevaliers teutons.

"Onuphrius ou les vexations fantastiques d'un admirateur d'Hoffmann" est une nouvelle fantastique de Théophile Gautier.

Jim, the first mate aboard a small steamer named the Patna, travels from port to port in the Pacific Ocean. When the ship hits floating wreckage, Jim and the crew are forced to abandon it, leaving hundreds of ethnic travelers onboard. However, Jim's reprehensible actions are soon discovered by the court, and he is compelled to face his guilt and redeem himself - a journey that leads him to a remote exotic location where he is revered as the Lord, "Tuan Jim".

Depuis la mort de sa femme, Émile Sever mène avec son fils une existence recluse sur la ferme familiale, jusqu'au jour où il se résout à engager une domestique. Celle qui se présente a un passé mystérieux, une volonté farouche de s'ancrer quelque part. Aussi Florian l'accueille-t-il avec hostilité. Son père, obsédé par la transmission de son patrimoine à sa descendance, se prend à imaginer qu'elle pourrait être la parfaite épouse. Florian se fait à l'idée, d'autant que cela lui permet de préserver son jardin secret.

One of Henry James’ main themes was the interaction between the Old World and the New. Restless Baroness Eugenia Munster and her charming bohemian brother Felix are visiting their American cousins in Boston, New England. The effect these two extravagant characters have on their austere Puritan relations forms the substance of the book and is told in a series of scenes or ‘sketches’.

Berlin, 1961. Rudi Möser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an ambitious actor. With the sudden divorce of their parents, the brothers find themselves living in different sectors of a divided Berlin; the postwar partition strangely mirroring their broken family.

A mythical man known as Nightmare haunted young children for years. Until he became real. DCI Harry McNeil knows the legend all too well. Growing up in the Highlands, Nightmare was on his and every other child's mind as they went to sleep. Then, Nightmare claimed his first victim. A young girl, found dead in an abandoned cemetery with the words, I am Nightmare, carved into her chest. Two more victims, the same words carved into them. Then Nightmare disappears. Now, years later, there have been reports of graffiti being sprayed around Inverness and on graves in old cemeteries.

Una mujer hermosa e ingenua que roba con destreza a altos ejecutivos, un pintor habitado por fuerzas misteriosas y un sacerdote que se enfrenta a un caso de posesión demoníaca en La Candelaria, historias que se tejen en torno a la de Campo Elías, héroe de la guerra de Vietnam, quien inicia su particular descenso a los infiernos obsesionado por la dualidad entre el bien y el mal, entre Jekyll y Hyde, y se convertirá en un ángel exterminador.

With the summer season on Sandhamn comes an unsettling mystery for Detective Inspector Thomas Andreasson. A bullied young boy has vanished from a sailing camp on neighboring Lökholmen Island. Has the terrorized eleven-year-old run away? Or, in this isolated vacation spot where strangers lurk, is it something more ominous?

Released in our new Young Adult Classics format, Henry James's classic ghost story is a masterpiece of the supernatural. The tale is taken from the diary of a governess, who describes her mounting sense of paranoia at the relationship between her two wards and the ghostly figures that haunt the estate.