Humor Classics

Voltaire's Candide can only be described as a satirical novella that was intended to attack the optimistic and backwards way of thinking that was common during the 18th century. Filled with absurd and darkly humorous content, the short work is a highly debatable and thought-provoking piece. The story centers around Candide, the nephew of a baron, who's teacher, Pangloss, teaches Candide that the world is the way it should be and that everything in it is good.

Una narrazione disincantata e ironica denuncia il vuoto di valori che seguì la disfatta napoleonica. La cittadella descritta da Stendhal è in realtà molto diversa dalla vera cittadella di Parma e, invece, molto simile a Castel Sant'Angelo, dalla cui cella fuggì (calandosi con delle corde), nel Cinquecento, Alessandro Farnese, rinchiuso per aver rapito e sedotto una nobildonna romana. In seguito diviene cardinale e, poi, papa.

"I Viaggi di Gulliver" (Gulliver's Travels) è un capolavoro della letteratura mondiale, un romanzo che coniuga fantasia e satira...

Set and written in 1726, This is a marvelously imaginative tale of the four voyages of Lemuel Gulliver. He finds himself shipwrecked and the prisoner of captors ranging in size from 6 inches tall to 60 feet tall and of various other persuasions. But this is just the beginning of a story written, strangely enough to satirize the foolishness and vices of modern men as they were perceived at the time. No one, young or old, can ever forget the Lilliputians and the Yahoos that starred in these wonderful and riveting stories of long ago.

Questa colossale opera fu pubblicata nel 1862. Considerata uno dei romanzi più importanti del XIX secolo, narra la storia di vari personaggi nell’arco di 20 anni, intrecciando la loro vita alle vicende storiche della Parigi post Restaurazione.

Il racconto di Poe ci porta in un paese perfetto dove l'ordine regna sovrano e le radici culturali sono ironicamente notevolissime.Nulla può andare storto in un contesto di perfezione del genere... a meno che il diavolo non ci metta lo zampino.

Il più celebre romanzo di Pirandello, scritto nel 1904, narra la storia del bibliotecario Mattia Pascal, il quale, da ricco proprietario terriero, dopo una vita di sprechi e scioperataggine, si ritrova ridotto in miseria, a causa delle ruberie perpetrate dall'amministratore dei suoi terreni.Un vortice di disgraziate vicissitudini travolge la sua vita, quando infine, alla morte delle due figliolette, in preda alla disperazione, fugge da Miragno e, per puro caso si ritrova nel Casino di Montecarlo, dove vince una considerevole somma alla roulette.

O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. Includes: "By Courier", "Jimmie Hayes and Muriel", "School and Schools", "Roads of Destiny", "A Blackjack Bargainer"," A Cosmopolite in a Café", "Christmas by Injunction", "Mammon and the Archer", "A Bird of Bagdad", "After 20 Years", "From The Cabby’s Seat", "Lost on Dress Parade", "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog", "Tobin’s Palm", "Transients in Arcadia", "The Trimmed Lamp", and more.

E se in una tiepida notte di luna piena vi capitasse di incontrare Satana? È questo quello che accade a due esimi letterati moscoviti e purtroppo per loro, l'incontro significherà dolore e morte. Non saranno gli unici ad avere a che fare con il signore del male e il suo seguito di demoni. Lo strano e pericolosissimo gruppetto si fermerà infatti alcuni giorni a Mosca, provocando catastrofi e sconvolgimenti a tutte le persone che avranno la sventura di incontrarli, ma darà vita anche a situazioni esilaranti al limite dell'assurdo, descritte con una straordinaria comicità.

Hear two classic tales from Russian master of the short story Nikolai Gogol. This audiobook includes both his famous grotesque satire "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" and "The Carriage", in which Gogol's brilliant eye for social satire and explroation of social anxiety nearly ventures into the realm of the absurd.

Linbury goes green and Jennings and Darbishire want to do their bit for the environment. Given the simple task of distributing leaflets, what could go wrong? But when Darbishire’s shoelace refuses to stay tied, Jennings, using his usual initiative, removes the rubber band holding the leaflets together and performs an emergency shoelace repair. All seems fine, until a gust of wind hurls the leaflets over Marina Gardens.

El Buscón nos cuenta las aventuras de Pablos, un pícaro con "altos pensamientos de caballero". En el deseo de mejorar su posición social, el protagonista sale de su Segovia natal hacia otras ciudades como Madrid, Toledo y Sevilla, desde donde embarca a las Indias en un desesperado intento de cambiar su suerte. El ingenio y la magistral pluma de Quevedo consiguen que el lector disfrute con estas aventuras y desventuras de Pablos.

Horror, Humor, and Heroes is a collection of twelve short stories, one novella, and a preview for my next novel that should contain enough variety to entertain you readers. Sample some of my finest offerings, such as - a guardian wolf fearing the coming of man, a producer willing to do anything to bring the first pay per view live werewolf hunt to the world, and a zombie running for congress.

In 1729, Swift published A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick known today as A Modest Proposal. In this satire, Swift grotesquely suggests how the poor could solve the problem of their numerous families which they are struggling to feed.

Has Jeeves finally lost his grip? Wealthy, scatterbrained Bertie Wooster—with the aid of his ever-faithful butler, Jeeves—attempts to romantically link dreamy, soulful Gussie Fink-Nottle with soppy, sweet Madeline Bassett. But as soon as Bertie takes Gussie and Madeline's love connection into his own hands, things go disastrously wrong! Fortunately, Jeeves steps in to set matters straight. But the characters must endure tangled layers of comedic complications before they reach the invariably clever and satisfying finale.

Barry Lyndon is a picaresque novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published as a serial in Fraser's Magazine in 1844, about a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy. Thackeray, who based the novel on the life and exploits of the Anglo-Irish rake and fortune-hunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, later reissued it under the title The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. The novel is narrated by Lyndon himself, who functions as a quintessentially unreliable narrator.

Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Moreover, it is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.

Entranced by romantic tales of heroism and chivalry, Don Quixote—self-proclaimed knight errant—embarks on a delusional quest for fame and adventure. The eccentric Spanish country gentleman and his companion Sancho encounter an array of unforgettable characters and undertake some of the most famously foolhardy exploits in literature. Listeners will delight in following their chivalrous misadventures to right wrongs and punish evil in this timeless, laugh-out-loud tale.

Emmeline Lucas, known to all as "Lucia", and her husband, Peppino, acquire a second home in fashionable Brompton Square in London from a deceased Aunt. When they move there for the season, Lucia's 'subjects' in Riseholme seethe with envy and outrage that she has deserted them for more illustrious circles, where her snobbism and blatant ambition reach new heights.

Literary cohorts and members of the famous Algonquin Round Table, Dorothy Parker and Franklin P. Adams, made these two short audiobooks to humorously contrast the experiences of both men and women meeting, dating...and then deciding not to marry various men and women in their lives.