Ivan Cankar is considered one of four representatives of Slovenian modernism (in addition to Murn, Kette, and Župančič). In 1899, which is now considered the beginning of Slovenian modernism, Župančič's debut collection of poetry "Čaša opojnosti" (The Goblet of Inebriation) and Cankar's "Erotika" (Eroticism) were published. Cankar soon began to write fiction and plays. His sketches, stories, novellas, and, later, novels and plays were influenced by the Romantics, naturalism, decadence, sym...

The Serfs is a piece of Slovenian classical drama. It is one of the key literary works in the Slovene language, published by Ivan Cankar. Translated by Lesley Zore, it comes for the first time in the English Language.It is the year of 1907. The clerical party has achieved a victory in the Austro-Hungarian parliamentary elections. Can a progressive teacher recover from this conservative bullshit? Let's see...Content Warnings and other specifics, such as lite...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

Throughout the long centuries of human history is the want, and the need, to share information, to exchange ideas and for that knowledge and experience, for curiosity and learning, to be the basis of a civil society.In literature the ambition is much narrower. In order to be known, to be popular, you had to be published. And for that people had to know you existed and your ideas worth reading. Obviously for most of humanity’s time people couldn’t read and texts couldn’t be publishe...

'It is only a bruise'A carefree Russian official has what seems to be a trivial accident...One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

Leo Tolstoy’s harrowing tale about a man battling a mysterious illness who must confront his impending death, the pitfalls of redemption, and the meaning of life itself.Hailed as one of the world’s supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, a...

The Plummeting Old Women by Daniil Kharms is a collection of stories, incidents, dialogues and fragments that forms an important part of the buried literature of Russian modernism now revealed under glasnost. These texts are characterized by a startling and macabre novelty, with elements of the grotesque, fantastic and child-like touching the imagination of the everyday. They express the cultural landscape of Stalinism – years of show trials, mass atrocities and stifled political life. The...

In "Basic Mandarin Chinese For Beginners! Book 1 & 2: Your First Mandarin Book & Your Second Mandarin Book", you'll be learning the absolute best way to begin mastering Mandarin Chinese. By combining all aspects of the language, you will quickly become a fluent speaker, an excellent listener, a strong reader and a beautiful writer of Mandarin Chinese.The most important thing about learning Mandarin Chinese is to be patient, diligent and above all, have fun.Trust in the learning pro...

“Over the past hundred years we have had numerous versions . . . of [Tolstoy’s] major works. This volume, however, is arguably the best so far.” —Times Literary SupplementIn the last two days of his own life, Peter Carson completed these new translations of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession before he succumbed to cancer in January 2013. Carson, the eminent British publisher, editor, and translator who, in the words of his author Mar...

This new edition combines Tolstoy’s most famous short tale, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, with a less well known but equally brilliant gem, Master and Man, both newly translated by Ann Pasternak Slater. Both stories confront death and the process of dying: In Ivan Ilyich, a bureaucrat looks back over his life, which suddenly seems meaningless and wasteful, while in Master and Man, a landowner and servant must each confront the value of the other as they brave a devas...

Who better to tell the story of Ukraine than a kobzar, one of the country’s blind wandering minstrels that sang of its history and people? It is this iconic and entertaining figure, who walked the land and conveyed its traditions, that serves as the prism through which Taras Shevchenko composed his pioneering collection of poems, The Kobzar.The origin of the poems themselves is extraordinary. Written over a span of nearly 25 years, they mark many crossroads in Shevchenko’s life. Th...

'no one pitied him as he would have liked to be pitied' As Ivan Ilyich lies dying he begins to re-evaluate his life, searching for meaning that will make sense of his sufferings. In 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich' and the other works in this volume, Tolstoy conjures characters who, tested to the limit, reveal glorious and unexpected reserves of courage or baseness of a near inhuman kind. Two vivid parables and 'The Forged Coupon', a tale of criminality, explore class relations ...