Manhattan Transfer is an American novel by John Dos Passos published in 1925. It focuses on the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories. It is considered to be one of Dos Passos' most important works. The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy and restles...

What does a professor Brazilian or otherwise think and do on the first day of class, standing before a group of “foreign” students to talk about Brazilian literature? This apparently simple question that gave rise to the essays gathered in this book opens a series of other questions: Who is this professor? How did he or she go about planning that first class? What challenges do professors face when teaching the literature of a country different from that of their students, and in a lan...

This "lyrically descriptive [novel] traces the terrible evolution of rural ways of life into cruelty and abuse via the history of one unhappy family." — Kirkus Reviews1898: In the small French village of Puy-Larroque, Éléonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and family with an iron hand. Éléonore passes her childhood with little heat and no runni...

New York Times Notable Book: A Manhattanite seeks Midwestern bliss and finds something else in this "funny, literate [and] often touching story" ( People).Television correspondent Lucinda Trout is unhappy about the superficiality and shallowness of her life in New York, not to mention the latest stratospheric rent hike. Seeking an escape, she proposes a new project: She'll move far, far away, to the wholesome, most-livable-list town of Prairie City, and sen...

A collection of short Christmas stories by some of Russia's greatest nineteenth and twentieth century authors—several appearing in English for the first time.Running the gamut from sweet and reverent to twisted and uproarious, this collection offers a holiday feast of Russian fiction. Dostoevsky brings stories of poverty and tragedy; Tolstoy inspires with his fable-like tales; Chekhov's unmatchable skills are on full display in his story of a female factory owner a...

The classic study of alienation, existentialism, and how great artists have portrayed characters who exist on the margins of society.Published to immense acclaim in the mid-1950s, The Outsider helped make popular the literary concept of existentialism. Authors like Sartre, Kafka, Hemingway, and Dostoyevsky, as well as artists like Van Gogh and Nijinsky, delved for a deeper understanding of the human condition in their work, and Colin Wilson's landmark book...

The basis for the Oscar–winning buddy film. "There is no questioning the rampant power achieved through shriveling, shattering scenes" ( Kirkus Reviews).Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in N...

This essay collection by the revered public intellectual displays his " profound erudition, lively wit, and passion for ideas of all shapes and sizes" ( Booklist).In these fourteen essays, Umberto Eco examines many of the ideas that have inspired his provocative and illuminating fiction. From the title essay—a disquisition of the notion that every country needs an enemy—he takes readers on an exploration of lost islands, mythical realms, a...

"It is not simply that [Dos Passos] has a keen eye for people, but that he has a keen eye for so many different kinds of people."— The New York TimesMarking the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" ( Time), The Big Money brings us back to America after the Great War, a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobil...

An in-depth exploration of the legacy of Joseph Stalin on the former Soviet Union, by the author of King Leopold's Ghost.Although some twenty million people died during Stalin's reign of terror, only with the advent of glasnost did Russians begin to confront their memories of that time. In 1991, Adam Hochschild spent nearly six months in Russia talking to gulag survivors, retired concentration camp guards, and countless others. The result is a riveting evo...

In "Ars√®ne Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes," Maurice Leblanc masterfully intertwines witty narration with elements of both crime fiction and adventure. The book presents a series of encounters between the suave gentleman thief Ars√®ne Lupin and the astute detective Herlock Sholmes'Äîa thinly veiled homage to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Leblanc's prose, laced with clever wordplay and a lighthearted tone, captures the tension between the two iconic characters, while exploring themes ...

From a Nobel Prize winner: "A psychological, even metaphysical thriller that will keep you turning the pages . . . with growing alarm and alacrity." — The Seattle TimesA Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the YearSenhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage,...