Klasika

Charles Bukowski’s brilliant, fantastical pastiche of a detective story. Packed with wit, invention and Bukowski’s trademark lowlife adventures, it is the final novel of one of the most enjoyable and influential cult writers of the last century. Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued not just by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, but also by the surreal jobs he’s been hired to do. Not only has been hired to track down French classical author Celine – who’s meant to be dead – but he’s also supposed to find the elusive Red Sparrow – which may or may not be real.

With an Introduction and Notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. Tender is the Night is a story set in the hedonistic high society of Europe during the 'Roaring Twenties'. A wealthy schizophrenic, Nicole Warren, falls in love with Dick Diver - her psychiatrist. The resulting saga of the Divers' troubled marriage, and their circle of friends, includes a cast of aristocratic and beautiful people, unhappy love affairs, a duel, incest, and the problems inherent in the possession of great wealth. Despite cataloguing a maelstrom of interpersonal conflict, Tender is the Night has a poignancy and warmth that springs from the quality of Fitzgerald's writing and the tragic personal experiences on which the novel is based. Six years separate

Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. Sense and Sensibility is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival.

Jane Austen's novel tells the story of Marianne Dashwood, who wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love - and its threatened loss - the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

One of the great imaginative novels of the century, a fierce political satire, filled with the most dazzling surreal humour. One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by two demons, a beautiful naked witch and a huge black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. When the visitors leave, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, remain undiminished. An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, "Zooey", plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny's emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice. Written in Salinger's typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that ha

Joyce's first major work, written when he was only twenty-five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. He writes of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, yet creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

Phileas Fogg is the most laconic and orderly of men. His house in Saville Row is run like clockwork and his routine is meticulous. Passepartout, his new servant, is looking for a quiet life, but he is to be disappointed: on the very day he is employed, his master tells him to pack at once for a journey around the world. At his club that day, Fogg bet half his fortune that he could travel the world in an easterly direction in eighty days; so he and Passepartout begin their voyage. But Detective Fix of Scotland Yard finds it coincidental that Fogg should want to escape England in such a hurry while there is a robber on the loose. Convinced they are one and the same person he joins them on the first leg of their epic travels. A race against time to save face and fortune, Around the World

Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is fully of children. The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, ho

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it'. Thus wrote Orwell following his experiences as a militiaman in the Spanish Civil War, chronicled in Homage to Catalonia. Here he brings to bear all the force of his humanity, passion and clarity, describing with bitter intensity the bright hopes and cynical betrayals of that chaotic episode.
Pages: 272

These special fairy tales, which Oscar Wilde made up for his own sons, include 'The Happy Prince', who was not as happy as he seemed; 'The Selfish Giant', who learned to love little children; 'The Star Child', who suffered bitter trials when he rejected his parents. . . . Often whimsical and sometimes sad, they all shine with poetry and magic.