Modern classics

Written against a backdrop of brutal conflict and rising racism across Europe, this collection of writings by Sigmund Freud explore the underlying forces of modern neuroses and war.

The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940. The story concerns a visit by the devil and his entourage to the officially atheist Soviet Union. The devil, manifested as one Professor Woland, challenges the Soviet citizens' beliefs towards religion and condemns their behavior throughout the book. The Master and Margarita combines supernatural elements with satirical dark comedy and Christian philosophy, defying categorization within a single genre. Many critics consider it to be one of the best novels of the 20th century, as well as the foremost of Soviet satires. A censored version, with several chapters cut by editors, was published posthumously in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967 by his widow Elena Bulgakova. The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and editions.

« Visions de Cody est sans doute l’œuvre la plus ambitieuse de Jack Kerouac. Composée d’esquisses du New York des années 1950, du portrait intime des proches de l’écrivain, de la retranscription de leurs conversations sous drogues et alcool, elle constitue le complément indispensable au célèbre Sur la route. «Visions de Cody est une étude de caractère de six cents pages du héros de Sur la route, "Dean Moriarty", dont le nom est désormais "Cody Pomeray". Je voulais entreprendre un hymne immense qui unirait ma vision de l’Amérique avec des mots crachés selon la méthode spontanée moderne. Au lieu d’un simple récit horizontal des voyages sur la route, je voulais une étude verticale, métaphysique du personnage de Cody et de sa relation à "l’Amérique" en général.» Jack Kerouac. »--

Doctor Sax (Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three) is a novel by Jack Kerouac published in 1959. Kerouac wrote it in 1952 while living with William S. Burroughs in Mexico City. The novel was written quickly in the improvisatory style Kerouac called “spontaneous prose.” In a letter to Allen Ginsberg dated May 18, 1952, Kerouac wrote, “I’ll simply blow [improvise like a jazz musician] on the vision of the Shadow in my 13th and 14th years on Sarah Ave. Lowell, culminated by the myth itself as I dreamt it in Fall 1948 . . . angles of my hoop-rolling boyhood as seen from the shroud.” In a letter to Ginsberg dated November 8 of the same year, Kerouac admits “Doctor Sax was written high on tea [marijuana] without pausing to think, sometimes Bill [Burroughs] would come in the room and so the chapter ended there, . . .” (ibid, p. 185).

After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious El Dorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn’t think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over ten years of cases wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures. But the pieces never quite add up to revenge, and the few clues he has keep connecting to a dimwitted hooker, and her ex-con boyfriend and the bizarre murder of a Hare Krishna pimp.

Having spent some time in Rome, Antonio returns to his native town with the reputation of being a playboy and with a long list of amorous adventures behind him. To please his father, he agrees to marry the beautiful Barbara. A year after their marriage however - scandal erupts.

" ... An ageing man writes an apology for his rudeness to a librarian thirty-five years earlier, unleashing a dazzling, rancorous comic riff on growing old, regret, rudeness, smoking and 'the world's grandeur'."--Publisher description.

Gora (Bengali: গোরা) is a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, set in Calcutta (now Kolkata), in the 1880s during the British Raj. It is the fifth in order of writing and the longest of Tagore’s twelve novels. It is rich in philosophical debate on politics and religion. Other themes include liberation, universalism, brotherhood, gender, feminism, caste, class, tradition versus modernity, urban elite versus rural peasants, colonial rule, nationalism and the Brahmo Samaj.

Leslie Titmuss has risen to become Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Ecological Affairs and Planning. But market forces are encroaching on Rapstone Valley. The question is should Titmuss support or withstand these cataclysmic changes?

In 600 A.D. in northern Britain, Prosper becomes a shield bearer with the Companions, an army made up of three hundred younger sons of minor kings and trained to act as one fighting brotherhood against the invading Saxons.

One of the greatest fiction writers in Hindi, Munshi Premchand (1880-1936) wrote over 300 short stories, a dozen novels and two plays over a prolific career spanning three decades. This book brings together 23 classic tales which provide a glimkpse of the author's extraordinary range and diversity.