The Penguin classics ;

Headstrong and naive, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm for war and glory. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his impetuous nature and the political chicanery of his aunt Gina and her wily lover. Judged by Balzac to be the most important French novel of its time, The Charterhouse of Parma is a compelling novel of extravagance and daring, blending the intrigues of the Italian court with the romance and excitement of youth.

A landmark work of philosophy and of literature, Thus Spoke Zarathustra is the fullest expression of Nietzche's belief that "the object of mankind should lie in its highest individuals." In his thirtieth year Zarathustra - the archetypal Ubermensch representative of supreme passion and creativity - abandons his home for the mountains, where he lives, literally and figuratively, on a level of experience far above the conventional standards of good and evil. The exuberant, poetic testimony of Nietzche's great messianic hero (and alter ego) is a vivid demonstration of the philosopher's genius. Walter Kaufmann's celebrated translation - hailed by Newsweek for its "incandescent splendor of language"--Has gained general recognition as the most authoritative version of Zarathustra existing in English.

A prose translation of one the earliest versions of the tragic legend of Tristan and Yseult, along with an anonymous fragment concerning the episode of Tristan's madness.

Contains: Володя большой и Володя маленький [Дуэль]( [Жена]( [Страх]( Убийство Чёрный монах

Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation. But years later, when Effi has almost forgotten her affair, the secret returns to haunt her - with fatal consequences. In taut, ironic prose Fontane depicts a world where sexuality and the will to enjoy life are stifled by vain pretences of civilization, and the obligations of circumstance. Considered to be his greatest novel, this is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.

Although written over four hundred years after Alexander's death, Arrian's account of the man and his achievements is the most reliable we have. Arrian's own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world's greatest conqueror. He tells of Alexander's violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his defeat of Persia and campaigns through Egypt and Babylon - establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. While Alexander emerges as a charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power.

Capturing a ninteenth-century Spanish world of political tumult and personal obsession, Benito Pérez Galdós's Fortunata and Jacinta tells of two women who love the same man unfailingly - one as his mistress, the other as his wife. Agnes Moncy Gullón presents the detailed realism, the diversity of character and scene that have placed Fortunata and Jacinta alongside the voluminous works of Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac. Galdós's Madrid, recast from his youthful wanderings through the city's slums and cafés, includes the egg sellers and faded bullfighters surrounding Fortunata as well as the quieter, sequestered milieu of Jacinta's upbringing. Through Juanito, the lover of both women, the writer reveals Spain as a variegated fabric of delicate traditions and established vices, of shaky politics and rich intrigue. In this vast and colorful world, resonant of Dickens's London and Balzac's France, Galdós presents his characters with a depth, ambiguity, and humor born of the multiplicity of his scene.

Even more popular in their day than Don Quixote, Cervantes's Exemplary Stories (1613) blend picaresque narrative, comic irony, moral ambiguity, and sheer mirth. A nobleman undergoes a change of identity to prove his love for a mere gypsy girl; two young delinquents discover a guild of criminals which models itself on a religious brotherhood; a jealous old man imprisons his child-bride in a house which conjures up both convent and seraglio; a law graduate goes mad and believes he is made of glass, and most fantastically, talking dogs philosophize on the foibles of human society in a ward full of syphilitics. By combining the extraordinary and the ordinary, the Exemplary Stories chart new novelistic territory and demonstrate Cervantes at his most imaginative and innovative. Cervantes's Exemplary Stories (1613) surprise, challenge and delight. Ranging from the picaresque to the satirical, the Exemplary Stories defy the conventions of heroic chivalric literature through a combination of comic irony, moral ambiguity, realism, and sheer mirth. This new translation captures the full vigor of Cervantes's wit and make available two rarely printed gems, "The Illustrious Kitchen Maid" and "The Power of Blood." - Publisher.

The Cid, Corneille's masterpiece set in medieval Spain, was the first great work of French classical drama; Cinna, written three years later in 1641, is a tense political drama, while The Theatrical Illusion, an earlier work, is reminiscent of Shakespeare's exuberant comedies.

One of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer (1788-1860) believed that human action is determined not by reason but by 'will' - the blind and irrational desire for physical existence. This selection of his writings on religion, ethics, politics, women, suicide, books and many other themes is taken from Schopenhauer's last work, Parerga and Paralipomena, which he published in 1851. These pieces depict humanity as locked in a struggle beyond good and evil, and each individual absolutely free within a Godless world, in which art, morality and self-awareness are our only salvation. This innovative - and pessimistic - view has proved powerfully influential upon philosophy and art, directly affecting the work of Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Wagner among others.

Baghdad, throughout the Abbasid dynasty, was the centre of Arab-Muslim culture where the assimilation of Persian, Indian and Greek writing and thought produced a rich and diverse literature. The three poets represented in this volume wrote between the eighth and tenth centuries A.D., and range in mood from serious speculation to exuberant sensuality to delicate lyricism."--Back cover.