* Harry Mulisch's The Assault was an international bestseller which was made into an Oscar Award-winning film. This magnificent epic has been compared to works by Umberto Eco, Thomas Mann, and Dostoevsky. Harry Mulisch's magnum opus is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes--friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, reli...more
The indisputable bible of the Beat Generation, "On the Road" (1957) fictionalizes Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend, Neal Cassidy.
DARKNESS THREATENS to overtake Earthsea. As the world and its wizards are losing their magic, Ged -- powerful Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord -- embarks on a sailing journey with highborn young prince, Arren. They travel far beyond the realm of death to discover the cause of these evil disturbances and to restore magic to a land desperately thirst...more
Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death...more
Often compared to Tolkien's Middle-Earth or Lewis's Narnia, Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea is a stunning fantasy world that grabs quickly at our hearts, pulling us deeply into its imaginary realms. Four books A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore and Tehanu) tell the whole Earthsea cycle--a tale about a reckless, awkward bo...more
Years before, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan -- she, an isolated young priestess, he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer's widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary life. And he is a broken old man, mourning the powers lost to him not by choice.A lifetime ago, they helped each other at a ti...more
Months after his predecessor and lover is hit and killed by a car while reading a volume of Dickinson poetry, a Cambridge professor receives a copy of a Conrad novel with a mysterious dedication and travels to Buenos Aires and Uruguay in search of its sender.
In their youth, Florentino Ariza and Fermino Daza fall passionately in love. When Fermina eventually chooses to marry a wealthy, well-born doctor, Florentino is devastated, but he is a romantic. As he rises in his business career he whiles away the years in 622 affairs--yet he reserves his heart for Fermina. Her husband dies at last, and Flore...more
Ursula K. Le Guin's award-winning, groundbreaking science fiction classic takes us to the world of Winter, and introduces us to its inhabitants, the Gethenians-whose society is not based on gender roles.
Here, for a change, is a fish tale that actually does honor to the author. In fact The Old Man and the Sea revived Ernest Hemingway's career, which was foundering under the weight of such postwar stinkers as Across the River and into the Trees. It also led directly to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1954 (an award Hemingway gladly accepted, desp...more