In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps--a community devoted exclusively to sickness--as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. The Magic Mountain is a monumental work of erudition and irony, sexual tension and intel...more
This, Cortázar’s great political novel, focuses on the political condition of Latin America. It is a controversial blend of his aesthetic searches and his interest in the revolutionary movements of those times. This manual for the child Manuel is a sort of collage of press clippings, and among other things it reveals torture techniques used by U...more
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is an ominous fable about the pursuit of great wealth. Readers will be transported to a fabulous fantasy land of such opulence that its very existence has to remain a jealously guarded secret. Fatal consequences lie in store for 'bona fide' guests and uninvited visitors alike, while the sybaritic luxury of the place i...more
N. S. Rubashov, an old guard Communist, falls victim to an unnamed government; with outstanding psychological insight, Koestler traces his story through arrest, imprisonment and trail in a classic novel which, when first published, famously drew attention to the nature of Stalin's regime.
Joe Christmas does not know whether he is black or white. Faulkner makes of Joes tragedy a powerful indictment of racism; at the same time Joe's life is a study of the divided self and becomes a symbol of 20th century man.
One of Woolf’s most experimental novels, The Waves presents six characters in monologue - from morning until night, from childhood into old age - against a background of the sea. The result is a glorious chorus of voices that exists not to remark on the passing of events but to celebrate the connection between its various individual parts.
Published in 1934, TENDER IS THE NIGHT was one of the most talked-about books of the year. "It's amazing how Excellent much of it is," Ernest Hemingway said to Maxwell Perkins. "I will say now," John O'Hara wrote Fitzgerald, "TENDER IS THE NIGHT is in the early stages of being my favorite book, even more than THIS SIDE OF PARADISE." And Archibald M...more