'no one pitied him as he would have liked to be pitied' As Ivan Ilyich lies dying he begins to re-evaluate his life, searching for meaning that will make sense of his sufferings. …
'Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K. for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.' A successful professional man wakes up one morning to …
Indiana (1831) is an absorbing and vivid romantic novel, set partly in provincial France, partly in Paris, and partly on a tropical island. It tells the story of a beautiful and …
'My title speaks not merely of war, but also of the crumbling of a regime and the end of a world.' Émile Zola The penultimate novel of the Rougon-Macquart cycle, La Débâcle (1892) …
'If life could write, it would write like Tolstoy.' Isaac Babel Tolstoy's epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic …
The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth century Paris. The store is a symbol of …
Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations is as fresh, outspoken, and exciting today as it was in when it was first published in 1862. The controversial …
'Abbé Faujas has arrived!' The arrival of Abbé Faujas in the provincial town of Plassans has profound consequences for the community, and for the family of François Mouret in …
'In recent decades, interest in hunger artists has greatly diminished.' Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and …
'I have become whore through goodwill and libertine through virtue.' Orphaned and penniless at the age of twelve, the beautiful and devout Justine embarks upon her remarkable …
