Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

In this hard-hitting novel, first published in 1924, the murky personal relationship between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor mirrors the troubled politics of colonialism. Adela Quested and her fellow British travelers, eager to experience the "real" India, develop a friendship with the urbane Dr. Aziz. While on a group outing, Adela and Dr. Aziz visit the Marabar caves together. As they emerge, Adela accuses the doctor of assaulting her. While...

"A hundred and fifty years after its first publication, Crime and Punishment continues to fascinate readers. It was the first of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's long novels to feature not only profound debate on the most pressing philosophical and spiritual questions of the day, but also a murder plot and a level of intrigue and tension associated more commonly with popular fiction than high literature. It established the author's reputation as both...

When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master, Mr Jones, and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced...

Written at a time of social unrest in Victorian Britain and set in London at the time of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots, Dickens's brooding novel of mayhem and murder in the eighteenth century explores the relationship between repression and liberation in private and public life. Barnaby Rudge tells a story of individuals caught up in the mindless violence of the mob. Lord George Gordon's dangerous appeal to old religious prejudices is interwoven...

A 50th-anniversary Deluxe Edition of the incomparable 20th-century masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov's fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life...