"Nine mesmerizing stories saturated in the details of Roman life that showcase Jhumpa Lahiri's extraordinary range and virtuosity"-- "Rome--metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multifaceted and metaphysical--is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories: the first short-story collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth. In 'The Boundary,'...

"Murasaki Shikibu, born into the middle ranks of the aristocracy during the Heian Period (794-1185 CE), wrote The Tale of Genji--widely considered the world's first novel--during the early years of the eleventh century. Expansive, compelling, and sophisticated in its representation of ethical concerns and aesthetic ideals, Murasaki's tale came to occupy a central place in Japan's remarkable history of artistic achievement and is now recognized as...

"Into a compelling real portrait of nineteenth-century Russian society Dostoevsky introduces his ideal hero, the saintly Prince Myshkin. The tensions subsequently unleashed by the hero's innocence, truthfulness, and humility betray the inadequacy of his moral idealism and disclose the spiritual emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate him. Myshkin's mission ends in idiocy and darkness, but it is the world that is rotten, not he. The Idiot (1868),...

Russia's first major novel, and perhaps still its most popular, Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls is a comic epic of greed and gluttony that is admired not only for its colorful cast of characters and devastating satire, but also for its sense of moral fervor.The anti-hero of the novel is a man named Chichikov, who hatches a brilliant plan to get rich quick. He will journey through Russia and buy up, at reduced rates, the recently deceased serfs of landowners,...

"In the middle of a blizzard a widow watches the ruin of her late husband's garden, until suddenly she sees a woman running naked in the falling snow. After telling her parents she is abandoning her Christian faith, a girl becomes infatuated with a Mormon missionary who reminds her of a boy killed in her village years before. When his family home is lost, a father desperately offers his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who will take them in....

"Alone but for her memories, Nancy has returned to Chile to wait for her cancer to take her away. Before her illness, before her husband's ridiculous death, before she fled home hidden in the back of a truck, she spent her youth at Playa Roja, swimming alongside the creepy old gringos amid rumors of young women gone missing and young men found dead. Nancy's bitter mother--mi madre mala, Nancy calls her--abandoned the family and her brother disappeared...

The small village of Puy-Larroque, southwest France, 1898. Éléonore is a child living with her father, a pig farmer whose terminal illness leaves him unable to work, and her God-fearing mother, who runs both farm and family with an iron hand. Éléonore passes her childhood with little heat and no running water, sharing a small room with her cousin Marcel, who does most of the physical labor on the farm. When World War I breaks out and the village...

A lo largo de la vida de Proust, nueve de sus cuentos pasaron desapercibidos; el escritor ni siquiera hablo de ellos. Quizas no estaba listo para compartir los primeros temas que estaba cultivando para su obra maestra, En busca del tiempo perdido. O tal vez, al tratar directamente con el deseo gay, fueron demasiado audaces, demasiado cercanos a la vida para la sociedad censuradora de la epoca. En estos cuentos, publicados en ingles por primera vez,...

"Olav settles in at his ancestral estate and soon brings Ingunn home as his wife. Both hope to put their troubles behind them, but the crimes and shameful secrets of the past have a long reach and tenacious hold. The consequences of sin, suspicion, and familial obligations may prove a greater threat to the pair's happiness than even their long years of separation"--

"Private investigator John Blacksad is up to his feline ears in mystery and intrigue, digging up the backstories behind murders, child abductions, and nuclear secrets during the 1950s Red Scare in the United States"--P. [4] of cover.