The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

ISBN 9781907832567

Amidst prosperity of the 1920s in New York we see a portrait of the Jazz Age, with its decadence and excess. This novel is considered Fitzgerald 's best work and captures the spirit of the author's generation.  A love story and a cautionary tale about the American Dream ingrained in Gatsby's journey to happiness, this story presents a fine example of 20th century American writing.

A month before publication, after a final review of the proofs, Fitzgerald asked if it would be possible to re-title the novel Trimalchio or Gold-Hatted Gatsby but his editor, Maxwell Perkins, advised against it. On March 19, Fitzgerald asked if the book could be renamed Under the Red, White and Blue but it was at that stage too late to change. The Great Gatsby was published on April 10, 1925. Fitzgerald remarked that "the title is only fair, rather bad than good." Read more >

"Civilization's going to pieces. I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things... The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be--will be utterly submerged... It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things. -- The Great Gatsby

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

ISBN: 9781909438019 (paper back) ISBN: 9781909438026 (ebook)

Clarissa Dalloway is preparing to host a party. She is the kind of woman you would pass on the street without a thought, and Woolf lets us see the dreams, fears, foibles, passion and pain that swirl endlessly inside Mrs. Dalloway. We follow Clarissa through the course of a single day, and as she goes about her errands, preparing for a party she’s giving that night, her lost love for an old flame resurfaces unexpectedly; her never-consummated lesbian longing for a childhood friend; and her endless yearning for some resolution, direction, permanence. Read More >

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

ISBN: 9781909676732 (paper back) ISBN: 9781909676749 (ebook)

A debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald, taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti. This Side of Paradise follows life of Amory Blaine, an attractive Princeton University student who dabbles in literature and formulates his own philosophy of romantic egoism. The novel explores post war uncertainties, the theme of love, greed and status-seeking. Read More >

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

ISBN:9781909175495 (ebook)

A story of a young man named Orlando, born in England, briefly a lover to the elderly queen followed by an intense love affair with a foreign princess whose sudden departure leaves him heartbroken. Orlando resorts to writing his poem The Oak Tree, started and abandoned in his youth. He finishes the poem only after mysterious transformation into a woman — the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. A semi-biographical novel based in part on the life of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West. Read More >

IT'S TIME by Pavel Kostin (English Edition)

ISBN 9781907832185

Set on the shores of the Baltic Sea, on rooftops lit with mesmerizing orange sunset and in the darkest corners of urban night. We find real characters there with depth and ideas searching for direction in their fragile lives and learning to express their ideas through art.

From up on the roof, you can see everything. You can see life scurrying below you, and see it with a calm objectivity. No prejudices, no assumptions. That's what Max, the compelling narrator does: even when he is not sitting on a rooftop, he looks at life with intelligent curiosity, amiable openness and good-humoured equanimity. Max is not only a great companion for the reader — a calm presence at the centre of events — but the perfect lens through which to see a hidden world.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

ISBN 9781907832390

Set in Joyce's native Ireland, the story follows life of a young man Stephen and his transformation from child to artist. In five chapters, we are taken through Stephen's early childhood in Ireland and confinement at boarding school, his dalliances with theatre and hiring prostitutes, his retreat from sensory excess into religious devotion, his retreat from religious devotion into aesthetic, ascetic excess, and, ultimately, his retreat from Ireland and fellowship in favour of destiny.

A major example of the Künstlerroman in English literature, a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel. It is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. The manuscript was rescued by Joyce's sister when he attempted to burn the original in a fit of rage during an argument with his wife.

IT'S TIME (Время Пришло) by Pavel Kostin (Russian Edition)

ISBN 9781907832215

Set on the shores of the Baltic Sea, on rooftops lit with mesmerizing orange sunset and in the darkest corners of urban night. We find real characters there with depth and ideas searching for direction in their fragile lives and learning to express their ideas through art. Also available in English translation by James Rann, read more here >

From up on the roof, you can see everything. You can see life scurrying below you, and see it with a calm objectivity. No prejudices, no assumptions. That's what Max, the compelling narrator does: even when he is not sitting on a rooftop, he looks at life with intelligent curiosity, amiable openness and good-humoured equanimity. Max is not only a great companion for the reader — a calm presence at the centre of events — but the perfect lens through which to see a hidden world.

A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov

ISBN 9781907832345

Lermontov’s only full-scale novel, which prophetically describes the duel in which he later lost his own life. The hero of the novel, Pechorin is an intense individual, a military officer who kidnaps beautiful daughter of Circassian tribesman and who, according to Lermantov’s own introduction, is a composite portrait, made up of all the vices which flourish, full grown, amongst the generation of the time. Read more here>

On July 25, 1841, at Pyatigorsk, fellow soldier Nikolai Martynov, who had been the butt of Lermontov's jokes, challenged Lermontov to a duel. The duel took place two days later at the foot of Mashuk mountain. Lermontov deliberately chose the edge of a precipice for the duel, so that if either combatant was wounded, he would fall and his fate would be sealed. Lermontov was killed by Martynov's first shot. Much of his best verse was posthumously discovered in his pocket-book. Read more >

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

ISBN 9781907832338

Oscar Wilde's only novel, a classic instance of the aestheticism of the 19th century English literature. Dorian is what I would like to be – in other ages, perhaps, said Oscar Wilde describing this novel. Basil Hallward is what I think I am. Lord Henry is what the world thinks I am.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake. Read more >