Febrero

Could you survive on your own in the wild, with every one out to make sure you don't live to see the morning? In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.

Cansados de sufrir abusos, los animales de la granja de los Jones deciden rebelarse contra sus amos. Tras echar al propietario, establecen un nuevo orden basado en la igualdad. Sin embargo, pronto surge entre ellos una nueva clase de burócratas, los cerdos, que, con astucia, codicia y prepotencia, se imponen sobre el resto de animales. Concebida como una sátira mordaz del estalinismo, el carácter universal de su mensaje convierte esta novela en un extraordinario análisis de la corrupción que engendra el poder, una furibunda diatriba contra los totalitarismos y un lúcido examen de las manipulaciones que sufre la verdad histórica en los momentos de transformación política.

Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human, this leading postwar Japanese writer's second novel, tells the poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. In consequence, he feels himself "disqualified from being human" (a literal translation of the Japanese title). Donald Keene, who translated this and Dazai's first novel, The Setting Sun, has said of the author's work: "His world … suggests Chekhov or possibly postwar France, … but there is a Japanese sensibility in the choice and presentation of the material. A Dazai novel is at once immediately intelligible in Western terms and quite unlike any Western book." His writing is in some ways reminiscent of Rimbaud, while he himself has often been called a forerunner of Yukio Mishima. Cover painting by Noe Nojechowiz, from the collection of John and Barbara Duncan; design by Gertrude Huston