winter

'He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration ... doomed to perish in tortures the most severe' Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.

وُلد ويليام ستونر في أواخر القرن التاسع عشر لأسرة زراعية فقيرة معدمة في ميزوري. أُرسل إلى الجامعة الحكومية لدراسة علم الزراعة، لكنه يقع بدلًا من ذلك في حب الأدب الإنجليزي ويعتنق حياة الباحث العلمي، المختلفة كل الاختلاف عن الوجود الشاق الذي عرفه. ومع ذلك، ومع مرور السنوات، يواجه ستونر سلسلة من خيبات الأمل: فالزواج من عائلة «لائقة» يباعد بينه وبين والديه؛ وتتعرقل مسيرته المهنية؛ وتدير زوجته وابنته ظهريهما له ببرود؛ وتنتهي تجربة حب جديدة غيّرت حياته تحت وطأة تهديد الفضيحة. وإذ ينغلق على نفسه أكثر فأكثر، يعيد ستونر اكتشاف الصمت الرواقي لأسلافه ويواجه عزلة جوهرية. رواية جون ويليامز المضيئة والمؤثرة بعمق عمل يتسم بكمال هادئ. ويخرج ويليام ستونر منها لا بوصفه نموذجًا أمريكيًا أصيلًا فحسب، بل بطلًا وجوديًا غير متوقع، يقف، كأنه شخصية في لوحة لإدوارد هوبر، بارزًا في مواجهة عالم لا يرحم.

You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN here and here. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival. In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. This Norton Critical Edition includes a rich selection of background and source materials in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included. Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.

Written by Rimbaud at age 18 in the wake of a tempestuous affair with fellow poet, Paul Verlaine, A Season in Hell has been a touchstone for anguished poets, artists and lovers for over a century. This volume presents the text in French and English with photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe.

A lyrical debut novel from a musician and artist renowned for her sharp sexual and political imagery Jo is in a strange new country for university, and having a more peculiar time than most. A house with no walls, a roommate with no boundaries, and a home that seems ever more alive. Jo’s sensitivity, and all her senses, become increasingly heightened and fraught, as the lines between bodies and plants, and dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh. This debut novel from critically acclaimed artist and musician Jenny Hval, presents a heady and hyper-sensual portrayal of sexual awakening and queer desire. A complex, poetic and strange novel about bodies, sexuality and the female gender.

‘It is best to do nothing! The best thing is conscious inertia! So long live the underground!’Alienated from society and paralysed by a sense of his own insignificance, the anonymous narrator of Dostoyevsky’s groundbreaking Notes from Underground tells the story of his tortured life. With bitter sarcasm, he describes his refusal to become a worker in the ‘ant-hill’ of society and his gradual withdrawal to an existence ‘underground’. The seemingly ordinary world of St Petersburg takes on a nightmarish quality in The Double when a government clerk encounters a man who exactly resembles him – his double perhaps, or possibly the darker side of his own personality. Like Notes from Underground, this is a masterly study of human consciousness.Jessie Coulson’s introduction discusses the stories’ critical reception and the themes they share with Dostoyevksy’s great novels.

Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with the corrupt, money-hungry Ganya. In the end, Myshkin’s honesty, goodness, and integrity are shown to be unequal to the moral emptiness of those around him. In her revision of the Garnett translation, Anna Brailovsky has corrected inaccuracies wrought by Garnett’s drastic anglicization of the novel, restoring as much as possible the syntactical structure of the original story.

Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden sex worker, can offer the chance of redemption.

The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture. This award-winning translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky remains true to the verbal inventiveness of Dostoevsky’s prose, preserving the multiple voices, the humor, and the surprising modernity of the original. It is an achievement worthy of Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel.

Der türkische Klassiker über Liebe und Sehnsucht in einer Welt im Wandel, erstmals in englischer Sprache erhältlich. „Es ist vielleicht leichter, einen Mann abzutun, dessen Gesicht kein Anzeichen eines inneren Lebens erkennen lässt. Und wie schade das ist: Ein Hauch von Neugier genügt, um über Schätze zu stolpern, die wir nie erwartet hätten.“ Ein schüchterner junger Mann verlässt sein Zuhause im ländlichen Teil der Türkei, um im Berlin der 1920er Jahre ein Handwerk zu erlernen. Die überfüllten Straßen der Stadt, ihre blühende Kunstszene, leidenschaftliche Politik und zwielichtigen Kabaretts bilden die Kulisse für eine zufällige Begegnung mit einer Frau, die ihn für den Rest seines Lebens heimsuchen wird. Emotional kraftvoll, atmosphärisch dicht und berührend tiefgründig ist Die Madonna im Pelzmantel ein unvergesslicher Roman über Neuanfänge und das unergründliche Wesen der menschlichen Seele. „Leidenschaftlich, aber klar ... Alis Erfolg [liegt in] seiner Fähigkeit, das Entstehen eines Gefühls zu beschreiben, das von außen scheinbar geradlinig ist, in seinem Kern jedoch zwischen gegensätzlichen Extremen hin- und herschwingt und die Spannungen offenlegt, die ein solches Auf und Ab begleiten.“ Atilla Özkirimli, Schriftsteller und Literaturhistoriker

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction. A thoroughly absorbing, and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.

White Nights is a short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky that was published in 1848. Set in St. Petersburg, it is the story of a young man fighting his inner restlessness. A light and tender narrative, it delves into the torment and guilt of unrequited love. Both protagonists suffer from a deep sense of alienation that initially brings them together. A blend of romanticism and realism, the story appeals gently to the senses and feelings.

As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, a jealousy, and a sense of self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. Set against the rubble of the bombed city, in a time of gray austerity and deprivation, Winter Love recalls a life at its most vivid.