Fiction & Literature (255)

How to Win the Nobel Prize in Literature

ISBN: 9781843913740

Author: David Carter   

With humour, wit and insight David Carter provides an account of the mixed fortunes of the Nobel Prize in Literature, together with tongue-in-cheek guidelines f...


With humour, wit and insight David Carter provides an account of the mixed fortunes of the Nobel Prize in Literature, together with tongue-in-cheek guidelines for the would-be laureate.
There are acclaimed writers - James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain - who never won the Nobel Prize - and others, less well-known, such as Henryk Sienkiewicz, Paul Heyse and Wladyslaw Reymont, who did. What do you have to do to impress, or be snubbed by the Nobel Committee? Using the device of a set of guidelines for the would-be laureate, the book explores many of the unusual and controversial decisions made by the committee over the years. The reader can discover the many quirky considerations that hopeful writers must bear in mind. Certain factors always help, such as 'being a man', and 'having your work translated into Swedish'. Presenting interesting quotes from the presentation and acceptance speeches and from other sources in the writers' works, David Carter provides answers to some intriguing questions, such as: why did some writers refuse to accept the prize, and why were others rejected? Is there evidence for political, ideological and geographical bias in the selection? Why was it sometimes awarded to two writers and sometimes not at all? What does it actually take to win?


Bind: hardback


Pages: 200


Publication Date: 20-09-2012


$34.99
The Frozen Deep

ISBN: 9781843910947

Author: Wilkie Collins    Publisher: Hesperus Press

Based on the doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, The Frozen Deep is a dramatic tale of vengeance and self-sacrifice. Exchanging vows of love with sailor Frank...


Based on the doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, The Frozen Deep is a dramatic tale of vengeance and self-sacrifice. Exchanging vows of love with sailor Frank Aldersley the night before his departure, Clara Burnham is haunted by the memory of Richard Wardour, and his mistaken belief that they will one day marry. On different ships, the two men have no cause to meet—until disaster strikes and they find themselves united by their battle for survival. When they learn of their rivalry, there follows an act of pure selflessness, making The Frozen Deep one of Collins' most moving and tragic works. The author of The Moonstone, The Woman in White, and Who Killed Zebedee?, Wilkie Collins is widely regarded as the originator of the English detective novel.


Bind: paperback


Publication Date: 28-09-2012


$19.99
The Haunted House

ISBN: 9781843910213

Author: Charles Dickens    Publisher: Hesperus Press

Compiled by Charles Dickens, and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins among its contributors, this rediscovered work is an ingenious collaborative tale...


Compiled by Charles Dickens, and counting Elizabeth Gaskell and Wilkie Collins among its contributors, this rediscovered work is an ingenious collaborative tale of the supernatural with indelible touches of pure Dickensian comedy. When the narrator spies a deserted house from his railway carriage, he determines to take up residence. But local legend has it that this is a haunted house, and no servant will dare enter employment. Refusing to be thwarted, he instead invites a number of acquaintances to join him, commissioning each with the task of routing out any supernatural inhabitants. As they gather together on twelfth night, each recounts his version of the ghostly activities.


Bind: paperback


Publication Date: 28-09-2012


$19.99
Notes From The Underground

ISBN: 9781843911265

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky   

Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is a composite of the tormented clerk and the frustrated dreamer of his earlier stories, but his Notes from the Underground is a ...


Dostoevsky’s Underground Man is a composite of the tormented clerk and the frustrated dreamer of his earlier stories, but his Notes from the Underground is a precursor of his great later novels and their central concern with the nature of free will. Initially musing on his “sickness” and the detested notion of self-interest, the maladjusted and willful Underground Man turns to a series of incidents from years earlier. Scornful of others and of himself, he recounts a party he attended at which, unwelcome, he got drunk and acted scandalously, the visit to a brothel that ensued, and the chance arrival there of love—love which, of course, by his very nature he cannot accept, and so debases. Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky is one of the greatest, most influential prose writers of all time.


Bind: paperback


Publication Date: 28-09-2012


$19.99
A Dog's Heart

ISBN: 9781843914020

Author: Mikhail Bulgakov    Publisher: Hesperus Press

Through his surreal, often grotesque humour, Bulgakov creates in this book - a new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and ...


Through his surreal, often grotesque humour, Bulgakov creates in this book - a new translation of one of the most popular satires on the Russian Revolution and on Soviet society - an ingenious new twist to the 'Frankenstein' parable. Having been scalded by boiling water earlier that day, and with little chance to survive the severe winter night, a stray dog is left for dead on the streets. Lamenting his fate, he is ill prepared for the chance arrival of a wealthy professor who befriends him and takes him home. However, it seems the professor's motives are not entirely altruistic - an expert in medical experimentation, he sees his new charge as the potential subject for a bizarre operation, and implants glands from a dead criminal in the dog. The resulting half-man, half-beast is, as to be expected, a monstrosity, yet one that fits in remarkably well with Soviet society...


Bind: paperback


Publication Date: 28-09-2012


$19.99
The Secret Life of Wives

ISBN: 9781843911227

Author: Pietro Aretino    Publisher: Hesperus Press

In this hilarious sequel to The Secret Life of Nuns, courtesan Nanna reveals to her confidante, Antonia, what really goes on in the lives of married women. A wo...


In this hilarious sequel to The Secret Life of Nuns, courtesan Nanna reveals to her confidante, Antonia, what really goes on in the lives of married women. A woman can only be saved from a life-threatening craving and utter damnation by a well-endowed priest; an over-devout matron releases the devil within her when she meets an attractive hermit; an insatiable wife is redressed by her husband in a most barbarous manner - these are merely some of the 'truths' that Aretino exposes behind the respectable mask of marriage. And in describing the subterfuges, machinations and diabolical ruses wives resort to - unbeknownst to their poor husbands - in order to secure the secret object of their desires, Aretino adds another titillating page to his immense catalogue of human characters.


Bind: paperback


Pages: 100


Publication Date: 09-11-2012


$19.99
The Collected Poems of Robert Burns

ISBN: 9781853264153

Author: Robert Burns    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

The Wordsworth Poetry Library comprises the works of the greatest English-speaking poets, as well as many lesser-known poets. Each collection has a specially co...


The Wordsworth Poetry Library comprises the works of the greatest English-speaking poets, as well as many lesser-known poets. Each collection has a specially commissioned introduction.


Pages: 672


Dimensions: 129 x 198 x 36 mm


Publication Date: 01-09-1995


$19.99
The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson

ISBN: 9781853264146

Author: Alfred Tennyson    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

The Wordsworth Poetry Library comprises the works of the greatest English-speaking poets, as well as many lesser-known poets. Each collection has a specially co...


The Wordsworth Poetry Library comprises the works of the greatest English-speaking poets, as well as many lesser-known poets. Each collection has a specially commissioned introduction.


Pages: 640


Dimensions: 129 x 198 x 37 mm


Publication Date: 01-07-1994


$19.99
The Scarlet Letter

ISBN: 9781853260292

Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

This book includes an introduction and notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. This is a troubling story ...


This book includes an introduction and notes by Henry Claridge, Senior Lecturer, School of English, University of Kent at Canterbury. This is a troubling story of crime, sin, guilt, punishment and expiation, set in the rigid moral climate of 17th-century New England. The young mother of an illegitimate child confronts her Puritan judges. However, it is not so much her harsh sentence, but the cruelties of slowly exposed guilt as her lover is revealed, that hold the reader enthralled all the way to the book's poignant climax.


Pages: 224


Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 13 mm


Publication Date: 01-05-1992


$7.99
Call of the Wild / White Fang

ISBN: 9781853260261

Author: Jack London    Publisher: Wordsworth Editions

Pages: 256


Dimensions: 126 x 198 x 14 mm


Publication Date: 01-03-1992


$9.99
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