Alma Books With the Flow Huysmans Joris-Karl

Joris-Karl Huysmans' shocking novel of an innocent's descent into a world of depraved, blasphemous rituals, The Damned (La-Bas) caused a scandal when it was first published in nineteenth-century France. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction and notes by Terry Hale • Durtal, a shy, censorious man, is writing a biography of Gilles de Rais, the monstrous fifteenth-century child-murderer thought to be the original for 'Bluebeard'. Bored and disgusted by the vulgarity of everyday life, Durtal seeks spiritual solace by immersing himself in another age. But when he starts asking questions about Gilles's involvement in satanic rituals and is introduced to the exquisitely evil madame Chantelouve, he is soon drawn into a twilight world of black magic and erotic devilry in fin-de- siecle Paris

Jude Fawley, an intelligent and sensitive young Wessex schoolboy, dreams of studying at the famous university in Christminster, Hardy’s fictional representation of Oxford. He embarks on years of private study, but his plans are thrown into disarray when he is deceived into marriage and then deserted by the duplicitous Arabella Donn. Jude, still hoping to earn a place at the university, travels to Christminster to work as a stonemason. Here, he falls for his freethinking cousin Sue, but with the pair living together out of wedlock, the pressures of poverty and social disapproval soon threaten to ruin their lives • Full of passion, anger, fatalism and tragedy, Jude the Obscure attacks the inequalities and hypocrisies inherent within Victorian society’s attitudes towards marriage, social mobility, education and the role of women

The first story in this volume, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, is an amusing portrayal of two exceptionally close friends, the mortal insult that drives them apart, and the ensuing chaos that occurs. This is Gogol's humour at it's best, where the most irrelevant-seeming details and turns of phrase take on a bizarre life of their own. Ivan Krylov's Panegyric in Memory of My Grandfather has an ingenuous narrator praise the nobility and modesty of a landowner whose actions prove him to be otherwise. The two tales by Mikhail Saltykov are satirical attacks on civil servants and Russia's autocracy. The final piece, Tolstoy's Ivan the Fool, is a playful and allegorical critique of contemporary Russian society. Together, they represent some of Russia's finest comic writing before the twentieth century

When the young naturalist Darwin set sail on a round-the-world expedition at the end of 1831, it was only with a vague notion that the relationships between all life forms, both present and extinct, were more complex than the Christian version of the world’s creation purported them to be. During his five-year voyage of discovery on board HMS Beagle and more than two decades subsequently devoted to research, he painstakingly collected a mass of evidence from across the planet – from Paraguay and the Galapagos Islands to Staffordshire and Scotland – building a compelling case for the theory of natural selection, which would change the way we look at the world for ever • The founding text of evolutionary biology – which prompted a revolution in the fields of science and religion similar in magnitude to the discoveries of Copernicus and Newton – Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was an instant best-seller when it was published in 1859 and has become a cultural milestone that has influenced a wide range of disciplines of human knowledge

On the eve of the Crimean War, the young, headstrong Yelena, the daughter of aristocratic Russian parents, falls in love with a revolutionary from Bulgaria named Insarov. Facing the wrath and disapproval of her family, Yelena abandons her home to follow Insarov to Bulgaria. Their fateful match sets in motion a series of tragic events which challenge notions of love, revolution and idealism • A highly controversial work upon its original publication, Ivan Turgenev's On the Eve is now recognized as one of the masterpieces of Russian literature and an essential document of the upheaval that dominated Russian society in the years prior to the Crimean War. Turgenev's restrained, nuanced prose is rendered beautifully in Michael Pursglove's new translation

Миссис Рэмзи обещает своим гостям, что на следующий день они вместе отправятся к маяку, вид на который открывается из окон их летнего домика. Однако этот визит состоится лишь спустя десять лет, за которые семье Рэмзи придется пережить войну и горе утраты. Это путешествие позволит героям познать себя • Данное издание является частью серии Alma Classics и Virginia Woolf Collection и содержит критический аппарат и материалы для дополнительного чтения, в том числе фотографии и примечания • По мотивам произведения был снят фильм «На маяке» • Книга на английском языке • When Mrs Ramsay tells her guests at her summer house on the Isle of Skye that they will be able to visit the nearby lighthouse the following day, little does she know that this trip will only be completed ten years later by her husband, and that a gulf of war, grief and loss will have opened in the meantime

In the Twilight, the third collection of short stories compiled by Anton Chekhov himself, was his first major success and won him the prestigious Pushkin Prize when it was published in 1887. This volume represents a clear milestone in the writer's passage from the youthful Antosha Chekhonte, author of slight comic sketches, to the mature master of the short-story genre

Начинающий поэт Гордон Комсток презирает мещанские устои среднего класса и меркантильность современного общества, молящегося на деньги. Из-за своих убеждений он уходит с высокооплачиваемой работы в рекламном агентстве и устраивается в книжный магазин, надеясь, что у него будет больше времени на стихи. Увы, это решение обрекает молодого человека на бедность, лишающую его душевных сил и творческой энергии. Самооценка Гордона стремительно падает, его взгляд на мир становится всё мрачнее, и перспектив у него всё меньше. Его дружбе с редактором Филиппом Равелстоном такое развитие событий тоже не идёт на пользу, а о романтических отношениях и говорить нечего. Сможет ли девушка Гордона Розмари убедить поэта свернуть с пути, навязанного его принципами? • «Да здравствует фикус!» - третий роман Джорджа Оруэлла

Одним летним утром в Пойнз-холле, загородный дом, расположенный в самом центре Англии, царила настоящая суматоха. Его обитатели готовились к ежегодному летнему празднику, который должен был состояться тем же вечером. На него был приглашены: мистер Оливер, хозяин Пойнз-холла, гламурная кокетка миссис Манреса вместе со своим другом Уильямом Доджем, Жиль и Иза, испытывающие проблемы в семейной жизни. Разумеется, на празднике будет присутствовать и эксцентричная мисс Ла Троб, занимающаяся постановкой пьесы • «Между актов» – это символический роман Вирджинии Вулф, в котором раскрываются актуальные для начала XX века темы, такие как положение человека в обществе, непростые межличностные отношения и связь между жизнью и искусством. «Между актов» – это последний роман Вулф, который наглядно демонстрирует, в каком направлении развивалось бы творчество писательницы, если бы ее жизнь не оборвалась в результате ужасной трагедии

Infamous as the inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (A Rebours) is translated by Robert Baldick with an introduction by Patrick McGuinness in Penguin Classics • A wildly original fin-de-siecle novel, Against Nature contains only one character. Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where her indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. Against Nature, in the words of the author, exploded 'like a meteorite' and has enjoyed a cult following to this day

The cult novel of fin de siecle decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde • ‘It will be biggest fiasco of the year – but I don’t give a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before.’ • The title page of the first complete English translation of Against Nature (published in the French as A Rebours) included the caption ‘the book that Dorian Gray loved and inspired Oscar Wilde.’ It was, declared Wilde, one of the best novels he had ever read • It is the story of Jean des Esseintes, the last of a proud and noble family, who retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois society and leads a life based on cultivation of the senses through art. Des Esseintes distills perfumes from the rarest oils and essences, he creates a garden of poisonous flowers, sets gemstones in a tortoise’s gold-painted shell and plans to corrupt a street urchin until he is degraded enough to commit murder

Пол: женский • Джемпер ASOS DESIGN Поиски окончены Круглый вырез Заниженная линия плеч Графическое изображение цветов на груди Отделка края в рубчик Просторный крой