Penguin Frogs and Other Plays Aristophanes

With three plays focusing on the family and how it struggles to stay together by telling lies - and exposing them, Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and Other Plays is translated with an introduction by Peter Watts in Penguin Classics • In Ghosts, Osvald Alving returns home only to discover the truth about the father he always looked up to, and learns the horrific effect his father's debauchery has had on him. It was Ibsen's most provocative drama, stripping away the surface of a middle-class family to expose layers of hypocrisy and immorality. A Public Enemy sets two brothers against each other when one wishes to make public the facts about the polluted water in the public baths of their home town. And When We Dead Wake tells of an artist meeting an old lover by chance and rejecting his wife, in a symbolic exploration of Ibsen's own literary life and the sacrifices he made in his work

This selection of plays shows Euripides transforming the titanic figures of Greek myths into recognizable, fallible human beings. Medea, in which a spurned woman takes revenge upon her lover by killing her children, is one of the most shocking of all the Greek tragedies. Medea is a towering figure who demonstrates Euripides' unusual willingness to give voice to a woman's case. Alcestis is based on a magical myth in which Death is overcome, and The Children of Heracles examines conflict between might and right, while Hippolytus deals with self-destructive integrity

Four devastating Greek tragedies showing the powerful brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred • The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter's sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family

One of the foundation-stones of modern philosophy, Rene Descartes' Meditations and Other Metaphysical Writings is translated from the Latin with an introduction by Desmond M. Clarke in Penguin Classics • Descartes was prepared to go to any lengths in his search for certainty - even to deny those things that seemed most self-evident. In his Meditations of 1641, and in the Objections and Replies that were included with the original publication, he set out to dismantle and then reconstruct the idea of the individual self and its existence. In doing so, Descartes developed a language of subjectivity that has lasted to this day, and he also took his first steps towards the view that would eventually be expressed in the epigram Cogito, ergo sum ('I think, therefore I am'), one of modern philosophy's most famous - and most fiercely contested - claims

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series. Please note that the eBook edition does NOT include access to the audio edition and digital book. Written for learners of English as a foreign language, each title includes carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises • Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content • The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers story comprehension and develop vocabulary

Four of Ibsen's most important plays in superb modern translations, part of the new Penguin Ibsen series • In these four unforgettably intense plays, Henrik Ibsen explores the complex nature of truth, the tension between freedom and responsibility, and the terrible pull that the past exerts over the present. In The Wild Duck, an idealist destroys a family by exposing the lie behind his friend's marriage. In Rosmersholm, a respectable man is driven to extremes by guilt over his wife's death, while in The Lady from the Sea a woman is caught between her family and the enticement of the wild sea. And in Hedda Gabler, one of Ibsen's most famous and vivid anti-heroines struggles to break free from the conventional life she has created for herself, with tragic results

Through their sheer range, daring innovation, flawed but eloquent characters and intriguing plots, the plays of Euripides have shocked and stimulated audiences since the fifth century BC. Phoenician Women portrays the rival sons of King Oedipus and their mother's doomed attempts at reconciliation, while Orestes shows a son ravaged with guilt after the vengeful murder of his mother. In the Bacchae, a king mistreats a newcomer to his land, little knowing that he is the god Dionysus disguised as a mortal, while in Iphigenia at Aulis, the Greek leaders take the horrific decision to sacrifice a princess to gain favour from the gods in their mission to Troy. Finally, the Rhesus depicts a world of espionage between the warring Greek and Trojan camps

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe...' wrote Lewis Carroll in his wonderfully playful poem of nonsense verse, 'Jabberwocky'. This new edition collects together the marvellous range of Carroll's poetry, including nonsense verse, parodies, burlesques, and more. Alongside the title piece are such enduringly wonderful pieces as 'The Walrus and the Carpenter', 'The Mock Turtle's Song', 'Father William' and many more

This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka’s works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka’s eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka’s literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought

John Updike was always as much a poet as a storyteller and the poems in this, his final collection, celebrate the everyday, even as they address his own imminent mortality. It is in the connected series of poems, Endpoint, written on his last few birthdays and culminating with the illness that killed him, that Updike's work is at its most touching and poignant

В сборнике новых переводов "Метаморфозы и другие истории" собрана небольшая часть произведений Кафки, которые он сам считал достойными публикации. В нее вошли "Метаморфозы", его самая известная работа, исследование ужасающей трансформации и отчуждения; "Медитация", сборник его ранних исследований; "Судный день", написанный за одну ночь неистового творчества; "Кочегар", первая глава романа, действие которого происходит в Америке, и увлекательная эпизодическая пьеса, а также "Аэропланы в Брешиа, рассказ очевидца Кафки о воздушном шоу в 1909 году. Вместе взятые, эти рассказы раскрывают широту литературного видения Кафки и необычайную творческую глубину его мысли • Книга на английском языке • This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication

Одна из наиболее важных философских школ девятнадцатого века, утилитаризм, выдвигает точку зрения, согласно которой ценность или правильность действия зависит от того, насколько хорошо оно способствует благополучию тех, кого оно затрагивает • Джереми Бентам (1748-1832) был основателем движения, таким же социальным реформатором, как и философом. Его величайший интерпретатор Джон Стюарт Милль (1806-73) стремился очеловечить прагматический утилитаризм Бентама, уравновесив требования разума и воображения, индивидуальности и социального благополучия в таких эссе, как "Бентам", "Кольридж" и, прежде всего, "Утилитаризм". Работы Бентама и Милля, собранные в книге "Утилитаризм и другие эссе", показывают создание и развитие системы этики, которая оказала ключевое влияние на моральную философию и законодательную политику