Książki obcojęzyczne

The Time Machine z podręcznym słownikiem angielsko-polskim (Wehikuł czasu) jest powieścią science fiction, napisaną przez H. G. Wells’a, w 1895 roku. Książka przedstawia wizję odległej o tysiące lat przyszłości. Cywilizacja zmierza ku zagładzie, a rasa ludzka uległa degeneracji. Książka opowiada historię młodego naukowca, którego marzeniem jest podróżowanie w czasie. Niestety gdy jego marzenie się spełnia nie trafia wcale do raju, tylko do świata niszczejącego i zmierzająceg...

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz z podręcznym słownikiem angielsko-polskim (Czarnoksiężnik z Krainy Oz) to powieść zaliczana do klasyki światowej literatury dla dzieci, napisana przez L. Franka Bauma a wydana w Chicago w roku 1900. Powieść, w amerykańskiej literaturze dziecięcej, jako pierwsza została zaliczona do kategorii fantasy. Główną bohaterką książki jest 12-letnia Dorotka. Dziewczynka jest sierotą mieszkającą na farmie w Kansas wraz z ciotką, wujem i swoim najbliższym przy...

Sigmund Freud’s controversial ideas have penetrated Western culture more deeply than those of any other psychologist. The ‘Freudian slip’, the ‘Oedipus complex’, ‘childhood sexuality’, ‘libido’, ‘narcissism’ ‘penis envy’, the ‘castration complex’, the ‘id’, the ‘ego’ and the ‘superego’, ‘denial’, ‘repression’, ‘identification’, ‘projection’, ‘acting out’, the ‘pleasure principle’, the ‘reality principle’, ‘defence-mechanism’ – are all taken for granted in our everyday vocabul...

Finnegans Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and their family - their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as all our books. Joyce's last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed styles, like Ulysses, but, rather, formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape. This 'language' is based on English vocabulary and syntax but, at the same time, self-consciously designed to function as a pun machine with an ...

Selected and Introduced by M J Elliott. ‘They were removing the stones quietly, one by one, from the centuried wall. And then, as the breach became large enough, they came out into the laboratory in single file; led by a stalking thing with a beautiful head made of wax.’ From the dark, mind-expanding imagination of H P Lovecraft, Wordsworth presents a third volume of tales penned by the greatest horror writer of the 20th Century. Here are some of Lovecraft’s weirdest fl...

With an Introduction by Anthony Briggs. Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. Russia in the 1840s. There is a stranger in town, and he is behaving oddly. The unctuous Pavel Chichikov goes around the local estates buying up 'dead souls'. These are the papers relating to serfs who have died since the last census, but who remain on the record and still attract a tax demand. Chichikov is willing to relieve their owners of the tax burden by buying the titles for a song. What...

Translated by Constance Garnett with an introduction by Anthony Briggs. Dostoevsky's fascination for mental breakdown and violence (20 murders in his four main novels) was based on his own life, and these two unmistakably autobiographical works bear this out. The House of the Dead is fiction, but based on his four years in a Siberian prison. An educated upper-class man is condemned to live among criminals and brutal guards, with arbitrary punishments, lousy food, di...

The original and bestselling leadership book! Sun Tzu's ideas on survival and success have been read across the world for centuries. Today they can still be applied to business, politics and life. The Art of War demonstrates how to win without conflict.

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction by A.D.P. Briggs. In 1869 a young Russian was strangled, shot through the head and thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave a small group of violent revolutionaries, from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject and culmination of Devils, a title that refers the young radicals themselves and also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking pe...

Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction by A. D. P. Briggs. As Fyodor Karamazov awaits an amorous encounter, he is violently done to death. The three sons of the old debauchee are forced to confront their own guilt or complicity. Who will own to parricide? The reckless and passionate Dmitri? The corrosive intellectual Ivan? Surely not the chaste novice monk Alyosha? The search reveals the divisions which rack the brothers, yet paradoxically unite them. Around...

Sylvia Plath is a major cultural icon who continues to inspire new generations of female readers. The Bell Jar is one of the defining novels of the 20th century. I was supposed to be having the time of my life . . . Working as an intern for a New York fashion magazine in the summer of 1953, Esther Greenwood is on the brink of her future. Yet she is also on the edge of a darkness that makes her world increasingly unreal. Esther's vision of the world shimmers and shifts: day-...

Translated by Constance Garnett with an Introduction and Notes by Dr Keith Carabine, University of Kent at Canterbury. Crime and Punishment is one of the greatest and most readable novels ever written. From the beginning we are locked into the frenzied consciousness of Raskolnikov who, against his better instincts, is inexorably drawn to commit a brutal double murder. From that moment on, we share his conflicting feelings of self-loathing and pride, of contempt for and ...

'All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others' When the downtrodden animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master Mr Jones and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless élite among them, masterminded by the pigs Napoleon and Snowball, starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessl...

Selected, Edited and Introduced by David Stuart Davies. The Best of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of twenty of the very best tales from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fifty-six short stories featuring the arch sleuth. Basing his selection around the author's own twelve personal favourites, David Stuart Davies has added a further eight sparkling stories to Conan Doyle's ‘Baker Street Dozen’, creating a unique volume which distils the pure essence of the world's ...

Translated by Yuan Shibing and J.J.L.Duyvendak. With introductions by Robert Wilkinson. The two political classics in this book are the product of a time of intense turmoil in Chinese history. Dating from the Period of the Warring States (403-221BC), they anticipate Machiavelli's The Prince by nearly 2000 years. The Art of War is the best known of a considerable body of Chinese works on the subject. It analyses the nature of war, and reveals how victory may be ensur...

Translated by Constance Garnett, with an Introduction and Notes by Agnes Cardinal, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from an asylum in Switzerland. As he becomes embroiled in the frantic amatory and financial intrigues which centre around a cast of brilliantly realised characters and which ultimately lead to tragedy, he emerges as a unique combination of the Christian ideal of perfection and Dosto...

The father of science fiction, Jules Verne, invites you to join the intrepid and eccentric Professor Liedenbrock and his companions on a thrilling and dramatic expedition as they travel down a secret tunnel in a volcano in Iceland on a journey which will lead them to the centre of the earth. Along the way they encounter various hazards and witness many incredible sights such as the underground forest, illuminated by electricity, the Great Geyser, the battle between prehistori...

Introduction and Notes by Gene M. Moore, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Generally regarded as the pre-eminent work of Conrad's shorter fiction, Heart of Darkness is a chilling tale of horror which, as the author intended, is capable of many interpretations. Set in the Congo during the period of rapid colonial expansion in the 19th century, the story deals with the highly disturbing effects of economic, social and political exploitation of European and African societies an...

With an Introduction and Notes by Stuart Hutchinson, University of Kent at Canterbury. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz is an ominous fable about the pursuit of great wealth. Readers will be transported to a fabulous fantasy land of such opulence that its very existence has to remain a jealously guarded secret. Fatal consequences lie in store for 'bona fide' guests and uninvited visitors alike, while the sybaritic luxury of the place is evoked in an effortless prose ...

With an Introduction by Paul Wright. 'What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth' So wrote the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) in 1817. This collection contains all of his poetry: the early work, which is often undervalued even today, the poems on which his reputation rests including the 'Odes' and the two versions of the uncompleted epic 'Hyperion', and work which only came to light after his death including his attempts at drama and ...

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr Tim Middleton, Head of English Studies, University of Ripon and York. In seeking to discover his inner self, the brilliant Dr Jekyll discovers a monster. First published to critical acclaim in 1886, this mesmerising thriller is a terrifying study of the duality of man's nature, and it is the book which established Stevenson's reputation as a writer. Also included in this volume is Stevenson's 1887 collection of short stor...