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Entries in Classics (12)

Thursday
Jan052012

Great Expectations (Collins Classics) by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations (Collins Classics)
Charles Dickens
AED 13.00
ISBN 9780007350872

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Description

Living with his sister and her husband, Pip is an orphan without any expectations. It is only when he begins to visit a rich old woman, Miss Havisham and her adopted niece that he begins to hope for something better. When it is revealed that Pip has inherited a large sum of money from a mysterious benefactor on the condition that he moves to London to become a gentleman, Pip's adventure really begins. Epic, illuminating and memorable, Dickens mysterious tale of Pip's quest to find the truth about himself is one of his most enduring and popular novels to date.

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced 'Oliver Twist',' the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870 he was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

Tuesday
Apr052011

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (Vintage Classic) by Mark Twain


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Vintage Classic)
Mark Twain
AED 15.00
ISBN 9780099511113

Description

Huck is a young, naive white boy fleeing from his drunken, dangerous Pa and Jim is a runaway slave longing to be reunited with his family. Flung together by circumstance, they journey down the Mississippi together on a log raft, each in search of his own definition of freedom. Their daring adventures along the way provide both entertainment and a satirical look at the moral values of the Deep South of the 1800s.

About the Author

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),[1] better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel."

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age,"[2] and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."[3]

Tuesday
Apr052011

Draculla (Vintage Classics) by Bram Stoker


Draculla (Vintage Classics)
Bram Stoker
AED 15.00
ISBN 9780099511229

Description

Collected inside this book are diary entries, letters and newspaper clippings that piece together the depraved story of the ultimate predator. A young lawyer on an assignment finds himself imprisoned in a Transylvanian castle by his mysterious host. Back at home his fiancee and friends are menaced by a malevolent force which seems intent on imposing suffering and destruction. Can the devil really have arrived on England's shores? And what is it that he hungers for so desperately?

About the Author

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912) was an Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

Monday
Mar282011

Tess Of The D'Urbervilles (Vintage Classics) by Thomas Hardy


Tess of The D'Urbervilles (Vintage Classics)
Thomas Hardy
AED 15.00
ISBN 9780099511625

Description

Tess is an innocent young girl until the day she goes to visit her rich "relatives," the D’Urbervilles, in hope that they might help her alleviate her own family’s poverty. Her encounter with her manipulative cousin, Alec, leads her onto a path that is beset with suffering and betrayal. When she falls in love with another man, Angel Clare, Tess sees a potential escape from her past, but only if she can tell him her shameful secret.

About the Author

Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, during his lifetime he was much better known for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from theMadding Crowd, which earned him a reputation as a great novelist. The bulk of his fictional works, initially published as serials in magazines, were set in the semi-fictional land of Wessex (based on the Dorchester region where he grew up) and explored tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances.

Monday
Mar282011

Hard Times (Vintage Classics) by Charles Dickens


Hard Times (Vintage Classics)
Charles Dickens
AED 15.00
ISBN 9780099518921

Description

The children at Mr Gradgrind’s school are sternly ordered to stifle their imaginations and pay attention only to cold, hard reality. They live in a smoky, troubled industrial town where entertainment is hard to come by and resentments run deep. The effects of Gradgrind’s teaching on his own children, Tom and Louisa, are particularly profound and leave them ill-equipped to deal with the unpredictable desires of the human heart. Luckily for them they have a friend in Sissy Jupe, the child of a circus clown, who retains her warm-hearted, compassionate nature despite the pressures around her. This classic includes illustrations by Frederick Walker.

About the Author

One of the grand masters of Victorian literature, Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors' prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and "slave" factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years' formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney's clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Thursday
May202010

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse 5
Kurt Vonnegut
AED 42
ISBN 9780099800200 

Description

Centring on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.

About the Author

Kurt Vonnegut’s black humor, satiric voice, and incomparable imagination first captured America’s attention in The Sirens of Titan in 1959 and established him as “a true artist” (The New York Times) with Cat’s Cradle in 1963. He was, as Graham Greene declared, “one of the best living American writers.” Mr. Vonnegut passed away in April 2007.

Excerpt

Chapter One

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. 

I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. 

I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes. [...]

Video

 

Monday
May102010

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler
AED 44
ISBN 9780099424918

Description

Darkness At Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he re-lives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, Darkness At Noon asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is--as the Times Literary Supplement has declared--"A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama..." 

Sunday
May022010

Penguin Classics for AED 10

All of our Penguin Classics are AED 10 each.

Choose from the following titles:

Frankenstein
Hard Times
Around the World in 80 Days
Women in Love
Great Expectations
Wuthering Heights
Twelfth Night
Sons and Lovers
Kim
Hamlet
Sense and Sensibility
Crime and Punishment
Romeo and Juliet
Kidnapped
Arabian Nights
Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
& More...
 

Monday
Apr262010

Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton


Alice in Wonderland (Book of the Film)
Tim Burton
AED  37
ISBN 9780141330464

Description

From Walt Disney Pictures and visionary director Tim Burton comes a magical re-imagining of one of the most beloved stories of all time. Mia Wasikowska stars as 19-year-old Alice, who returns to the whimsical world she first encountered as a young girl, reuniting with her childhood friends: the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Dormouse, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, and of course, the Mad Hatter. Alice embarks on a fantastical journey to find her true destiny and end the Red Queen’s reign of terror.

Video

 

Thursday
Apr222010

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies
William Golding
AED 49
ISBN 978571191475

Description

Lord of the Flies , William Golding's classic tale about a group of English schoolboys who are plane-wrecked on a deserted island, is just as chilling and relevant today as when it was first published in 1954. At first, the stranded boys cooperate, attempting to gather food, make shelters, and maintain signal fires. Overseeing their efforts are Ralph, "the boy with fair hair," and Piggy, Ralph's chubby, wisdom-dispensing sidekick whose thick spectacles come in handy for lighting fires. Although Ralph tries to impose order and delegate responsibility, there are many in their number who would rather swim, play, or hunt the island's wild pig population. Soon Ralph's rules are being ignored or challenged outright. His fiercest antagonist is Jack, the redheaded leader of the pig hunters, who manages to lure away many of the boys to join his band of painted savages. The situation deteriorates as the trappings of civilization continue to fall away, until Ralph discovers that instead of being hunters, he and Piggy have become the hunted: "He forgot his words, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet." Golding's gripping novel explores the boundary between human reason and animal instinct, all on the brutal playing field of adolescent competition. 

Video