Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate. A Major Literary Event: a brilliant new translation of Thomas Mann's first great novel, one of the two for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. Buddenbrooks, first published in Germany in 1900, when Mann was only twenty-five, has become a classic of modem literature -- the story of four generations of a wealthy bourgeois family in northern Germany. Buddenbrooks surpasses all other modem family chronicles; it has, indeed, proved a model for most of them. Thomas Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.

Annotation:Witty, linguistically playful, and groundbreaking, Joyce's classic novel follows Stephen Dedalu as he comes of age in early 20th-century Ireland. In frank and funny prose, it captures his sexual awakening, his intellectual development, and his rebellion against Roman Catholicism. From the author of Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake.

Annotation:James Joyce - an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. These short stories centre on Joyce's idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later appear in minor roles in Joyce's novel Ulysses.[1] The initial stories in the collection are narrated by children as protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progressively older people. This is in line with Joyce's tripartite division of the collection into childhood, adolescence and maturity.

Annotation:Contents: Psychopathology of everyday life. The interpretation of dreams. Three contributions to the theory of sex. Wit and its relation to the unconscious. Totem and taboo. The history of the psychoanalytic movement

Annotation:Hesperus's centenary edition of the Conrad classic also includes The Congo Diary and Up-River Book, which essentially are notes from his six-month stay in the Congo in 1890. His travels there and sojourn on the river apparently served as the inspiration for the novel. The book also features introductions for Heart and The Congo Diary as well as textual notes for all sections.

Annotation: a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician, considered to be one of the greatest short-story writers in the history of world literature.[3] His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. He is considered one of Russia's greatest playwrights.

Annotation:...set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".[1] Forster employs his first-hand knowledge of India in the novel.

Annotation:an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present.[1]

Annotation:One of the great works of the twentieth century, The has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure. One of the iconic figures of modern world literature, Kafka writes about universal problems of guilt, responsibility, and freedom. He offers no solutions, but provokes his readers to arrive at meanings of their own.

Annotation:In Osaka in the years immediately before World War II, four aristocratic women try to preserve a way of life that is vanishing. As told by Junichiro Tanizaki, the story of the Makioka sisters forms what is arguably the greatest Japanese novel of the twentieth century, a poignant yet unsparing portrait of a family–and an entire society–sliding into the abyss of modernity. Filled with vignettes of upper-class Japanese life and capturing both the decorum and the heartache of its protagonist,The Makioka Sistersis a classic of international literature.

Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate...poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century.[4] The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrockis regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement. He followed this with what have become some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men , Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets.[5] He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral. The Waste Land,(is) a masterpiece. During his lifetime, Eliot received many honors and awards, including the Nobel Prize for literature. T. S. Eliot is considered by many to be a literary genius and one of the most influential men of letters during the half-century after World War I

Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate. Still considered one of the best books ever written about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon is an impassioned look at the sport by one of its true aficionados. It reflects Hemingway's conviction that bullfighting was more than mere sport and reveals a rich source of inspiration for his art. Here he describes and explains the technical aspects of this dangerous ritual and "the emotional and spiritual intensity and pure classic beauty that can be produced by a man, an animal, and a piece of scarlet serge draped on a stick." A fascinating look at the history and grandeur of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoonis also a deeper contemplation of the nature of cowardice and bravery, sport and tragedy, and is enlivened throughout by Hemingway's sharp commentary on life and literature.

Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate. His style was postmodern minimalist and some of his major themes were imprisonment in one's self, the failure of language, and moral conduct in a godless world.

Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate. He was deeply affected by the plight of the French during the Nazi occupation of World War II, who were subject to the military's arbitrary whims.

Annotation:Nobel Prize Laureate. Acclaimed for both his craft and his imagination, he has been called a master of myth and magical realism. His stories depict a world shaped by myth, history, politics, and nature. One Hundred Years of Solitude traces a century in the town's history... Skillfully blending the fantastic, the mythical, and the commonplace in a humorous and powerful narrative, Garcia Marquez tells a moving tale of people locked in an isolation, partly of their own making and partly due to U.S. and European cultural and political domination of Latin America. With this work, Garcia Marquez established himself internationally as a major novelist, and his reputation has continued to grow since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982.

Annotation:Things Fall Apart tells two intertwining stories, both centering on Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first, a powerful fable of the immemorial conflict between the individual and society, traces Okonkwo’s fall from grace with the tribal world. The second, as modern as the first is ancient, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world with the arrival of aggressive European missionaries. These perfectly harmonized twin dramas are informed by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul.