The short novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ was first published in 1902 and caused a major upheaval in English-language literature, of which it is still considered a classic, and Francis Ford Coppola's film ‘Apocalypse Now,’ based on it, was and remains one of the most powerful works in the history of world cinema. Young Captain Marlow sails up the Congo River, through the wild African jungle, full...

‘A Room of One's Own’ is a famous essay based on lectures Woolf gave at Newnham College and Girton College – two women's colleges at Cambridge University – in October 1928. In it, she addresses all women engaged in literature and recalls her great predecessors – Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot – who were forced to write in the common living room, hide their manuscripts from...

The Brothers Grimm were the first compilers of a German dictionary, outstanding linguists, and, of course, some of the most famous and widely read fairy tale writers. Over many years of painstaking work, they collected and recorded more than two hundred fairy tales and legends, which are read and reread all over the world. The uniqueness of these tales lies in the fact that they are equally...

Written as an eloquent defence of the faith at a time when the Roman Empire was on the brink of collapse, this great theological and philosophical work by St Augustine, bishop of Hippo, examines the ancient pagan religions of Rome, the arguments of the Greek philosophers and the revelations of the Bible. Pointing the way forward to a citizenship that transcends worldly politics and will last...

Moby-Dick still stands as an indisputable literary classic. It is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopedia of whaling lore and legend, Moby-Dick is a haunting, mesmerizing, and important social commentary populated with several...

This collection includes immortal masterpieces of ancient comedy – such as ‘The Birds’ and ‘The Clouds,’ ‘Lysistrata’ and ‘The Frogs,’ ‘The Two Menaechmi,’ ‘The Grouch,’ and ‘The Girl from Andros.’ And although the plots of these magnificent comedies transport us to the distant past, the characters and human types described in them are just as familiar to us today as they were to the...

When Tess Durbeyfield is driven by family poverty to claim kinship with the wealthy D'Urbervilles and seek a portion of their family fortune, meeting her 'cousin' Alec proves to be her downfall. A very different man, Angel Clare, seems to offer her love and salvation, but Tess must choose whether to reveal her past or remain silent in the hope of a peaceful future. With its sensitive...

Written during the turmoil of the English Civil War, Leviathan is an ambitious and highly original work of political philosophy. Claiming that man's essential nature is competitive and selfish, Hobbes formulates the case for a powerful sovereign—or Leviathan—to enforce peace and the law, substituting security for the anarchic freedom he believed human beings would otherwise experience. This...

‘The Three Musketeers’ is the most famous historical adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, telling the story of the dangerous and exciting adventures of the brave Gascon d'Artagnan, the noble Athos, the cheerful Porthos, and the mysterious Aramis.

Three immortal masterpieces of world drama, translated into all major languages, belonging to the golden fund of literature of all times and peoples, and still performed on the best stages of the world today and adapted for the screen a total of 43 times (including in our country). The dramatic poem ‘Peer Gynt,’ with its whimsical combination of reality and mysticism, social satire, and...

By the time Frances Hodgson Burnett began writing ‘The Secret Garden,’ she had already built a highly successful literary career spanning several decades. She had several highly successful books to her name, the most successful of which, ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ sold hundreds of thousands of copies on both sides of the Atlantic. However, none of the author's previous works could compare in...

Even during his lifetime, Albert Camus was called the ‘Conscience of the West,’ and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for ‘his important literary work, which with clear seriousness illuminates the problems of human conscience in our time.’ Camus's rejection of cruelty and violence is evident in both his life and his works. In his essay ‘Reflections on the Guillotine,’ published when capital...