Dina Rubina is a contemporary prose writer and winner of the Russian ‘Big Book’ award. Her novella ‘On Upper Maslovka Street’ was adapted into a film in 2004, starring Alisa Freindlich and Yevgeny Mironov. This work is largely personal for Rubina. While living in Moscow, the writer and her husband visited Nina Ilyinichna Niss-Goldman, a famous artist. She sculpted portraits of Bryusov,...

One of the most important novels of our time, which has entered the post-war canon of European literature, was first published in 1959. Its protagonist is the ‘little man’ Oskar Matzerath, whose childhood coincides with the years of the rise of National Socialism. Aware of the absurdity of reality, he decides to stop growing and refuses to become an adult. His constant companion is a tin...

One of the most famous works by the 2025 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. – A disturbing and captivating novel that is impossible to put down. – The story of a small town where the arrival of a strange circus with a giant whale triggers a chain of mysterious events. – The book served as the basis for the legendary film ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ by director Béla Tarr.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer created one of the great touchstones of English literature, a masterly collection of chivalric romances, moral allegories and low farce. A story-telling competition between a group of pilgrims from all walks of life is the occasion for a series of tales that range from the Knight’s account of courtly love and the ebullient Wife of Bath’s Arthurian legend, to...

Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos's great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded lives. While Merteuil challenges Valmont to seduce...

Sparked by Thoreau’s outrage at American slavery and the American-Mexican war, Civil Disobedience is a call for every citizen to value his conscience above his government. Within this 19th century essay, Thoreau explains government of any sort – including democracy – does not possess more wisdom or justice than its individual citizens, and that it is every citizen’s responsibility to avoid...

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat and ambitious civil servant, set out from post-revolutionary France on a journey across America that would take him 9 months and cover 7,000 miles. The result was Democracy in America, a subtle and prescient analysis of the life and institutions of 19th-century America. Tocqueville looked to the flourishing deomcratic system in America...

Revolt in the Desert is Lawrence of Arabia's classic military memoir, an account of the experiences of one remarkable British officer's war from his own perspective, a war of lightning raids, of blown up railway tracks and trains, ambushes and open battles of Arabs against the Ottoman Turks. Here are the Imperial Camel Corps, armoured car squadrons, daring RAF pilots and their aircraft,...

‘The Robot Tales,’ written and published by Stanislaw Lem between 1963 and 1965, tell stories set in an imaginary pseudo-medieval universe where robots have taken the place of humans. They dream and fall in love, perform heroic deeds and play petty tricks on each other – just like members of humanity. The stories have been translated into 18 languages and have also been adapted into several...

The master of the novella, Prosper Mérimée, created some of the most vivid characters in world literature, combining captivating plots with historically and ethnographically accurate descriptions of Corsican and Spanish life. This edition includes his best novellas, among them ‘Mateo Falcone,’ ‘The Game of Backgammon,’ ‘Colomba,’ and, of course, the famous ‘Carmen.’

The place is the Greek island of Cephallonia, where gods once dabbled in the affairs of men and the local saint periodically rises from his sarcophagus to cure the mad. Then the tide of World War II rolls onto the island's shores in the form of the conquering Italian army. Caught in the occupation are Pelagia, a willful, beautiful young woman, and the two suitors vying for her love: Mandras,...

The collection includes Kafka's most famous ‘short’ works from different years. Here you will find the so-called Kafkaesque nightmares – ‘The Metamorphosis,’ ‘In the Penal Colony,’ elegant parables, satirical stories and miniatures, as well as diary entries.