Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts: a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. As a boy he meets a foreign commander who adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of adventurous friends. Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, they decide to go in search of the legendary priest-king Prester...

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...

Every newcomer has their own Moscow. For the heroine of this book, the city is exactly as she wanted to see it: noisy, chaotic, but surprisingly not malicious – thanks to the wonderful people who are ready to offer help precisely when it seemed there was no one to turn to.

In this amazing philosophical book, which ridicules the modern insane world, the absurdity and cruelty of human actions, fantasy and reality, madness and logic, author and character, truth and falsehood, fact and fiction merge into one.

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.

More than a hundred years have passed since the first Sherlock Holmes story was published, and readers all over the world still eagerly immerse themselves in the world of fascinating and dangerous adventures, the special charm of which lies in the firm conviction that everything will end well, because there are several dozen stories!

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...

This collection includes two novels by Conan Doyle about the adventures of the immortal duo from 221B Baker Street – the great detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend and assistant, Dr. Watson. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories. For two centuries now, new generations of readers have followed with unwavering enthusiasm and fascination...