A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: LA Times * Boston Globe * The Millions * LitHub * ShondalandBy the New York Times bestselling author of the award-winning AFTERPARTIES comes a collection like none other: sharply funny, emotionally expansive essays and linked short fiction exploring family, queer ...
Using the poet's native Italian landscapes, Gilbert Highet recreates these poets in situ to evoke the essence of their work. His translations summon a land enchanted by presences - from Horace's beloved Tivoli to Ovid in the Abruzzi. Highet lets each poet tell his own story - their pleasures and agonies, ...
Spurred by a lifelong fascination with the great emperor, French novelist Honore de Balzac set himself the painstaking task of collecting a selection of Napoleon's aphorisms from his public speeches and the gazettes of the time.
A tongue-in-cheek manual on how servants should cope with the demands of their masters and perform their tasks in ways that will best satisfy their indolence, wastefulness and greed. It takes a caustic and irreverent look at master-servant relations.
De Quincey's seminal 1827 work was greatly influential on such writers as Poe, Baudelaire and Borges, and the trace of its impact can still be found today in modern satire, black humour and crime and detective fiction.
Swift's The Benefit of Farting argues eloquently, in a forceful a posteriori fashion, that most of the distempers thought to affect the fairer sex are due to flatulences not adequately vented.
Inspired by Gogol's surreal tales, Dostoevsky's hilarious story has been interpreted by some as a vitriolic piece of social criticism and a veiled attack on the revolutionary philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
This short collection shows Chekhov in an amusing, playful light, poking fun at the greed, sycophancy and ignorance of his characters, with the moral detachment that also characterizes his major, serious works.
The Decay of Lying sees Wilde explore his deepest preoccupations about the relationship between life and art, and examine the work of such writers as Shakespeare and Balzac.
LITERARY STUDIES: FICTION, NOVELISTS & PROSE WRITERS. Robert McCrum chooses what he considers to be the 100 best novels chosen from the last 300 years of English language writing. First published in the Observer over a period of 2 years.
