Louis Couperus

Noodlot

Louis Couperus (1863-1923) wordt door velen beschouwd als een van de belangrijkste schrijvers uit de Nederlandse literatuur. Hij is auteur van een enorm oeuvre van o.a. psychologische romans, historische romans, reisimpressies, etc. Zijn meest bekende, of best overgeleverde, romans zijn de zgn. Haagse romans die als thema het verval van de gegoede bourgeoisie hebben. Een van de belangrijke thema's in Couperus' werk is het noodlot.

De korte fatalistische roman Noodlot ga...

Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West's haunting novel The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect, the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend, and the poor innkeeper's daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe, dreamy past--...

Paris in the twenties: Pernod, parties and expatriate Americans, loose-living on money from home. Jake is wildly in love with Brett Ashley, aristocratic and irresistibly beautiful, but with an abandoned, sensuous nature that she cannot change. When the couple drifts to Spain to the dazzle of the fiesta and the heady atmosphere of the bullfight, their affair is strained by new passions, new jealousies, and Jake must finally learn that he will never possess the woman he loves.

Powerful, intense...

'It is only a bruise'. A carefree Russian official has what seems to be a trivial accident... One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s.

In this classic novel, Ken Kesey's hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in...

Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick's cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the mystery that surrounds him.

'you are to understand, Mr. Pip, that the name of the person who is your liberal benefactor remains a profound secret...' Young Pip lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith, with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his past - the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella - and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great...

The text is that of the 1813 first edition, accompanied by revised and expanded explanatory annotations. This edition also includes: biographical portraits of Austen by members of her family and, new to the fourth edition, those by Jon Spence (Becoming Jane Austen) and Paula Byrne (The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things). Also included are fifteen critical essays, twelve of them new to the fourth edition, reflecting the finest current scholarship.

Contributors include Janet Todd, Jim Co...

Bigger Thomas has grown up in Chicago’s slums, reckless, angry and adrift. A respectable job with the affluent Dalton family provides hope but sets him on course for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause célèbre in an ever-narrowing endgame.

First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. ...

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY DAVID LUKE. Death in Venice is a story of obsession. Gustave von Aschenbach is a successful but ageing writer who travels to Venice for a holiday. One day, at dinner, Aschenbach notices an exceptionally beautiful young boy who is staying with his family in the same hotel.

Soon his days begin to revolve around seeing this boy and he is too distracted to pay attention to the ominous rumours that have begun to circulate about disease spreading through the city.