Set in the days of the Empire, with the British ruling in Burma, Orwell's book describes corruption and imperial bigotry. Flory, a white timber merchant, befriends Dr. Veraswami, a black enthusiast for the Empire, whose downfall can only be prevented by membership at an all-white club.

Orwell draws on his years of experience in India to tell this story of the waning days of British imperialism. A handful of Englishmen living in a settlement in Burma congregate in the European Club, drink whiskey, and argue over an impending order to admit a token Asian.

George Orwell’s triumphant first novel. Informed by his experiences as a police officer in Burma, the novel paints a vivid portrait of the waning days of British imperial rule, and the racism and corruption that ran rampant. It centres on John Flory, a European businessman in colonial Burma, disenfranchised by the bigotry he sees around him and his persistent feeling of being out of place.

Erich Kästner, known to many as an author of children's and youth books, also wrote critically acclaimed novels. Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten was completed in 1931 and portrays the moral and intellectual decay amidst challenging political conditions.

Fabian is an unemployed Germanist wandering through the bustling city of Berlin, searching for work and connections. We witness his encounters with people trying to buy him, his girlfriend prostituting herself to become an actress, and his best friend's tragic suicide over a trivial remark.

Amidst the chaos, an inventor appears, wanting to retract his job-destroying inventions, but finds it impossible. Berlin is depicted as a city unraveling, where people live in a hopeless, merciless labyrinth akin to a madhouse.

Fabian stands as an outsider, a moralist whose weapon is observation and distance, crafted through sarcastic remarks. His aim is to observe whether the world has a talent for decency.

Kästner opposes the morally upright Fabian with human corruptibility, lack of conscience, and conformity. The book features numerous well-executed satirical highlights, such as a lottery where food is raffled or public brawls as evening entertainment.

Kästner's character descriptions are biting and relentless. A key example is the editor Müntzer, who supports something he doesn't believe in, fully aware of its falseness, having "chloroformed his conscience."

Fabian is a novel filled with astute, timely observations that remain relevant today. At the heart of Kästner's social critique lies human weakness and lethargy—knowing the falsehoods of circumstances but doing nothing about them—a criticism still valid to this day.

Following a young woman over the course of one outrageous and insufferable downtown dinner party at the home of her estranged best friends—an artist and curator couple, whom she now realizes stand for everything she detests—Happiness and Love is a piercing debut novel about brazen materialism, self-obsession, and the empty careerism of so-called cultural elites.

Years after escaping New York and the center of its artistic world—a group of self-important, depraved, and unscrupulous artists, curators, and hangers-on—our narrator is back in town. With no plans to see anyone she once knew, she’s wandering around the Lower East Side, thinking about the recent death of her former best friend, Rebecca, when she runs into Eugene, one half of the artist-curator couple at the heart of her old social set. Despite her better judgement, she accepts his invitation to a dinner party. And though the party is held only hours after Rebecca’s funeral, it not a memorial of Rebecca but a dinner held in honor of a young, newly famous actress whose lateness delays the party by hours.

As the guests sip their natural wine and await the actress’s arrival, the narrator, from her perch on the corner seat of a white sofa, silently, systematically, and mercilessly eviscerates them—their manners, their relationships, their delusions and failures, and the complete moral poverty that brings them here, to Nicole and Eugene’s loft on the Bowery. When the guest of honor finally does arrive, she sets in motion a disastrous end to the evening, laying bare the depravity and decadence of the hosts’ empty little lives—a hollowness that the narrator herself knows all too well.

The Wretched of the Earth is a seminal work by the distinguished psychiatrist from Martinique, Frantz Fanon, who actively participated in the Algerian Nationalist Movement. This masterpiece is a brilliant analysis of the psychology of the colonized and their path to liberation.

Fanon provides singular insight into the rage and frustration experienced by colonized peoples, and examines the role of violence in effecting historical change. The book incisively critiques the twin perils of post-independence colonial politics: the disenfranchisement of the masses by the elites, and intertribal and interfaith animosities.

This work, a veritable handbook of social reorganization for leaders of emerging nations, reflects the corruption and violence plaguing present-day Africa. The Wretched of the Earth has significantly influenced civil rights, anticolonialism, and black consciousness movements worldwide, reaffirming its status as a landmark in revolutionary literature.

In the Dream House is a revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author Carmen Maria Machado. This engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad offers a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.

Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. Her struggle gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles.

She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado's narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry.

She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, Disney villains, and iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

Know My Name is an empowering memoir by Chanel Miller, previously known to the world as Emily Doe. Her victim impact statement, posted on BuzzFeed, went viral, viewed by eleven million people within four days. It was a catalyst for legal changes in California and the recall of the judge in her case. Thousands wrote to her, expressing how her words gave them the courage to share their own experiences of assault.

In this memoir, Chanel reclaims her identity and tells her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. Despite the presence of eyewitnesses and secured physical evidence, her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and trial reveal the oppression victims face even in so-called 'perfect' cases.

Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators and a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable. Ultimately, it shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name challenges societal beliefs about what is acceptable, speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed the world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir stands as a modern classic.

From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today—written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie received a letter from a dear friend from childhood, asking her how to raise her baby girl as a feminist. Dear Ijeawele is Adichie's letter of response.

Here are fifteen invaluable suggestions—compelling, direct, wryly funny, and perceptive—for how to empower a daughter to become a strong, independent woman. From encouraging her to choose a helicopter, and not only a doll, as a toy if she so desires; having open conversations with her about clothes, makeup, and sexuality; debunking the myth that women are somehow biologically arranged to be in the kitchen making dinner, and that men can "allow" women to have full careers, Dear Ijeawele goes right to the heart of sexual politics in the twenty-first century.

It will start a new and urgently needed conversation about what it really means to be a woman today.

A Cidade e as Serras é um romance de Eça de Queirós, publicado em 1901, pertencente à última fase do escritor, onde se afasta do realismo e abandona a crítica pesada que fazia à sociedade portuguesa da época. O próprio título já indica sobre o enredo.

A narrativa se passa no século XIX, quando Paris era considerada a capital da Europa e o centro do mundo. Portugal, no entanto, mantinha-se como um país agrário e decadente.

José Maria de Eça de Queirós nasceu a Novembro de 1845, numa casa na Praça do Almada, em Póvoa de Varzim. O seu pai, José Maria de Almeida de Teixeira de Queirós, provinha de uma família de magistrados perseguidos pelos seus ideais liberais que defendiam uma doutrina constitucional.

Eça foi internado no Colégio da Lapa, no Porto, e mais tarde estudou Direito na Universidade de Coimbra, onde conheceu futuros escritores e poetas como Antero de Quental. Influenciado pelas novas ideologias europeias como o Positivismo e o Realismo-Naturalismo, Eça tornou-se notável pela originalidade e riqueza do seu estilo e linguagem.

Whipping Girl is a provocative manifesto that tells the powerful story of Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist.

Serano shares her experiences and observations—both pre- and post-transition—to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Her well-honed arguments stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender.

She exposes how deep-rooted the cultural belief is that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive, and how this “feminine” weakness exists only to attract and appease male desire. In addition to debunking popular misconceptions about transsexuality, Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activists must work to embrace and empower femininity—in all of its wondrous forms.

The Mirage of Love by Lady Diana is a captivating fiction that centers around the life of a protagonist woman. Happily married to her lover, she finds herself estranged from her husband after four years. Lost in the monotony of life without love and respect, she leads a servile existence repressed from joy and desires.

Determined to escape the deadly clutches of expectations and social repressions, she seeks to rise above menial existence and achieve her dreams. She falls in love with another man, her teacher and mentor, yet fears acknowledging her feelings due to potential social accusations. An incident awakens her to life's temporality, leading her into an ambitious and intimate relationship with her mentor.

In a world led by her lover, ambition becomes tangible, and she faces the disorder of the human world, particularly that of women. A critical moment arrives when she must choose between the men, showcasing her independence and strength.

This novel is a bold exploration of a woman's struggle against societal norms, representing the universal search for identity among womankind. The protagonist's journey is one of lust, self-realization, and the quest for identity beyond the home hemisphere.

The Overcoat is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories. It is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions, centered around the life and death of Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg.

Akaky is dedicated to his job as a titular councillor, taking special relish in the hand-copying of documents, though little recognized in his department for his hard work. Instead, the younger clerks tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare overcoat is often the butt of their jokes.

Akaky decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he takes it to his tailor, Petrovich, who declares the coat irreparable, telling Akaky he must buy a new overcoat. The story follows Akaky's journey to attain an "overcoat" of untold value and power, representing the mighty bureaucracy.

The narrative takes an interesting turn when Akaky dies of a broken heart after his beloved smart coat is stolen, symbolizing the reprisal of the lower class against the dominance of the ruling class.

Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet often neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936 by B.R. Ambedkar, it is a bold denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system.

Ambedkar, a figure comparable to W.E.B. Du Bois, offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and unjust social system. The world's best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, publicly responded to this provocation, and the debate between them remains unresolved.

This edition is extensively annotated and includes an introduction by Arundhati Roy, titled "The Doctor and the Saint." Roy examines the persistence of caste in modern India and explores the enduring conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi. She traces Gandhi's political career beginnings in South Africa, where his views on race, caste, and imperialism were shaped, and follows Ambedkar's rise as a major political figure.

Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar's anti-caste utopia, asserting that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hindered by systemic inequality.

Unspeakable Things is a fresh look at gender and power in the twenty-first century. It asks difficult questions about dissent and desire, money and masculinity, sexual violence, menial work, mental health, queer politics, and the Internet.

Laurie Penny, a celebrated journalist and activist, draws on a broad history of feminist thought and her own experience in radical subcultures in America and Britain to take on cultural phenomena from the Occupy movement to online dating. She provides her unique spin on economic justice and freedom of speech and offers candid personal insight to rally the defensive against eating disorders, sexual assault, and internet trolls.

Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines. It speaks for a new feminism that is about justice and equality, but also about freedom for all. It's about the freedom to be who we are, to love who we choose, to invent new gender roles, and to speak out fiercely against those who would deny us those rights.

Sam Harris' first book, The End of Faith, ignited a worldwide debate about the validity of religion. In the aftermath, Harris discovered that most people - from religious fundamentalists to non-believing scientists - agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, our failure to address questions of meaning and morality through science has now become the most common justification for religious faith. It is also the primary reason why so many secularists and religious moderates feel obligated to respect the hardened superstitions of their more devout neighbors.

In this explosive new book, Sam Harris tears down the wall between scientific facts and human values, arguing that most people are simply mistaken about the relationship between morality and the rest of human knowledge. Harris urges us to think about morality in terms of human and animal well-being, viewing the experiences of conscious creatures as peaks and valleys on a "moral landscape."

Because there are definite facts to be known about where we fall on this landscape, Harris foresees a time when science will no longer limit itself to merely describing what people do in the name of "morality"; in principle, science should be able to tell us what we ought to do to live the best lives possible.

Bringing a fresh perspective to age-old questions of right and wrong and good and evil, Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false - and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.

Using his expertise in philosophy and neuroscience, along with his experience on the front lines of our "culture wars," Harris delivers a game-changing book about the future of science and about the real basis of human cooperation.

Let the debate begin... The Advanced Genius Theory, hatched by Jason Hartley and Britt Bergman over pizza, began as a means to explain why icons such as Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Sting seem to go from artistic brilliance in their early careers to "losing it" as they grow older. The Theory proposes that they don’t actually lose it, but rather, their work simply advances beyond our comprehension.

The ramifications and departures of this argument are limitless, and so are the examples worth considering, such as George Lucas’s Jar Jar Binks, Stanley Kubrick’s fascination with coffee commercials, and the last few decades of Paul McCartney’s career. With equal doses of humor and philosophy, theorist Jason Hartley examines music, literature, sports, politics, and the very meaning of taste, presenting an entirely new way to appreciate the pop culture we love... and sometimes think we hate.

The Advanced Genius Theory is a manifesto that takes on the least understood work by the most celebrated figures of our time.

The clarion call to change that galvanized a generation. When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was first published, it created a shock wave of recognition in women, one that could be felt around the world. It went on to become an international bestseller, translated into more than twelve languages, and a landmark in the history of the women's movement.

Positing that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation, Greer examines the inherent and unalterable biological differences between men and women, as well as the profound psychological differences that result from social conditioning. Drawing on history, literature, biology, and popular culture, Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is a vital, passionately argued social commentary.

This book serves as both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.

Imagine a world where everyone knows everything about everybody. Where 'sharing' is valued above all, and privacy is considered a dangerous perversion.

Trafford wouldn't call himself a rebel, but he's daring to be different, to stand out from the crowd. In his own small ways, he wants to push against the system. But in this world, uniformity is everything. And even tiny defiances won't go unnoticed.

Ben Elton's dark, savagely comic novel imagines a post-apocalyptic society where religious intolerance combines with a sex-obsessed, utterly egocentric culture. In this world, nakedness is modesty, independent thought subversive, and ignorance is wisdom.

A chilling vision of what's to come? Or something rather closer to home?

Paranormal meets transcendental in this provocative and hilarious novel. Victor Pelevin has established a reputation as one of the most brilliant writers at work today; his comic inventiveness has won him comparisons to Kafka, Calvino, and Gogol. Time has described him as a "psychedelic Nabokov for the cyberage."

Pelevin’s new novel, his first in six years, is both a supernatural love story and a satirical portrait of modern Russia. It concerns the adventures of a hardworking fifteen-year-old Moscow prostitute named A. Huli, who in reality is a two thousand-year-old were-fox who seduces men in order to absorb their life force. She does this by means of her tail, a hypnotic organ that puts men into a trance in which they dream they are having sex with her.

A. Huli eventually comes to the attention of and falls in love with a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer named Alexander, who is also a werewolf (unbeknownst to our heroine). And that is only the beginning of the fun.

This is a stunning and ingenious work of the imagination, arguably Pelevin’s sharpest and most engrossing novel to date.

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism addresses the frequent doubts that skeptics, and even ardent believers, have about religion. Written by Timothy Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, this book provides a thoughtful exploration of faith in a Christian God.

Why is there suffering in the world? How could a loving God send people to Hell? Why isn’t Christianity more inclusive? Shouldn’t the Christian God be a god of love? How can one religion be “right” and the rest “wrong”? Why have so many wars been fought in the name of God? These are just a few of the questions even believers wrestle with today.

In this book, Keller uses literature, philosophy, real-life conversations, and reasoning to explain how faith in a Christian God is a soundly rational belief, held by thoughtful people of intellectual integrity with a deep compassion for those who truly want to know the truth.

To true believers, he offers a solid platform on which to stand their ground against the backlash to religion created by the Age of Skepticism. And to skeptics, atheists, and agnostics, he provides a challenging argument for pursuing the reason for God.

Meet Steven Stelfox.

London, 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. Twenty-seven-year-old A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, a world where no one knows anything and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public.

Fueled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, Stelfox blithely criss-crosses the globe—New York, Cologne, Texas, Miami, Cannes: you shout at waiters and sign credit card slips and all that really changes is the quality of the porn—searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.

But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cutthroat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.

Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical, and hysterically funny evisceration of the record business—a place populated by frauds, charlatans, and bluffers, where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved—as long as you want it badly enough.

In the mold of his acclaimed History of Beauty, renowned cultural critic Umberto Eco's On Ugliness is an exploration of the monstrous and the repellant in visual culture and the arts.

What is the voyeuristic impulse behind our attraction to the gruesome and the horrible? Where does the magnetic appeal of the sordid and the scandalous come from? Is ugliness also in the eye of the beholder?

Eco's encyclopedic knowledge and captivating storytelling skills combine in this ingenious study of the Ugly, revealing that what we often shield ourselves from and shun in everyday life is what we're most attracted to subliminally.

Topics range from Milton's Satan to Goethe's Mephistopheles; from witchcraft and medieval torture tactics to martyrs, hermits, and penitents; from lunar births and disemboweled corpses to mythic monsters and sideshow freaks; and from Decadentism and picturesque ugliness to the tacky, kitsch, and camp, and the aesthetics of excess and vice.

With abundant examples of painting and sculpture ranging from ancient Greek amphorae to Bosch, Brueghel, and Goya among others, and with quotations from the most celebrated writers and philosophers of each age, this provocative discussion explores in-depth the concepts of evil, depravity, and darkness in art and literature.

Cultural Amnesia is an encyclopedic A-Z masterpiece that serves as the perfect introduction to the core of Western humanism. This international bestseller by Clive James illuminates, rescues, or occasionally destroys the careers of many of the greatest thinkers, humanists, musicians, artists, and philosophers of the twentieth century.

Organized by quotations, the book is more than just a collection of essays. It takes the reader on an intellectual adventure, soaring to Montaigne-like heights, and provides a thorough understanding of the cultural and intellectual landscape of the last century. It's the book to burnish the memories of a Western civilization that James fears is nearly lost.

Andrea Dworkin, once called Feminism’s Malcolm X, has been worshipped, reviled, criticized, and analyzed—but never ignored. The power of her writing, the passion of her ideals, and the ferocity of her intellect have spurred the arguments and activism of two generations of feminists.

Intercourse is the book she is best known for, in which she provoked the argument that ultimately split apart the feminist movement. It enraged as many readers as it inspired when it was first published in 1987. In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society, sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women’s subordination to men.

In her introduction to this twentieth-anniversary edition of Intercourse, Ariel Levy, the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, discusses the enormous impact of Dworkin’s life and work. Dworkin’s argument is the stickiest question of feminism: Can a woman fight the power when he shares her bed?

In a breathtaking adventure story, the paranoid and brilliant inventor Allie Fox takes his family to live in the Honduran jungle, determined to build a civilization better than the one they've left.

Fleeing from an America he sees as mired in materialism and conformity, he hopes to rediscover a purer life. But his utopian experiment takes a dark turn when his obsessions lead the family toward unimaginable danger.

The teaching of G. I. Gurdjieff (1866-1949) has come to be recognized as one of the most original, enduring, and penetrating of our century. While Gurdjieff used many different means to transmit his vision of the human dilemma and human possibility, he gave special importance to his acknowledged masterwork, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.

Beelzebub's Tales is an "ocean of story" and of ideas that one can explore for a lifetime. It is majestic in scale and content, challengingly inventive in prose style, and often approached with apprehension. This revised edition, prepared under the direction of Gurdjieff's closest pupil, Jeanne de Salzmann, offers a new experience of Gurdjieff's masterpiece for contemporary readers.

This edition provides a translation that clarifies the verbal surface while respecting the author's thought and style. It is presented in a sturdy cloth edition, echoing its original publication.

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person?

David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.

So Much More is not another Christian-teenage-girl survival guide. Instead, it offers bold insights into how Christian girls can wage war with the world and win. The Botkin sisters focus on how young women can rise above their God-hating culture and change it for the better.

Today, countless young ladies face difficult problems and challenging questions. While many long for godly purpose in their lives, their bewilderment mounts when they observe broken homes, distant fathers, overwhelmed mothers, degrading college courses, and a lack of spiritual guidance — both at home and at church. As hope for security and stability fades, it is no wonder that many young ladies feel orphaned, unprotected, and without hope for their futures.

Within the pages of this book, discover practical, biblical solutions for the young woman who wants to do so much more than just survive in a savagely feministic, anti-Christian culture. Find the answers a girl is not likely to get from her church, her peers, or her culture.

Tom Wolfe, the master social novelist of our time, presents a sensational new novel about life, love, and learning amid today's American colleges.

Our story unfolds at the fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth. The roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns are suffused with tradition... Or so it appears to the beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina.

Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time. As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite, she is seduced by the glamour of acceptance, betraying both her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different—and the exotic allure of her own innocence.

With his trademark satirical wit and famously sharp eye for detail, Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons immortalizes the early-21st-century college-going experience.

Reviving Ophelia is a profound exploration by therapist Mary Pipher, who was increasingly troubled by the rising issues facing adolescent girls. Why were so many of them turning to therapy? Why had these promising young individuals succumbed to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and crushingly low self-esteem?

The answer struck a chord with Pipher, with parents, and with the girls themselves. They were caught in a "developmental Bermuda Triangle," coming of age in a media-saturated culture obsessed with unrealistic ideals of beauty and dehumanized sexual images. It was a culture rife with addictions and sexually transmitted diseases, causing them to lose their resilience and optimism in a "girl-poisoning" environment that promoted values contrary to those needed for survival.

Reviving Ophelia is voiced by the brave, fearless, and honest girls themselves who are emerging from the chaos of adolescence. It is a call to arms, offering important tactics, empathy, and strength. This book urges a change where young hearts can flourish again, rediscover, and reengage their sense of self.

The Guermantes Way is the third volume in Marcel Proust's monumental series, In Search of Lost Time. After the relative intimacy of the first two volumes, this installment opens up a vast, dazzling landscape of fashionable Parisian life in the late nineteenth century.

The narrator enters the brilliant, shallow world of the literary and aristocratic salons. Both a salute to, and a devastating satire of a time, place, and culture, this novel defines the great tradition of novels that follow the initiation of a young man into the ways of the world.

This elegantly packaged new translation introduces a new generation of readers to the literary richness of Marcel Proust.

Ignorance is bliss, or so hopes Antoine, the lead character in Martin Page's stinging satire, How I Became Stupid—a modern day Candide with a Darwin Award-like sensibility. A twenty-five-year-old Aramaic scholar, Antoine has had it with being brilliant and deeply self-aware in today's culture.

So tortured is he by the depth of his perception and understanding of himself and the world around him that he vows to denounce his intelligence by any means necessary in order to become "stupid" enough to be a happy, functioning member of society.

What follows is a dark and hilarious odyssey as Antoine tries everything from alcoholism to stock-trading in order to lighten the burden of his brain on his soul.

Caliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction.

She shows how the battle against the rebel body and the conflict between body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.

En ce temps-là, on mettait des photographies géantes de produits sur les murs, les arrêts d'autobus, les maisons, le sol, les taxis, les camions, la façade des immeubles en cours de ravalement, les meubles, les ascenseurs, les distributeurs de billets, dans toutes les rues et même à la campagne.

La vie était envahie par des soutiens-gorge, des surgelés, des shampoings antipelliculaires et des rasoirs triple-lame. L'œil humain n'avait jamais été autant sollicité de toute son histoire : on avait calculé qu'entre sa naissance et l'âge de 18 ans, toute personne était exposée en moyenne à 350 000 publicités.

Même à l'orée des forêts, au bout des petits villages, en bas des vallées isolées et au sommet des montagnes blanches, sur les cabines de téléphérique, on devait affronter des logos "Castorama", "Bricodécor", "Champion Midas" et "La Halle aux Vêtements". Il avait fallu deux mille ans pour en arriver là.

In the spirit of his savagely funny and national best-seller Parliament of Whores, Give War a Chance is P. J. O'Rourke's number one New York Times best-selling follow-up.

O'Rourke runs hilariously amok by tackling the death of Communism, sanctimonious liberals, and America's perennial bad guy Saddam Hussein in a series of classic dispatches from his coverage of the 1991 Gulf War.

Here is our most mordant and unnervingly funny political satirist on:

• Kuwait City after the Gulf War: "It looked like all the worst rock bands in the world had stayed there at the same time."
• On Saddam Hussein, O'Rourke muses: "He's got chemical weapons filled with ... chemicals. Maybe he's got The Bomb. And missiles that can reach Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Spokane. Stock up on nonperishable foodstuffs. Grab those Diet Coke cans you were supposed to take to the recycling center and fill them up with home heating oil. Bury the Hummel figurines in the yard. We're all going to die. Details at eleven."

The Holocaust Industry is a controversial indictment of those who exploit the tragedy of the Holocaust for their own gain. Norman G. Finkelstein presents an iconoclastic and controversial study, moving from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements.

It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength aligned with US foreign policy, that the memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this newfound status. Their interpretations of the tragedy often vary from actual historical events and are employed to deflect criticism of Israel and its supporters.

Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein argues that the main danger to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, concluding that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket.

Thoroughly researched and closely argued, this book is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it addresses are so rarely discussed.

The greatest power of literature is to break any limits, and this book allows us to partake in this. Vargas Llosa discusses here some literary works such as Lolita, Death in Venice, The Stranger, Manhattan Transfer, Tropic of Cancer, and The Tin Drum.

This splendid work is an immersion in the views of the author, one of the most brilliant writers of our time, about the purpose of literature and the present and future of books.

Description in Spanish: Lolita, Muerte en Venecia, El extranjero, Manhattan Transfer, Trópico de Cáncer y El tambor de hojalata son sólo algunas de las obras del siglo XX de las que nos habla Mario Vargas Llosa en estas páginas. Revela con sus palabras la íntima relación de su lectura con las posibilidades de ampliar nuestra experiencia vital.

In the first century A.D., Ovid, author of the groundbreaking epic poem Metamorphoses, came under severe criticism for The Art of Love, which playfully instructed women in the art of seduction and men in the skills essential for mastering the art of romantic conquest.

In this remarkable translation, James Michie breathes new life into the notorious Roman’s mock-didactic elegy. In lyrical, irreverent English, he reveals love’s timeless dilemmas and Ovid’s enduring brilliance as both poet and cultural critic.

The most disastrous family reunion in the history of fiction. The Drummond family, reunited for the first time in years, gathers near Cape Canaveral to watch the launch into space of their beloved daughter and sister, Sarah.

Against the Technicolor unreality of Florida's finest tourist attractions, the Drummonds stumble into every illicit activity under the tropical sun—kidnapping, blackmail, gunplay, and black market negotiations, to name a few. But even as their lives spin out of control, Coupland reminds us of their humanity at every turn.

He crafts a hilarious masterpiece with the keen eye of a cultural critic and the heart and soul of a gifted storyteller. Coupland tells not only the characters' stories but also the story of our times—thalidomide, AIDS, born-again Christianity, drugs, divorce, the Internet—all bound together with the familiar glue of family love and madness.

In a world with so many religions, why Jesus? We are living in a time when you can believe anything, as long as you do not claim it to be true. In the name of “tolerance,” our postmodern culture embraces everything from Eastern mysticism to New Age spirituality. But as Ravi Zacharias points out, such unquestioning acceptance of all things spiritual is absurd. All religions, plainly and simply, cannot be true.

Jesus Among Other Gods provides the answers to the most fundamental claims about Christianity, such as: Aren’t all religions fundamentally the same? Was Jesus who He claimed to be? Can one study the life of Christ and demonstrate conclusively that He was and is the way, the truth, and the life?

In each chapter, Zacharias considers a unique claim that Jesus made and then contrasts the truth of Jesus with the founders of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism with compelling insight and passionate conviction. In addition to an impressive breadth of reading and study, he shares his personal journey from despair and meaninglessness to his discovery that Jesus is who He said He is.

The Satyricon is the most celebrated work of fiction to have survived from the ancient world. It is often described as the first realistic novel and the father of the picaresque genre.

The narrative follows a pair of literature scholars as they wander through the cities of the southern Mediterranean. Along their journey, they encounter a series of vivid characters: a teacher in higher education, a libidinous priest, a vulgar freedman turned millionaire, a manic poet, a superstitious sea-captain, and a femme fatale. Each character is wickedly satirized, offering a vibrant depiction of Roman society's underbelly.

Petronius masterfully blends humor and critique, crafting a story that is both entertaining and insightful. This new translation by P.G. Walsh captures the original's gaiety, accompanied by an introduction and notes that illuminate the text's rich literary in-jokes and allusions.

The Public Burning is a groundbreaking novel that emerged as a controversial best-seller in 1977. It has since become one of the most influential novels of our time. This work of contemporary fiction is unique as it uses living historical figures as characters.

The novel reimagines the three fateful days in 1953 that culminated with the execution of alleged atomic spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The story is dominantly narrated by Vice-President Richard Nixon — the voraciously ambitious bad boy of the Eisenhower regime.

The novel features an enormous cast including Betty Crocker, Joe McCarthy, the Marx Brothers, Walter Winchell, Uncle Sam, his adversary The Phantom, and Time magazine incarnated as the National Poet Laureate.

All these characters, along with thousands more, converge in Times Square for the carnivalesque auto-da-fe at which the Rosenbergs are put to death. Not a single person present escapes implication in Cold War America's ruthless public spectacle.

A Hollywood millionaire with a terror of death, whose personal physician happens to be working on a theory of longevity – these are the elements of Aldous Huxley's caustic and entertaining satire on man's desire to live indefinitely. With his customary wit and intellectual sophistication, Huxley pursues his characters in their quest for the eternal, finishing on a note of horror.

This is Mr. Huxley's Hollywood novel, and you might expect it to be fantastic, extravagant, crazy, and preposterous. It is all that, and heaven and hell too. It is the kind of novel that he is particularly the master of, where the most extraordinary and fortuitous events are followed by contemplative little essays on the meaning of life. The story is outrageously good, with a highly sensational plot that will keep astonishing you to practically the final sentence.

Mr. Huxley's elegant mockery, his cruel aptness of phrase, the revelations, and the ingenious surprises he springs on the reader are those of a master craftsman; Mr. Huxley is at the top of his form.

Ecce Homo is an extraordinary autobiography penned by the renowned philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in late 1888, just weeks before his final descent into madness. This remarkable work stands as one of the most intriguing and bizarre examples of the genre ever written.

In this compelling narrative, Nietzsche provides a profound exploration of his life, philosophical journey, and intellectual development. He examines the heroes he has identified with, struggled against, and ultimately overcome, including Schopenhauer, Wagner, Socrates, and Christ. Through this examination, Nietzsche predicts the cataclysmic impact of his forthcoming revelation of all values.

Both self-celebrating and self-mocking, penetrating and strange, Ecce Homo offers the final, definitive expression of Nietzsche's main beliefs and serves as his last testament.

This essential reading challenges traditional morality, encourages the establishment of autonomy, and promotes a commitment to creativity.

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.

Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise.

Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Jejak Langkah is not just a historical novel meant to fill an episode of a nation at a critical juncture, but also aims to address the lack of literature exploring this complex period. This novel offers an alternative reading for us to view the path and waves of history from different perspectives.

The tetralogy is divided into four books, representing different periods of movement. This third novel, Jejak Langkah, is the phase of organizing resistance. Minke mobilizes all efforts to fight against the long-standing power of the Indies. However, Minke chooses not armed resistance but the path of journalism, creating as much Indigenous reading material as possible. The most famous of these is Medan Prijaji.

Through this newspaper, Minke calls upon the Indigenous people to do three things: increase boycotts, organize, and abolish feudalistic culture. Simultaneously, through journalistic steps, Minke calls out: "Educate the people with organization and educate the rulers with resistance."

In Praise of Shadows is an essay on aesthetics by the renowned Japanese novelist, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. This book explores various elements of Japanese culture, such as architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings.

The book includes perfect descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and the mysterious allure of women in the darkness of the house of pleasure. Tanizaki contrasts the subtlety and nuance of traditional Japanese interiors with the dazzling light of the modern age, offering a classic description of the collision between these two worlds.

The Women's Room is the bestselling feminist novel that awakened both women and men. It follows the transformation of Mira Ward and her circle as the women's movement begins to have an impact on their lives. A biting social commentary on an emotional world gone silently haywire, this book is a modern classic offering piercing insight into the social norms accepted so blindly and revered so completely.

Marilyn French questions those accepted norms and poignantly portrays the hopeful believers looking for new truths.

To Have Or to Be? is a seminal work from the second half of the 20th century. It serves as a manifesto for a new social and psychological revolution aimed at saving our threatened planet. This book encapsulates the penetrating thought of Erich Fromm.

Fromm's thesis explores two modes of existence that battle for the spirit of humankind: the having mode, which focuses on material possessions, power, and aggression, forming the foundation of universal evils like greed, envy, and violence; and the being mode, which is rooted in love, the pleasure of sharing, and productive activity.

This book is a brilliant program for socioeconomic change, urging readers to reflect on their own lives and society.