If there is one city that captures the tragedy and euphoria of the twentieth century, it is Berlin. The scene of socialist revolution and Nazi... oppression, invaded and occupied, divided and blockaded, it rose again after German reunification to become a thriving global cultural center. Not surprisingly, Berlin has been home to some of the finest writers in any language, who have rooted their tales in the nooks and neighborhoods of this fascinating place. In Berlin Tales, translator Lyn Marven and editor Helen Constantine offer a collection that reveals the literary brilliance and urban richness found in Berlin over the decades. The stories are grouped together by district--from the Jewish Mitte to Turkish Kreuzberg, from Alexanderplatz to individual streets--and layered on top of each other historically, providing a narrative palimpsest that tells us much about the city and its writers. The city's image, meaning, and appeal to immigrants and tourists find full expression here, in this remarkable array of work from across the decades.

Chateaubriand was the giant of French literature in the early nineteenth century. Drawing on eighteenth-century English romanticists, on explorers in... America, and on Goethe's Werther, he had a profound effect on French writers from Victor Hugo and Lamartine to George Sand and Flaubert. A quixotic and paradoxical personality, he combined impressive careers as a brilliant prose-poet, a spiritual guide, a high-ranking diplomat, and an enterprising lover.Atala and René are his two best-known works, reflecting not only his own joys, aspirations, and despair, but the emerging tastes of a new literary era. Atala is the passionate and tragic love story of a young Indian couple wandering in the wilderness, enthralled by the beauties of nature, drawn to a revivified Christianity by its esthetic charm and consoling beneficence, and finally succumbing to the cruelty of fate. Perhaps even more than Werther or Childe Harold, René embodies the romantic hero, and is not wholly foreign to the disorientation of youth today. Solitary, mysterious, ardent, and poetic, he is in open revolt against a society whose values he rejects. Withough question this archetype played a large part in determining the course of French literature up to the 1850's.

This varied French language textbook is designed for intermediate-level students. Its aim is to promote ease and comprehension in reading while... introducing students to 20th-century Francophone literature. Founded upon the notion that in-depth learning can include materials and activities that employ a playful approach, "Identite, Modernite, Texte" shows students how literature is related to life and how to develop critical and analytical reading skills. Exploring many aspects of the theme of identity, the book combines the use of modern literary texts and French civilization components with language building exercises. A wealth of activities, famous quotations, traditional French riddles and word games, and illustrations allows instructors great flexibility. An internet site for this book offers an array of additional supplementary materials, a detailed instructor's manual and the opportunity to communicate directly with the authors.

160pages. poche. Poche. Dans les rues d'Alger, les hommes s'étreignent. Derrière leurs portes closes, les femmes s'ennuient. Séparée de la ville par... un rectangle de verre, une jeune fille observe. Un mur sale, un trolley bondé, une enfant imprudente lui donnent les mots d'une nouvelle histoire. Elle invente. Elle s'invente. Elle est pubère, son père ne lui parle pas depuis deux ans. La mère prépare l'intrigue, les soeurs se taisent. L'ennui ronge la capitale. Personne n'y échappe. Pas même le soleil! Les hommes attendent. Ils l'attendent. L'amour et l'espoir n'existent pas. Les pensées se cognent contre un espace amputé de son temps. Cachée derrière sa fenêtre, avide de savoir, la voyeuse force sur la réalité. Un voile s'éloigne, une petite fille meurt sous les pneus d'un camion. Les trous de serrure s'élargissent, la voyeuse dérobe la vie des autres. Le rêve s'impose. La mort guette. Toutes deux se convoitent, s'invitent, se rejettent. Le sang se faufile entre les mots et les maux.

In this mischievous and utterly original debut, Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm-inspired tales. As... readers follow the siblings through a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind (and beyond) the bread crumbs, edible houses, and outwitted witches. Fairy tales have never been more irreverent or subversive as Hansel and Gretel learn to take charge of their destinies and become the clever architects of their own happily ever after. Watch a Video

In this mischievous and utterly original debut, Hansel and Gretel walk out of their own story and into eight other classic Grimm-inspired tales. As... readers follow the siblings through a forest brimming with menacing foes, they learn the true story behind (and beyond) the bread crumbs, edible houses, and outwitted witches. Fairy tales have never been more irreverent or subversive as Hansel and Gretel learn to take charge of their destinies and become the clever architects of their own happily ever after.

This volume includes "The Battle of the Books" and "The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit", both which accompanied "A Tale of a Tub" on its first... publication in 1704.About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A dazzling Urdu epic that evokes a magical Indo-Muslim world Originally composed in the fourteenth century and made popular in 1803 by Mir Amman's... colloquial retelling, this wonderfully entertaining story paints a portrait of a distant and colorful time and place. In despair at having no son to succeed him, the king of Turkey leaves his palace to live in seclusion. Soon afterward, however, he encounters four wandering dervishes-three princes and a rich merchant-who have been guided to Turkey by a supernatural force that prophesied their meeting. As the five men sit together in the dead of night sharing their tales of lost love, a magnificent landscape reveals courtly intrigue and romance, fairies and djinn, oriental gardens and lavish feasts.

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the... birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen and joins a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel.A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.

Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the... birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen and joins a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel.A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.

"How can I tell him that he will never find her, after he has been searching for her all his life? If I could talk to him without breaking his heart,... there is something I would tell him, in hopes it would stop his sleepless nights and wrongheaded search for a shadow. I would repeat this to him: 'Your Matilde Lina is in limbo, the dwelling place of those who are neither dead nor alive.' But that would be like severing the roots of the tree that supports him. Besides, why do it if he is not going to believe me." In the midst of war, the protagonists of A Tale of the Dispossessed are continuously searching: for a promised land, a destiny, the face of a woman who has disappeared -- searching for an impossible love and, conversely, for a love that is possible. A way station for refugees from violence is the setting for an intense love triangle in which an uprooted and wandering people lead the reader to experience the collective drama of forced relocation. A Tale of the Dispossessed speaks to us about the inexorable law that has led man, expelled from paradise since the days of Adam through to modern times, in his search for a way back home.

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!' Set before and... during the French Revolution in the cities of Paris and London, A Tale of Two Cities tells the story of Dr Manette's release from imprisonment in the Bastille and his reunion with daughter, Lucie. A French aristocrat Darnay and English lawyer Carton compete in their love for Lucie and the ensuing tale plays out against the menacing backdrop of the French Revolution and the shadow of the guillotine.

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the... student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .” With these famous words, Charles Dickens plunges the reader into one of history’s most explosive eras—the French Revolution. From the storming of the Bastille to the relentless drop of the guillotine, Dickens vividly captures the terror and upheaval of that tumultuous period. At the center is the novel’s hero, Sydney Carton, a lazy, alcoholic attorney who, inspired by a woman, makes the supreme sacrifice on the bloodstained streets of Paris. One of Dickens’s most exciting novels, A Tale of Two Cities is a stirring classic of love, revenge, and resurrection. Gillen D’Arcy Wood received his Ph.D in English from Columbia University in 2000 and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of The Shock of the Real: Romanticism and Visual Culture, 1760–1860.

Against the backdrop of the French Revolution, Dickens unfolds a masterpiece of drama, adventure, and courage featuring Charles Darnay, a man falsely... accused of treason. He bears an uncanny resemblance to the dissolute, yet noble Sydney Carton. Brilliantly plotted, the novel culminates in a daring prison escape in the shadow of the guillotine.