100 Greatest Books of World Literature part 1
Explore the first part of the 100 Greatest Books of World Literature, featuring timeless classics and masterpieces from renowned authors. Discover must-read novels that shaped literary history.
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The Ramayana
by VÄlmÄ«ki
One of the ancient world's great verse epics is retold in energetic English prose in this sparkling volume.
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The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu
The worldâs first novel, in a translation that is âlikely to be the definitive edition . . . for many years to comeâ (The Wall Street Journal) A Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, with flaps and deckle-edged paper Written in the eleventh century, this exquisite portrait of courtly life in medieval Japan is widely celebrated as the worldâs first novel. Genji, the Shining Prince, is the son of an emperor. He is a passionate character whose tempestuous nature, family circumstances, love affairs, alliances, and shifting political fortunes form the core of this magnificent epic. Royall Tylerâs superior translation is detailed, poetic, and superbly true to the Japanese original while allowing the modern reader to appreciate it as a contemporary treasure. Supplemented with detailed notes, glossaries, character lists, and chronologies to help the reader navigate the multigenerational narrative, this comprehensive edition presents this ancient tale in the grand style that it deserves.
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Njal's Saga
Â
An Icelandic family saga, probably from the 13th century, in a modern translation.
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The Divine Comedy
by Dante Alighieri
The Divine Comedy, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. It proceeds on a journey that, in its intense recreation of the depths and the heights of human experience, has become the key with which Western civilization has sought to unlock the mystery of its own identity. Mandelbaum's astonishingly Dantean translation, which captures so much of the life of the original, renders whole for us the masterpiece of that genius whom our greatest poets have recognized as a central model for all poets. This Everyman's edition-containing in one volume all three cantos, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso-includes an introduction by Nobel Prize--winning poet Eugenio Montale, a chronology, notes, and a bibliography. Also included are forty-two drawings selected from Botticelli's marvelous late-fifteenth-century series of illustrations. (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
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Othello
by William Shakespeare
Presents the text of Shakespeare's tragedy in which Othello, a Moorish general, is led by a jealous and evil ensign to believe his wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful, and includes explanatory notes, background, critical essays, and other reference material.
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Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes
A definitive English translation of the sixteenth-century classic follows the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through Spain and become subject to the noble knight-errant's fanciful imagination. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.