Современная зарубежная литература онлайн бесплатно - Страница 75
Description
Originally published as a serial, Nostromo is set in a fictional South American country where the outbreak of civil war puts the mining town of Sulaco in turmoil. Giovanni Battista Fidanza, known as Nostromo, is given the task of smuggling out a large amount of silver to keep it from the revolutionaries.
Conrad was inspired to write the book when he read, in a sailor’s memoir, the tale of a man who singlehandedly stole a boatload of silver. He had first heard the same story a quarter of a century earlier as a young sailor.
Nostromo has met with critical acclaim: it is often regarded as Conrad’s greatest novel and Francis Scott Fitzgerald said he would rather have written Nostromo than any other novel.
Description
In this first full-length Arsène Lupin novel the gentleman-thief remains a shadowy figure for most of the novel, working two steps beyond the law with a hidden aim. To fight against this anti-hero, Leblanc introduces Isidore Beautrelet, the prodigious school-boy detective. Also making an appearance are old foes Detective Ganimard and (in yet another copyright-defeating name change) Holmlock Shears. The battle of wills that ensues pulls Isidore through rural France as he tries to get to the bottom of Lupin’s motives.
The Hollow Needle was originally serialized in the magazine Je Sais Tout from 1908 to 1909, and was translated into English in 1910. Arsène Lupin starred in many further stories and plays, and a direct sequel to this story, Le second visage d’Arsène Lupin, was written by Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud in 1975.
Description
“This shop is haunted” reads the sign on the front of the bookshop; not by the ghost of a person from the past, but by the ghosts of all great literature which haunt all libraries and bookstores.
The owner of the bookshop is so focused on his books that he cannot see the unusual things that are going on in his shop. It takes a young advertising salesman who is seeking new business and the daughter of a rich client who has been sent to earn a living for herself in the bookshop to discover the plot that’s brewing amongst the bookshelves.
The Haunted Bookshop is a gentle mystery story which is full of wonderful literary references. It is set in the aftermath of the First World War before the Paris Peace Conference took place in an age where the “Lost and Found” columns are the place to look for significant information.
Description
This work by H. G. Wells was first published in 1910. In contrast to Wells’ early speculative fiction works like The Time Machine, this is a comic novel set in the everyday world of the late Victorian and early Edwardian era in England. Despite the less than happy life-story of Mr. Polly, it is an amusing book, enlivened by Polly’s inventive attitude towards the English language.
Alfred Polly’s mother dies when he is only seven, and he is brought up by his father and a stern aunt. He is indifferently educated, and leaves school in his early teens to be employed as a draper’s assistant. As the years pass, he finds himself more and more disenchanted with his occupation, but it is too late to change it. Eventually his father dies and leaves him a legacy which may be enough to set up in business for himself. He sets up his own shop in a small town and stumbles into an unhappy marriage. The business is not profitable, and in his middle-age, unhappy and dyspeptic, Mr. Polly comes up with an idea to bring an end to his troubles. Things, however, do not go as he planned, and lead to an unexpected result.
Wells’ later work often displays his passion for social reform. Here, that passion is less obvious, but nevertheless he demonstrates his sympathy for middle-class people raised like Mr. Polly with but a poor education and trapped into either dead-end jobs or in failing retail businesses.
The History of Mr. Polly was well-received by critics at the time of publication and was subsequently made into both a film and two different BBC television serials.
Description
The Wonderful Visit is an early work by H. G. Wells, published in the same year as The Time Machine. It takes a gentle, semi-comic approach to some of Wells’ social concerns by using the device of an angel fallen into our world from the Land of Dreams. This external observer, largely ignorant of the ways of humans and our society, is able to focus an unbiased eye on our failings.
The story opens with a strange glare over the little village of Sidderford one night, observed by only a few. But then reports arise of a Strange Bird being seen in the woods. The Rev. Hilyer, the Vicar of Sidderford, is a keen ornithologist. He takes his gun and goes out to hunt this unusual specimen for his collection. He does indeed see a strange flying creature, shoots at it, and brings it down. To his horror, he finds that he has shot and wounded a man-like creature with wings—in fact, an Angel.
The Vicar restores the Angel to health, but finds himself incapable of convincing others that this person really is an angel. The continuing clashes of the Angel’s idealistic points of view with the harsh reality of the human world are the core of this story.
The Wonderful Visit was well-received by critics and Wells’ contemporaries. Joseph Conrad praised it for its imaginative approach in a personal letter to Wells.
Description
After the conviction of two prominent politicians for sedition, Dumas’s story focuses on the trial of an accused collaborator: one Cornelius van Baerle, whose only wish is to grow his tulips in peace. His crowning achievement is set to be the impossible black tulip, a feat worth one hundred thousand guilders from the Horticultural Society of Haarlem, but before he can sprout the bulb he’s imprisoned with only the daughter of the prison warden to give him a glimmer of hope.
Set a few decades after the tulip mania of the 1630s, Alexandre Dumas’s novel opens with a historical incident: the mob killing of Johan and Cornelius de Witt, then high up in the government. Dumas successfully balances the romance of the protagonist’s love for both the heroine and his precious tulip with a quest to prove his innocence and thwart the schemes of his rival tulip-fancier Boxtel. The Black Tulip was originally published in three volumes in French in 1850; presented here is the 1902 translation by publisher P. F. Collier & Son.
Description
The Railway Children is Edith Nesbit’s most well-known and well-loved book for young readers. Since its first book publication in 1906, it has been made into movies, radio plays and television series several times, dramatised in the theatre, performed in actual railway stations, and even turned into a musical.
It tells the story of three children: Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, who with their mother are forced to leave their comfortable suburban home and go to live in a small cottage in the country, after their father is taken away from them for what at first seem inexplicable reasons. They live there very quietly, not going to school, whilst their mother writes stories and poems to earn a small income. The children’s lives, however, are greatly enlivened by their proximity to a nearby railway line and station, in which they take great interest. They befriend the railway staff and have several adventures in which they demonstrate considerable initiative and courage.
One unusual topic touched on by the book is the then-current Russia-Japan war, which divided opinion in England. Nesbit was clearly opposed to the actions of the Tsarist government of Russia, and she introduces into the story a Tolstoy-like Russian writer who has escaped from a prison camp in Siberia, to which he was condemned for publishing a book espousing his liberal views.
Description
Wilfred Owen was a soldier and poet during the second half of the first World War. His poetry, contrary to the propaganda of the time, dealt with the horrors of front-line trench warfare and was written at least partially out of a sense of duty to tell of the realities of war. Most of his poetry was published posthumously in 1920 after his death in combat in November 1918, a mere week before the armistice was signed.
His poetry, along with that of his close friend Siegfried Sassoon, is now regarded as an authentic voice of the experiences of the soldiers of the War. Held in especially high regard are Dulce Et Decorum Est with its vivid description of a gas attack, and Anthem for Doomed Youth. The poems are here presented in chronological order according to the date of final revision.
Description
Auguste Comte, considered by some to be the first “philosopher of science,” was perhaps most famous for founding the theory of Positivism: a framework of thinking and living meant to engender unity across humanity, backed by love, science, and intellect.
Positivism itself is a combination philosophy and way of life. Here Comte lays down the various tenets of the philosophy, describing what he views as the six major characteristics of the system. Comte goes into surprising detail, going so far as to describe minutiae like how children should be educated, the structure of a unified global committee of nations, new flags, calendars, the role of the arts, and so on. He ends the book with what he calls the “Religion of Humanity,” a secular religion meant to replace the traditional religions that people of the time were becoming disillusioned with.
The book and the theory are both very much products of the time. Comte was born around the end of the French Revolution, and lived in Paris during that time when republican ideas, respect for science, and a revolutionary and forward-thinking spirit made fertile ground for change. He viewed Positivism as the single solution to most of the problems of the day, including Communism, the plight of the working class, the shift away from traditional religion, and the constant war and strife that had plagued humanity.
Comte’s theories gained a huge following: you might even recognize the Positivist motto, “Order and Progress,” inscribed on Brazil’s national flag. While Positivism and its executive arm, the Church of Humanity, today only seem to survive in any significant number in Brazil—and even there in a greatly declined state—its theories were hugely influential in the emergence of many “ethical societies” and secular church movements around the globe.
Description
The Little White Bird is generally divided into three sections: the first chronicles the narrator’s life in London, beginning with how he came to know a little boy named David (who joins him on his adventures), and describes other matters of his everyday life.
The second section tells the story of how Peter Pan came to be a “betwixt-and-between” and his adventures in Kensington Gardens, including his interactions with the birds as well as the fairies hidden in the park.
Finally, the third section of the book revisits London with the narrator and David. The two make brief visits to Kensington Gardens and embark on a new adventure to Patagonia.
The Little White Bird is the first story to include the famous Peter Pan character, two years before Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, the play that made the character famous. While The Little White Bird can be described as a prelude to the play, inconsistencies such as Peter Pan’s age make the two stories incompatible.