Category Archives: Travel Guides
Tortilla Flat
John Steinbeck`s first major critical and commercial success, and perhaps his funniest novel, “Tortilla Flat” includes a critical introduction by Thomas Fensch in “Penguin Modern Classics”. Danny is a paisano, descended from the original Spanish settlers who arrived in Monterey, California, centuries before. He values friendship above money and possessions, so when he suddenly inherits
The Captive Mind
Written in Paris in the early 1950s, this book created instant controversy in its analysis of modern society that had allowed itself to be hypnotized by socio-political doctrines, and to accept totalitarian terror on the strength of a hypothetical future.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
“She has examined the heart of man with an understanding… that no other writer can hope to surpass” Tennessee Williams Often cited as one of the great novels of twentieth-century American fiction, Carson McCullers` prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle
The Road to Wigan Pier
A searing account of George Orwell`s observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, “The Road to Wigan Pier” is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter
A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, `Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter` offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly
How Green Was My Valley
Growing up in a mining community in rural South Wales, Huw Morgan is taught many harsh lessons. Looking back, where difficult days are faced with courage and the valleys swell with the sound of Welsh voices, it becomes clear that there is nowhere so green as the landscape of his own memory.
Log From the Sea of Cortez
In 1940 Steinbeck sailed in a sardine boat with his great friend the marine biologist, Ed Ricketts, to collect marine invertebrates from the beaches of the Gulf of California.The expedition was described by the two men in Sea of Cortez, and was originally published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is told here
Travels with Charley – In Search of America
Travels with Charley is an account of legendary American writer John Steinbeck’s journey in 1960, when he was almost sixty years old, to rediscover his native land. Steinbeck felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds and the essence of its people. Accompanied only by his dog, Charley, he travelled across the
The Wayward Bus
Drifting through its cast of vivid, earthy characters in a series of impressionistic vignettes, `The Wayward Bus` is John Steinbeck`s Californian Canterbury Tales.`The Wayward Bus` travels through the backroads of the lush California countryside, transporting the lost and the lonely to new destinations. Juan Chicoy is at the wheel, a man of the land, hot-blooded
Once There Was a War
`Do you know it, do you remember it, the drives, the attitudes, the terrors and, yes, the joys?` Thus Steinbeck introduces his collection of poignant and hard-hitting dispatches for the New York Herald Tribune when the Second World War was at its height. He begins in England, recounting the courage of the bomber crews, the
A Russian Journal
Just after the iron curtain fell on Eastern Europe John Steinbeck and acclaimed war (and Magnum) photographer, Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travellers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad – now Volgograd – but through the countryside of the
The Red Pony
Jody Tiflin has the urge for rebellion, but he also wants to be loved. In `The Red Pony` Jody begins to learn about adulthood – its pain, its responsibilities and its problems – through his acceptance of his father`s gifts. First he is given a red pony, and later he is promised the colt of
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
An ancient bridge collapses over a gorge in Peru, hurling five people into the abyss. It seems a meaningless human tragedy. But one witness, a Franciscan monk, believes the deaths might not be as random as they appear. Convinced that the disaster is a punishment sent from Heaven, the monk sets out to discover all
Undertones of War
In what is one of the finest autobiographies to come out of the First World War, the distinguished poet Edmund Blunden records his experiences as an infantry subaltern in France and Flanders. Blunden took part in the disastrous battles of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele, describing the latter as `murder, not only to the troops,
Hiroshima
When the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, killing 100,000 men, women and children, a new era in human history opened. Written only a year after the disaster, John Hersey brought the event vividly alive with this heart-rending account of six men and women who survived despite all the odds. A
Reflections in a Golden Eye
McCullers` second novel, “Reflections in a Golden Eye”, is set on a Southern army base in the 1930s. “Reflections” tells the story of Captain Penderton, a bisexual whose life is upset by the arrival of Major Langdon, a charming womanizer who has an affair with Penderton`s tempestuous and flirtatious wife, Leonora.
Manhattan Transfer
A modernist masterwork that has more in common with films than traditional novels, John Dos Passos` `Manhattan Transfer`. A colourful, multi-faceted chronicle of New York in the early 1920s, `Manhattan Transfer` ranks with James Joyce`s `Ulysses` as a powerful and often lyrical meditation on the modern city. Using experimental montage techniques borrowed from the cinema,
A Clergyman`s Daughter
Intimidated by her father, the rector of Knype Hill, Dorothy performs her submissive roles of dutiful daughter and bullied housekeeper. Her thoughts are taken up with the costumes she is making for the church school play, by the hopelessness of preaching to the poor and by debts she cannot pay in 1930s Depression England. Suddenly
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a
Labyrinths
`Labyrinth` is a superb collection of selected works by Jorge Luis Borges, bringing together many of his stories including the celebrated `Library of Babel`, `Garden of Forking Paths`, `Funes the Memorious` and `Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote`. In later life, dogged by increasing blindness, Borges used essays and brief tantalizing parables to explore the
