'Knut Hamsun founded the modernist and postmodernist novel at once' writes James Wood in his introduction to this seminal work by a Nobel Prize-winning writer who has been recognised as one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century.A young man called John Nagel arrives to spend a summer in a small Norwegian coastal town, a stranger in a loud yellow suit who begins to behave very curiously. He shocks, bewilders and beguiles with his open defiance and erratic self-rev...

Mysteries is a classic of European literature, one of the seminal novels of the twentieth century. It is the story of Johan Nagel, a strange young man who arrives to spend a summer in a small Norwegian coastal town. His presence acts as a catalyst for the hidden impulses, concealed thoughts and darker instincts of the local people. Cursed with the ability to understand the human soul, especially his own, Nagel can foresee, but cannot prevent, his own self-destruction.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has ...

This warm and lyrical semi-autobiographical first novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen charts the coming of age of Lawrence Breavman, the only son of a Jewish Montreal family.‘Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.’Lawrence Breavman seeks two things: love and beauty. Beginning with the innocent games of delicious misadventure with first love Lisa and the absorbing wanders through Montre...

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA.'She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense' GUARDIAN'One of the last century's most original literary talents' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Du Maurier employs well the assured balancing of uncanny possibilities ... and the bitterly wry sense of absurdity that were to characterise her finest fiction' HELEN TAYLOR, INDEPENDENT...

From the Nobel Prize–winning author: "One of the great short novels of the 20th century" ( The Wall Street Journal).Internationally acclaimed as one of the world's most influential writers, Kenzaburō Ōe brings to the fore the post-WWII rage and anxiety of a decorous society in this "deathly black comedy . . . dripping with nuclear terror" ( The Japan Times).Bird is an antisocial twenty-seven-year-old intellectual hanging ...

Thomas Clayton Wolfe (October 3, 1900 – September 15, 1938) was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing. His books, written and published from the 1920s to the 1940s, vividly reflect on American culture and mores of the period, albeit filtered through Wolfe's sensitive, s...

Before the world knew Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Cassady, this "brilliant and important" novel chronicled the author's early years among the Beats ( Los Angeles Free Press).Published five years before On the Road, this candid and perceptive roman à clef chronicles the adventures of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady before they became literary icons. In dive bars and all-night diners, cabs racing across Manhattan and squalid apartments stic...

Curious events almost seem to cry out for the Saint's intervention, and in these stories he is faced with enough peculiar crimes to keep him well occupied. The various adventures he gets himself into lead him to kiss a policewoman, buy a racehorse, invest in bootlegging, dabble in antiques, rent a flat, recover a treaty, get arrested, demonstrate an invention - and always come out on top.

In Prohibition-era New York, criminals rule the city: the gangsters do what they like, and pay the judges for the privilege; the few honest cops are helpless; and above them all the Big Fellow pulls the strings. With that many sinners, cleaning up the town will take a Saint...Simon Templar is a long way from home, and facing great danger from directions both expected and entirely unforeseen. But he promised to do the job; and a saint never goes back on his word.

Now fans need no longer wait for the CBC to re-run recordings of Max Ferguson's notorious radio shows (assuming that the tapes have not all been destroyed by court order). A full dose of his lunacy, depravity, and flagrant disregard for CBC management can now be enjoyed at any hour of the day or night simply by reading a copy of And Now. Here's Max, his scandalous memoir of a life in broadcasting at the CBC. Max Fergusons 52 years as an announcer on CBC television and radio included such prog...

A "creatively captivating and intellectually challenging" existential mystery from the great Polish author—"sly, funny, and . . . lovingly translated" ( The New York Times).Winner of the 1967 International Prize for LiteratureMilan Kundera called Witold Gombrowicz "one of the great novelists of our century." Now his most famous novel, Cosmos, is available in a critically acclaimed translation by the award-winning translato...