European

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, read by Max Deacon and Dan Stevens. At the start of the twentieth century, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young officer cadet, advising him on writing, love, sex...

There is now no doubt that not only is Waiting for Godot the outstanding play of the 20th century, but it is also Samuel Beckett's masterpiece....

English literature may very well be the greatest body of imaginative writing the world has yet seen...

Brought to you by Penguin The Divine Comedy describes Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide; his ascent of Mount Purgatory and encounter with his dead love, Beatrice; and finally, his arrival in Heaven. Examining questions of faith, desire and enlightenment, the poem is a brilliantly...

In this BBC full-cast production, the ghost of Hamlet's father orders him to kill the man who took his life, his throne and his wife: Claudius. In a tale of caution, tragedy and revenge, Hamlet is driven to madness by his mission and his father's legacy. Michael Sheen stars as Hamlet, with...

A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible....

Brought to you by Penguin. This Penguin Classic is performed by Adrian Schiller. In Paradise Lost Milton produced poem of epic scale, conjuring up a vast, awe-inspiring cosmos and ranging across huge tracts of space and time. And yet, in putting a charismatic Satan and naked Adam and Eve at the...

Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Jeremy Irons' perceptive reading illuminates the poetry of T. S. Eliot in all its complexity....

Tom Jones, a foundling, is brought up by the kindly Mr. Allworthy. Forced to leave the house as a young man after tales of his disgraceful behavior reach his benefactor's ears, he sets out in utter despair....

For the very first time, The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm makes available in English all 156 stories from the 1812 and 1815 editions....

The complete "box set" of T. H. White's epic fantasy novel of the Arthurian legend....

For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer....

A dynamic remastering of the second BBC Radio 4 full-cast serial – Fit the Seventh to Fit the Twelfth – which spawned a phenomenal hitchhiking legend The second original series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remastered by Dirk Maggs (director of the Tertiary, Quandary and...

Milton tells the story of man's creation, fall and redemption, "to justify the ways of God to men"....

In this BBC full-cast production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena run to the woods and stumble into a life separate from time itself. Fairy magic wreaks havoc and midsummer madness takes over as lovers tread the delicate line between fantasy and reality...

Dante's Divine Comedy is considered to be not only the most important epic poem in Italian literature, but also one of the greatest poems ever written....

A collection of seminal dramatised pieces by the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe was a colossus of German literature and a true Renaissance man. A novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher, he wrote the first international bestseller, The Sorrows of Young...

Over the course of a steamy and tense afternoon, twelve jurors deliberate the fate of a 19-year-old boy alleged to have murdered his own father....

Four classic comedies from one of the wittiest playwrights in Western literature....

Sir Ian McKellen, fresh from his performance as Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, is Prospero, and heads a strong cast in Shakespeare’s last great play....

Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men....

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor....

Agnes, una muchacha peculiar que parece no rendir cuentas a nadie y que es capaz de crear misteriosos remedios con sencillas combinaciones de plantas...

Benedict Cumberbatch, Greta Scacchi and Simon Russell Beale star in Michael Frayn's award-winning play about the controversial 1941 meeting between physicists Bohr and Heisenberg. Copenhagen, Autumn 1941. The two presiding geniuses of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg meet for...

“Probably the most finely accomplished and ... most enduring" translation (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of this essential work of world literature—from a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante and an accomplished poet. “The Hollanders … act as latter-day Virgils, guiding us...

Livre de dévotions esthétiques, Autels privilégiés voit Robert de Montesquiou ériger ses autels à ceux qu’il aime: un tendre procès en Cour d’art et d’amour plaidant la canonisation de Desbordes‑Valmore; un culte scruté autour du «demi‑dieu» Leconte de Lisle, sur les pelouses du Luxembourg; le pauvre Lelian, Paul Verlaine, fragile et fraternel; l’ensoleillé Mistral, «notre Provençal Horus». Entre hommages, plaidoiries et fleurs jetées — des Pensives Roses sur la route — se dessine une procession de saints laïcs où ferveur, ironie et grâce composent, à voix basse, de véritables romans du ciel.

Quand Mathias, 11 ans, violoniste prometteur, demande à sa mère de participer à la " Tournée des étoiles ", un concours de jeunes talents, elle choisit de tout faire pour qu'il réalise son rêve, malgré la sclérose en plaques précoce dont il est atteint. Gustave, son grand-père, un compositeur distrait et loufoque, décide d'acheter un van afin de transformer cette tournée d'auditions en véritable aventure. Tandis que Mathias nourrit le secret espoir, grâce à la musique, de renouer avec son père dont il reste sans nouvelles... 

Dans ces Nouveaux Contes, Maupassant cisèle des récits où l’ironie froide et la précision du regard dévoilent les hommes. Mademoiselle Fifi ouvre le bal: un commandant prussien, comte de Farlsberg, installé depuis des mois au château d’Uville, règne en maître indifférent—bois humide au feu, éperons dans le marbre, meubles entaillés—et la tension sourd. Autour, d’autres histoires captent le frisson d’une époque et la comédie humaine.

Dans ces courts tableaux en prose, Remy de Gourmont distille une mélancolie lucide et une ironie feutrée. Entre rêve et désenchantement, figures furtives et paysages intérieurs se succèdent en vignettes moroses où l’ombre révèle la beauté. Fin de siècle, la phrase se fait musique: elle effleure le bizarre, l’ennui, le désir, la mort, et laisse au silence la part du mystère.

Una peculiar gramática que se hace eco de las dificultades que el autor ha detectado en sus alumnos, los medios de comunicación y la sociedad en general. Una amena síntesis sobre el buen uso de nuestro idioma y una denuncia de los abusos que cometen los hablantes.

C'est un vrai tour de force qu'a réalisé ici François Debluë en termes d'économie et de subtilité littéraires. En une soixantaine de scènes rapides, nous découvrons les grands désarrois et les petites victoires de la vie d'un homme annoncé comme ordinaire - mais cela existe-t-il...

Die Schriften der französischen Prosa-Ikone Anatole France wurden zu Beginn des letzten Jahrhunderts vom Vatikan auf den Index verbotener Bücher gesetzt. Ob bei den offiziellen europäischen Gottes-Profis inzwischen ein Umdenken stattgefunden hat ist zu bezweifeln. Jedenfalls zeugen die Erzählungen des Anatole France von einem großartigen Verständnis der praktischen Welt und einem sehr gutem Verständnis der menschlichen Natur – wahrscheinlich deswegen für den Vatikan unverständlich.

In this book, acclaimed actor Paterson Joseph opens up the process of rehearsing and preparing for the RSC's 2012 production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and, by doing so, brings a greater understanding to the play's characters; its rhetoric and the power of rhetoric in general, both on and off stage; its setting and political context and how this can be interpreted and refreshed for the 21st century.

Three dramas by Barry Hines and an abridged reading of his classic Kes (A Kestrel for a Knave) Yorkshire-born author Barry Hines is renowned for his 1968 novel A Kestrel for a Knave (later turned into Ken Loach’s award-winning film Kes) and for scripting the BAFTA-winning BBC TV film Threads...

Read by the author and poet, Brian Bilston. Why do we write poetry? Who should write it? And where do you even start? Well, Brian Bilston, one of the UK’s most hilarious and best-loved poets, is here to take us through the hows, whys and whats of reading, writing and enjoying poetry every day...

Robert Browning was fascinated by people—not only people of his own day, but also people who had lived in the remote past. Five of his famous dramatic monologues are spoken by characters from the ancient Classical world: a Greek goddess (Artemis), a Roman senator (in “Imperante Augusto Natus Est—”), an Arab physician (Karshish), a Greek poet (Cleon), and the last surviving eyewitness of Jesus Christ (in “A Death in the Desert”). They probe many different questions, especially regarding the transition from paganism to Christianity.

Thomas More is an enduringly fascinating and profoundly controversial figure. A brilliant scholar, his Utopia of 1516 dared to imagine how society might be completely reordered. At the same time, his hatred of the Reformation caused him to advocate, and seek to implement, the death penalty for...

'A book to underline endlessly, to dog-ear, to carry around until battered, and then to tell all your friends to buy because you're too reluctant to give up your own copy. A wonder’ Polly Barton ‘Dazzling … one fine day, you open a book by an unknown writer, and a charge of pure talent...

George Eliot pushed the boundaries of fiction and of Victorian society. She was an extraordinary woman whose unconventional life meant that she was judged harshly by family, friends, and strangers. Eliot wanted to draw attention to the feelings and motivations of ordinary people, so that we...

A mysterious woman appears nightly at the bedside of a prince and sings to him until he falls sick with love for her. A determined hero tracks his beloved through several incarnations, struggling to win her back. A young warrior seeks a woman who turns into a swan. These are the plots of...