Written by Rimbaud at age 18 in the wake of a tempestuous affair with fellow poet, Paul Verlaine, A Season in Hell has been a touchstone for anguished poets, artists and lovers for over a century. Thi…
Epictetus was born into slavery about 55 C.E. in the eastern outreaches of the Roman Empire. Sold as a child and crippled from the beatings of his master, Epictetus was eventually freed, rising from h…
The Warden centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundat…
As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family membe…
Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides co…
Similar to the premise of the Smallville television series, this hardcover book takes a look at the life of a young Clark Kent as he begins to develop strange powers. Living in a small Kansas town, th…
'I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting the…
The story revolves around two seemingly homeless men simply waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree, inhabiting a drama spun of their own consciousness. Th…
Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles …
Professor Esolen's translation of Dante's Inferno is the best one I have seen, for two reasons. His decision to use unrhymed blank verse allows him to come nearly as close to the meaning of the origin…
Vita Nuova (1292-94) is regarded as one of Dante's most profound creations. The thirty-one poems in the first of his major writings are linked by a lyrical prose narrative celebrating and debating the…
Joe Keller and Herbert Deever, partners in a machine shop during the war, turned out defective airplane parts, causing the deaths of many men. Deever was sent to prison while Keller escaped punishment…
First performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, The Three Sisters probes the lives and dreams of Olga, Masha, and Irina, former Muscovites now living in a provincial town from which they long to es…
Ulysses is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920 and then published in its entirety…
Originally written in 1952 but not published till 1985, Queer is an enigma - both an unflinching autobiographical self-portrait and a coruscatingly political novel, Burroughs' only realist love story …
