Primære faneblade

  • Philip Roth: The Dying Animal
    Af Philip Roth (2001)
    Summary: David Kepesh is white-haired and over sixty, an eminent TV culture critic and star lecturer at a New York college, when he meets Consuela Castillo, a decorous, well-mannered student of twenty-four, the daughter of wealthy Cuban exiles, who promptly puts his life into erotic disorder. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when he left his wife and child, Kepesh has experimented with living what he calls an "emancipated manhood," beyond the reach of family or a mate. Over the years he has refined that exuberant decade of protest and license into an orderly life in which he is both unimpeded in the world of eros and studiously devoted to his aesthetic pursuits. But the youth and beauty of Consuela, "a masterpiece of volupté" undo him completely, and a maddening sexual possessiveness transports him to the depths of deforming jealousy. The carefree erotic adventure evolves, over eight years, into a story of grim loss. What is astonishing is how much of America's post-sixties sexual landscape is encompassed in THE DYING ANIMAL. Once again, with unmatched facility, Philip Roth entangles the fate of his characters with the social forces that shape our daily lives. And there is no character who can tell us more about the way we live with desire now than David Kepesh, whose previous incarnations as a sexual being were chronicled by Roth in THE BREAST and THE PROFESSOR OF DESIRE. A work of passionate immediacy as well as a striking exploration of attachment and freedom, THE DYING ANIMAL is intellectually bold, forcefully candid, wholly of our time, and utterly without precedent—a story of sexual discovery told about himself by a man of seventy, a story about the power of eros and the fact of death

  • Michel Houellebecq: The Elementary Particles
    Summary: An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne

  • James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
    Af James Baldwin (2001)
    Summary: One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World' Baldwin's ground-breaking second novel , which established him as one of the great American writers of his time David, a young American in 1950s Paris, is waiting for his fiancée to return from vacation in Spain. But when he meets Giovanni, a handsome Italian barman, the two men are drawn into an intense affair. After three months David's fiancée returns and, denying his true nature, he rejects Giovanni for a 'safe' future as a married man. His decision eventually brings tragedy. Filled with passion, regret and longing, this story of a fated love triangle has become a landmark of gay writing. James Baldwin caused outrage as a black author writing about white homosexuals, yet for him the issues of race, sexuality and personal freedom were eternally intertwined. 'Exquisite... a feat of fire-breathing, imaginative daring' Guardian 'Excruciating beauty' San Francisco Chronicle 'Audacious... remarkable... elegant and courageous' Caryl Phillips

  • Zadie Smith: White Teeth
    Af Zadie Smith (2001)
    Summary: An unforgettable portrait of London and one of the most talked about debuts of all time! 'The almost preposterous talent was clear from the first pages' Guardian On New Years Day 1975, the day of his almost-suicide, life said yes to Archie Jones. Not OK or 'You-might-as-well-carry-on-since-you've-started'. A resounding affirmative. Promptly seizing his second life by the horns, Archie meets and marries Clara Bowden, a Caribbean girl twenty-eight years his junior. Thus begins a tale of friendship, of love and war, of three culture and three families over three generations . . . ***** 'Street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time' New York Times 'Outstanding' Sunday Telegraph 'An astonishingly assured début, funny and serious . . . I was delighted' Salman Rushdie

  • John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
    Af John Steinbeck (2001)
    Summary: Shocking and controversial when it was first published in 1939, Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of dust bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel West in search of the promised land. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and broken dreams, yet out of their suffering Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision; an eloquent tribute to the endurance and dignity of the human spirit

  • George Orwell: The Complete Novels of George Orwell : Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four
    Af George Orwell (2001)
    Summary: 'The greatest writer of the twentieth century' Observer George Orwell's best-known novels, Animal Farm , describing a revolution that goes horribly wrong, and Nineteen Eighty-Four , portraying a world where human freedom has been crushed, are two of the most famous, well-quoted and influential political satires ever written. The other novels in this volume also tell stories of people at odds with repressive institutions: the corrupt imperialism of Burmese Days , disaffection with materialistic society in Keep the Aspidistra Flying , the perils of modern suburban living in Coming Up for Air and surviving on the streets in A Clergyman's Daughter . All the novels brought together here display Orwell's humour, his understanding of human nature and his great compassion