When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; he is indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.
Nietzsche said that he never travelled anywhere without a volume of Emerson's essays in his pocket, while Mathew Arnold described Emerson as 'the greatest prose writer of the century'. It is a remarkable writer who could at once appeal to a man considered a pillar of Victorian society, and to a man dedicated to bringing down such pillars. In his own time Emerson was considered a profoundly radical thinker, but after his death he was increasingly seen as a bland Boston Brahmin, contentedly ripening with the new England melons, benignly meditating on such viperous notions as the Over–soul.He is now appreciated as one of the truly seminal American writers, refusing all orthodoxies, complacencies and fixities—both a truly celebratory and deeply adversarial thinker. A unique paperback edition, with introduction and chronology of Emerson's life and times.
It is the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hawsers. A Polar wind blows through it, and birds of prey hover over it."So Melville wrote of his masterpiece, one of the greatest works of imagination in literary history. In part, Moby-Dick is the story of an eerily compelling madman pursuing an unholy war against a creature as vast and dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. But more than just a novel of adventure, more than an encyclopaedia of whaling lore and legend, the book can be seen as part of its author's lifelong meditation on America. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby-Dick is also a profound inquiry into character, faith, and the nature of perception.
Now the subject of a major film by Baz Luhrmann, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, this work is F. Scott Fitzgerald's brilliant fable of the hedonistic excess and tragic reality of 1920s America. Edited with an introduction and notes by Tony Tanner, it follows young, handsome, and fabulously rich Jay Gatsby, the bright star of the Jazz Age. As writer Nick Carraway becomes immersed in Gatsby's extravagant world, he confronts the mystery of Gatsby's origins and desires. Beneath the glamorous facade lies a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled, leading to a destructive obsession that unravels Gatsby's life. Fitzgerald captures the disillusionment of post-war America and the moral failures of a society fixated on wealth and status. More than a reflection of a specific era, the narrative chronicles Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, embodying the universal conflict between illusion and reality. Fitzgerald, who married Zelda Sayre, whose struggles influenced his writing, has attained mythical status in American literary history. His masterwork is often regarded as the 'great American novel.' After his death, The New York Times noted that he 'created a "generation"' in both fact and literary sense.
Tanner guides us through Austen's novels from optimistic early works to the darker Persuasion and fragmentary Sanditon--a journey that takes her from acceptance of a society maintained by landed property, family, money, and strict propriety through an insistence on the need for authentication of these values to a final skepticism and even rejection.
Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel of love during wartime. Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield, this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Hemingway famously rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. A classic novel of love during wartime, “A Farewell to Arms stands, more than eighty years after its first appearance, as a towering ornament of American literature” (The Washington Times).
Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. It is the story of this Jay Gatsby who came so mysteriously to West Egg, of his sumptuous entertainments, and of his love for Daisy Buchanan – a story that ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism, and is infused with a sense of the strangeness of human circumstance in a heedless universe. It is a magical, living book, blended of irony, romance, and mysticism.
Male, female, deft, fraudulent, constantly shifting: which of the masquerade of passengers on the Mississippi steamboat Fidele is the confidence man? The central motif of Melville's last and most modern novel can be seen as a symbol of American cultural history.
To eat in Hong Kong is endlessly fascinating and exciting. A mere dot on the map of China, and home to seven million migrants, Hong Kong boasts a food scene that is breathtakingly rich and varied. Tony Tan explores this vibrant city through 80 exquisite dishes, from the cutting-edge contemporary to the traditional, from both the high and low of Hong Kong cuisine - with recipes from the city's iconic hotels, its hawker stalls, and even a legendary dumpling house on the outskirts of Kowloon. Tony weaves his recipes with stories that trace Hong Kong's Chinese roots, explore its deep colonial connections and tantalise us with glimpses of today's ultra-modern city and most delicious eating spots. Author BiographyBorn in Malaysia and fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, Tony Tan trained at La Varenne, France, and Leiths School of Food and Wine in the UK. He has presented master classes and been guest chef at hotels and restaurants throughout Australia, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand and Spain, including the Ritz in Madrid and Alambique, one of Spain's top cooking schools. He was an international judge at Hong Kong's premier Chinese cuisine challenge, The Best of the Best Culinary Competition. He writes for magazines and newspapers in Australia and internationally and comments regularly in the media on food and wine. - Hong Kong Food City By Tony Tan (Hardback)
