Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

From Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the best-selling, award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, comes a brilliant, engaging, and eminently readable translation of Leo Tolstoy’s master epic. War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count... (more)

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Library of Latin America)

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (Library of Latin America)

by MacHadoDeAssis, Joaquim Maria, Gregory Rabassa

"Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man," writes the narrator of The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas. But while he may be dead, he is surely one of the liveliest characters in fiction, a product of one of the most remarkable imaginations in all of literature, Brazil's greatest novelist of the nineteenth century, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. By turns flippant and profound, The... (more)

Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray's VANITY FAIR, "a Novel Without a Hero" is a satiric masterpiece that encapsulates all the layers of British society in a microcosm while conveying the spirit and atmosphere of an epoch, and introduces literature's most charming picaresque anti-heroine, Becky Sharp. The reader cannot help but observe with wicked glee Becky's effervescently amoral exploits as she rises through the ranks... (more)

The House of the Dead and Poor Folk (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)

The House of the Dead and Poor Folk (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The House of the Dead and Poor Folk , by Fyodor Dostoevsky , is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics : New introductions commissioned from today's top... (more)

Quo Vadis

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature. A brilliant Polish writer and patriot, he is possibly best known abroad for his monumental historical epic Quo Vadis that portrays the vibrant and dissonant combination of cruel excesses and decadence of Rome during the reign of the corrupt Emperor Nero and the high faith of the emerging era of early Christianity. Quo Vadis: A Narrative of... (more)

A Passage to India

by E. M. Forster

Among the greatest novels of the twentieth century and the basis for director David Lean’s Academy Award-winning film, A Passage to India tells of the clash of cultures in British India after the turn of the century. In exquisite prose, Forster reveals the menace that lurks just beneath the surface of ordinary life, as a common misunderstanding erupts into a devastating affair.

Therese Raquin

by Emile Zola

In a dingy apartment on the Passage du Pont-Neuf in Paris, Thérèse Raquin is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. The numbing tedium of her life is suddenly shattered when she embarks on a turbulent affair with her husband’s earthy friend Laurent, but their animal passion for each other soon compels the lovers to commit a crime that will haunt them forever. Thérèse Raquin caused... (more)

The Charterhouse of Parma

by Stendhal

Richard Howard's exuberant and definitive rendition of Stendhal's stirring tale has brought about the rediscovery of this classic by modern readers. Stendhal narrates a young aristocrat's adventures in Napoleon's army and in the court of Parma, illuminating in the process the whole cloth of European history. As Balzac wrote, "Never before have the hearts of princes, ministers, courtiers, and women been depicted... (more)

Dangerous Liaisons

by Choderlos de Laclos

A new translation of one of the most notorious novels of all time Published just years before the French Revolution, Laclos’s great novel of moral and emotional depravity is a disturbing and ultimately damning portrayal of a decadent society. Aristocrats and ex-lovers Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont embark on a sophisticated game of seduction and manipulation to bring amusement to their jaded... (more)

The Story of San Michele

by Axel Munthe

This 'dream-laden and spooked' (Marina Warner, London Review of Books) story is to many one of the best-loved books of the twentieth century. Munthe spent many years working as a doctor in Southern Italy, labouring unstintingly during typhus, cholera and earthquake disasters. It was during this period that he came across the ruined Tiberian villa of San Michele, perched high above the glittering Bay of Naples on... (more)

Gervaise: (L'assommoir). The natural and social life of a family under the second empire. A novelEmile Zola

Gervaise: (L'assommoir). The natural and social life of a family under the second empire. A novel

by Emile Zola

$L'\Education Sentimentale$

L'\Education Sentimentale

by Gustave Flaubert, Gustave Flaubert

Sapho

by Alphonse Daudet

Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), né à Nîmes (Gard), est un écrivain et auteur dramatique français. Daudet se consacra à l’écriture, non seulement comme chroniqueur au journal Le Figaro mais aussi comme romancier. Puis, après avoir fait un voyage en Provence, Alphonse commença à écrire les premiers textes qui feront partie des Lettres de mon Moulin (1869). Il connut son premier succès en 1862-1865, avec la Dernière... (more)

Master and Marguerite

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

Souvenirs de la maison des morts

by Fedor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski, Henri Mongault, Louise Desormonts

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, described by G. K. Chesterton as a “study in human weakness and the slow human surrender,” may be called Charles Dickens ’s finest moment in a remarkably illustrious literary career. In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan named Pip. The convict terrifies the young boy and threatens to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in the... (more)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich: A Novel

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world... (more)

1984

by George Orwell

George Orwell's prophetic, nightmarish vision of "Negative Utopia" is timelier than ever-and its warnings more powerful.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

by Thomas Hardy

Violated by one man, forsaken by another, Tess Durbeyfield is the magnificent and spirited heroine of Thomas Hardy's immortal work. Of all the great English novelists, no one writes more eloquently of tragic destiny than Hardy. With the innocent and powerless victim, Tess, he creates profound sympathy for human frailty, while passionately indicting the injustices of Victorian society. Scorned upon its publication... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: social novels

by William Makepeace Thackeray

by Leo Tolstoy

by MacHadoDeAssis, Joaquim Maria, Gregory Rabassa

by William Makepeace Thackeray

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

by E. M. Forster

by Emile Zola

by Stendhal

by Choderlos de Laclos

by Axel Munthe

by Emile Zola

by Gustave Flaubert, Gustave Flaubert

by Alphonse Daudet

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

by Fedor Mikhaïlovitch Dostoïevski, Henri Mongault, Louise Desormonts

by Charles Dickens

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

by George Orwell

by Thomas Hardy