Literature: history & criticism

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Book Cover: The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts
By Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' – and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s.
Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 – 'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history' – and the McCarthyism...
Published: 22/06/2000
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141182551
RRP: $19.95
Book Cover:  Mao's Last Dancer

In a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, interested more in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strange men come to his school – Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision...

In a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, interested more in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words...

Published: 01/09/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780670040247
RRP: $32.95
Book Cover:  Nineteen Eighty Four
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and liberty...
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world...
Published: 04/02/2004
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141187761
RRP: $22.95
Book Cover:  Pride and Prejudice
When Elizabeth first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lovely 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...
When Elizabeth first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited; while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lovely mind. When she later discovers...
Published: 06/03/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439518
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Great Gatsby
In The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream, Fitzgerald recreates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
'A classic, perhaps the supreme American...
In The Great Gatsby , Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence...
Published: 01/07/2000
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141182636
RRP: $14.95
Book Cover: A Fortunate Life

Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent sixty years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite enduring hardships we can barely imagine today, Facey always saw his life as a 'fortunate' one.

A true classic of Australian literature, his simply written autobiography is an inspiration. It is the story...

Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent sixty years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite...

Published: 20/04/2005
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780143003540
RRP: $26.95
Book Cover:  Frankenstein
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover...
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein...
Published: 01/05/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439471
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Night
By Elie Wiesel
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he endured, the loss of his family and his struggle to survive in a world that stripped him of humanity, dignity and faith. Describing in simple terms the tragic murder of a people from a survivor's perspective...
Born into a Jewish ghetto in Hungary, as a child, Elie Wiesel was sent to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. This is his account of that atrocity: the ever-increasing horrors he...
Published: 06/06/2006
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780140189896
RRP: $22.95
Book Cover:  Emma
Beautiful, clever, rich – and single Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protigie Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel...
Beautiful, clever, rich – and single Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic...
Published: 05/05/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439587
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Jane Eyre
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural independence and spirit – which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible...
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane's natural...
Published: 02/08/2006
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141441146
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays

Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. Includes Lady Windermere's Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, A Florentine Tragedy and The Importance of Being Earnest, which appears in full with the 'Grigsby' scene which originally...

Wilde was both a glittering wordsmith and a social outsider. His drama emerges out of these two perhaps contradictory identities, combining epigrammatic brilliance and shrewd social observation. Includes...

Published: 03/07/2000
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780140436068
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Charles Dickens: A Life

CHARLES DICKENS was a phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest novelist in the English language, the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination, Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick, the Artful Dodger, David Copperfield, Little Nell, Lady Dedlock, Mrs Gamp, Pip, Miss Havisham and many more. He was also a demonically hard-working journalist, father of ten children, indefatigable walker and traveller...

CHARLES DICKENS was a phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest novelist in the English language, the creator of characters who live immortally in the English imagination, Sam Weller, Mr Pickwick, the Artful Dodger...

Published: 14/11/2011
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9780670917679
RRP: $39.95
Book Cover:  Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the Congo by the Belgians in one of the largest acts of genocide committed up to that time. Conrad's narrator encounters at the end of the story a man named Kurtz, dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable...
Heart of Darkness has been considered for most of this century as a literary classic, and also as a powerful indictment of the evils of imperialism. It reflects the savage repressions carried out in the...
Published: 06/02/2008
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141441672
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Theban Plays: King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
By Sophocles

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles to create a powerful trilogy of mankind's struggle aginst fate.

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles to create a powerful trilogy of mankind's struggle aginst fate.

Published: 31/12/1963
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780140440034
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence. The Picture of Dorian Gray was a succes de scandale . Early readers were...
Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his...
Published: 06/03/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439570
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Wuthering Heights
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance is now...
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous...
Published: 06/03/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439556
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Little Prince: Popular Penguins

Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own tiny planet to travel the universe, learning the vagaries of adult behaviour through a series of extraordinary encounters. His personal odyssey culminates in a voyage to Earth and further adventures...

Moral allegory and spiritual autobiography, The Little Prince is the most translated book in the French language. With a timeless charm it tells the story of a little boy who leaves the safety of his own...

Published: 28/06/2010
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141194806
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover: The Odyssey
By Homer
The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats – shipwrecks, battles, monsters and the implacable enmity of the sea-god Poseidon – Odysseus must test his bravery and native cunning to the full if he is to reach his homeland safely and overcome...
The epic tale of Odysseus and his ten-year journey home after the Trojan War forms one of the earliest and greatest works of Western literature. Confronted by natural and supernatural threats – shipwrecks...
Published: 06/03/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780140449112
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina seems to have everything – beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike, and soon brings jealousy and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of...
Anna Karenina seems to have everything – beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their...
Published: 06/06/2003
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780140449174
RRP: $9.95
Book Cover:  Great Expectations
A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a series of events that change the orphaned Pip's life forever, and he eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a gentleman. Dickens's...
A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity...
Published: 09/01/2004
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780141439563
RRP: $9.95

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08 Feb 2012
USBBY annual list of outstanding international books

Selected for the 2012 United States Board of Books for Young People (USBBY) list of Outstanding International Books for children and young adults.

The Garden of Empress Cassia by Gabrielle Wang

The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett

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