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Great Books Of The 20th Century
''Great Books of the 20th Century'' is a series of twenty novels published by Penguin Books released at the end of the millennium. The following novels are included in the series: *''Heart of Darkness'' by Joseph Conrad (1899–1902) *''Swann's Way'' by Marcel Proust (1913) *'' The Metamorphosis and Other Stories'' by Franz Kafka (1915) *'' The Good Soldier'' by Ford Madox Ford (1915) *'' A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' by James Joyce (1914–16) *'' My Ántonia'' by Willa Cather (1918) *''Women in Love'' by D. H. Lawrence (1920) *'' The Age of Innocence'' by Edith Wharton (1920) *''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck (1939) *''The Heart of the Matter'' by Graham Greene (1948) *''The Adventures of Augie March'' by Saul Bellow (1953) *'' Lord of the Flies'' by William Golding (1954) *''On the Road'' by Jack Kerouac (1957) *''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' by Ken Kesey (1962) *''1984'' by George Orwell (1949) *'' Waiting for the Barbarians'' by J. M. Coetzee (1980) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year."About Penguin – company history" , Penguin Books. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fictio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception." He has been called "a giant of American letters." During his writing career, he authored 33 books, with one book coauthored alongside Edward Ricketts, including 16 novels, six non-fiction books, and two collections of short stories. He is widely known for the comic novels '' Tortilla Flat'' (1935) and '' Cannery Row'' (1945), the multi-generation epic '' East of Eden'' (1952), and the novellas '' The Red Pony'' (1933) and '' Of Mice and Men'' (1937). The Pulitzer Prize–winning '' The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon. In the first 75 years after it was published, it sold 14 million copies. Most of Steinbeck's work is set in central California, particu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waiting For The Barbarians
''Waiting for the Barbarians'' is a novel by the South African writer J. M. Coetzee. First published in 1980, it was chosen by Penguin for its series ''Great Books of the 20th Century'' and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for fiction. American composer Philip Glass has also written an opera of the same name based on the book which premiered in September 2005 at Theater Erfurt, Germany. Coetzee is said to have taken the title as well as to have been heavily influenced by the 1904 poem " Waiting for the Barbarians" by the Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy. Coetzee's novel was as well deeply influenced by Italian writer Dino Buzzati's novel '' The Tartar Steppe'' (which too had been based on Cavafy's poem). Plot The story is narrated in the first person by the unnamed magistrate of a settlement that exists on the territorial frontier of "The Empire". The Magistrate's rather peaceful existence comes to an end with the Empire's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. He is known for the allegorical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945) and the dystopian novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949). His non-fiction works, including '' The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and '' Homage to Catalonia'' (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture. Blair was born in India, and raised and educated in England. After school he became an Imperial policeman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1984
Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). * January 10 ** The United States and the Vatican City, Vatican (Holy See) restore full diplomatic relations. ** The Victoria, Seychelles, Victoria Agreement is signed, institutionalising the Indian Ocean Commission. *January 24 – Steve Jobs launches the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh personal computer in the United States. February * February 3 ** Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor–UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another, resulting in a live birth. ** STS-41-B: Space Shuttle Challenger, Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' is launched on the 10th Space Shuttle mission. * February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered spac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Kesey
Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income. After ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' was published, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady) and othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (novel)
''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' is a novel by Ken Kesey published in 1962. Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of institutional processes and the human mind, including a critique of psychiatry and a tribute to individualistic principles. It was adapted into the Broadway (and later off-Broadway) play ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' by Dale Wasserman in 1963. Bo Goldman adapted the novel into a 1975 film of the same name directed by Miloš Forman, which won five Academy Awards. ''Time'' magazine included the novel in its "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005" list. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's 200 "best-loved novels." Plot The book is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a gigantic yet docile half-Native American patient at a psychiatric hospital, who presents himself as deaf and mute. Bromden's tale focuses mainly on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, who faked in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ancestry, Kerouac was raised in a French-speaking home in Lowell, Massachusetts. He "learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens." During World War II, he served in the United States Merchant Marine; he completed his first novel at the time, which was published more than 50 years after his death. His first published book was ''The Town and the City'' (1950), and he achieved widespread fame and notoriety with his second, ''On the Road'', in 1957. It made him a beat icon, and he went on to publish 12 more novels and numerous poetry volumes. Kerouac is recognized for his style of spontaneous prose. Thematically, his work covers topics such as his Catholic spirituality, jazz, travel, promiscuity, life in New Yor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
On The Road
''On the Road'' is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat Generation, Beat and Counterculture of the 1960s, Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee), Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx), and Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise. The idea for ''On the Road'', Kerouac's second novel, was formed during the late 1940s in a series of notebooks, and then typed out on a continuous reel of paper during three weeks in April 1951. It was published by Viking Press in 1957. ''The New York Times'' hailed the book's appearance as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was a British novelist, playwright, and poet. Best known for his debut novel ''Lord of the Flies'' (1954), he published another twelve volumes of fiction in his lifetime. In 1980, he was awarded the Booker Prize for ''Rites of Passage'', the first novel in what became his sea trilogy, ''To the Ends of the Earth''. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Literature. As a result of his contributions to literature, Golding was knighted in 1988. The house was known as ''Karenza'', the Cornish word for ''love'', and he spent many childhood holidays there. He grew up in Marlborough, Wiltshire, where his father, Alec Golding, was a science master at Marlborough Grammar School (1905 to retirement), the school the young Golding and his elder brother Joseph attended. His mother, Mildred (Curnoe), kept house at 29, The Green, Marlborough, and was a campaigner for female suffrage. Golding's mother, who was Cornish and whom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Of The Flies
''Lord of the Flies'' is a 1954 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding. The plot concerns a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality, between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. The novel, which was Golding's debut, was generally well received. It was named in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list. In 2003, it was listed at number 70 on the BBC's The Big Read poll, and in 2005 ''Time'' magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005, and included it in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time. Popular reading in schools, especially in the English-speaking world, ''Lord of the Flies'' was ranked third in the nation's favourite books from school in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction three times, and he received the National Book Foundation's lifetime Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990."Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" National Book Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2012. In the words of the Swedish Nobel Committee, his writing exhibited e mixture of rich |
