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The brevity of Muriel Spark's novels is equaled only by their brilliance. These four novels, each a miniature masterpiece, illustrate her development over four decades. Despite the seriousness of their themes, all four are fantastic comedies of manners, bristling with wit.Spark's most celebrated novel, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, tells the story of a charismatic schoolteacher's catastrophic effect on her pupils. THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS is a beautifully drawn portrait of young women living in a hostel in London in the giddy postwar days of 1945. THE DRIVER'S SEAT follows the final haunted hours of a woman descending into madness. And THE ONLY PROBLEM is a witty fable about suffering that brings the Book of Job to bear on contemporary terrorism.Characters are vividly etched in a few words; earth-shaking events are lightly touched on. Yet underneath the glittering surface there is an obsessive probing of metaphysical questions: the meaning of good and evil, the need for salvation, the search for significance.

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold remains one of Eveyln Waugh's most remarkable and self-revealing works. Three years before he wrote it, Waugh suffered "a brief bout of hallucination" similar to the one that besets Mr. Pinfold in this wildly witty and occasionally frightening novel.A successful, middle-aged novelist with a case of "bad nerves," Gilbert Pinfold embarks on a recuperative trip to Ceylon. Almost as soon as the gangplank lifts, Mr. Pinfold hears sounds coming out of the ceiling of his cabin: wild jazz bands, barking dogs, loud revival meetings. He can only infer that somewhere concealed in his room an erratic public-address system is letting him hear everything that goes on aboard ship. And then, instead of just sounds, he hears voices. But they are not just any voices. These voices are talking, in the most frightening intimate way, about him!

Upper-class scoundrel Basil Seal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, creates havoc wherever he goes, much to the despair of the three women in his life-his sister, his mother, and his mistress. When Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany, it seems the perfect opportunity for more action and adventure. So Basil follows the call to arms and sets forth to enjoy his finest hour-as a war hero. Basil's instincts for self-preservation come to the fore as he insinuates himself into the Ministry of Information and a little-known section of Military Security. With Europe frozen in the "phoney war," when will Basil's big chance to fight finally arrive?

The Honorary Consul, Graham GreeneThe Honorary Consul is a British thriller novel by Graham Greene, published in 1973. It was one of the author's own favourite works. The title is a reference to the diplomatic position known as an honorary consul. The story is set in the city of Corrientes, part of the Argentine Littoral, on the shore of the Paraná River. Eduardo Plarr is an unmarried medical doctor of English descent who when a boy left Paraguay with his mother to escape the political turmoil for Buenos Aires. His English father remained in Paraguay as a political rebel and aside from a single hand-delivered letter, they never hear from him again. ....تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پانزدهم ماه جولای سال 1978 میلادیعنوان: کنسول افتخاری؛ نویسنده: گراهام گرین؛ مترجم: احمد میرعلایی؛ تهران، کتاب زمان، 1356؛ در 386 ص؛ چاپ دیگر: تهران، علم، 1385؛ در 402 ص؛ شابک: 9644056094؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان انگلیسی - سده 20 مداستان «ادواردو» یک پزشک انگلیسی است، که پدرش زندانی سیاسی در پاراگوئه هست. یکی از گروهکها با او تماس میگیرند و از او میخواهند تا در دزدیدن سفیر آمریکا، به آنها یاری کند، تا در قبال آزادی کنسول، بخواهند پدر او و دیگر زندانیان سیاسی را آزاد کنند. ادواردو میپذیرد اما افراد گروه به جای سفیر آمریکا ، کنسول افتخاری انگلیس، «چارلی» را که دوست ادواردو نیز هست، میدزدند . ... ا. شربیانی

As the Easter Rebellion looms, tension mounts in the rain-soaked streets of Dublin. Tension is also ratcheting up at home. Pat Dumay is a Catholic and an Irish patriot. His relentlessly pious mother pursues her own private war with his stepfather, a man sunk in religious speculation and drink. Meanwhile Pat's Protestant soldier cousin, Andrew Chase-White, puzzles out his complex emotions about Ireland and the girl he loves. Weaving between them moves Millie Kinnard: fast, feminist, and only just respectable.

Graham Greene's classic Cuban spy story, now with a new package and a new introduction First published in 1959, Our Man in Havana is an espionage thriller, a penetrating character study, and a political satire that still resonates to this day. Conceived as one of Graham Greene's 'entertainments,' it tells of MI6's man in Havana, Wormold, a former vacuum-cleaner salesman turned reluctant secret agent out of economic necessity. To keep his job, he files bogus reports based on Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and dreams up military installations from vacuum-cleaner designs. Then his stories start coming disturbingly true.

Detective Mike Hoolihan has seen it all. A fifteen-year veteran of the force, she's gone from walking a beat, to robbery, to homicide. But one case--this case--has gotten under her skin.When Jennifer Rockwell, darling of the community and daughter of a respected career cop--now top brass--takes her own life, no one is prepared to believe it. Especially her father, Colonel Tom. Homicide Detective Mike Hoolihan, longtime colleague and friend of Colonel Tom, is ready to "put the case down." Suicide. Closed. Until Colonel Tom asks her to do the one thing any grieving father would ask: take a second look.Not since his celebrated novel Money has Amis turned his focus on America to such remarkable effect. Fusing brilliant wordplay with all the elements of the classic whodunit, Amis exposes a world where surfaces are suspect (no matter how perfect), where paranoia is justified (no matter how pervasive), and where power and pride are brought low by the hidden recesses of our humanity.

Full of suspense, humor, and symbolism, this magnificently crafted and magical novel replays biblical and medieval themes in contemporary London. An attempt by the sharp, feral, and uncommonly intelligent Lucas Graffe to murder his sensual and charismatic half-brother Clement is interrupted by a stranger—whom Lucas strikes and leaves for dead. When the stranger mysteriously reappears, with specific demands for reparation, the Graffes’ circle of idiosyncratic family and friends is disrupted—for the demands are bizarre, intrusive, and ultimately fatal.

Edwin Williamson’s major new biography is the first in any language to encompass the entire span of Jorge Luis Borges’s life and work. Drawing upon previously unknown or unavailable sources, it brings out the human side of Borges: his roots in Argentina, the evolution of his political ideas, his relations with family and friends, the conflicts, desires, and obsessions that drove the man and shaped his work. Williamson’s definitive biography finally unlocks the mysteries that still surround the life of Borges, resulting in a compelling and poignant portrait that will radically transform established views of this modern master.

One climbed to the very top of the social ladder, the other chose to live among tramps. One was a celebrity at twenty-three, the other virtually unknown until his dying days. One was right-wing and religious, the other a socialist and an atheist. Yet, as this ingenious and important new book reveals, at the heart of their lives and writing, Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were essentially the same man. Orwell is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, Waugh for Brideshead Revisited and comic novels like Scoop and Vile Bodies. However different they may seem, these two towering figures of twentieth-century literature are linked for the first time in this engaging and unconventional biography, which goes beyond the story of their amazing lives to reach the core of their beliefs–a shared vision that was startlingly prescient about our own troubled times.Both Waugh and Orwell were born in 1903, into the same comfortable stratum of England’s class-obsessed society. But at first glance they seem to have lived opposite lives. Waugh married into the high aristocracy, writing hilarious novels that captured the amoral time between the wars. He converted to Catholicism after his wife’s infidelity and their divorce. Orwell married a moneyless student of Tolkien’s who followed him to Barcelona, where he fought in the Spanish Civil War. She saved his life there–twice–but her own fate was tragic.Waugh and Orwell would meet only once, as the latter lay dying of tuberculosis, yet as The Same Man brilliantly shows, in their life and work both writers rebelled against a modern world run by a privileged, sometimes brutal, few. Orwell and Waugh were almost alone among their peers in seeing what the future–our time–would bring, and they dedicated their lives to warning us against what was coming: a world of material wealth but few values, an existence without tradition or community or common purpose, where lives are measured in dollars, not sense. They explained why, despite prosperity, so many people feel that our society is headed in the wrong direction. David Lebedoff believes that we need both Orwell and Waugh now more than ever.Unique in its insights and filled with vivid scenes of these two fascinating men and their tumultuous times, The Same Man is an amazing story and an original work of literary biography.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY IAN RANKIN.In a small continental country civil war is raging. Once a lecturer in medieval French, now a confidential agent, D is a scarred stranger in a seemingly casual England, sent on a mission to buy coal at any price. Initially, this seems to be a matter of straightforward negotiation, but soon, implicated in murder, accused of possessing false documents and theft, held responsible for the death of a young woman, D becomes a hunted man, tormented by allegiances, doubts and the love of others.

With superb skill and feeling, Graham greene retraces the experiences and encounters of a long and extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; he has travelled like an explorer seeking our people and political situations. 'at the dangerous edge of things' - Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last days - of the French. , Cuba, Prague, Paraguay, Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. With ironic delight he recalls his time in the British Secret Service in Africa, and his brief involvement in Hollywood. He writes, as only he can about people and places, about faith, doubt, fear and, not least, the trials and craft of writing.

Others have reviewed this work far more eloquently than I can, but I still wanted to put a few words into the ether:*** This a review of the entire book, not just this "chapter." And it is a "review" in the loosest possible terms: Consider this stream-of-consciousness rambling:***To avoid that night without a Dawn:In my life I had been like a painter climbing a road high above a lake, a view of which is denied to him by a curtain of rocks and trees. Suddenly through a gap in the curtain he sees the lake, its whole expanse is before him, he takes up his brushes. But already the night is at hand, the night ... which no dawn will follow.People, places, smells, feelings, memories: The swirling vortices of time that we try to cling to, fade and die, only to return in a person or place from which we have come.Do we end at the beginning or start with the end? How can a story begin without an ending or does it begin at all? The "ways" (Guermantes and Swann's) combine into a single point, a new life blooming out into a new future, while those who brought that life forward rot on their feet. The Narrator guides us through these threads, and though his prose is rich and layered, descriptive and deep, filled with ever-expanding descriptions of events, feelings, thoughts, and smells, we still feel as if we walk through a dream. To me, there was a constant fog pervasive over every dinner party, Balbec, Combray, the War, and all those involved; was it because the Narrator is never named (except in those snippets where the fourth wall breaks, and these I'm convinced, had Proust lived, would not be in the final cut)? And in the final chapter, the fog clears a little, letting us see new faces: Except they aren't new. They are people we know, but who have aged. Once unrecognizable strangers resolve into friends with whom we've dined only recently, but "recently" being many decades prior.It is thus that Time works its decay. It leaves us people in their places, places with their people, and bright memories that are in stark contrast to the dullness that remains.This has been a very personal journey, in which I often found myself looking in a mirror. When asked "what is that book about?" I often find it hard to offer a concise reply, because The Search is different for everyone, and has its own varying meanings for each reader. As such, I find it hard to write any sort of traditional review for anyone, apart from the feelings and memories that are invoked by this sprawling narrative.In order to properly answer the question, "what is this book about?" I must recall the madeleine scene and return the question with: Have you ever walked by a building and caught the whiff of some savory aroma; and had said aroma carry you back to your college days, wherein those memories flash vivid, bright, but only for a second (though you've re-lived four solid years in seconds)? Or, have you bitten into a Christmas cookie, and had childhood pass before your eyes: memories of being dandled on a long-dead relative's knee, the smell of the brandy on his breath, and the sounds of Bing Crosby playing in the background? Multiply this feeling by an entire lifetime, and you can begin to brush fingers against the skein of this intricate, masterful, multi-sided book.Reading The Search is an endeavor that engaged all my senses and spoke to deep memories within my heart; it was such a personal experience, that I hope I've given it enough justice with my rambling.

Swinging between his wife and his mistress in the sacred and profane love machine and between the charms of morality and the excitements of sin, the psychotherapist, Blaise Gavender, sometimes wishes he could divide himself in two. Instead, he lets loose misery and confusion and—for the spectators at any rate—a morality play, rich in reflections upon the paradoxes of human life and the nature of the battle between sacred and profane love.

T. S. Eliot was not only one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century—he was also one of the most acute writers on his craft. In On Poetry and Poets, which was first published in 1957, Eliot explores the different forms and purposes of poetry in essays such as "The Three Voices of Poetry," "Poetry and Drama," and "What Is Minor Poetry?" as well as the works of individual poets, including Virgil, Milton, Byron, Goethe, and Yeats. As he writes in "The Music of Poetry," "We must expect a time to come when poetry will have again to be recalled to speech. The same problems arise, and always in new forms; and poetry has always before it . . . an ‘endless adventure.'"

Bertram had no belief in luck. He was not superstitious. A conspicuously unsuccessful assistant accountant, he was planning to get married for the second time. Quite quietly: St Luke's, Maida Hill, and then two weeks in Bournemouth. But Dreuther, a director of Bertram's firm, whimsically switches wedding and honeymoon to Monte Carlo. Inevitably Bertram visits the Casino. Inevitably he loses. Then suddenly his system starts working . . .\

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