Don Quixote

Milan Kundera

The Art of the Novel

Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the post-psychological novel.

F.Scott Fitzgerald

The Love of the Last Tycoon: The Authorized Text

The Last Tycoon, edited by the preeminent Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli, is a restoration of the author's phrases, words, and images that were excised from the 1940 edition, giving new luster to an unfinished literary masterpiece. It is the story of the young Hollywood mogul Monroe Stahr, who was inspired by the life of boy-genius Irving Thalberg, and is an expose of the studio system in its heyday. The Last Tycoon is now available for the first time in paperback.

John Cleland

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure

'Fanny Hill' scandalised thousands of Victorians with its vivid descriptions of sexual pleasure, and landed its author in court a year after publication on charges of 'corrupting the King's subjects'. This only heightened its allure - and today it is still hugely appreciated as a work of true erotic and literary merit. What's a penniless country girl to do in the big city? Fanny Hill is a blushing country maiden until tragic circumstances force her to seek a new life in London. She is taken in by the motherly Mrs Brown, but on her first night she receives a rather unorthodox welcome from one of the young ladies in the house - and swiftly gains a much more explicit idea of what is expected in her new role. Fanny takes to carnal pleasures with gusto, and she vividly recalls each lusty encounter, every thrusting conquest, in her saucy, voyeuristic and thoroughly irresistible memoirs.