Chekhov’s little-known literary gem is a profound and moving work, combining the political tensions of the day with a tale of deep poignancy and sorrow. With St. Petersburg awash with extravagant, dissolute bureaucrats concerned only with increasing their vast riches, a secret movement infiltrates one of its members into one such household. Once there, the man sees for himself the profligacy that he has sworn to opposeyet he also sees purposelessness throughout life. Determining to follow his own values, he embarks upon a new path, little knowing that this too will lead him to tragedya tragedy he will find impossible to bear.

The Story of a Nobody (100 Pages)

Literature & Fiction

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich

Literary

Hesperus Pr

As both a masterpiece of Russian populist writing and a parody of the entire genre, Poor People is an early example of Dostoevsky’s genius. Written as a series of letters, Poor People tells the tragic tale of a petty clerk and his impossible love for a young girl. Longing to help her and her family, he sells everything he can, but his kindness leads him only into more desperate poverty, and ultimately into debauchery. As a typical man of the underground,” he serves as the embodiment of the belief that happiness can only be achieved with riches.

Poor People (Hesperus Classics)

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

In Hadji Murat, Tolstoy recounts the extraordinary meeting of two polarized culturesthe refined, Europeanized court of the Russian tsar and the fierce Muslim chieftains of the Chechen hills. This brilliant, culturally resonant fiction was written towards the end of Tolstoy’s life, but the conflict it describes has obvious, ironic parallels with current affairs today. It is 1852, and Hadji Murat, one of the most feared mountain chiefs, is the scourge of the Russian army. When he comes to surrender, the Russians are delighted. Or have they naively welcomed a double-agent into their midst? With its sardonic portraitsfrom the inscrutable Hadji Murat to the fat and bumbling tsarTolstoy’s story is an astute and witty commentary on the nature of political relations and states at war. Leo Tolstoy is one of the world’s greatest writers. Best known for his brilliantly crafted epic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, he used his works to address the problems of Russian society, politics, and traditions.

Hadji Murat

TOLSTOY, LEO

Contemporary

In this rediscovered literary gem, Turgenev explores the elusive nature of love, suggesting that with the loss of love comes a sense of resignationand the conviction that the essence of life lies in self-denial. It is published here with the short story Yakov Pasynkov.In a series of letters to a friend, the narrator relates how he has managed to convince a married womanhitherto shielded from the powerful effects of poetry and fictionof the importance of developing the imagination. By introducing her to Goethe’s masterpiece, he sets in motion a chain of crucial events. In this poetic exploration of spiritual awakening, Turgenev demonstrates his preoccupation with the culture of Western Europe and the nature of human relations. Ivan Turgenev was a Russian novelist and playwright who spent much of his life in Western Europe. His writing profoundly affected the course of European literature.

Faust

Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich

Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches marks the first publication of one of Virginia Woolf’s very earliest notebooks. Recently unearthed from a collection of private papers, it contains a series of six striking and semi-autobiographical sketches, each transcribed and edited by Dr. David Bradshaw. From the cold formality of London townhouses with their rows of austere portraits, to the dull chaos of the academic’s abode, and the eccentric spinster’s Hampstead home, Virginia Woolf paints a series of portraits of everyday life, capturing character and setting in exquisite detail. Experimental in style, and heralding the later masterpieces Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, this early notebook is quintessential Woolf.

Carlyle's House and Other Sketches (100 Pages)

Bradshaw, David

WOOLF, VIRGINIA

The Fatal Eggs

Mikhail Bulgakov

Journeying to Constantinople by boat, Edmondo De Amicis is initially dismayed to discover that his first glimpse of this much-awaited city will be obscured by fog. Yet, as he will come to appreciate, the slow unveiling of rooftops, domes and minarets is in fact the best introduction to Constantinople he could wish for. Throughout his stay in this most cosmopolitan of cities - with Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Gypsies, Catholics and Jews sewn together in a patchwork of life - he encounters the inhabitants' endless vitality, in a city which provides an inexhaustible source of beauty and mystery. The first edition for more than a century of what is arguably the best book ever written about Istanbul, Constantinople is the poetic account of one of the world's most exotic cities.

Constantinople (Hesperus Classics Series)

Travel

De Amicis, Edmondo

Asia

Believing William Legrand to have gone insane following an insect bite, his friend initially decries his quest for gold as the ramblings of a madman. Yet when Legrand's conviction fails to waiver, they set off on a bizarre journey, accompanied by Jupiter, Legrand's loyal and equally skeptical servant. What follows is a strange tale of coded messages, hidden treasure, and uncanny prophecy that will both enthrall and baffle even the most perceptive readers.Part horror story, part detective fiction, The Gold Bug is an ingenious tale bearing all the hallmarks of Poe's extraordinary narrative skill. It is presented here with The Sphinx, a similarly themed and equally disturbing short story. Wonderfully versatile as an author and best known for his tales of terror and the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) holds a venerable place in the history of American literature.

The Gold Bug

POE, EDGAR ALLAN

United States

The last of the Christmas Numbers compiled by Charles Dickens, this is a charming and highly entertaining series of stories from one of England’s best-known and most widely read novelists. Named after the man who delivered him as a baby, Doctor Marigold is a poor hawker who, after a dreadful turn of events, finds happiness with his adopted daughter Sophy. She is a deaf mute, and to help her learn to read and communicate, Doctor Marigold "prescribes" her various stories, which he collects into a book while she is at school. These prescriptions, written by Dickens and five other distinguished Victorian writers, are tales of adventure and romance, featuring thieves, kidnappings, and witchcraft. Together they form a wonderful selection of tales that are told with the clever wit and brilliant description that characterize Dickens’ writing.

Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions (Hesperus Classics)

DICKENS., CHARLES

Molholland, Rosa

A civil servant stands accused of not understanding the rules of punctuation. He begins to go through the correct use of commas and semicolons before arriving at the exclamation mark, which, he realizes, in 40 years of writing, he has never used. From here he develops a bizarre and paranoid fantasy in which everyday objects transform into malevolent exclamation marks. Written when Chekhov was on the verge of becoming a literary celebrity, this is an enlightening new selection that reveals the author’s often neglected comic talents.

The Exclamation Mark (Hesperus Classics)

ANTON CHEKHOV

Short Stories & Anthologies

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Hesperus Pr publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hesperus Pr