William the Conqueror's crossing of the Channel in 1066 is the stuff of legend, but can it also be seen as the last great Viking expedition? The story begins in 911 when, on the coast of the Northern France the French King gave the Viking chieftain,...

John Hollander, poet and scholar, was a master whose work joined luminous learning and imaginative risk. This book, based on the unpublished Clark Lectures Hollander delivered in 1999 at Cambridge University, witnesses his power to shift the horizons...

Only a handful of Emily Dickinson's nearly 2000 poems were published in her lifetime, but today she is recognised as one of the most important American poets of the 19th century. This attractive collection gathers more than 150 of her memorable works...

This is a new release of the original 1933 edition.

Set in Czechoslovakia between the 1940s and the 1990s, Tomas Zmeskal's stimulating novel focuses on one family's tragic story of love and the unspoken. Josef meets his wife, Kveta, before the Second World War at a public lecture on Hittite culture. K...

Curiosity has been seen through the ages as the impulse that drives our knowledge forward and the temptation that leads us toward dangerous and forbidden waters. The question "Why?" has appeared under a multiplicity of guises and in vastly different...

Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence – in his many letters, extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating...

A classic of Modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, the pieces poke fun at mullahs, t...

Well before publishing the "Lives of the Poets", Samuel Johnson was an accomplished biographer, having written the lives of numerous scholars, scientists, philosophers, critics, and theologians (including Peter Burnham, Sir Thomas Browne, and Confuci...

"A few months ago? the novelty mug frightened us all by spontaneously bursting into Viva Las Vegas and I took that? as a sign, did what any? Catholic would do – put up a shrine". from Burnfort, Las Vegas "The Windows of Graceland" gathers the cream...