Fiction & Literature

Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill

Germinal

Emile Zola

The novel's central character is Étienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), and originally to have been the central character in Zola's "murder on the trains" thriller La Bête humaine (1890) before the overwhelmingly positiv...

Theresa Raquin

Emile Zola

Thérèse Raquin is the daughter of a French sea-captain and an Algerian mother. After her mother's death, her father takes her to live with her aunt, Madame Raquin, and Camille, her valetudinarian son. Because her son is "so ill", Madame...

This Is Not A Story

Denis Diderot

There are two different stories in This is not a story. The first recounts the story of Tanié, who is in love with a venal and greedy woman, Madame Reymer. Tanié goes off to Saint-Domingue for ten years to make a fortune for her. Madame...

Les Bijoux Indiscrets(The Indiscreet Toys)

Denis Diderot

Sultan Mangogul of Congo is bored with life at court and suspects his mistress Mirzoza of infidelity. A genie presents him with a magical ring that has unique properties. When the ring is rubbed and pointed at the vagina of any woman the vagina begin...

Zadig or The Book of Fate

Voltaire

Zadig, a good-hearted, handsome young man from Babylonia, is in love with Sémire and they are to marry. Sémire, however, has another suitor: Orcan, who wants her for himself. Zadig tries to defend his love from Orcan's threat, but his e...

Tales of Two Countries

Maksim Gorky

A volume of brief tales addressing the later work of the Russian author, the product of his visit in Capri. It is intriguing to take note of how this difference in climate changed not simply his perspective, but rather even his abstract style.  ...

Three Man

Maksim Gorky

Three Man or Three of Them is a 1901 novel by Maksim Gorky. The plot concerns Ilya Lunyev, a boy from an urban slum, who enters the middle-class milieu only to be disillusioned to find the same moral corruption  

The Man Who Was Afraid

Maksim Gorky

Gorky started working on The Man Who Was Afraid in 1898. "It is supposed to present the broad and true picture of the contemporary life, while featuring the figure of an energetic, healthy man, craving for space to realize his power's potential....