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Based, like the earlier Impressions of Africa, on uniquely eccentric principles of composition, this book invites the reader to enter a world which in its innocence and extravagance is unlike anything in the literature of the twentieth century. Cantarel, a scholarly scientist, whose enormous wealth imposes no limits upon his prolific ingenuity, is taking a group of visitors on a tour of "Locus Solus", his secluded estate near Paris. One by one he introduces, demonstrates and expounds the discoveries and inventions of his fertile, encyclopaedic mind. An African mud-sculpture representing a naked child; a road-mender's tool which, when activated by the weather, creates a mosaic of human teeth; a vast aquarium in which humans can breathe and in which a depilated cat is seen stimulating the partially decomposed head of Danton to fresh flights of oratory. By each item in Cantarel's exhibition there hangs a tale - a tale such as only that esteemed genius Roussel could tell. As the inventions become more elaborate, the richness and brilliance of the author's stories grow to match them; the flow of his imagination becomes a flood and the reader is swept along in a torrent of wonder and hilarity.

A distressed young man murders the woman he loves in a café, watched by a large crowd. Fascinated by the crime she has witnessed, Anne Desbaresdes returns several times to the scene, forming a relationship with a man who also saw the murder, and drinking through the afternoon with him as he patiently answers her eager questions. Slowly, they find themselves being taken over by forces which threaten their own stability.Moderato Cantabile is a carefully woven tapestry of emotion, in which the characters' inner lives are reflected by the story's spaces and landscapes.

In his most famous and perhaps most typical work, Robbe-Grillet explores his principal preoccupation: the meaning of reality. The novel is set on a tropical banana plantation, and the action is seen through the eyes of a narrator who never appears in person, never speaks and never acts. He is a point of observation, his personality only to be guessed at, watching every movement of the other characters' actions as they flash like moving pictures across the distorting screen of a jealous mind.The result is one of the most important and influential books of our time, a completely integrated masterpiece that has already become a classic.

A glorious exercise in cheeky punmanship, The Wonderful Wonder of Wonders sees Jonathan Swift in fine scatological form.

This short collection shows Chekhov in an amusing, playful light, poking fun at the greed, sycophancy and ignorance of his characters, with the moral detachment that also characterizes his major, serious works.

De Quincey's seminal 1827 work was greatly influential on such writers as Poe, Baudelaire and Borges, and the trace of its impact can still be found today in modern satire, black humour and crime and detective fiction.

Never published in its author's lifetime and intended solely for his own children, to whom he read it every Christmas, The Life of Our Lord is an accessible and gently humorous take on the life of Jesus Christ and his teachings.

A playful look at nineteenth-century values and talking points, this dictionary will provide enduring entertainment and prove relevant even today.

The Decay of Lying sees Wilde explore his deepest preoccupations about the relationship between life and art, and examine the work of such writers as Shakespeare and Balzac.

Inspired by Gogol's surreal tales, Dostoevsky's hilarious story has been interpreted by some as a vitriolic piece of social criticism and a veiled attack on the revolutionary philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

Swift's The Benefit of Farting argues eloquently, in a forceful a posteriori fashion, that most of the distempers thought to affect the fairer sex are due to flatulences not adequately vented.

As well as providing humorous reflections on the nature of scholarship and education, Swift seizes the opportunity to take swipes at several authors and critics. The result is a timeless and entertaining parody by one of the most enduringly popular writers in the English language.

Spurred by a lifelong fascination with the great emperor, French novelist Honore de Balzac set himself the painstaking task of collecting a selection of Napoleon's aphorisms from his public speeches and the gazettes of the time.

A collection of lesser-known early short fiction - ranging from absurd humorous sketches to psychological dramas and tragic tales - which demonstrates Anton Chekhov's mastery of the genre, with stories about marital infidelity, betrayal, deception and love in its various forms.

Charts the life of the French playwright - Moliere - from humble beginnings to later theatrical triumphs and political controversies.

This collection of Dante Alighieri's "Canzoniere", translated for the first time in its entirety into English, charts his poetic evolution and displays the ground on which his "Vita Nova" and "Divine Comedy" developed.

Mark Twain's gloriously funny "Diary of Adam and Eve", which John Updike recently described as 'a paradigm of the relations between sexes', is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous biblical story.

A story of the siege of a small post office by a group of rebels, who discover to their embarrassment that a female postal clerk, Gertie Girdle, is still in the lavatory some time after they have shot or expelled the rest of the staff.

These hilarious adventures make Queneau's novel, presented in the form of a script and parodying various genres, one of the best literary jeux d'esprit in modern literature.

With a cast of eccentric characters, amusing incidents and an uplifting tone, The Sunday of Life - its title playfully alluding to Hegel's theory of history - is a scintillating novel which showcases Queneau's trademark punning, sly wit and delight in the absurdity of people and situations.

This new edition contains more than 35 illustrations by acclaimed illustrator David Mackintosh and a wealth of extra material.

This new edition of Robinson Crusoe contains more than 21 illustrations by acclaimed illustrator Adam Stower and a wealth of extra material.

Recounts the tribulations of a lecherous local magistrate as he attempts to have his way with the miller's beautiful but devoted wife, with unforeseen and hilarious consequences.

Acclaimed for the terseness and simplicity of her language, her poems show an acute power of observation and deep psychological introspection, revealing a mind akin to Emily Dickinson's and Sylvia Plath's, but also a unique and unmistakeably original voice.

"Secretum" - Petrarch's best-known work in Latin - is a fascinating and pioneering example of the autobiographical genre.

Foscolo ranks among the most famous and enduringly popular poets in Italian literature. This book is here presented in brand new translation English next to Italian.

Set against the chequered background of the city of the six Ps - Pope, priests, princes, prostitutes, parasites and the poor - Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli' poems deal with life's elementals. This selection of poems represent people from every course and manner of life - housewives, mothers, beggars, lovers, popes, thieves, gossips and more.