Classics - St. Charles Public Library

"A fresh and faithful translation of Vergil's Aeneid restores the epic's spare language and fast pace and sheds new light on one of the cornerstone narratives of the west. For two thousand years, the epic tale of Aeneas' dramatic flight from Troy, his doomed love affair with Dido, his descent into the underworld, and the bloody story behind the establishment of Rome has electrified audiences around the world. In Vergil's telling, Aeneas' heroic journey...

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, a common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy, is one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe. It has exerted a living influence in China for 3,000 years, and interest in it has been rapidly spreading in the West.

"The first great adventure story in the Western canon, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty, and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. In this fresh, authoritative version--the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman--this stirring tale of shipwrecks, monsters, and magic comes alive in an entirely new way. Written in iambic pentameter verse...

"Things Fall Apart tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a 'strong man' of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the...

Cry, the Beloved Country is a beautifully told and profoundly compassionate story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son Absalom, set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s. The book is written with such keen empathy and understanding that to read it is to share fully in the gravity of the characters' situations. It both touches your heart deeply and inspires a renewed faith in the dignity of mankind. Cry, the Beloved Country...

Following a nuclear war in the Northern Hemisphere, the inhabitants of a small Australian community wait for the inevitable aftereffects of the bombs to reach them.

One of China's Four Great Classical Novels, "The Dream of the Red Chamber" is perhaps the greatest novel written in the Chinese vernacular. Its authorship is attributed to Cao Xueqin, who lived sometime from the early to mid-eighteenth century. Little is known of Cao Xueqin, except from what was passed down from his contemporaries and friends. An intelligent and artistic man, known for both his poetry and his paintings, Xueqin spent a decade working...

Includes more than 350 interpretative essays on the themes, plots, and techniques of works of twentieth-century fiction published in England, Ireland, Canada, India, Nigeria, and other areas of the British Commonwealth of Nations.