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English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original.

Mozart wrote Idomeneo when he was twenty-four years old. It is one of most astonishing achievements of an altogether astonishing career. This guide explains the special nature of the music in an analysis of its themes and development, and places the opera in its context as an expression of the Enlightenment.

English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original.

A collection of early short stories which helped make Fitzgerald's name, Tales of the Jazz Age combines period pieces - the most notable of which is the novella-length 'May Day' - with more fanciful creations, such as the fantastical 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button', recently made into a Hollywood film.

One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century world literature, 'The Metamorphosis' is accompanied in this volume by a selection of other classic tales and sketches by Kafka - such as 'The Judgement', 'In the Penal Colony' and 'A Country Doctor' - all presented in a lively and meticulous new translation by Christopher Moncrieff.

From the story of revenge served cold in 'The Shot' to the supernatural atmosphere of 'The Undertaker', this collection - presented here in a brand-new translation by Roger Clarke - sparkles with humour and is a testament to the brilliance and versatility of Pushkin's mind.

Written at the same time as Oliver Twist - indeed the serialized version of the novel referred to Mudfog as the protagonist's home town - The Mudfog Papers lampoons all manner of journalistic and scientific writing of the time and showcases the young Dickens at his satirical best.

Part of Alma Classics Fitzgerald's mini-series, this lavishly produced edition with flaps, foil on the cover and 4 b&w plates contains notes and an extensive apparatus on Fitzgerald's life and works.

New, award-winning translation of Goncharov's popular masterpiece Rich in situational comedy, psychological complexity and social satire, Oblomov - here presented in Stephen Pearl's award-winning translation, the first major English-language version of the novel in more than fifty years - is a timeless novel and a monument to human idleness.

Populated by an unforgettable cast of characters, from the beautiful, self-destructive Nastasya Filippovna to the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin and the radical student Ippolit, The Idiot is one of Dostoevsky's most personal and intense works of fiction presented here in a new translation.

Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, this title follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, football referees, deaf police agents, assassins and stranded astronauts as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and beyond.

Increasingly Samuel Beckett''s writing is seen as the culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century ΓÇô succeeding the work of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. Beckett is a writer whose relevance to his time and use of poetic imagery can be compared to Shakespeare''s in the late Renaissance.John Calder has examined the work of Beckett principally for what it has to say about our time in terms of philosophy, theology and ethics, and he points to aspects of his subject''s thinking that others have ignored or preferred not to see.Samuel Beckett''s acute mind pulled apart with courage and much humour the basic assumptions and beliefs by which most people live. His satire can be biting and his wit devastating. He found no escape from human tragedy in the comforts we build to shield ourselves from reality ΓÇô even in art, which for most intellectuals has replaced religion. However, he did develop a moral message ΓÇô one which is in direct contradiction to the values of ambition, success, acquisition and security which is normally held up for admiration, and he looks at the greed, God-worship, and cruelty to others which we increasingly take for granted, in a way that is both unconventional and revolutionary.If this study shocks many readers it is because the honesty, the integrity and the depth of Beckett''s thinking- expressed through his novels, plays and poetry, but also through his other writings and correspondence- is itself shocking, to conventional thinking. Yet what he has to say is also comforting. He offers a different ethic and prescription for living ΓÇô a message based on stoic courage, compassion and an ability to understand and forgive.

In this collection of short stories, drawing heavily from the author's own experiences as a medical graduate on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Bulgakov describes a young doctor's turbulent and often brutal introduction to his practice in the backward village of Muryovo. It includes the piece Morphine