Böcker utgivna av W W Norton & Co Ltd

Richard Wagner's vast Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle comprises four full-length operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung) and is arguably the most extraordinary achievement in the history of opera. His own libretto to the operas, translated by Andrew Porter, is an intricate system of metric patterns, imaginative metaphors and alliteration, combining to produce the music in text.

Cardenal, In Cuba. The Nicaraguan Poet-Priest muses over Cuba

Whether it's a Web page on the Internet or a chapter in an annual budget report, readers today have less time to spend wading through text-they want the writing they read to be articulate and to the point. Effective Writing will help writers at any level of proficiency produce clear, concise writing structured around the messages they want to convey to their audience, and supported with strong, well-developed paragraphs and sentences. Written in plain language and a relaxed style, this book is easily adaptable to a wide variety of writing styles and tasks, and will be helpful at any stage of the process: conceptualization, writing, or editing.

May Sarton's ninth novel explores a woman's struggle to reconcile the claims of life and art, to transmute passion and pain into poetry. As it opens, Hilary Stevens, a renowned poet in her seventies, is talking with Mar, an intense young man who has sought her out and whose passionate despair reminds her of herself when young. Mar has had an unhappy love affair with a man. Bewildered by both his sexuality and his writing talent, he flings his anguish against Hilary's brusque, sympathetic intelligence.

A foundling, Fanny, is raised by adoptive parents, Lord and Lady Bellars, but is forced to flee to London when her libertine stepfather ravishes her. After toiling in a London brothel, Fanny embarks on a series of adventures that teach her what she must know to live and prosper as a woman.

Tender Branson - last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult - is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. But before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage, " and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.

Patrick O'Brian has emerged, in the opinion of many, as one of the greatest novelists in English. His fame rests mainly on the achievement of the epic Aubrey/Maturin novels, but few readers know that O'Brian first made his reputation as a writer of short fiction. Collected here are twenty-seven stories that O'Brian wished to preserve: stories of uncommon lyricism and beauty that will confirm his rightful place in the front rank of short-story writers as well as of novelists.Although the tone of this collection ranges effortlessly from the humorous to the dramatic, the most characteristic and memorable stories often have to do with a glimpse of savage, destructive forces through the fragile shell of human civilization. The threatened chaos may be psychological, as in "On the Wolfsberg," or it may be lurking in the natural world, as in "A Passage of the Frontier," or, as in the dark masterpiece "The Chian Wine," it is suddenly discovered in the ancient, irrational impulses of human nature.The setting may be the marshes of western Ireland, the Pyrenees, or the claustrophobic confines of a clockmender's house, but each story is a showcase for Patrick O'Brian's fresh and meticulous prose; each story reaffirms his sympathetic understanding of human passion and suffering. This collection proves that O'Brian is not simply the master of a genre, but an author who will long be honored as one of our most eminent literary figures.

The author seeks to show how its success in building up its authority and its legal and administrative machinery militated against its claim to spiritual leadership, and how an institution which rose through furthering the cause of reform later became an obstacle to reform and itself in need of reformation. In other words, he is concerned with the great dichotomies - to say nothing of the conflicting ideals and contrasting personalities - which make the history of the medieval papacy so dramatic and instructive. Professor Barraclough's writings on papal history cover a period of more than thirty years. They are based on extensive research in the Vatican Archives and other major manuscript libraries. The present volume is refreshingly original in judgment and constantly surprises the reader by its ability to place even the best-known episodes and personalities in anew and revealing light.

My book does not pretend to scholarship, only to a desire to help the average reader who wants to know Joyce's work but has been scared off by the professors. The appearance of difficulty is part of Joyce's big joke; the profundities are always expressed in good round Dublin terms; Joyce's heroes are humble men.