Mr and Mrs Brown are keen to make it to Thompson Hall for a cosy family Christmas – the first they will be spending in England instead of France for several years. When Mr Brown is taken ill in Paris en route home, it seems their Christmas wishes may not be...
Mankind has entered another Dark Age. Individuality has been eliminated. People refer to themselves only by using "we" and "they". All live in collective homes and the mass is more important than the individual. However even in this far future, there is someone...
The major part of the human population lives under the surface of Earth. Humankind has created a Machine which meets all possible needs. Travelling is permitted but people do not feel the need for it. Everybody lives in a separate room and communication is...
Gregor Samsa is a travelling salesman who wakes up one morning to realize that he been transformed from a human being to a "monstrous vermin". He reflects back on his life, his work, his relationship with his family and his employer, and he realizes that each...
Youth' is an autobiographical short story by Joseph Conrad. It was written in 1898, first published in Blackwood's Magazine, and included as the first story in the 1902 volume Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories. The volume also included Heart of Darkness...
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s. The novel tells the story of the death, at age 45, of a high court...
The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved...
The Idiot is anything but, yet his fellow boarders at Mrs. Smithers Pedagog's home for single gentlemen see him as such. His brand of creative thought is dismissed as foolishness yet it continues to get under their skin, because when you're beneath contempt...
Three trees, known as the Peacock trees, are blamed by the peasants for the fever that has killed many. Squire Vane scoffs at this legend as superstition. To prove them wrong, once and for all, he takes a bet to spend the night in the trees. In the morning...
Milton is an epic poem by William Blake, written and illustrated between 1804 and 1810. Its hero is John Milton, who returns from Heaven and unites with Blake to explore the relationship between living writers and their predecessors, and to undergo a mystical...
"Kathleen" is a 1920 novel by Christopher Morley. It tells the story of a group of eight Oxford undergrads who call themselves "The Scorpions. " One day, they find a letter that a certain Kathleen wrote to Joe, and they build an idea of who she might be in...
In Henrik Ibsen's play "Little Eyolf" we meet Alfred Allmer and his wife Rita, whose marriage and relationship has been strained ever since their son, Eyolf, fell from a table as an infant and became lame. Alfred has been burying himself in work, writing his...
Master Builder Halvard Solness is an ageing architect who has not achieved what he wanted, neither in art nor in love. He fears and bullies his juniors, and thinks he is going mad. His wife and mistress try to care for him as best they can, without themselves...
Ali Baba and Cassim are two Persian brothers. Ali Baba barely manages to put food on the table for his family, while his brother lives an easy life thanks to his rich wife. One day, while chopping wood in the forest, Ali Baba sees a band of thieves laden with...
After their father’s death, the two brothers, Nur al-Din and Shams al-Din, agree to marry two sisters on the same day. The main idea is that Nur wants to have a son, while Shams wants to have a daughter. And so it happens. Shams al-Din has a daughter and Nur...
Audiokniha Slavné vánoční příběhy. Čtyři legendární příběhy světové literatury pro adventní čas Vánoční koleda Ch. Dickense je slavnou novelou o starém lakomci Scroogeovi, kterému duchové ukážou svět chudých a změní tak jeho smýšlení. Sherlock Holmes a doktor...
Without question one of the most significant books in modern history, The Communist Manifesto is a brief, populist pamphlet that distils the core ideas of Communism into accessible prose. Published just months before violent uprisings threatened to destabilise...
Julius Caesar is Shakespeare’s most political play. He examines whether political assassination can ever be justified, and the effect of this act of violence on its perpetrators. The high ideals of Brutus are tested to the full by the consequences of Julius...