The demonic handsome Nikolai Stavrogin and the son of home teacher Petrush Verkhovensky are simultaneously returning to the provincial city from abroad. After their arrival, strange things begin to happen: scandals, fires, killings. Political intrigues are being woven, rumors are spreading, a skeleton is found in every resident in the closet. Within a month, a quiet city turns into a hell of a funnel, most of the actors die, go crazy or run away. Dostoevsky concocts an anti-nihilistic pamphlet, and writes the gloomy and exciting tragedy of a world that has lost its harmony and meaning....
The novel about an all-consuming passion for the game. Wounded by their addictive position, the young teacher Alexei Ivanovich comes to the conclusion that money is everything, and the only way to gain it is by playing roulette. It gives a feeling of power, victory, good luck, and before this pleasure, even love recedes into the background....
Finding himself on the brink of poverty after the death of his father, the young and largely naive Nicholas Nickleby, under the pressure of his cynical and pragmatic uncle, becomes a teacher in one of the notorious closed English schools... Even now, even the most trained reader is shocked by pictures of ruthless corporal punishment and humiliation of older students - teachers and younger students - elders. Closed schools, in which, according to most Victorian writers, forged the color of the British Empire, became a monstrous prison for the humanist Dickens, breaking children's destinies and...
A terrible anti-utopian pamphlet by Daniel Defoe, which shocked the contemporaries of the writer - and shocking even modern readers with his cold, almost ironic objectivity. The victims of the "black death" that fell upon England could be counted in the hundreds of thousands. However, the story of one person who survived the "Plague Year" affects us much more than dry numbers......
The satirical science fiction novel by Jonathan Swift, in which human and social vices are vividly and wittily ridiculed. The book has become a classic of moral and political satire, although its abridged alterations (and film adaptations) for children are especially popular. Shipwrecked, Lemuel Gulliver woke up thrown to an island inhabited by tiny little men, whose serious passions around growth and fashion seem ridiculous. His subsequent wanderings will lead Gulliver to Brobdingneg, the land of giants, to the philosophical guigngnms, to the vile yekha. During these journeys, Gulliver will...
A novel where the bitter fury of a realist writer is hidden under external sentimentality, for which the imperfection of human nature and the darkness of the human soul are not news - and still cause rejection. Friendship and betrayal, love and hate, the confrontation of minions and stepsons of fate - these are just a few storylines of this truly comprehensive, epoch-making novel, where the history of the country and era is reflected in the history of a small town....
White people build a bridge over the sacred Mother Ganges. The chief engineer of the project is very worried whether his brainchild will survive the catastrophic flood of the river. By circumstance, with a single servant, he falls on a small island and sees an amazing collection of ancient gods of India....
The literary heritage of the English novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915) is quite extensive. Of the eighty novels, however, most were written by her in order to make money. One of the results of this was the dominance of the “sensational novel” motifs, which was very popular among the reading public of that time, which led to numerous attacks on Braddon by literary critics of her time, as well as modern English literary critics accusing her of a lack of artistic skill....
This ironic, witty and extremely informative story about the American journey through the Old World captivated the readers and spread in a huge circulation. And Mark Twain himself, who first tried his hand in the genre of travel notes, came to the conclusion that anyone who has been living in a corner of the world for a century will never learn tolerance, will not be able to look at life broadly and sensibly. Almost one hundred and fifty years after the release of his book, it is difficult to disagree with him....
"Martin Cheslewith" is Dickens’s frankly satirical, witty, mischievous humor, inspired by a trip to the United States. It seems to the reader that the high society of New York in the middle of the 19th century appears - in reality, prudent, mercantile Yankees with their naive, absurd and vulgar attempts to fake London aristocratic customs. This is the general background on which the full story of exciting adventures unfolds with the cousins of Cheslwith - the adventurous, addicted Martin, suffering from tyranny of his rich grandfather, and the cynical, mercilessly cruel Jonas....
