The Cloak Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/538 urn:isbn:0226300684 en 1835 Short Fiction The story centers on the life and death of Akaky Akakievich, an impoverished government clerk and copyist in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg. Akaky is dedicated to his job, taking special relish in the hand-copying of documents, though little recognized in his department for his hard work. Instead, the younger clerks tease him and attempt to distract him whenever they can. His threadbare overcoat is often the butt of their jokes. Akaky decides it is necessary to have the coat repaired, so he takes it to his tailor, Petrovich, who declares the coat irreparable, telling Akaky he must buy a new overcoat. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/538.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/538.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/538.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/538.mobi The Nose Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1430 urn:isbn:0688104649 en 1836 Short Fiction http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1430.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1430.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1430.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1430.mobi The Sorrows of Young Werther Johann Wolfgang von Goethe http://www.feedbooks.com/book/348 urn:isbn:0812969901 en 1774 Novels The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des jungen Werthers) is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature, and it also influenced the later Romantic literary movement. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/348.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/348.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/348.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/348.mobi The Trial Franz Kafka http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9 urn:isbn:0805210407 en 1925 Novels Horror Fantasy The Trial (German: Der Process) is a novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime. According to Kafka's friend Max Brod, the author never finished the novel and wrote in his will that it was to be destroyed. After his death, Brod went against Kafka's wishes and edited The Trial into what he felt was a coherent novel and had it published in 1925. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/9.mobi The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180 urn:isbn:0486437914 en 1880 Novels Psychology The Brothers Karamazov is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, and is generally considered the culmination of his life's work. Dostoevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial in The Russian Messenger and completed in November 1880. Dostoevsky intended it to be the first part in an epic story titled The Life of a Great Sinner,[1] but he died less than four months after its publication. The book portrays a parricide in which each of the murdered man's sons share a varying degree of complicity. On a deeper level, it is a spiritual drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, reason, free will and modern Russia. Dostoevsky composed much of the novel in Staraya Russa, which is also the main setting of the novel. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/180.mobi Taras Bulba Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/542 urn:isbn:1402100019 en 1835 Short Fiction http://www.feedbooks.com/book/542.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/542.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/542.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/542.mobi A May Evening Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/17 urn:isbn:0226300684 en 1887 Short Fiction http://www.feedbooks.com/book/17.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/17.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/17.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/17.mobi Ulysses James Joyce http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232 urn:isbn:0141182806 en 1922 Novels Sexuality Ulysses is a novel by James Joyce, first serialized in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on February 2, 1922, in Paris. It is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature. Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinised into Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g., the correspondences between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1232.mobi Crime and Punishment Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38 urn:isbn:0679420290 en 1866 Novels Psychology The poverty-stricken Raskolnikov, believing he is exempt from moral law, murders a man only to face the consequences not only from society but from his conscience, in this seminal story of justice, morality, and redemption from one of Russia's greatest novelists. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/38.mobi Don Quixote Miguel Cervantes http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183 urn:isbn:B001AAWVRY en 1615 Novels Humor/Satire Don Quixote, errant knight and sane madman, with the company of his faithful squire and wise fool, Sancho Panza, together roam the world and haunt readers' imaginations as they have for nearly four hundred years. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/183.mobi Moby-Dick Herman Melville http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54 urn:isbn:0553213113 en 1851 Novels Adventure Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaling ships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have encountered him. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat and bit off his leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/54.mobi Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad http://www.feedbooks.com/book/15 urn:isbn:0486264645 en 1902 Novels Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski). Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series (1899) in Blackwood's Magazine. It is widely regarded as a significant work of English literature and part of the Western canon. This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame narrative. It follows Marlow as he recounts, from dusk through to late night, his adventure into the Congo to a group of men aboard a ship anchored in the Thames Estuary. The story details an incident when Marlow, an Englishman, took a foreign assignment as a ferry-boat captain, employed by a Belgian trading company. Although the river is never specifically named, readers may assume it is the Congo River, in the Congo Free State, a private colony of King Leopold II. Marlow is employed to transport ivory downriver; however, his more pressing assignment is to return Kurtz, another ivory trader, to civilization in a cover up. Kurtz has a reputation throughout the region. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/15.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/15.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/15.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/15.mobi Middlemarch George Eliot http://www.feedbooks.com/book/575 urn:isbn:0451529170 en 1871 Novels Vast and crowded, rich in irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character, with two of the era's most enduring characters, Dorothea Brooke, trapped in a loveless marriage, and Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/575.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/575.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/575.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/575.mobi Grimm's Fairy Tales Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm Wilhem Karl Grimm http://www.feedbooks.com/book/187 urn:isbn:0517229250 en 1812 Young Readers Collections Children's and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmärchen) is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as Grimms' Fairy Tales (German: Grimms Märchen). http://www.feedbooks.com/book/187.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/187.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/187.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/187.mobi Oblomov Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov http://www.feedbooks.com/book/10 urn:isbn:1933480092 en 1858 Novels Romance Oblomov is the best known novel by Russian writer Ivan Goncharov, first published in 1859. Oblomov is also the central character of the novel, often seen as the ultimate incarnation of the superfluous man, a symbolic character in 19th-century Russian literature. Oblomov was compared to Shakespeare's Hamlet as answering 'No!' to the question "To be or not to be?" Oblomov is a young, generous nobleman who seems incapable of making important decisions or undertaking any significant actions. Throughout the novel he rarely leaves his room or bed and famously fails to leave his bed for the first 150 pages of the novel. The book was considered a satire of Russian nobility whose social and economic function was increasingly in question in mid-nineteenth century Russia. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/10.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/10.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/10.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/10.mobi War and Peace Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83 urn:isbn:067003469X en 1869 Novels History War War and Peace is a novel by Leo Tolstoy, first published from 1865 to 1869 in Russkii Vestnik, which tells the story of Russian society during the Napoleonic Era. It is usually described as one of Tolstoy's two major masterpieces (the other being Anna Karenina) as well as one of the world's greatest novels. War and Peace offered a new kind of fiction, with a great many characters caught up in a plot that covered nothing less than the grand subjects indicated by the title, combined with the equally large topics of youth, marriage, age, and death. Though it is often called a novel today, it broke so many conventions of the form that it was not considered a novel in its time. Indeed, Tolstoy himself considered Anna Karenina (1878) to be his first attempt at a novel in the European sense. This work is available for countries where copyright is Life+70 and in the USA. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/83.mobi Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2052 urn:isbn:0451530179 en 1915 Novels From an orphan with a clubfoot, Philip Carey grows into an impressionable young man with a voracious appetite for adventure and knowledge. Then he falls obsessively in love, embarking on a disastrous relationship that will change his life forever. This work was published before 1923 and is in the public domain in the USA only. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2052.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2052.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2052.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2052.mobi Fathers and Sons Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922 urn:isbn:0192833928 en 1862 Novels When a young graduate returns home he is accompanied, much to his father and uncle's discomfort, by a strange friend "who doesn't acknowledge any authorities, who doesn't accept a single principle on faith." Turgenev's masterpiece of generational conflict shocked Russian society when it was published in 1862 and continues today to seem as fresh and outspoken as it did to those who first encountered its nihilistic hero. http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/1922.mobi The Mysterious Portrait Nikolai Gogol http://www.feedbooks.com/book/537 urn:isbn:0226300684 en 1842 Short Fiction http://www.feedbooks.com/book/537.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/537.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/537.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/537.mobi The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6 urn:isbn:0375751513 en 1891 Novels Oscar Wilde's story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is one of his most popular works. Written in Wilde's characteristically dazzling manner, full of stinging epigrams and shrewd observations, the tale of Dorian Gray's moral disintegration caused something of a scandal when it first appeared in 1890. Wilde was attacked for his decadence and corrupting influence, and a few years later the book and the aesthetic/moral dilemma it presented became issues in the trials occasioned by Wilde's homosexual liaisons, trials that resulted in his imprisonment. Of the book's value as autobiography, Wilde noted in a letter, "Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be--in other ages, perhaps." http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.png http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.pdf http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.epub http://www.feedbooks.com/book/6.mobi