Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics

Doctor Zhivago is the epic novel of Russia in the throes of revolution and one of the greatest love stories ever told. Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, wrestles with the new order and confronts the changes cruel experience has made in him and the anguish of being torn between the love of two women.

His stories are fillled with the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. He writes of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, yet creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.

The stories all centre around the city of Dublin and its inhabitants at the beginning of the twentieth century. They offer a moving portrait of an entire world and era long since disappeared.

This selection of stories by Katherine Mansfield has been chosen by Claire Tomalin and emphasize the stronger, feminist side of her writing rather than the popular, more sentimental view. The 21 stories are presented in chronological order and include "Prelude", "The Garden Party" and "At the Bay".

The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.
Young, handsome and fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby is the bright star of the Jazz Age, but as writer Nick Carraway is drawn into the decadent orbit of his Long Island mansion, where the party never seems to end, he finds himself faced by the mystery of Gatsby's origins and desires.

In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.

W. Somerset Maugham is the Introducer to this beautiful Everyman's Library edition.

Adela and her elderly companion Mrs Moore arrive in the Indian town of Chandrapore, and feel trapped by its insular and prejudiced British community. Determined to explore the 'real India', they seek the guidance of the charming and mercurial Dr Aziz. But a mysterious incident occurs while they are exploring the Marabar caves, and the well-respected doctor soon finds himself at the centre of a scandal.

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself, is also an oblique self-portrait of the young James Joyce and a universal testament to the artist's 'eternal imagination'.

Joyce expertly encapsulates the development of individual consciousness and the role of the artist in society in what is considered one of his greatest works.

Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. It traces emotional conflicts through the protagonist, Paul Morel, and his suffocating relationships with a demanding mother and two very different lovers, which exert complex influences on the development of his manhood.

Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. But as time passes, bringing with it war and death, the summer home stands empty until one day, many years later, the family return to make the long-postponed visit to the lighthouse

Anita Brookner is known for her poignant, witty studies of emotionally restrained women navigating loneliness, deception, and desire.

‘Brookner works a spell on the reader; being under it is both an education and a delight.’—The Washington Post Book World

Hotel du Lac won the Booker Prize in 1984 and established Brookner’s international reputation as an intellectual powerhouse with an intimate understanding of the intricacies of human nature.

INTRODUCTION BY HERMIONE LEE, who selected the novels for this omnibus and as well as introducing it, making it the perfect companion to her new biography.

The Waves has been hailed as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It interweaves the voices of six characters, three boys and three girls, beginning with their childhood in a garden by the sea and following them throughout their lives. As the six grow up they experience friendships and loves, triumphs and regrets, and they grieve for the death of a seventh character, their beloved friend Percival.

Interspersed throughout their interior monologues, and unifying them, are brief
scenes of the seaside that progress from dawn to sunset of a single day. Defying
classification, Woolf’s novel boldly breaks down the barriers between poetry and prose, as well as those between the consciousnesses of her individual characters, producing an entrancing and groundbreaking work of literature

With effortless grace, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates in her second novel a
seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to
establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s.
We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters:
Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor
full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has
abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm, and Richard, a
shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s wilful twin sister Kainene. These
characters are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined
possible. Half of a Yellow Sun is an electrifying modern masterpiece about the ways in
which love complicates everything.