The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov
An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate,
The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential
classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet
life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be
published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a
censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its
language has become part of the common Russian speech.
One hot
spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that
includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat
with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak
havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But
they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master,
a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and
Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so
deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him. What
ensues is a novel of inexhaustible energy, humor, and philosophical
depth, a work whose nuances emerge for the first time in Diana
Burgin's and Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's splendid English version.
1984 | George Orwell
Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is
a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory
becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political
satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian,
bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find
individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of
modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the
language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of
hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks
among the most terrifying novels ever written.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland / Through the
Looking-Glass
| Lewis Carroll
"I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir," said Alice, "Because I'm
not myself, you see."
When Alice sees a white rabbit take a
watch out of its waistcoat pocket she decides to follow it, and a
sequence of most unusual events is set in motion. This mini book
contains the entire topsy-turvy stories of Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, accompanied by practical
notes and Martina Pelouso's memorable full-colour illustrations.
A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction
| Christopher W. Alexander
At the core of A Pattern Language is the philosophy that in
designing their environments people always rely on certain
‘languages,’ which, like the languages we speak, allow them to
articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a
formal system which gives them coherence.
This book provides a
language of this kind. It will enable making a design for almost any
kind of building, or any part of the built environment. ‘Patterns,’
the units of this language, are answers to design problems: how high
should a window sill be?; how many stories should a building have?;
how much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and
trees?
More than 250 of the patterns in this language are
outlined, each consisting of a problem statement, a discussion of
the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say
in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so
deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seems likely that they
will be a part of human nature and human action as much in five
hundred years as they are today.
A Pattern Language is related
to Alexander’s other works in the Center for Environmental Structure
series: The Timeless Way of Building (introductory volume) and The
Oregon Experiment.