Random House New Releases - Classics - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

The Belly of Paris by Mark Kurlansky

2009-05-12T00:30:00-05:00

The Belly of Paris
Written by Emile Zola
Translated by Mark Kurlansky

Trade Paperback, 368 pages | Modern Library | Fiction - Classics | $16.00 | May 12, 2009 | 978-0-8129-7422-5 (0-8129-7422-0)

Part of Emile Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga, The Belly of Paris is the story of Florent Quenu, a wrongly accused man who escapes imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Returning to his native Paris, Florent finds a city he barely recognizes, with its working classes displaced to make way for broad boulevards and bourgeois flats. Living with his brother’s family in the newly rebuilt Les Halles market, Florent is soon caught up in a dangerous maelstrom of food and politics. Amid intrigue among the market’s sellers–the fishmonger, the charcutière, the fruit girl, and the cheese vendor–and the glorious culinary bounty of their labors, we see the dramatic difference between “fat and thin” (the rich and the poor) and how the widening gulf between them strains a city to the breaking point.

Translated and with an Introduction by the celebrated historian and food writer Mark Kurlansky, The Belly of Paris offers fascinating perspectives on the French capital during the Second Empire–and, of course, tantalizing descriptions of its sumptuous repasts.

The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

2009-05-05T00:30:00-05:00

The Dark Side The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
Written by Jane Mayer

Trade Paperback, 432 pages | Anchor | History - United States - 21St Century; Political Science - Political Freedom & Security - Terrorism | $15.95 | May 5, 2009 | 978-0-307-45629-8 (0-307-45629-3)

One of The New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year

National Bestseller
With a New Afterword

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

A Best Book of the Year: Salon, Slate, The Economist, The Washington Post, Cleveland Plain-Dealer

The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In spellbinding detail, Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions by which key players, namely Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, exploited September 11 to further a long held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.

PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 by Laura Furman

2009-05-05T00:30:00-05:00

PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
Edited by Laura Furman

Trade Paperback, 464 pages | Anchor | Fiction - Literary | $15.00 | May 5, 2009 | 978-0-307-28035-0 (0-307-28035-7)

A collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 features unforgettable tales in settings as diverse as post-war Vietnam, a luxurious seaside development in Cape Town, an Egyptian desert village, and a permanently darkened New York City. Also included are essays from the eminent jurors on their favorite stories, observations from the winners on what inspired them, and an extensive resource list of magazines.

Antony and Cleopatra by Eric Rasmussen

2009-04-14T00:30:00-05:00

Antony and Cleopatra
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Written at the pinnacle of Shakespeare’s career and featuring his most soaring poetic idiom, Antony and Cleopatra is both an immortal love story and a political drama played out on a global scale.

Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Each play includes an Introduction as well as an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-white illustrations.

Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

King Lear by Eric Rasmussen

2009-04-14T00:30:00-05:00

King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

King Lear is Shakespeare’s bleakest and profoundest tragedy, a searing dramatization of humankind at the edge of apocalypse that explores the family and the nature of being with passion, poetry, and dark humor.

Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Each play includes an Introduction as well as an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-white illustrations.

Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Macbeth by Eric Rasmussen

2009-04-14T00:30:00-05:00

Macbeth
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

One of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, filled with fierce, violent action, Macbeth is a human drama of ambition, desire, and guilt in a world of blood and darkness, with whispers of the supernatural.

Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Each play includes an Introduction as well as an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-white illustrations.

Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

The Winter's Tale by Eric Rasmussen

2009-04-14T00:30:00-05:00

The Winter's Tale
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

One of the last plays Shakespeare penned on his own, The Winter’s Tale is a transcendent work of death and rebirth, exploring irrational sexual jealousy, the redemptive world of nature, and the magical power of art.

Under the editorial supervision of Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, two of today’s most accomplished Shakespearean scholars, this Modern Library series incorporates definitive texts and authoritative notes from William Shakespeare: Complete Works. Each play includes an Introduction as well as an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career; commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers; scene-by-scene analysis; key facts about the work; a chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times; and black-and-white illustrations.

Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2009-04-07T00:30:00-05:00

Jane Eyre
Written by Charlotte Bronte

Charlotte Brontë's most beloved novel describes the passionate love between the courageous orphan Jane Eyre and the brilliant, brooding, and domineering Rochester.

The loneliness and cruelty of Jane's childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in love with her sardonic employer, her discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a heart-wrenching choice. Ever since its publication in 1847, Jane Eyre has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic. It lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2009-04-07T00:30:00-05:00

Wuthering Heights
Written by Emily Bronte

Perhaps the most haunting and tormented love story ever written, Wuthering Heights is the tale of the troubled orphan Heathcliff and his doomed love for Catherine Earnshaw.

Published in 1847, the year before Emily Bronte's death at the age of thirty, Wuthering Heights has proved to be one of the nineteenth century's most popular yet disturbing masterpieces. The windswept moors are the unforgettable setting of this tale of the love between the foundling Heathcliff and his wealthy benefactor's daughter, Catherine. Through Catherine's betrayal of Heathcliff and his bitter vengeance, their mythic passion haunts the next generation even after their deaths. Incorporating elements of many genres—from gothic novels and ghost stories to poetic allegory—and transcending them all, Wuthering Heights is a mystifying and powerful tour de force.

Karnak Caf� by Naguib Mahfouz

2008-12-02T00:30:00-05:00

Karnak Caf�
Written by Naguib Mahfouz

In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation by the secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion, fear, and betrayal.

At a Cairo café in the 1960s, a legendary former belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family of regulars, including a group of idealistic university students. One day, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the students disappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail's beautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, they are apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. It is only years later, after their lives have been further shattered, that the narrator pieces together the young people's horrific stories and learns how the government used them against one another. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself enters the Café and sits among his former victims, claiming a right to join their society of the disillusioned. Now translated into English for the first time, Naguib Mahfouz's tale of the insidious effects of government-sanctioned torture and the suspension of rights and freedoms in a time of crisis is shockingly contemporary.

War and Peace by Larissa Volokhonsky

2008-12-02T00:30:00-05:00

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

From the award-winning translators of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov comes this magnificent new translation of Tolstoy's masterwork.

War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

A s Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.

Random House New Releases - Classics - Between November 27, 2008 and December 27, 2009.

The Belly of Paris by Mark Kurlansky

The Belly of Paris Written by Emile Zola Translated by Mark Kurlansky

The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

The Dark Side The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American IdealsWritten by Jane Mayer

PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 by Laura Furman

PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009 Edited by Laura Furman

Antony and Cleopatra by Eric Rasmussen

Antony and Cleopatra Written by William Shakespeare Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

King Lear by Eric Rasmussen

King Lear Written by William Shakespeare Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Macbeth by Eric Rasmussen

Macbeth Written by William Shakespeare Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

The Winter's Tale by Eric Rasmussen

The Winter's Tale Written by William Shakespeare Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre Written by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Wuthering Heights Written by Emily Bronte

Karnak Caf� by Naguib Mahfouz

Karnak Caf� Written by Naguib Mahfouz

War and Peace by Larissa Volokhonsky

War and Peace Written by Leo Tolstoy Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

The Belly of Paris
Written by Emile Zola
Translated by Mark Kurlansky

The Dark Side The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
Written by Jane Mayer

PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories 2009
Edited by Laura Furman

Antony and Cleopatra
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Macbeth
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

The Winter's Tale
Written by William Shakespeare
Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen

Jane Eyre
Written by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights
Written by Emily Bronte

Karnak Caf�
Written by Naguib Mahfouz

War and Peace
Written by Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky