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What would happen if a doctor implanted the pituitary gland and
testicles of a man into the body of a stray dog? In Mikhail Bulgakov’s
topsy-turvy world, the dog starts to walk on two legs, drink, smoke,
thieve, chase women and recite every swear word in Russian. The perfect
candidate for a government official, in other words. This rude, riotous
send-up of the Soviet Union, banned immediately on publication, is
satire red in tooth and claw.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not
used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad
quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are
images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to
keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the
original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain
imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made
available for future generations to enjoy.
In Dreams of Leaving and Remaining, award winning journalist Meek
explores a nation uneasy with itself. In the decades since the
twilight of empire, Britain has struggled to find its place, and
identity, in the world. This has come to the point of crisis since
the 2008 financial crash. Meek meets the farmers and fishermen who
wish Britain to turn its back on the world and restore its former
glory, and are willing to lose the very support that their industry
depends on. He reports on a Cadbury's factory that is to be shut
down and moved to Poland in the name of free market economics,
exploring the impact on the local community left behind. He charts
how the NHS is coping with the twin burdens of austerity and an
ageing population. Through his journey he asks what we can recover
from the debris of an old nation as we head towards new horizons,
and what we must leave behind. There are no easy answers, and what
he creates instead is a masterly portrait of an anxious, troubled
nation. Instead, he demands that we reconsider the power of the
stories that we tell ourselves about who we are, a nation's
alienated from itself.
'Inventive and original' The Times 'Fans of intelligent historical
fiction will be enthralled' Hilary Mantel Shortlisted for the
Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Longlisted for the Orwell
Prize for Political Fiction Three journeys. One road. England,
1348. A gentlewoman flees an odious arranged marriage, a proctor
sets out for a monastery in Avignon and a young ploughman in search
of freedom is on his way to volunteer with a company of archers.
All come together on the road to Calais. In the other direction
comes the Black Death, the plague that will wipe out half of the
population of Northern Europe. To Calais, In Ordinary Time is an
exploration of love, death and power, against the backdrop of
catastrophe.
1919, Siberia. Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under
military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along
the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears
from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison,
insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young
widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead,
suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours
a secret of its own . . .
Since Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership, the nation has
been profoundly split: one side fantasizing that the referendum
will never be acted upon, the other entrenched in questionable
assumptions about reclaimed sovereignty and independence.
Underlying the cleavage are primal myths, deeper histories, and
political folk-legends. James Meek,'the George Orwell of our
times', goes in search of the stories and consequences arising out
of a nation's alienation from itself. In Dreams of Leaving and
Remaining, Meek meets farmers and fishermen intent on exiting the
EU despite the loss of protections they will incur. He reports on a
Cadbury's factory shut down and moved to Poland in the name of free
market economics, exploring the impact on the local community left
behind. He charts how the NHS is coping with the twin burdens of
austerity and an aging population. Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
is urgent reporting from one of Britain's finest journalists. James
Meek asks what we can recover from the debris of an old nation as
we head towards new horizons, and what we must leave behind.There
are no easy answers, and what he creates instead is a masterly
portrait of an anxious, troubled nation.
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A Dog's Heart (Paperback)
Mikhail Bulgakov; Edited by Andrew Bromfield; Introduction by James Meek
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A Dog's Heart: An Appalling Story is Mikhail Bulgakov's hilarious
satire on Communist hypocrisies. This Penguin Classics edition is
translated with notes by Andrew Bromfield, and includes an
introduction by James Meek. In this surreal work by the author of
The Master and Margarita, wealthy Moscow surgeon Filip
Preobrazhensky implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a
drunken petty criminal into the body of a stray dog named Sharik.
As the dog slowly transforms into a man, and the man into a
slovenly, lecherous government official, the doctor's life descends
into chaos. A scathing indictment of the New Soviet Man, A Dog's
Heart was immediately banned by the Soviet government when it was
first published in 1925: alternating lucid realism with
pulse-raising drama, the novel captures perfectly the atmosphere of
its rapidly changing times. Andrew Bromfield's vibrant translation
is accompanied by an introduction by James Meek, which places the
work in the context of the Russian class struggles of the era and
considers the vision, progressive style and lasting relevance of an
author who was isolated and suppressed during his lifetime. This
edition also contains notes and a chronology. Mikhail Bulgakov
(1891-1940) was born in Kiev, today the capital of Ukraine. After
finishing high school, Bulgakov entered the Medical School of Kiev
University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a
doctor in his early works Notes on Cuffs and Notes of a Young
Country Doctor. His later works treated the subject of the artist
and the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but The
Master and Margarita is generally considered his masterpiece. Fame,
at home and abroad, was not to come until a quarter of a century
after his death at Moscow in 1940. If you enjoyed A Dog's Heart,
you might like Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, also available
in Penguin Classics. 'One of the greatest of modern Russian
writers, perhaps the greatest' Nigel Jones, Independent
At the dawn of the twenty-first century Adam Kellas finds himself
hurled on a journey between continents and cultures. In his quest
from the war-torn mountains of Afghanistan to the elegant dinner
tables of north London and then the marshlands of the American
South, only the memory of the beautiful, elusive Astrid offers the
possibility of hope. With all the explosive drama of The People's
Act of Love, this is a spellbinding tale of folly and the pursuit
of love from one of today's most talented and visionary writers.
This is the greatest book about the archangels gives details about
them and tells the child how to call on there favorite angel for
safety and protected and lets them sleep good and have peaceful
rest
A RICHLY IMAGINED NOVEL OF FAMILY, LOVE AND SCIENCE SET IN
MODERN-DAY LONDON, FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
"THE PEOPLE'S ACT OF LOVE
"Ritchie Shepherd, aging former pop star and wildly successful
producer of a reality teen talent show, is starting to trip over
the intricacy of his own lies. Gallingly, his sister, Bec, a
scientist developing a crucial vaccine, is as addicted to
truth-telling as Ritchie is to falsehood. Ritchie relies on her
certitude even as he seethes with resentment. A devastating chain
of events is set into motion when Bec tells her fiance, Val, a
powerful tabloid editor, that she can't bring herself to marry him
after all. Furious, he sets into motion an elaborate revenge plot
intended to destroy Bec by exposing the people who are close to
her.
A bighearted epic in the manner of Tolstoy, James Meek's
"The""Heart Broke In" is also as shrewd, starkly funny, and
of-the-moment as Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" or Jeffrey
Eugenides's "The Marriage Plot." Most of all, it is a staggeringly
good read, fiction with the reverberating resonance of truth.
"The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and
now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals.
It's the public itself. it's us." In a little over a generation the
bones and sinews of the British economy - rail, energy, water,
postal services, municipal housing - have been sold to remote,
unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of
brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James
Meek shows how Britain's common wealth became private, and the
impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing
to spiralling energy bills. Meek explores the human stories behind
the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three
decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary
citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest
burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only
public enterprises that have become private property, but we
ourselves. Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a
passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost
and what losing it cost us - the rent we must pay to exist on this
private island.
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