A stranger arrives in a Russian backwater community with a bizarre proposition for the local landowners: cash for their "dead souls," the serfs who have died in their service and for whom they must continue to pay taxes until the next census. The landowner receives a payment and a relief of his tax burden, and the stranger receives--what? Gogol's comic masterpiece offers a vast and satirical painting of the Russian panorama as it traces the path and...

A 19th-century woman pursues her romantic dreams through a series of lovers.

Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. This Modern Library edition presents the acclaimed Samuel Putnam translation of the epic tale, complete with notes, variant readings, and an Introduction by the translator." Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being," said novelist Milan Kundera....

This semi-autobiographical novel explores obsession. After failing as an artist in France, sensitive Philip Carey returns to England to go to medical school. It is there that he falls in love with a cold and unfeeling waitress who may ultimately destroy them both.

The eponymous Jim is a young, good-looking, genial, and naive water-clerk on the Patna, a cargo ship plying Asian waters. He is, we are told, "the kind of fellow you would, on the strength of his looks, leave in charge of the deck." He also harbors romantic fantasies of adventure and heroism--which are promptly scuttled one night when the ship collides with an obstacle and begins to sink. Acting on impulse, Jim jumps overboard and lands in a lifeboat,...

Kim is the son of an Irish soldier born under British Imperial rule in 19th century India. Left in the care of a half-caste woman, Kim is free to explore the back allies and bazaars of Lahore . But when he meets with his father's old regiment he trades his native clothes for European suits and abandons his free wheeling life for the trappings of a secret agent.

Presents the first book of Proust's monumental work "Remembrance of Things Past", introducing such themes as the destructive force of obsessive love, the allure and the consequences of transgressive sex, and the selective eye that shapes memories.