Download or read book A Fairly Honourable Defeat written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea In a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties. As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book An Honourable Defeat written by Anton Gill and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1994 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The numbers are small. Scattered across the landscape that was Nazi Germany, the Resistance looks puny: too little, too late. And yet, in the context of a police state, it assumes larger proportions. For those who have never known life under such a regime, it is hard to grasp the daily terror that makes an act of political graffiti a capital offense, that labels resistance "treason." Now, drawing on archival materials and on interviews with those few resisters and their families who survived, Anton Gill brings their story to light. Here are union leaders and businessmen, priests and Communists, students and factory workers; above all, here are the only people who had any plausible chance at more than symbolic resistance: those in the Army, the Foreign Office, the Abwehr. For these, obeying the dictates of conscience meant betraying the demands of government, and every day brought the risk of denunciation and death. Not many survived. Seen in terms of numbers, this is a story of defeat. But in the larger moral universe, it must be acknowledged as an honourable defeat: against awful odds and in appalling circumstances, these men and women kept the faith - a tribute to the power of human conscience.
Download or read book A Fairly Honourable Defeat written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of love and its excesses, missteps, and modest triumphs, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea In a dark comedy of errors, Iris Murdoch portrays the mischief wrought by Julius, a cynical intellectual who decides to demonstrate through a Machiavellian experiment how easily loving couples, caring friends, and devoted siblings can betray their loyalties. As puppet master, Julius artfully plays on the human tendency to embrace drama and intrigue and to prefer the distraction of confrontations to the difficult effort of communicating openly and honestly. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book The Black Prince written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-03-25 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement. He is tormented by his melancholic sister, who has decided to come live with him; his ex-wife, who has infuriating hopes of redeeming the past; her delinquent brother, who wants money and emotional confrontations; and Bradley's friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a younger, deplorably more successful author of commercial fiction. The ever-mounting action includes marital cross-purposes, seduction, suicide, abduction, romantic idylls, murder, and due process of law. Bradley tries to escape from it all but fails, leading to a violent climax and a coda that casts shifting perspectives on all that has preceded.
Download or read book Nuns and Soldiers written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-07-30 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling meditation on love and honor, greed and generosity, passion and death, from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, The Sea Set in London and in the South of France, this brilliantly structured novel centers on two women: Gertrude Openshaw, bereft from the recent death of her husband, yet awakening to passion; and Anne Cavidge, who has returned in doubt from many years in a nunnery, only to encounter her personal Christ. A fascinating array of men and women hover in urgent orbit around them: the "Count," a lonely Pole obsessively reliving his émigré father's patriotic anguish; Tim Reede, a seedy yet appealing artist, and Daisy, his mistress; the manipulative Mrs. Mount; and many other magically drawn characters moving between desire and obligation, guilt and joy. This edition of Nuns and Soldiers includes a new introduction by renowned religious historian Karen Armstrong.
Download or read book An Honourable Defeat A History of German Resistance to Hitler 1933 1945 written by Anton Gill and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-02-13 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The numbers were small, and their cause hopeless. Scattered across the landscape that was Nazi Germany, the Resistance looked puny: too little, too late. And yet it was made of many heroic men and women who were not afraid to risk their lives to stand up to a regime they knew was wrong. For those who have never known life under such a regime, it is hard to grasp the daily terror that makes an act of political graffiti a capital offense, that labels resistance "treason." Now, drawing on archival materials and on interviews with those few resisters who survived, Anton Gill brings their story to light. Here are union leaders and businessmen, priests and communists, students and factory workers; above all, here are the only people who had any real chance at more than symbolic resistance: those in the Army, the Foreign Office, the Abwehr. For these, obeying the dictates of conscience meant betraying the demands of government, and every day brought the risk of denunciation and death. 'A sober and useful analysis of the resistance to Hitler [that] reminds us of the astonishing moral courage human beings can display...The vast majority of Germans simply did not have the bravery to stand up to Hitler - but then who among us, confronted with the brutality of that regime, would have mustered the courage?' - Robert Harris, author of Fatherland, in The Sunday Times 'Mr. Gill fluidly conveys the attitudes and personalities of key figures in the resistance and the links among them.' - The New York Times Book Review 'Gill's illuminating study cogently argues that Hitler was not an irresistible force and that he succeeded only because he was allowed to.' - Publishers Weekly Anton Gill has been a freelance writer since 1984, specialising in European contemporary history but latterly branching out into historical fiction. He is the winner of the H H Wingate Award for non-fiction for his study of survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, 'The Journey Back From Hell'.
Download or read book The Good Apprentice written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-12-01 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edward Baltram is overwhelmed with guilt. His nasty little prank has gone horribly wrong: He has fed his closest friend a sandwich laced with a hallucinogenic drug and the young man has fallen out of a window to his death. Edward searches for redemption through a reunion with his famous father, the reclusive painter Jesse Baltram. Funny and compelling, The Good Apprentice is at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book Fairly Honourable Defeat written by I. Murdoch and published by . This book was released on 2009-12-23 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Book and the Brotherhood written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A story about love and friendship and Marxism Many years ago Gerard Hernshaw and his friends “commissioned” one of their number to write a political book. Time passes and opinions change. “Why should we go on supporting a book which we detest?” Rose Curtland asks. “The brotherhood of Western intellectuals versus the book of history,” Jenkin Riderhood suggests. The theft of a wife further embroils the situation. Moral indignation must be separated from political disagreement. Tamar Hernshaw has a different trouble and a terrible secret. Can one die of shame? In another quarter a suicide pact seems the solution. Duncan Cambus thinks that since it is a tragedy, someone must die. Someone dies. Rose, who has gone on loving without hope, at least deserves a reward.
Download or read book Writing Book Reviews written by John Eldridge Drewry and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complete revision of the author's "Book reviewing", originally published in 1945.
Download or read book The Sandcastle written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1978-03-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sparklingly profound novel about the conflict between love and loyalty The quiet life of schoolmaster Bill Mor and his wife Nan is disturbed when a young woman, Rain Carter, arrives at the school to paint the portrait of the headmaster. Mor, hoping to enter politics, becomes aware of new desires. A complex battle develops, involving love, guilt, magic, art, and political ambition. Mor’s teenage children and their mother fight discreetly and ruthlessly against the invader. The Head, himself disenchanted, advises Mor to seize the girl and run. The final decision rests with Rain. Can a “great love” be purchased at too high a price?
Download or read book The Sea the Sea written by Iris Murdoch and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-03-01 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Booker Prize—a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a playwright as he composes his memoirs Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world and shake his oversized ego to its very core. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Download or read book From a Tiny Corner in the House of Fiction written by Gillian Dooley and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dooley provides background information for each of the interviews, along with a thorough index.
Download or read book Three Minutes to Doomsday written by Joe Navarro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edge-of-your-seat memoir from former FBI agent Joe Navarro reveals the shocking, inside details of how he spearheaded a 1980s investigation into a colossal espionage breach that would have left the US defenseless in a Soviet attack.
Download or read book The War of the Fists written by Robert Charles Davis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The War of the Fists" is a study of 17th-century worker culture in the city of Venice, focusing on the mock battles, or "battagliole", which the town's two popular factions waged on public bridges. Their importance in the city's plebeian life makes bridge battles an extremely valuable point of entry for exploring structures of Venetian popular culture, a task which Robert Davis attempts at several levels.
Download or read book Bruno s Dream written by Iris Murdoch and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Honorable Exit written by Thurston Clarke and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A MAIN SELECTION OF THE MILITARY BOOK CLUB A groundbreaking revisionist history of the last days of the Vietnam War that reveals the acts of American heroism that saved more than one hundred thousand South Vietnamese from communist revenge In 1973 U.S. participation in the Vietnam War ended in a cease-fire and a withdrawal that included promises by President Nixon to assist the South in the event of invasion by the North. But in early 1975, when North Vietnamese forces began a full-scale assault, Congress refused to send arms or aid. By early April that year, the South was on the brink of a defeat that threatened execution or years in a concentration camp for the untold number of South Vietnamese who had supported the government in Saigon or worked with Americans. Thurston Clarke begins Honorable Exit by describing the iconic photograph of the Fall of Saigon: desperate Vietnamese scrambling to board a helicopter evacuating the last American personnel from Vietnam. It is an image of U.S. failure and shame. Or is it? By unpacking the surprising story of heroism that the photograph actually tells, Clarke launches into a narrative that is both a thrilling race against time and an important corrective to the historical record. For what is less known is that during those final days, scores of Americans--diplomats, businessmen, soldiers, missionaries, contractors, and spies--risked their lives to assist their current and former translators, drivers, colleagues, neighbors, friends, and even perfect strangers in escape. By the time the last U.S. helicopter left Vietnam on April 30, 1975, these righteous Americans had helped to spirit 130,000 South Vietnamese to U.S. bases in Guam and the Philippines. From there, the evacuees were resettled in the U.S. and became American citizens, the leading edge of one of America's most successful immigrant groups. Into this tale of heroism on the ground Clarke weaves the political machinations of Henry Kissinger advising President Ford in the White House while reinforcing the delusions of the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, who, at the last minute, refused to depart. Groundbreaking, page-turning, and authoritative, Honorable Exit is a deeply moving history of Americans at a little-known finest hour.
