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Joseph Knight
€12,00by James Robertson
‘A book of such quality as to persuade you that historical novels are the true business of the writer.’
Daily Telegraph
A gripping, shocking story of history, enlightement and slavery from the bestselling author of THE FANATIC. JOSPEH KNIGHT confirms James Robertson as one of our foremost novelists.
Exiled to Jamaica after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, Sir John Wedderburn made a fortune, alongside his three brothers, as a faux surgeon and sugar planter. In the 1770s, he returned to Scotland to marry and re-establish the family name. He brought with him Joseph Knight, a black slave and a token of his years in the Caribbean.
Now, in 1802, Sir John Wedderburn is settling his estate, and has hired a solicitor’s agent, Archibald Jamieson, to search for his former slave. The past has haunted Wedderburn ever since Culloden, and ever since he last saw Knight, in court twenty-four years ago, in a case that went to the heart of Scottish society, pitting master against slave, white against black, and rich against poor.
As long as Knight is missing, Wedderburn will never be able to escape the past. Yet what will he do if Jamieson’s search is successful? And what effect will this re-opening of old wounds have on those around him? Meanwhile, as Jamieson tries to unravel the true story of Joseph Knight he begins to question his own motivation. How can he possibly find a man who does not want to be found?
James Robertson’s second novel is a tour de force, the gripping story of a search for a life that stretches over sixty years and moves from battlefields to the plantations of Jamaica, from Enlightenment Edinburgh to the back streets of Dundee. It is a moving narrative of history, identity and ideas, that dramatically retells a fascinating but forgotten episode of Scottish history.
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Boonrod
€12,00by Paola Tonussi
Boonrod is a creature born on the street in Thailand and destined for a vagabond’s life. Everything changes for him thanks to a chance meeting with the boy Atid, who gives him love and a real home. A perfect mutual understanding soon grows between them, a friendship coloured by a sort of nostalgia, suspended, as in a fairy-story, between the enchantment of childhood and the lush beauty of the tropical landscape. This happy interlude comes to an abrupt end when Boonrod, once more on his own, must confront pain and anguish, cruelty and death. Salvation comes at the eleventh hour and he will be given the chance of starting over again, with a new life. “Paola Tonussi, with her writer’s sensibility and sure poetic touch, has succeeded in rendering not only the extraordinary love story that those who share their lives with a dog know well; but also – and astonishingly – to describe through the eyes of ‘man’s best friend’ himself the suffering and atrocity of the DMT, that every year is responsible in China and Korea for the massacre of millions of innocent and vulnerable creatures, snared, tortured and killed to finish on the tables of the grossest form of oriental traditionalism. Paola’s is then a book that scores doubly. Because she extracts from the devotion that has always united men and their dogs a unique voice, that anatomizes the full range of unconditional affection, the courage of bearing witness and the hope of salvation”. (Maria Grazia Filippi, journalist) “a poetic and terrible tale” (Sergio Frigo, writer)
Also available in Italian
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin
€11,65di Harriet Beecher Stowe
The novel that changed the course of American history
Published in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel was a powerful indictment of slavery in America. Describing the many trials and eventual escape to freedom of the long-suffering, good-hearted slave Uncle Tom, it aimed to show how Christian love can overcome any human cruelty. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has remained controversial to this day, seen as either a vital milestone in the anti-slavery cause or as a patronising stereotype of African-Americans, yet it played a crucial role in the eventual abolition of slavery and remains one of the most important American novels ever written.
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.
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Jane and Louisa Will Soon come Home
€11,00di Erna Brodber
Enter the world of the protagonist, who explores the multiple dimensions of family and origin for a woman in a rapidly-changing Jamaica. A challenging but highly engaging read. .. not since George Lamming’s In The Castle Of My Skin have we had a first time novel with this kind of effortless , bottomless detail of life and leaf and sorrow
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Jack Maggs
€11,00by Peter Carey
London,1837. Jack Maggs, raised and deported as a criminal, has returned from Australia, in secret and at great risk. What does he want after all these years, and why is he so interested in the comings and goings at a plush townhouse in Great Queen Street? And why is Jack himself an object of such interest to Tobias Oates, celebrated author, amateur hypnotist and fellow burglar – in this case of people’s minds, of their histories and inner phantoms? A thrilling story of mesmerism and possession, of dangerous bargains and illicit love against the backdrop of Victorian London.
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Lexicographers and grammarians in the history of English
€11,00by Roberta Facchinetti
This book delves into three scholars who contributed to the advancement of English lexicographic and grammar writing tradition between the 16th and the 19th century. Specifically, Peter LEVINS authored Manipulus Vocabulurom (1570), the first hardword rhyming dictionary; Anthony HUISH’s Priscianus Nascens (1660) and Priscianus Ephebus (1668) were aimed at English schoolboys learning to translate from English into Latin and vice versa; finally, Percival LEIGH’s Comic English Grammar (1840) laid bare a cross section of English socio-linguistic idiosyncrasies that could hardly be unveiled in a ‘serious’, scholarly way. From language teaching to translation, from lexicology to lexicography, from theoretical studies to socio-linguistic parody, the three scholars examined complement each other in terms of genres exploited, content analysed and methodology enacted; most of all, they testify to the fact that viewing language – particularly lexico-grammar – from different perspectives is a winning way to understand the past (and present) of language itself.
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Introduction to English Phonetics and Morphology
€11,00by Roberta Facchinetti
The book illustrates the key aspects of English phonetics and morphology, bearing in mind that competence in these two fields facilitates the mastering of languages at different levels: spelling, vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, word recognition, origin and structure of words and, overall, text comprehension. Phonetics is the branch of linguistics that studies the sounds of human speech, how they are produced, transmitted and perceived. In turn, morphology analyses the structure of words and their parts, such as stems, prefixes, and suffixes, with special focus on the differences between derivational and inflectional affixes. Competence in these two branches of English linguistics is the first step in the full mastering of English.
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Oroonoko
€10,85di Aphra Behn
A new single-volume edition of an early anti-slavery novel
When Prince Oroonoko’s passion for the virtuous Imoinda arouses the jealousy of his grandfather, the lovers are cast into slavery and transported from Africa to the colony of Surinam. Oroonoko’s noble bearing soon wins the respect of his English captors, but his struggle for freedom brings about his destruction. Inspired by Aphra Behn’s visit to Surinam, Oroonoko reflects the author’s romantic views of native peoples as being in “the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin.” The novel also reveals Behn’s ambiguous attitude toward slavery: while she favored it as a means to strengthen England’s power, her powerful and moving work conveys its injustice and brutality.
This new single-volume edition of Oroonoko includes a carefully modernized text accompanied by an introduction, chronology, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.
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.
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Joseph Andrews and Shamela
€10,80di Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding wrote both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) in response to Samuel Richardson’s book Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy travesty. Joseph Andrews begins as a parody, too, but soon outgrows its origins, and its deepest roots lie in Cervantes and Marivaux. In both stories, Fielding demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste.
This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C. Battestin for the definitive Wesleyan Edition of Fielding’s works. The text of Shamela is based on the first edition, and two substantial appendices reprint the preliminary matter from the second edition of Richardson’s Pamela and Conyers Middleton’s Life of Cicero, which is also closely parodied in Shamela. This Oxford World’s Classics edition also features a new introduction by Thomas Keymer which situates Fielding’s works in their critical and historical contexts.
