Modern Classics Stanmore College Learning Resource Centre
The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the "Roaring Twenties", and a devastating exposé of the ‘Jazz Age’. Through the narration of Nick Carraway the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions which lined the Long Island shore in the 1920s, to encounter Nick's cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby, and the mystery that surrounds him. Also on DVD.
In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteenyear-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? Study of freewill? A Clockwork Orange is all of these.
Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden dissects the 'phoney' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves. Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood behind, this book explores the world with disarming frankness and a warm, affecting charisma.
Set in the American south this is the tale of Celie, a poor young black girl. Abused by her father, she loses two children and then is married to a man who treats her like a slave. She dreams of becoming like the glamorous Shug Avery, a rebellious black singer. Gradually Celie discovers the support of women that enable her to begin a new life. Also on DVD.
When the animals of Manor Farm overthrow their master and take over the farm themselves, they imagine it is the beginning of a life of freedom and equality. But gradually a cunning, ruthless elite among them starts to take control. Soon the other animals discover that they are not all as equal as they thought, and find themselves hopelessly ensnared as one form of tyranny is replaced with another. Also on DVD.
Esther Greenwood is at college and is fighting two battles; one against her own desire for perfection in all things - grades, boyfriend, looks, career - and the other against mental illness. What The Bell Jar has to say about what women expect of themselves and what society expects of women, is as sharply relevant today as it has always been.
It’s an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards, to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and his best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. At this moment, they’re hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed with the big, friendly words: ‘DON’T PANIC’. The weekend has only just begun.
Karim lives in south London and dreams of making his escape to the big city. But his father is a strange and compelling figure whose powers of meditation hold a circle of would-be mystics spellbound with the fascinations of the East. Among his disciples is the glamorous Eva. When his father runs off with her to a crumbling flat in Barons Court, Karim's life becomes changed in ways that even he had never dreamed of.
Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the ‘American Dream’. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans. Also on DVD.
Streetwise George and his big, childlike friend Lennie are searching for work in the fields and valleys of California. They have nothing except the clothes on their back and a hope that one day they'll find a place of their own and live the ‘American Dream’; but Lennie doesn’t know his own strength and accidentally gets the pair into trouble, endangering their lives as well as their dreams. Also on DVD.
Sal Paradise, a young innocent, joins his hero Dean Moriarty, a traveller and mystic, the living epitome of ‘Beat’, on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States. Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the ‘American Dream’.
Okonkwo is a great warrior with a fiery temper, renowned in West Africa. Determined not to be like his father, he refuses to show weakness to anyone - even if the only way he can master his feelings is with his fists. When outsiders threaten the traditions of his clan, Okonkwo takes violent action. Will his pride eventually destroy him?
Charles Marlow, a seaman and wanderer, recounts his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz: dying, insane, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Travelling upriver to the heart of the African continent, he gradually becomes obsessed by this enigmatic figure, questioning not only of his own nature and values, but also those of western civilisation.
Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth, rewriting the past to suit the needs of the Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him through the all-seeing ‘telescreens’ and the watchful eye of Big Brother. In his longing for truth and liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair, but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal. Also on DVD.
Joyce draws a realistic and memorable cast of Dubliners together in a powerful exploration of overarching themes. Writing of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, he creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience.
The Palm-Wine Drinkard is often considered the seminal work of modern African literature. It tells the mythological story of a man who follows a palm wine tapster into the land of the dead or ‘Deads' Town’. There he finds a world of magic, ghosts, demons and supernatural beings.
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townsend. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange and terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages...
When a witchdoctor appears on the Marquis de Casalduero's doorstep prophesising a plague of rabies in the Colombian seaport, he dismisses her claims - until he hears that his young daughter was one of four people bitten by a rabid dog and the only one to survive. Garcia Marquez’ novel is an exercise in ‘magical realism’, exploring ritual, belief and superstition.
Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire on his cathedral. His mason anxiously advises against it, for the old cathedral was built without foundations. Nevertheless, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, until the stone pillars shriek and the ground beneath it swims. Its shadow falls ever darker on the world below and on Dean Jocelin in particular.
Life is tough for Billy, a troubled teenager growing up in Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can. Also on DVD.
Nurse Ratched rules her mental hospital with an iron fist. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy, who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with Nurse Ratched. The book is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness. Also on DVD.
A plane crashes on an uninhabited island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. Golding’s novel is a look at the darker side of human nature. Also on DVD.
Set off the coast of Havana, Hemingway's fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. It was The Old Man and the Sea that won Hemingway the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man's challenge to the elements in which he lives.
Meet Bradley the Buyer, the best narcotics agent in the business. Say hello to Dr ‘Fingers’ Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, and the sadistic, manipulative Dr Benway. And then there’s our narrator, Bill Lee, an Ivy League-educated narcotics addict. This is the story of Bill’s flight south from New York to a drug-and-sex-soaked retreat in Tangiers, where ambiguous Good and enticing Evil vie for the human soul. Welcome to Interzone…
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The brilliant student of an earlier generation returns to his Sudanese village; obsession with the mysterious West and a desire to bite the hand that has half-fed him, has led him to London and the beds of women with similar obsessions about the mysterious East. He kills them at the point of ecstasy and the Occident, in its turn, destroys him. Salih’s novel is powerfully and poetically written.
The story follows Antoinette Cosway, a white Creole heiress, from her youth in Jamaica to her unhappy marriage and relocation to England, caught in an oppressive patriarchal society in which she belongs neither to the white Europeans nor the black Jamaicans. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys' brief, beautiful masterpiece.
In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges. The ‘Bright Young Things’ of Twenties' Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade - whether promiscuity, dancing, cocktail parties or sports cars. Waugh's funny and daring satire reveals the darkness and vulnerability that lurks beneath the glittering surface of the high life.
This brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes Metamorphosis, his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation in which a man awakes to discover that he has turned into an insect. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the imaginative depth of his thought.
Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveller these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world's great anti-war books. Billy Pilgrim's odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know. Also on DVD.
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous, life-embracing Ida Arnold. Greene's gripping thriller exposes a world of loneliness and fear, of life lived on the 'dangerous edge of things'. Also on DVD.
It’s 1981 and Egypt is lurching into the modern world. Rich with irony and infused with political undertones, the story is narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson Elwan, and Elwan's headstrong and beautiful fiancÊe Randa. The novel reaches its climax with the assassination of President Sadat on October 6, 1981, an event around which the fictional plot is skilfully woven.
Darkness at Noon is set in an unnamed country ruled by a totalitarian government. Rubashov, once a powerful player in the regime, finds the tables turned on him when he is arrested and tried for treason. His reflections on his previous life and his experiences in prison form the heart of this moving and thought-provoking masterpiece.
After the death of Meursault’s mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sadness and when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled. Why would this seemingly law-abiding bachelor do such a thing? In The Outsider Camus explores the predicament of the individual who refuses to pretend and is prepared to face the indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.
Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Paramo - lover, overlord, and murderer. Rulfo’s extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions and unfathomable mysteries has been a profound influence on a whole generation of Latin American writers.
Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.
Set in an unnamed African country, the book is narrated by Salim, a young man who owns his own shop in a small city. This spot, this ‘bend in the river’, is a microcosm of post-colonial Africa at the time of Independence: a scene of chaos, violent change, warring tribes, ignorance, isolation and poverty. A Bend in the River is a truly moving story of historical upheaval and social breakdown.
Clarissa Dalloway is giving a party. Woolf’s novel, written in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style, travels forwards and back in time and in and out of the characters' minds to construct an image of Clarissa's life and of the inter-war social structure. The delicate artistry and lyrical prose of Woolf's fourth novel have established her as one of the great English writers.
After a terrible murder in the village of Ilmorog, four suspects are placed in detention: Munira the headmaster; Abdullah the storekeeper; Karega the assistant teacher and barmaid Wanja. The lives of these four characters are inextricably linked with the lives of the three murder victims, the fortunes of Ilmorog and with the fate of Kenya itself. Published to great controversy in 1977, Petals of Blood is as much a ‘whodunit’ as a political novel and satire.
When Bill Masen wakes up blindfolded in hospital there is a bitter irony in his situation. Carefully removing his bandages, he realizes that he is the only person who can see: everyone else, doctors and patients alike, have been blinded by a meteor shower. Now, with civilization in chaos, the triffids - huge, venomous, large-rooted plants able to 'walk', feeding on human flesh - can have their day.
Far in the future, the World Controllers have created the ideal society. Through clever use of genetic engineering, brainwashing and recreational sex and drugs all its members are happy consumers. Bernard Marx seems alone harbouring an ill-defined longing to break free. A visit to one of the few remaining Savage Reservations where the old, imperfect life still continues, may be the cure for his distress.
EASY READERS Suitable for ESOL and Literacy learners. Also on DVD.
Suitable for ESOL and Literacy learners. Also on DVD.
Suitable for ESOL and Literacy learners. Also on DVD.
Suitable for ESOL and Literacy learners.
BOOK REVIEW STUDENT NAME: BOOK TITLE: AUTHOR:
You can also submit reviews on Twitter @LRCStanmore
BOOK REVIEW STUDENT NAME: BOOK TITLE: AUTHOR:
You can also submit reviews on Twitter @LRCStanmore
BOOK REVIEW STUDENT NAME: BOOK TITLE: AUTHOR:
You can also submit reviews on Twitter @LRCStanmore
BOOK REVIEW COMPETITION Review 3 of the books in this brochure and you could win a ÂŁ20 Amazon voucher!!! You can do this quickly and easily on twitter: @LRCSTANMORE Your review should: Describe the book, including your assessment of the plot, writing, character development, and other aspects of the book. Remember - DO NOT give away the ending!
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