Alma Books Ltd

As the ageing Gustav von Aschenbach, a famous author who has recently been ennobled in recognition of his literary achievements, arrives in Venice for a holiday and checks into his Lido hotel, he is struck by the arresting good looks of Tadzio, an aristocratic Polish youth of around fourteen who is sojourning there with his family. Gradually, what starts as a feeling of intense curiosity develops into a profound passion, until Aschenbach begins to follow the adolescent secretly through the streets of the Serenissima and becomes utterly infatuated with his beauty. Considered by many to be Mann’s masterpiece, Death in Venice, first published in 1912 and based on the author’s own stay in Venice the previous year, is presented here in a sparkling new translation by Sander Berg. ABOUT THE SERIES: Alma Classics Evergreens is a series of popular classics. All the titles in the series are provided with an extensive critical apparatus and extra reading material, including a section of photographs and notes. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition (or collated from the most authoritative editions or manuscripts) and edited using a fresh, intelligent editorial approach. With an emphasis on the production, editorial and typographical values of a book, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading the classics.

Famous for seminal poems such as ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’, ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ and ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’, Dylan Thomas was the author of a substantial body of poetry, which he began writing as a teenager and continued to expand until the end of his short and troubled life.This is the most complete edition ever published of Dylan Thomas''s poetry. The texts are based on the first published editions of the poems or on manuscript notebook versions. All of his Swansea Grammar School poems are here reproduced, many of them reprinted for the first time since their original appearance in the student magazine. For a precocious genius such as Thomas, they are important as they show his early interest in the ludic aspect of language and his rapid development into a more serious poet. The book contains over a thousand notes, with textual variants.

The scene opens in Moscow in August 1968. Forty-two-year-old Daniil Petrovich Barkov is a prizewinning writer whose life is at a crossroads. His wife is slowly dying in a hospital bed, and his faith in his country is shaken by the anti-democratic invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet troops. On a Sunday afternoon in Red Square, Barkov witnesses a peaceful demonstration for human rights. Eight men and women, including a mother and her baby, sit silently on the pavement near Lenin’s tomb and unfurl their banners. Within moments, police whistles are heard, and KGB agents arrest them with shocking brutality. Barkov is moved by the bravery of the protesters, but resists the impulse to join them. The guilt-ridden author vows to write an eyewitness report, a burning polemic against rule by aggression, which will show his growth as an artist.At once an indictment of oppression and an exploration of the role and responsibility of the individual in the face of tragic historical events – themes that preoccupied Maltz throughout his life and artistic career – The Eyewitness Report, left unpublished by its author at his death and presented here for the first time, will cement Maltz’s reputation as one of the finest storytellers and most perceptive thinkers of the last century.