Shelfology Book Pairing

by E. M. Forster

The Longest Journey (1907) is a novel by English author E.M. Forster. Despite its critical success, the novel was a commercial failure for Forster, but has since grown in reputation and readership to help cement his reception as one of twentieth century England's most talented writers. Rickie Elliot enters Cambridge as a young man, exploring his interests in poetry and art and joining a circle of intellectuals centered around a philosopher named Stewart Ansell. An orphan, Rickie cherishes his small number of friends, including Agnes and her brother Herbert, who were his only companions as a youth. When Agnes's fiancé dies in a football match, Rickie steps in to console her, and the two become engaged. Shortly afterward, a visit to Rickie's elderly Aunt leads to his discovery of a stepbrother named Stephen, and the young scholar is plunged into the past and forced to face his family's secret history. While Agnes, now his wife, encourages him to reject Stephen, Rickie struggles with his feelings and takes his frustration out on his pupils at the dormitory school where he has been appointed to teach classics. Cut off from his Cambridge friends, and growing apart from Agnes, Rickie makes an effort to connect with Stephen, who has grown to be a troubled young man. Between literary fame and married life, the bonds of family and friendship, Rickie's story of hardship and personal development poses poignant questions regarding social conventions, infidelity, and the life of a struggling artist. The Longest Journey is a powerful bildungsroman and the second novel published by English literary icon E.M. Forster. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of E.M. Forster's The Longest Journey is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

By Mikhail Bulgakov - Bitig Books Classics

by Mikhail Bulgakov

An audacious revision of the stories of Faust and Pontius Pilate, The Master and Margarita is recognized as one of the essential classics of modern Russian literature. The novel's vision of Soviet life in the 1930s is so ferociously accurate that it could not be published during its author's lifetime and appeared only in a censored edition in the 1960s. Its truths are so enduring that its language has become part of the common Russian speech.One hot spring, the devil arrives in Moscow, accompanied by a retinue that includes a beautiful naked witch and an immense talking black cat with a fondness for chess and vodka. The visitors quickly wreak havoc in a city that refuses to believe in either God or Satan. But they also bring peace to two unhappy Muscovites: one is the Master, a writer pilloried for daring to write a novel about Christ and Pontius Pilate; the other is Margarita, who loves the Master so deeply that she is willing literally to go to hell for him.