ALMA BOOKS

(P/B) THE THEATRE AND ITS DOUBLE
First published in 1938, The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays detailing Antonin Artaud's radical theories on drama, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and lack of experimentation. It contains the famous manifestos of the 'Theatre of Cruelty', analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides some suggestions on a physical training method for actors and actresses, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of eastern dance drama. Also included is 'Seraphim's Theatre', in which Artaud attempt...
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(P/B) Supernatural Short Stories
One of the main forces in early nineteenth-century literature, Sir Walter Scott was not only among the greatest novelists of his time, but influenced generations of writers, including literary giants such as Stendhal and Tolstoy. Though chiefly remembered for his historical epics Ivanhoe, Rob Roy and Guy Mannering, Scott penned a number of short stories which have been unjustly eclipsed by the enduring fame of his longer works. This volume brings together some of Scott's best short stories, each containing an element of the supernatural - ...
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(P/B) GONE WITH THE WIND
The pampered daughter of a wealthy Georgian plantation owner of Irish descent, sixteen-year-old Scarlett O'Hara soon realizes that young men can't resist her charms, despite her forthright manners and her refusal to embrace her mother's ladylike ways. Her romantic intrigues lead her to an early marriage, but when the war between the Union and the Southern States breaks out and she is left a young widow, Scarlett's life is turned upside down, and she finds herself embroiled, together with the world surrounding her, in a long struggle for su...
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(P/B) THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Dorian Gray is having his picture painted by Basil Hallward, who is charmed by his looks. But when Sir Henry Wotton visits, and seduces Dorian into the worship of youthful beauty with an intoxicating speech, Dorian makes a wish he will live to regret: that all the marks of age will now be reflected in the portrait, rather than on Dorian's own face. The stage is now set for a masterful tale about appearance, reality, art, life, truth, fiction and the ultimate burden of conscience. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) TENDER IS THE NIGHT
While holidaying at a villa on the French Riviera, Dick and Nicole Diver, a wealthy American couple, meet the young film star Rosemary Hoyt. Her arrival causes a stir in their social circle and exposes the cracks in their fragile marriage. As their relationship unravels, glimpses of their troubled past emerge, and a series of disturbing events unfolds. Peopled by an unforgettable cast of aristocrats and high-fliers, Tender Is the Night is at once a scathing critique of the materialism and hypocrisy of the Roaring Twenties and a poignant an...
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(P/B) Notes from Underground
The unnamed narrator of the novel, a former government official, has decided to retire from the world and lead a life of inactivity and contemplation. His fiercely bitter, cynical and witty monologue ranges from general observations and philosophical musings to memorable scenes from his own life, including his obsessive plans to exact revenge on an officer who has shown him disrespect and a dramatic encounter with a prostitute. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) UTOPIA
In Thomas More's hugely influential Utopia, a traveller recounts his discovery of an island nation in which the inhabitants enjoy unprecedented social cohesion and justice. The book imagines a community in which laws, personal relations and professional ambition are based on reason, in contrast with the tradition-bound superstitions of Europe, which were, in More's eyes, impediments to equality and peaceful coexistence. One of the indicators of the profound cultural and political influence of More's masterpiece is today's common use of the...
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GRAMMATICA PRATICA DELLA LINGUA ITALIANA A1/B2
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(P/B) MADAME BOVARY
Beautiful Emma Rouault yearns for the life of wealth, passion and romance she has encountered in popular sentimental fiction, and when her doctor, the well-meaning but awkward and unremarkable Charles Bovary, begins to pay her attention, she imagines that she may be granted her wish. However, after their marriage, Emma soon becomes frustrated with the boredom of provincial life and finds herself seeking escape and contemplating adultery. As Emma's efforts to make a reality of her fantasies become more dangerous, both she and those around h...
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(P/B) POEMS FROM THE MOOR
From the transcendent beauty of nature observed on the Yorkshire moors to fierce and forceful confrontations of mortality, Emily Bront?'s poems are powerful and passionate works that eloquently elaborate upon her sister Charlotte's description of her as "a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove". While only twenty-one of Emily Bront?'s poems were published in her lifetime, her poetic oeuvre is rich and varied, and not only includes visionary poems such as 'No Coward Soul Is Mine' and 'Remembrance', but also features the poems that describe ...
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(P/B) THE COMPLETE PETER PAN
The boy who wouldn't grow up, Peter Pan has the power of flight and lives on a magical island. But he is fascinated by Mary Darling's bedtime stories for her children and makes covert night-time visits to their Bloomsbury home. One evening he loses his shadow, and after Mary's daughter Wendy helps him reattach it, he invites her to fly away with him on an extraordinary adventure. In addition to the famous 1911 novel Peter and Wendy, which tells the familiar adventures of Peter Pan in Neverland and introduces the unforgettable characters of...
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(P/B) THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU
After the Lady Vain is shipwrecked, Edward Prendick is plucked from the waves by a passing ship and deposited on a remote island. Here he is the guest of Dr Moreau, whose notorious scientific methods had caused an uproar that left him with no choice but to flee London. Disquieted and appalled by the pained cries of suffering animals, Edward soon realizes that the Doctor is continuing and developing his depraved experiments, and that he too is in great danger. Shocking and suffused with contemporary fears regarding the morality of the lates...
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(P/B) THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
The heir to his grandfather's considerable fortune, Anthony Patch is led astray from the path to gainful employment by the temptations of the 1920s Jazz Age. His descent into dissolution and profligacy is accelerated by his marriage to the attractive but turbulent Gloria, and the couple soon discover the dangerous flip side of a life of glamour and debauchery. Containing obvious parallels with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's own lives, The Beautiful and Damned is a tragic examination of the pitfalls of greed and materialism and the transie...
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(P/B) ULYSSES
Controversial, scandalous, erudite and funny, Ulysses is undisputedly a landmark of twentieth-century modernism. It charts one day - 16th June 1904 - in the lives of three inhabitants of Dublin: the advertising salesman Leopold Bloom, the artist Stephen Dedalus and Bloom's wife Molly. Their peregrinations, thoughts and encounters form the basis of the narrative, which becomes a celebration of all human experience through the lives of specific individuals in a specific place at a specific time. Ulysses is both an experimental novel and a bo...
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(P/B) MRS DALLOWAY
As Mrs Dalloway works on the preparations for a dinner party, her thoughts throughout the day wander from memories of the past to interrogations about the present and lead her to assess the choices she has made in life and love. Her monologue interweaves with the account of the distress, on that same day, of the shell-shocked veteran Septimus Warren Smith, whose trauma and hallucinations end in tragedy, as the links between the two characters unfold. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) THE DIARIES OF ADAM AND EVE
Mark Twain's gloriously funny "Diary of Adam and Eve", which John Updike recently described as 'a paradigm of the relations between sexes', is presented here with a number of other Twain pieces on our two oldest ancestors, showing the writer's interest in this most famous biblical story. By giving a voice to Adam and Eve, and by hitting all the notes on the literary scale - from the intimate to the comical, from the journalistic to the idyllic - Twain displays the brilliance and wit for which he is rightly considered one of the greatest sa...
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(P/B) WE
WE takes place in a distant future, where humans are forced to submit their wills to the requirements of the state, under the rule of the all-powerful Benefactor, and dreams are regarded as a sign of mental illness. In a city of straight lines, protected by green walls and a glass dome, a spaceship is being built in order to spearhead the conquest of new planets. Its chief engineer, a man called D-503, keeps a journal of his life and activities: to his mathematical mind everything seems to make sense and proceed as it should, until a chanc...
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(P/B) LEAVES OF GRASS
First published in 1855 and extended by the author over the course of more than three decades, Leaves of Grass embodies Walt Whitman's lifetime ambition to create a new voice that could capture the spirit and vibrancy of the young American nation, while celebrating at the same time "Nature without check with original energy". Famously written in free verse and brimming with sensuous imagery and an unbridled love of nature and life in all its forms, and containing celebrated poems such as the ebullient 'Song of Myself' - described by Jay Pa...
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(P/B) The Old Curiosity Shop
The beautiful Nell is a thirteen-year-old orphan who lives with her grandfather in a London bric-a-brac shop. Worried about his charge's future, the old man secretly gambles at night in order to provide an inheritance for her, but finally loses the little he has and is evicted from the shop by the evil hunchback and loan shark Daniel Quilp, suffering a breakdown as a result. Forced to leave the city, the young girl is left to take care of her grandfather and protect herself from the scheming villains who are hot on their heels. Dickens's f...
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(P/B) ORLANDO
Contains the original 1928 illustrations, notes and an updated extra material Orlando, a young nobleman and one of Queen Elizabeth I's court favourites, is the object of many ladies' attentions, but after suffering heartbreak he prefers literary pursuits to entertaining any thoughts of marriage. Having obtained an ambassadorial post in Constantinople, Orlando falls into a long sleep and wakes up suddenly transformed into a woman. Also blessed with the gift of never ageing, she embarks on adventurous travels throughout Europe and the follow...
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