Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological figure. Pygmalion was the most broadly appealing of all Shaw's plays. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a...
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1898, and was first produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski. Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhov's major plays because it is essentially an extensive...
Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by English novelist George Orwell. The only mistake George Orwell made in his anti-utopia 1984 was the date. A lot of things that he described as if happening in 1984 can be observed in the nowadays world. However, he...
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the...
In «The Embroidered Towel» by Mikhail Bulgakov the young doctor arrives at his new post after a bone-jarring 24-hour wagon ride. He frets about how young he looks, and feels intimidated by the well-stocked pharmacy and medical library his predecessor has left behind. He also worries that he'll...
"This audiobook collects a magnificent set of works by Russian classical authors: Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulgakov, Leonid Andreyev, Maxim Gorky, Ivan Turgenev, Aleksandr Kuprin. Each original story, springing from a common...
""«Self-Reliance»" is an 1841 essay written by American transcendentalist philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. It contains the most thorough statement of one of Emerson's recurrent themes: the need for each individual to avoid conformity and false consistency, and...
"The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize...
"Othello is a tragedy by William Shakespeare based on the short story «„Moor of Venice“» by Cinthio, believed to have been written in approximately 1603. The work revolves around four central characters: Othello, his wife Desdemona, his lieutenant Cassio, and his trusted advisor Iago....
"King Lear is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It tells the tale of a king who bequeaths his power and land to two of his three daughters, after they declare their love for him in an extremely fawning and obsequious manner. His third daughter gets nothing, because she will not flatter...
"Macbeth and his wife show how bad the evil that can possess human souls is. But evil is not all powerful. On the one hand, Macbeth is the gloomiest of the great Shakespeare’s tragedies; on the other hand, it’s more encouraging than Hamlet, Othello or King Lear. In no other tragedy as in...