Journey To the West was written by Wu Chen-en, and is considered to be one of the four great classic novels written during the Ming Dynasty (c. 1500-1582). Wu Chen-en was an elder statesman who witnessed a lot in his life, both good and bad, yet...
Hilariously picaresque, epic in scope, alive with the poetry and vigor of the American people, Mark Twain's story about a young boy and his journey down the Mississippi was the first great novel to speak in a truly American voice. Influencing...
Seduction of the Minotaur is an example of Anaïs Nin’s most mature and cohesive fiction. The central character, Lillian, arrives in an exotically primitive Mexico from New York, in part to forget her crumbling marriage and to find flow in...
New translations of the best stories by the one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most influential writers
No one has captured the modern experience, its wild dreams, strange joys, its neuroses and boredom, better than Franz Kafka. His...
A painter is so obsessed with painting the perfect portrait of his beautiful wife, that he does nothing else until it is finished. As an artist myself, I can relate to this story in more ways than one. It is very short, only a couple of pages,...
Sweet Thursday is a 1954 novel by John Steinbeck. It is a sequel to Cannery Row and set in the years after the end of World War II. According to the author, “Sweet Thursday” is the day after Lousy Wednesday and the day before Waiting...
Herman Melville’s classic masterpiece tells the story of the wandering sailor Ishmael and his voyage on the whaleship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby Dick, a white sperm whale of...