This critical interpretation of the origins of modern fiction follows the transformation of the picaresque novel over four centuries through the literature of Spain, France, England, Germany, Russia, and the United States. Blackburn uses for the first time the resources of myth criticism to demonstrate how the picaresque masterpieces of the Spanish Golden Age founded a narrative structure that was continued by Defoe, Smollett, Melville, Twain, and...

A wonderful tale of a young man's coming of age, Zorba the Greek has been a classic of world literature since it was first translated into English in 1952 and made into an unforgettable movie with Anthony Quinn. Zorba, an irrepressible, earthy hedonist, sweeps his young disciple along as he wines, dines, and loves his way through a life dedicated to fulfilling his copious appetites. Zorba is irresistible in this charming audio production by veteran...

A deeply moving, tragicomic adventure about a boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library on wheels in search of freedom, friendship, and, most of all, family.

"An ingenious tale [that] takes its heart from Dickens and its soul from America's great outlaw West." -Elle Half Apache and mostly orphaned, Edgar Presley Mint's trials begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. As he is shunted from the hospital to a school for delinquents to a Mormon foster family, comedy, pain, and trouble accompany Edgar through a string of larger-than-life experiences....

Presents the eighteenth-century social satire of a gentle and kind man who is thrashed by fate and his fellow man yet continues to believe that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." Includes background information, explanatory notes, author chronology, and critical analysis.

"Widely acknowledged as the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote features two of the most famous characters ever created: Don Quixote de la Mancha, the tall, bewildered, and half-crazy knight, and Sancho Panza, his rotund and incorrigibly loyal squire. The unforgettable comic dynamic between these two legendary figures has served as the blue-print for countless novels written since Cervantes's time. An immediate success when first...

This is Barth's most distinguished masterpiece. This modern classic is a hilarious tribute to all the most insidious human vices, with a hero who is "one of the most diverting . . . to roam the world since Candide." "A feast. Dense, funny, endlessly i

The story of a "girl-in-trousers" in 1890s England. She is a lesbian fishmonger who gains entry into the libertine world of music halls by an affair with a singer, becoming her partner in a cross-dressing show. But drama follows when the other goes straight.

"Berl Pickett is a smalltown doctor whose ill-advised decision to try to cover up an old friend's suicide attempt leads to dire consequences when she later dies from her injuries: his clinic privileges are suspended and he faces a possible criminal negligence charge. With plenty of time on his hands, Berl reverts to his former profession of house painter. Between jobs, he contemplates his past--seduced at 14 by his aunt, professionally inspired by...

"Born to a petty thief in London's notorious Newgate prison and determined to make her way in a rapacious and materialistic society, Moll Flanders recounts the "fortunes and misfortunes" of her turbulent life in this 1722 novel. Though Moll Flanders was shaped by the conventions of criminal biography, Defoe also drew on other literary traditions and his own rich background to create a remarkably original - and still controversial - work." "In addition...