The first collection of short stories -- winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

The first collection of short stories -- winner of the Somerset Maugham Award. Taut, brooding and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unbearable loneliness.

Birth, puberty, marriage, and death are, in all cultures, marked by ceremonies which may differ but are universal in function. Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) was the first anthropologist to note the regularity and significance of the rituals attached to the transitional stages in man's life, and his phrase for these, "the rites of passage," has become a part of the language of a...(展开全部)

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unb...(展开全部)

Ian McEwan's Somerset Maugham Award-winning collection First Love, Last Rites brought him instant recognition as one of the most influential voices writing in England today. Taut, brooding, and densely atmospheric, these stories show us the ways in which murder can arise out of boredom, perversity can result from adolescent curiosity, and sheer evil might be the solution to unb...(展开全部)

Synopsis In the early 1800s, Edmund Talbot, a young and rather priggish Englishman, takes passage on a boat heading for Australia where he is to be an official in the colonial government. In addition to Talbot, many of the eccentric passengers—a sexually predatory sailor, the aging coquette Miss Zenobia Brocklebank, the ship’s tyrannical captain—undergo profound changes in the ...(展开全部)

威廉•戈尔丁（William Golding，1911—1993） 英国作家、诗人，一九八三年诺贝尔文学奖获得者。 戈尔丁的小说富含寓意，广泛地融入了古典文学，神话，基督教文化以及象征主义。其作品主题一般是与黑暗邪恶有关，但他的小说中也表达一种昏暗的乐观主义。他的第一本小说《蝇王》（一九五四年）突出了他一直不停探讨的主题：人类天生的野蛮与文明的理性的斗争。这部小说也奠定了戈尔丁的世界声誉。 一九八〇年，小说《启蒙之旅》获得布克奖；一九八三年，戈尔丁因其作品“具有清晰的现实主义叙述技巧，以及虚构故事的多样性与普遍性，阐述了今日世界人类的状况”，获诺贝尔文学奖；一九八八年，获封爵士；二○○八年，《泰晤士报》在“一九四五年以来最伟大的五十位英国作家”名单中将戈尔丁名列为第三位。

English novelist, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. The choice was unexpected, because the internationally famous novelist Graham Greene (1904-1991) was considered the strongest candidate from the English writers. In many novels Golding has revealed the dark places of human heart, when isolated individuals or small groups are pushed into extreme situations. H...(展开全部)

Winner of the 2009 John Whiting Award for drama. An incredibly bold and mature first play, reminiscent of Noel Coward's Design For Living and Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg. Alternating between 1958 and 2008, and featuring the same three people, forever thirty-something, living similar but radically different lives, The Pride examines changing attitudes to sexuality over a per...(展开全部)