The Book Of Job - Opening

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.

Dandelion Wine - Opening

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

For Walter I. Bradbury
neither uncle nor cousin
but most decidedly
editor and friend.

AVON BOOKS, INC.
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019

Introduction copyright 1975 by Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1946, 1947, 1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1957 by Ray Bradbury
Interior design by Kellan Peck


First Avon Books Printing: February 1999

Printed in the U.S.A

At Swim-Two-Birds - Opening

CHAPTER 1

HAVING placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

'Εξισταται γαρ παντ απ αλληλων διχα

Copyright 1951, 1966 by Brian Nolan

Introduction copyright 1988 by William H. Gass

First Dalkey Archive edition, 1998

Second printing, 2001

Third printing, 2005

Fourth printing, 2008

All rights reserved

Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Printed on the permanent/durable acid-free paper and bound in the United States of America.

A Month Of Sundays - Opening

1

Forgive me my denomination and my town; I am a Christian minister, and an American. I write these pages at some point in the time of Richard Nixon's unravelling. Though the yielding is mine, the temptation belongs to others: my keepers have set before me a sheaf of blank sheets -- a month's worth, in their estimation. Sullying them is to be my sole therapy.

my tongue is the pen of a ready writer

-- PSALM 45

This principle of soul, universally and individually, is the principle of ambiguity.

-- PAUL TILLICH

Sale of the book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

A Fawcett Columbine Book
Published by Ballantine Books

Copyright 1974, 1975 by John Updike

This edition is published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincide3ntal.

An excerpt from this book originally appeared in Playboy magazine.

Manufactured in the United States of America

L'étranger - Ouverture

I

Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J'ai reçu un télégramme de l'asile :: <<>> Cela ne veut rien dire. C'était peut-être hier.

COLLECTIONS FOLIO

Éditions Gallimard, 1957

Inferno - Opening

... when I came to stop
Below a hill that marked one end of the valley
That had pierced my heart with terror, I looked up

Toward the crest and saw its shoulders already
Mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows
The road to everyone, whatever our journey.

CANTO I

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard -- so tangled and rough


And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.
And yet, to treat the good I found there as well


I'll tell what I saw, though how I came to enter
I cannot well say, being so full of sleep
Whatever moment it was I began to blunder

For Frank Bidart

Copyright 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Grioux
English translation copyright 1994 by Robert Pinsky
Italian text copyright 1991 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A., Milano
Illustrations 1994 by Michael Mazur
Foreword copyright 1994 by John Freccero
Notes copyright 1994 by Nicole Pinsky
All rights reserved
Published simultaneously in Canada by Harper Collins Canada Ltd
Printed in the United States of America
First edition, 1994

Distant Star - Opening

I

I saw Carlos Wieder for the first time in 1971, or perhaps in 1972, when Salvador Allende was President of Chile.

At that stage Wieder was calling himself Alberto Ruiz-Tagle and occasionally attended Juan Stein's poetry workshop in Concepcion, the so-called capital of the South.

"What star falls unseen?"
WILLIAM FAULKNER

For Victoria Avalos and Lautaro Bolaño

Copyright 1996 by Roberto Bolaño and Editorial Anagrama
Translation copyright 2004 by Chris Andrews

Published by arrangement with the Harvill Press, Random House UK, London.

This edition has been translated with the financial assistance of the Spanish Direccion General del Libro y Bibliotecas, Ministerio de Cultura.

Originally published by Edditorial Anagrama as Estrella distante in 1996

Manufactured in the United States of America.
New Directions books are printed on acid-free paper.
First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP993) in 2004.



New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

Israel Potter - Opening

TO

His Highness

THE

Bunker-Hill Monument

BIOGRAPHY, in its purer form, confined to the ended lives of the true and brave, may be held the fairest meed of human virtue -- one given and received in entire disinterestedness -- since neither can the biographer hope for acknowledgment from the subject, nor the subject at all avail himself of the biographical distinction conferred.

Correspondence - Opening

1

Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, poem and dedication in a book of Matisse paintings, Vienna 24(?) June 1948

'In Egypt'

For Ingeborg

Thou shalt say to the strange woman's eye: be the water!

Thou shalt seek in the stranger's eye those whom thou knowest to be in the water.

Thou shalt call them from the water: Ruth! Noemi! Miriam!

Thou shalt adorn them when thou liest with the stranger.

Thou shalt adorn them with the cloud-hair of the stranger.

Thou shalt say to Ruth, to Miriam and Noemi:

Behold, I sleep next to her!

Thou shalt adorn the stranger next to thee most beautifully of all

Thou shalt adorn her with the pain over Ruth, over Miriam and Noemi.

Thous shalt say to the stranger:
Behold, I slept next to these!

Vienna, 23 May 1948

To the meticulous one,

22 years after her birthday,

From the unmeticulous one

The Idiot - Opening

TOWARDS THE END of November, during a warm spell, at around nine o' clock in the morning, a train of the Petersburg-Warsaw line was approaching Petersburg at full stream. It was so damp and foggy that dawn could barely break; ten paces to right or left of the line it was hard to make out anything at all through the carriage windows.

FIRST VINTAGE CLASSICS EDITION, JULY 2003

Copyright 2001 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Classics and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

I The Supreme - Opening

I the Supreme Dictator of the Republic

Order that on the occasion of my death my corpse

be decapitated; my head placed on a pike for three days in the Plaza de la Republica, to

which the people are to be summoned by the sounding of a full peal of bells.

All my civil and military servants are to be

hanged. Their corpses are to be buried in

pastures outside the walls with neither

cross nor mark to commemorate their names.

At the end of the aforementioned period, I

order that my remains be burned and my ashes thrown into the river ...

Where was this found? Nailed to the door of the cathedral, Excellency. A patrol of grenadiers discovered it early this morning and brought it in to headquarters. Luckily no one had read it.

The Tale Of Genji - Opening

1
KIRITSUBO
The Paulownia Pavilion

In a certain reign (whose can it have been?) someone of no very great rank, among all His Majesty's Consorts and Intimates enjoyed exceptional favor. Those others who had always assumed that pride of place was properly theirs despised her as a dreadful woman, while the lesser Intimates were unhappier still.

For Susan

First published in the Unites States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 2001
Published in Penguin Books 2003

Translation, introduction, and notes copyright Royall Tyler, 2001
All rights reserved.
Illustrations on pp. 5--1107 reproduced by permission of the artist and original publisher.
Copyright Minoru Sugai and Shogakukan Publishing Company.

Printed in the United States of America
Set in Weiss
Designed by Jay Zimet

The Master and Margarita - Opening

BOOK ONE
CHAPTER I

Never Talk With Strangers

At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plum, bald, and carried his respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers and black sneakers.

'... who are you, then?'
'I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.'

Goethe, Faust

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group

First published as Master i Margarita in serial form in Moskva, 1966-7
This translation published in Penguin Books 1997

Text copyright Mikhail Bulgakov, 1966, 1967
Translation, Further Reading and Notes copyright Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1997
Introduction copyright Richard Pevear 1997
All rights reserved

Set in 10/12pt Monotype Garamond
Printed in the United States of America

Quarantine - Opening

1

The writing of a text presupposes the existence of a fine net of relationships binding the different threads that weave within it.

A.J.L., in memoriam

First published in Great Britain by Quartet Books Limited 1994
27 Goodge Street, London W1p 1FD

Originally published under the title La Cuarantena
by Mondadori Espana, S.A. in 1991

Copyright 1991 by Juan Goytisolo
Translation copyright 1994 by Peter Bush



All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form or by any means without the prior
written permission of the publisher

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

حیاتِ جاوید - آغاز

پیش لفظ

“ابتدا میں لفظ تھا ۔ اور لفظ ہی خدا ہے"

پہلے جمادات تھے ۔ ان میں نمو پیدا ہوئی تو نباتات آئے۔ نباتات میں جبلّت پیدا ہوئی تو حیوانات پیدا ہوئے۔ ان میں شعور پیدا ہوا تو بنی نوع انسان کا وجود ہوا ۔ اسی لئے فرمایا گیا ہے کہ کائنات میں جو سب سے اچھا ہے اس سے انسان کی تخلیق ہوئی۔

The War Of The End Of The World - Opening

The man was tall and so thin he seemed to be always in profile. He was dark-skinned and rawboned, and his eyes burned with perpetual fire. He wore shepherd's sandals and the dark purple tunic draped over his body called to mind the cassocks of those missionaries who every so often visited the villages of the backlands, baptizing hordes of children and marrying men and women who were cohabiting.

To EUCLIDES DA CUNHA
in the other world;
and, in this world,
to NELDA PINON

First published in the United States of America
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. 1984
Published in Penguin Books 1997

Originally published in Spanish as La Guerra del fin del mundo
by Editorial Seix Barral, S.A., Spain

Printed in the United States of America
Set in Aldus
Designed by Cynthia Krupat

A Party For Boris - Opening

First Prologue

Empty room, high windows and doors
The Good Woman right
Johanna enters from left with a table and places it by The Good Woman
The Good Woman
It's cold
Johanna moves the table still closer to The Good Woman and places herself behind her
The Good Woman
Heavens it's cold
Bring me the blanket

THOMAS BERNHARD (1931-89) was a playwright, poet, and novelist whose prestigious literary prizes include the Austrian State Prize, the Buchner Prize, the Bremen Prize, and Le Priz Seguier. His novels Woodcutters, Concrete, Gargoyles, and The Lime Works are also available in English translation from the University of Chicago Press. KENNETH NORTHCOTT is professor emeritus in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. PETER K. JANSEN is associate professor of German at the University of Chicago.

The three plays in this volume were originally published in three separate volumes as Ein Fest Fur Boris(1968), Ritter, Dene, Voss(1984), and Der Theatermacher (1984) by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.


The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
1990 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1990
Printed in the United States of America



The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences -- Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48--1984

Never Let Me Go - Opening

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty years-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years.

TO LORNA AND NAOMI

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Great Britail by Faber and Faber, Ltd., London, in 2005

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author's use of names of actual persons (living or dead), places, and characters is incidental to the purposes of the plot, and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work or to disparage any company or its products or services. The book has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by any persons or characters names in the text, their successors, or related corporate entities.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Book design by Iris Weinstein

Printed in the United States of America

Prince Frederick Of Homburg - Opening

Act I
SCENE 1

Fehrbellin. Garden in traditional French style. In the background a castle, from which a ramp leads down into the garden.

It is night.

Bareheaded wand with an open shirt, The Prince of Homburg, half-awake, half-asleep, sits under an oak tree, weaving himself a wreath. The Elector, his wife, Princess Natalie, the Count of Hohenzollern, Captain Golz, and others step secretly forth from the castle and look down from the balustrade of the ramp upon Homburg.

HOHENZOLLERN: The Prince of Homburg, our courageous cousin,
Who has led our cavalry the past three days
And given the elusive Swedes an eager chase,
Appeared again today, quite out of breath,
At our commanding post in Fehrbellin:
Were your orders to him then that he remain
For food and rest a mere three hours, then quick
Approach the Hackel Mountains once again,
To face our enemy Wrangel, who has tried
To entrench himself along the River Rhyn?
ELECTOR: 'Tis so!

ابن الو قت - آغاز

ابن الو قت کی تقریب

آج کل کا زمانہ ہوتا تو کانوں کان کسی کو خبر بہی نہ ہوتی۔ابن الوقت کی تشہیر کی بڑی وجہ یہ ہوی کہ اس نے ایسے وقت میںانگریزی وضع اختیار کی جب کہ انگریزی پڑھنا اور انگریزی چیزوں کا استعمال ارتداد سمجھا جا تا تھا. یہ تو ہماری آنکھوں دیکھی باتیں ہیں کہ ریل میںبہ ضرورت کوی بھلا مانس چرٹ پیتا تو جان پہچان والوں سےچراتا چھپاتا۔ ایک دوست کہیں باہر بند و بست میں نوکر تھے اور جانچ پڑتال کے لیے ان کو کھیت کھیت پھرنا پڑتا تھا، ہندستانی جوتی اس رپڑ میں کیا ٹھرتی ، نا چار انگریزی بوٹ پہننے لگے تھے مگر دو چار دن کے لیے دہلی آتے تو گھر میںکبھی کے پڑے ہوے پھٹے پرانے لیترے ڈھونڈ کر پا ؤں میں ہلگا لیتے، تب کہیں گھر سے باہر نکلتے۔