Although Dostoyevsky began his first notes for The Brothers Karamazov in April 1878, he had written several unfinished works years earlier. The Brothers Karamazov is Fyodor Dostoyevsky's final, perhaps most masterful novel. It is a deeply passionate and philosophical novel that delves into the difficult terrain of free will, morality, faith, doubt, reason, with ever-modernizing Russia as its setting.

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

Emile, is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the “best and most important of all my writings”. Due to a section of the book entitled “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762, the year of its first publication.

MAY 4.
How happy I am that I am gone! My dear friend, what a thing is the heart of man! To leave you, from whom I have been inseparable, whom I love so dearly, and yet to feel happy! I know you will forgive me. Have not other attachments been specially appointed by fate to torment a head like mine? Poor Leonora! and yet I was not to blame. Was it my fault, that, whilst the peculiar charms of her sister afforded me an agreeable entertainment, a passion for me was engendered in her feeble heart? And yet am I wholly blameless? Did I not encourage her emotions?

«El Principito habita un pequeñísimo asteroide, que comparte con una flor caprichosa y tres volcanes. Pero tiene “problemas” con la flor y empieza a experimentar la soledad. Hasta que decide abandonar el planeta en busca de un amigo. Buscando esa amistad recorre varios planetas, habitados sucesivamente por un rey, un vanidoso, un borracho, un hombre de negocios, un farolero, un geógrafo… El concepto de “seriedad” que tienen estas “personas mayores” le deja perplejo y confuso. Prosiguiendo su búsqueda llega al planeta Tierra, pero, en su enorme extensión y vaciedad, siente más que nunca la soledad. Una serpiente le da su versión pesimista sobre los hombres y lo poco que se puede esperar de ellos. Tampoco el zorro contribuye a mejorar su opinión, pero en cambio le enseña el modo de hacerse amigos: hay que crear lazos, hay que dejarse “domesticar”. Y al final le regala su secreto: “Sólo se ve bien con el corazón. Lo esencial es invisible a los ojos”. De pronto el Principito se da cuenta de que su flor le ha “domesticado” y decide regresar a su planeta valiéndose de los medios expeditivos que le ofrece la serpiente. Y es entonces cuando entra en contacto con el aviador, también el hombre habrá encontrado un amigo…»

Son of a merchant, Boccaccio di Chellino di Buonaiuto, of Certaldo in Val d'Elsa, a little town about midway between Empoli and Siena, but within the Florentine "contado," Gio-vanni Boccaccio was born, most probably at Paris, in the year 1313. His mother, at any rate, was a Frenchwoman, whom his father seduced during a sojourn at Paris, and afterwards deserted. So much as this Boccaccio has himself told us, under a transparent veil of allegory, in his Ameto. Of his mother we would fain know more, for his wit has in it a quality, especially noticeable in the Tenth Novel of the Sixth Day of the Decameron, which marks him out as the forerunner of Rabelais, and prompts us to ask how much more his genius may have owed to his French ancestry. His father was of sufficient standing in Florence to be chosen Prior in 1321; but this brief term of office—but two months—was his last, as well as his first experience of public life. Of Boccaccio's early years we know nothing more than that his first preceptor was the Florentine grammarian, Giovanni da Strada, father of the poet Zanobi da Strada, and that, when he was about ten years old, he was bound apprentice to a merchant, with whom he spent the next six years at Paris, whence he returned to Florence with an inveterate repugnance to commerce.

SOME of the caddies were poor as sin and lived in one-room houses with a neurasthenic cow in the front yard, but Dexter Green's father owned the second best grocery-store in Black Bear—the best one was "The Hub," patronized by the wealthy people from Sherry Island—and Dexter caddied on-ly for pocket-money. 

LUIS AGUIRRE had been living in Gibraltar for about a month. He had arrived with the intention of sailing at once upon a vessel bound for Oceanica, where he was to assume his post as a consul to Australia. It was the first important voyage of his diplomatic career.

Though best known for his heartwarming holiday tales and sweeping social novels such as A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations, Charles Dickens was a prolific writer who was always willing to experiment with new styles. The chilling tales collected in Three Ghost Stories are a result of his brief but successful foray into the mystery and detective genres.

Les Miserables is a French historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published in 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original French title.