Malena tiene doce años cuando recibe, sin razón, y sin derecho alguno, de manos de su abuelo el último tesoro que conserva la familia : una esmeralda antigua, sin tallar, de la que ella nunca podrá hablar porque algún día le salvará la vida. A partir de entonces, esa niña desorientada y perpleja, que reza en silencio para volverse niño porque presiente que jamás conseguirá parecerse a su hermana melliza, Reina , la mujer perfecta, empieza a sospechar que no es la primera Fernández de Alcántara incapaz de encontrar el lugar adecuado en el mundo. Se propone entonces desenmarañar el laberinto de secretos que late bajo la apacible piel de su familia, una ejemplar familia burguesa madrileña. A la sombra de una vieja maldición, Malena aprende a mirarse, como en un espejo, en la memoria de quienes se creyeron malditos antes que ella y descubre, mientras alcanza la madurez, un reflejo de sus miedos y de su amor en la sucesión de mujeres imperfectas que la han precedido.

Actuele roman over hoe men meeloper worden kan in een fascistisch systeem. Ooit verfilmd.

Booker Prize winner

De sporen van de Spaanse Burgeroorlog en de Franco-tijd zijn in twee hedendaagse Spaanse families nog steeds zeer zichtbaar.

The first in a four-volume edition of Tacitus Annals 1-6. The Annals are Tacitus' brilliant account of Roman imperial history from the death of Augustus to the death of Nero. Books 1-6 describe the reign of Tiberius. Professor Goodyear's introduction to the series deals concisely with the background to the Annals. He outlines the history of Tacitean scholarship to the present day and shows how Tacitus' historical judgements were sometimes distorted by his preoccupations with style and with the moral function of historical writing. The commentary attends equally to literary, historical and textual questions. There are several appendixes on topics of more specialized interest.

Published in 1912 on the heels of Twenty Years at Hull-House and at the height of Jane Addams's popularity, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil assesses the vulnerability of the rural and immigrant working-class girls who moved to Chicago and fell prey to the sexual bartering of what was known as the white slave trade.

Addams offers lurid accounts–-drawn from the records of Chicago's Juvenile Protection Association–-of young women coerced into lives of prostitution by men who lurked outside hotels and sweatshops. Because they lacked funds for proper recreation, Addams argues, poor and socially marginalized women were susceptible to sexual slavery, and without radical social change they would perhaps be "almost as free" as young men. In addition to promoting higher wages and better living conditions, Addams suggests that a longer period of public education for young women would deter them from the dangers of city life.

Despite its appeal to middle–class readers eager for tales of sexual excess and the rape of innocence, the press and prominent intellectuals criticized A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil for being disproportionately hysterical to its philosophical weight. Katherine Joslin's introduction considers the controversial reactions to the book and the circumstances of its publication. Behind the sensationalism of the narratives, Joslin locates themes including the commodification of sex and the importance of marriage for young women.

In De Braziliaanse affaire reconstructeert Evaldo Cabral de Mello het diplomatieke spel rondom de Vrede van Münster (1648) tussen de Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Provinciën en Portugal, met als medespelers Spanje, Frankrijk en Engeland, en als inzet de rijkdommen van Brazilië. In 1630 veroverde de West-Indische Compagnie het suikerrijke Recife. Onder Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen leek de kolonie een stevige bezitting, maar na zijn vertrek in 1644 ging het bergafwaarts. In 1640 werd Portugal onafhankelijk van Spanje en begon het onderhandelen met de Republiek. Na de verdrijving van de Nederlanders in 1654 duurden de onderhandelingen tot 1661, toen Portugal zwaar moest betalen voor de Nederlandse aanspraken op de kolonie. Evaldo Cabral de Mello is een gerenommeerd historicus en auteur, en zijn studie toont aan dat internationale politiek in de 17e eeuw vooral draaide om eigenbelang.

Als de mythologische jinns zich uit verveling gaan bemoeien met de mensen raakt de westerse samenleving in korte tijd compleet ontwricht.

Speelt ten tijde van de Franse Revolutie

Irene Beckman appears to have a perfect life: two grown children, a house in a prosperous suburb of Copenhagen, and a successful career as a family lawyer. She is cool, sophisticated, and still exotically good-looking, the dyed hair her only concession to time.
Then her husband announces that he's leaving her, and her mother reveals some unexpected information about Irene's father. Suddenly, Irene Beckman is neither wife nor daughter. Nor, she realizes, is it at all clear who she has been all these years. It is time to find out.
From the internationally acclaimed author of Silence in October, An Altered Light is another fascinating exploration of the nature of chance and relationships-between parents and children, husbands and wives, friends and strangers.

From one of today's foremost commentators on religious affairs and the author of A History of God comes an insightful chronicle of the fundamentalist form of religion and the forces of modernism that have, paradoxically, brought it into existence.

This book aims to arouse curiosity about English words and about the nature of language in general, especially among introductory students who do not intend to specialize in linguistics. It examines words from various backgrounds - including poetry, journalism, advertising. No previous knowledge of linguistics is assumed. The approach to the study of words is descriptive rather than theoretical. It looks at the structure of words, their meaning, spelling and pronunciation, how new words are manufactured or imported, and how the meaning of words change with time. Katamba also investigates how the mind deals with the amazing intellectual feat of retrieving the right word from its mental dictionary during conversation. The author has also published Morphology (Macmillan, 1993), and Introduction to Phonology (Longman, 1984).