A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf`s ” The Waves” is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. More than any of Virginia Woolf`s other novels, ” The Waves” conveys the full complexity & richness of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, ” The Waves” follows their development from childhood to youth & middle age. While social events, individual achievements & disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs & regrets, their awareness of unity & isolation. Separately & together, they query the relationship of past to present, & the meaning of life itself. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author & essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist & modernist, & the centre of ” The Bloomsbury Group”. This informal collective of artists & writers, which included ” Lytton Strachey” & ” Roger Fry”, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 & 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from ” Mrs Dalloway” (1925) to the poetic & highly experimental novel ” The Waves” (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism & biography, including the playfully subversive ” Orlando” (1928) & ”A Room of One`s Own” (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed ” The Waves”, you might like Woolf`s ” Mrs Dalloway”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ”A book of great beauty & a prose poem of genius.” (” Stephen Spender”). ” Full of sensuous touches...the sounds of her words can be velvet on the page.” (Maggie Gee, ” Daily Telegraph”). ...

The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful & poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea & follows their lives as they grow up & experience friendship, love & grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf`s response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six. ...

One bright February afternoon on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting & started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, & decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don`t just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, & our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts & of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we see & hear reaches us via light & sound waves, & our information age is reliant on the microwaves & infrared waves used by the telephone & internet infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to `see` with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through stadium crowds...there were waves, it seemed, wherever Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have in common with ones we splash around in on holiday? By the time he made the ultimate surfer`s pilgrimage to Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher, although he was still rubbish at surfing. &, while this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the shapes, colours & forms of life`s many undulations. ...

Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to Dmitry, the Russian love of her life, at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Thom decides to travel to their wedding in Astrakhan in the most obvious & straightforward way: by following the Volga river, from its source over 1, 000 miles inl&, all the way to the Caspian Sea & a party to remember. ...

Rooted in two vastly different cultures, a young man struggles to understand himself, find his place in the world, & reconnect with his mother-and her remote tribe in the deepest jungles of the Amazon rainforest-in this powerful memoir that combines adventure, history, & anthropology. ” My Yanomami family called me by name. Anyopo-we. What it means, I soon learned, is `long way around`: I`d taken the long way around obstacles to be here among my people, back where I started. A twenty-year detour.” For much of his young life, David Good was torn between two vastly different worlds. The son of an American anthropologist & a tribeswoman from a distant part of the Amazon, it took him twenty years to embrace his identity, reunite with the mother who left him when he was six, & claim his heritage. The Way Around is Good`s amazing chronicle of self-discovery. Moving from the wilds of the Amazonian jungle to the paved confines of suburban New Jersey & back, it is the story of his parents, his American scientist-father & his mother who could not fully adapt to the Western lifestyle. Good writes sympathetically about his mother`s abandonment & the deleterious effect it had on his young self; of his rebellious teenage years marked by depression & drinking, & the near-fatal car accident that transformed him & gave him purpose to find a way back to his mother. A compelling tale of recovery & discovery, The Way Around is a poignant, fascinating exploration of what family really means, & the way that the strongest bonds endure, even across decades & worlds. ...

` The Way Inn` takes the polished surfaces of modern life, the branded coffee & the free wifi, & twists them into a nightmare. The Way Inn is a global chain of identikit mid-budget hotels, & Neil Double is a valued member of its loyalty scheme. Neil is a professional conference-goer, a man who will attend trade fairs, expos & conventions so you don`t have to. This life of anonymised, budget travel would be hell for most, but it`s a kind of paradise for Neil, who has turned his incognito professional life into a toxic personal philosophy. But Neil is about to change. In a brand new Way Inn in an airport hinterl&, he meets a woman
- a woman he has seen before in bizarre & unsettling circumstances. She hints at being in possession of an astonishing truth about this mundane world. & then she disappears. Fascinated, & with his professional life unravelling, Neil tries to find the woman again. In doing so he is drawn into the appalling secret that lurks behind the fake smiles & muzak of the hotel...
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By the mercy of God I am a Christian, by my deeds a great sinner, by calling a homeless wanderer of the lowliest origins, roaming from place to place. Here, see my belongings: a bag of dry crusts on my back & the Holy Bible in my breast pocket; that`s it. In 1884 there appeared in Russia a slim volume containing four short tales. They told of a pilgrim, a lone wanderer, led by his quiet curiosity & a deep spiritual longing to undertake a lifelong journey across the l&. A folk hero, a figure familiar from the works of Tolstoy & Leskov, this gentle pilgrim & his simple story would soon travel the world
- & would even, much later, traverse the pages of JD Salinger`s Franny & Zooey as the `small pea-green cloth-bound book` that Franny keeps close in her handbag. The pilgrim`s ancient journey takes him from a city monastery through forests, fields & the steppes of Siberia. He walks by day & by night, through rains & summer months, finding food & shelter where he can. Along the way, he encounters priests & professors, convicts, nuns & beggars, a tipsy old man in a soldier`s greatcoat, from whom he slowly gathers great stores of wisdom & experience. But at the heart of his journey is his time spent praying as he journeys on alone, discovering the peace & consolation that come of constant prayer & silent contemplation. Simple & sincere, The Way of a Pilgrim paints an enduring picture of a life of detachment through wandering & prayer. &, as the pilgrim makes his way through the wilds, he invites us to travel with him, along an ancient path into an immense, mystical landscape.
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Benjamin Lundy crossed oceans under sail in the late nineteenth century & over one hundred years later Derek Lundy, his great-great nephew, has re-created that journey. In The Way of a Ship he places Benjamin on board the Beara Head with a community of fellow seamen as they perform the exhausting & dangerous work of sailing a square-rigger across the Atlantic & round Cape Horn. Derek Lundy adorns his story of an extraordinary journey with a profound knowledge of the sea & sailing, & reminds us that the ocean voyage under sail is an overarching metaphor for life itself. ...

On his journey from his war-torn village, Muri the cat travels through Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, Lithuania, Finland & Sweden, meeting on the way an unlikely
- but helpful
- group of creatures, from a sperm whale to a paraplegic mountaineer & a wandering Jew. This is no children`s book, but a witty exploration of the human condition through the people & objects Muri meets on his travels. Somewhere in the mix, Boyashov introduces us to two eminent professors, one from Cambridge, one from Geneva, who take opposite views on the question: Is man in a perpetual & aimless state of wandering or must he always have a goal in mind? The book is intended to be read on two levels
- as a narrated story of real (fictional) characters & as an allegory. It has been compared with ` Sophie`s World`.


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The Way of Saint James
- From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela is a pocket sized pilgrimage guidebook adapted
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