Books with title The Prophet - MP3 CD Audiobook in CD jacket

The Iliad by Homer is an epic of poem over 15,000 lines that recounts the conflict between Agamemnon, the man of power, and Achilles, the genius of war, over a period of several weeks. Their contretemps is set within the larger tale of the ten year Trojan War, and is told in flashbacks and flash-forwards; by the end the poem has told a more or less complete story of the war. No television min-series has anything on this epic poem. The story is utterly human and has resonated down the centuries. There’s the ugly man of power, selfish, greedy, entitled and obsessed. There’s the young, beautiful star, burdened with greatness and by the false power of a man without merit. The authentic versus the phony - the same old story. The Iliad was composed sometime between 760 and 710 B.C., and together with The Odyssey is considered the first great work of western literature. “Composed” is the correct word because The Iliad was passed down by oral tradition. The teacher recited it, the students repeated it and memorized it – all of it. There’s a story, apocryphal or not, that around 700 B.C., a virtual riot broke out when some upstart in the Academy proposed to write it all down, because the older, wiser men believed transcription would destroy the Greek facility for memorization, not to mention the silencing of the sound of the poetry itself. This reading returns this epic to the manner of presentation in force at the time. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

In addition to his considerable gifts as a poet, William Butler Yeats had a deep and lifelong interest in Irish folklore, and in The Celtic Twilight he collects tales told by friends, neighbors and acquaintances that venture into the realm of the mystical and magical. The title refers to the pre-dawn hours when Druid rituals were performed. These words from Yeats’ introduction give a good sense of his purpose in plucking this “handful of dreams”. "I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mine. The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me."

The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories is a collection of seven short stories. The title story, Chekhov’s most famous, describes an affair between two unhappily married people who meet by chance at the seaside resort of Yalta while vacationing alone. The affair becomes a love that endures after each returns home and leads to clandestine meetings and the inevitable heartbreak that comes from distance, lengthy absences and the impossibility of leaving their established lives. In “An Upheaval” a young governess suffers the indignity of having her room searched in her absence by the lady of the house. “A Doctor’s Visit” centers on an inner connection that develops between a doctor and the young heiress he has been called to examine that goes unexpressed. “Ionitch” also charts the evolution of a missed romantic opportunity between a young doctor with a promising future and a coquettish young woman from an artistic family. “The Head of the Family” is a wealthy, pompous ass who drinks and gambles and bullies anyone without the good sense to stay as far away as possible, most notably his young son. “Volodya” displays the emotional distress of a conflicted, frustrated teenage being raised in awkward surroundings by a vain single mother. “The Husband” portrays a mean-spirited, ill-humored tax collector who meanly spirits his wife away from a dance with a visiting regiment for having too much fun. As always, Chekhov portrays real life in all its wonder and horrors, its plainness and mystery, with the telling details and revealing remarks, without judging, for all to see.

Description Specification Reviews (0) Contents Links Credits Siddhartha, published in 1922, tells the story of a young man who undertakes a journey of self-discovery in ancient Nepal during the time of the Gautama Buddha. He leaves home to seek enlightenment in the ascetic life of a beggar and eventually meets with Gautama, the Buddha, but chooses to follow his individual path instead of joining the order. Crossing a river to the city, he settles and becomes a rich businessman and the lover of the beautiful courtesan Kamala. Finding his luxurious life empty in middle-age, he returns to the river, where he adopts a humble way of life and gradually finds peace and enlightenment. He crosses paths with former friends and lovers over the years in ways that deepen his (and our) understanding of the mysterious connectedness of all things in the cyclical unity of nature. Hesse wrote Siddhartha to cope with his ‘sickness of life’. In doing so he lived a reclusive life and immersed himself in Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. The book’s structure reflects the three stages of life for Hindu men, the four noble truths, and the eight-fold path. The result is a mesmerizing mixture of religious legend and modern novel, written in a simple, graceful style that harmonizes the tensions in the contrasting forces of life.

The Invisible Man (1897) was the third of Wells’ five “scientific romances”. The title character, Griffin, is a scientist studying optics who discovers a way to change a body’s refractive index to that of air, thus rendering the body invisible. He successfully tests the invention on himself but fails to reverse the effects. He wraps himself in bandages, finds lodging at a village inn, and spends his days seeking an antidote, venturing out only at night. He falls behind on his bill and skips out by undressing and taking flight. Increasingly desperate, he seeks refuge in the home of Kemp, a former colleague, but finds he cannot manage in the open. He tries to use his invisibility to conduct a “Reign of Terror” but is foiled, leading to a dramatic, fatal denouement. The premise and the portrayal of the gradual progression from gifted obsessive to insane psychopath have become staples of the genre and have led to countless adaptations and offshoots.

Anthem is set in a dystopian future Dark Age in which totalitarianism has extinguished individuality and imposed a strict order based on technology and collectivism. The main character is Equality 7-252, who is raised in a collective home and dreams of becoming a Scholar, since he was born with a “curse” that enables him to learn quickly and ask probing questions. His dream conflicts with the Life Mandate assigned by the Council of Vocations as a Street Sweeper. He discovers a tunnel in a work area containing metal tracks, a remnant from the Unmentionable Times. He goes exploring and soon steals some paper and begins a journal. He meets a Peasant girl, Liberty 5-3000, and falls for her, dubbing her “The Golden One”. Soon he rediscovers electricity and excitedly presents it to the World Council of Scholars, who are horrified by the threat to their Department of Candles and seek to destroy the invention and punish the inventor. Equality grabs the invention and escapes to the Uncharted Forest. The Golden One joins him a day later. They settle in a house in the mountains and spend their time reading books discovered in the library. They rediscover the word “I”, grapple with finding words to express love, rename themselves Prometheus and Gaea, and make plans for a future in which individuality is regained. Anthem was written while Rand was working on The Fountainhead and was published in England in 1938. It was revised and re-released in 1946 after the spectacular success of The Fountainhead and has since sold more than 3.5 million copies.

The Portrait of a Lady is one of the most popular of Henry James’ novels and considered a masterpiece. Set mainly in Italy and England, its heroine Isabel Archer, a young American heiress, seeks her future among the upper classes in European society. Her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchette, invites Isabel to visit at the family estate near London after the death of her father. Lord Warburton, neighbor to the Touchettes, proposes marriage, as does Caspar Goodwood, heir to a Boston fortune. Her invalid uncle dies and leaves her a portion of his fortune. Savoring independence, she rejects both, and travels the Continent. In Florence she meets and marries American expatriate and widower Gilbert Osmond, a match that proves to be troubled. Isabel bonds with Ormond’s daughter, Pansy, and supports her marriage plans, which conflict with the wishes of her father. Isabel leaves for England to comfort her dying cousin Ralph despite the objections of Ormond. Goodwood again courts her, but she chooses instead to return to Italy. The reader is left to wonder whether she will suffer her tragic marriage or eventually make other plans. The book was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in America and Macmillan’s Magazine in England in 1880-1881 before released as a book in 1881. It was acclaimed for its deep analysis of human consciousness and motivation, and did much to raise the awareness of the limited range of options available to Victorian women as they dealt with the lure of freedom and the tug of responsibility.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an epic sea adventure told by Ishmael, the sole survivor of the Pequod, a whaling ship driven to ruin by its captain’s monomaniacal obsession to hunt and destroy a white sperm whale, Moby Dick. Captain Ahab is driven to seek revenge on the ferocious whale, who destroyed Ahab’s ship and severed his leg at the knee on a previous voyage. The opening line, “Call me Ishmael” is among the most famous in all literature. The following narrative was radical at the time for its use of a variety of styles and techniques, some quite unconventional, and covers topics ranging from the techniques of whaling to life aboard ship to explorations of class and status, good and evil, and the nature of God. Moby-Dick was a commercial failure and out of print by the 1890’s but was rediscovered in the 1920’s. It is now regarded as a seminal work on the American themes of religion, fate, and economic growth and opportunity as well as a radical experiment that prefigured Modernism with its enormous scope and kaleidoscope of forms.

Dostoevsky knew his subject all too well when he wrote The Gambler, as he had a serious addiction to roulette. In 1866, he made a deal with a ruthless publisher to pay off his considerable gambling debts: he would deliver a novel within 30 days or forfeit his publishing income for nine years. He wrote quickly, dictating to a stenographer, and delivered the finished product with only hours to spare. Alexei, the gambler and narrator of the story, is an impoverished young nobleman serving as a tutor to the family of an imperious Russian general living beyond his means in an Alpine resort noted for its casino and international clientele of high rollers. Alexei falls for Polina, the general's stepdaughter, who is pretty, seductive and manipulative. She treats him like a dog and sets off his obsession with gambling by asking him to place a bet for her, which he wins, and which culminates in a spree in which he wins big but fails to win her affection. Alexei is not the only gambler, however. We come see that each of the characters is betting that they can manipulate circumstances to their advantage. The General hopes to inherit a fortune from his rich aunt; the alluring Frenchwoman wants to marry the General for his money; the pompous Frenchman wants to foreclose on the General’s properties; the rich aunt visits and drops a bundle at the tables and stiffs the General. After the Frenchwoman seduces Alexei and persuades him to spend his winnings on her, she ditches him to marry the General. And the winner is?

In 1854 John Stuart Mill began a short essay on the relationship of authority and liberty. Five years later he published On Liberty, a treatise that remains one of the most articulate and influential works on the subject. The central idea is that an individual should be free to pursue his own interests so long as the resulting action does not harm the interests of others. He defines three basic liberties: freedom of thought, emotion and expression; freedom to pursue one’s tastes, however vulgar or immoral; and freedom to associate with others. He proposes three reasons to justify resistance to government actions: if private agents can perform an action better than government; if the action benefits the agents even when the government is qualified; and, if the action adds to the power of government so that it becomes over-reaching or creates dependency in its subjects. The last chapter defines two maxims: “first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself”, and “that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection”. The book was immensely popular when published and continues to appeal due to its lucid analysis, accessible prose and compelling model of society. To this day a copy of the book is held by the president of the British Liberal Party as a symbol of office.

The figure of the noble savage has been a stock literary character since the 17th century, symbolizing an ideal outsider uncorrupted by civilization and thus an embodiment of the essential goodness of humanity. The notion was central to the Romantic idea of the fall of the natural man and is often (and erroneously attributed) to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The figure of Tarzan, first introduced in Tarzan of the Apes, is probably the best known and most enduring example of the last 100 years. He is John Clayton, Viscount Greystroke, the son of a British lord and lady who died while marooned on the coast of West Africa. The boy is adopted and raised by a tribe of Great Apes called the Mangani and reverts to a feral state of nature. Twenty years later he meets and falls in love with a young American woman, Jane Porter, who is identically marooned. The relationship awakens his human characteristics and begins his path back to civilization, which he experiences with mixed feelings. Contrary to the primitive character depicted in the twelve Johnny Weismuller films of the 1930's and 1940's, the original Tarzan combines the best of both worlds: he is athletic, attractive, emotionally intelligent, ethical, generous and gracious. The story was immensely popular when it first appeared in All-Story Magazine in 1912 and spawned 25 sequels by Burroughs as well as numerous adaptations, most recently the 2016 film The Legend of Tarzan.

The Awakening is one of the first American novels that focused on women’s issues and is now seen as a landmark feminist work. Originally titled A Solitary Soul and set in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast at the end of the 19th century, it is the story of Edna Pontelier, wife of a New Orleans businessman and mother of two sons who struggles to manage her family duties with her desire to be true to her emotions. The conflict becomes evident at the outset when, while vacationing, she falls in love with Robert, the son of the owner of the Grand Isle resort. He flees to escape the impossible situation, and Edna returns home to retreat from both her family and New Orleans social life. Left alone for a time, she dallies with a rakish acquaintance, becomes friends with Mme Reisz, an eccentric musician, and pines for Robert, who returns, only to run away again in shame. The story does not have a happy ending. The Awakening met with a mixed response due to its ruthlessly honest treatment of issues usually swept under the rug. The psychological insight, social commentary and realistic narrative mark it as an important link the development of American modernism. Critics rank the book alongside her contemporaries Edith Wharton and Henry James and among the first of the works in the Southern tradition of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connnor, and Tennessee Williams.