Thackeray's 'novel without a hero' follows the lives of two friends, Amelia Sedley and Becky Sharp. Amelia comes from a wealthy family but her father is made bankrupt. She marries George Osborne, a vain and superficial young man who does not really love her. Becky Sharp, on the other hand, comes from a penniless family, and is determined to use her beauty and charm to find a good position in life. What destinies lie ahead for these two young women? Audio added Thanks to elefanta
This is Ayn Rand's challenge to the prevalent philosophical doctrines of our time, and the "atmosphere of guilt, of panic, of despair, of boredom, and of all-pervasive evasion" that they create. One of the most controversial figures on the intellectual scene, Ayn Rand was a proponent of a moral philosophy called Objectivism-and ethic of rational self-interest-that stands in sharp opposition to the ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice. The fundamentals of this morality-"a philosophy for living on earth-are here vibrantly set forth by the spokeswoman for a new kind of intellectual.
Margaret Atwood is acknowledged as one of the foremost writers of our time. In Moral Disorder, she has created a series of interconnected stories that trace the course of a life and also the lives intertwined with it—those of parents, of siblings, of children, of friends, of enemies, of teachers, and even of animals. As in a photograph album, time is measured in sharp, clearly observed moments. The ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s, the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s, and the present —all are here. The settings vary: large cities, suburbs, farms, northern forests.
Hermione’s Group of Thinkers is a pleasingly gentle satire on the intellectual pretensions of a “High Society” American young woman, and her attempts to find a purpose in her life. In spite of having been written sometime during the First World War, these short tales (written in the first person by Hermione) remain remarkably sharp commentaries about how the world is put together, and the gap between rich and poor, and the mutual incomprehension on the part of the two groups.
