John Sturrock – författare

More commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo's Romantic novel of dark passions and unrequited love, Notre-Dame de Paris, is translated with an introduction by John Sturrock in Penguin Classics.In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmerelda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmerelda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her, that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.John Sturrock's clear, contemporary translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing it as a passionate novel of ideas, written in defence of Gothic architecture and of a burgeoning democracy, and demonstrating that an ugly exterior can conceal moral beauty. This revised edition also includes further reading and a chronology of Hugo's life.Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a forceful and prolific writer. He wrote volumes of criticism, Romantic costume dramas, lyrical and satirical verse and political journalism but is best remembered for his novels, especially Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and Les Miserables (1862) which was adapted into one of the most successful musicals of all time. Though exiled to the Channel Islands by Napoleon III, Hugo returned to Paris in 1870 and remained a great public figure until his death: his body lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe, and he was later buried in the Panthéon.If you enjoyed Notre-Dame de Paris, you might like Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.'A great writer - inventive, witty, sly, innovatory'A. S. Byatt, author of Possession

Georges Perec produced some of the most entertaining and spirited essays of his age. His literary output was amazingly varied in form and style and this generous selection of Perec's non-fictional work also demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour and accessibility.

Headstrong and naïve, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm for war and glory. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his impetuous nature and the political chicanery of his aunt Gina and her wily lover. Judged by Balzac to be the most important French novel of its time, The Charterhouse of Parma is a compelling novel of extravagance and daring, blending the intrigues of the Italian court with the romance and excitement of youth.

Keeping track of contemporary writing is by its nature difficult. What are the recent developments in Chinese or Israeli fiction? What has happened to poetry in Russia since the fall of Communism? Are we even up to date with the best novels or plays of English-speaking countries round the world? Every year, so much is published which we feel we should know about, that there's a strong need for a volume to evaluate it and put us on the track of what is most worth reading. This new Guide - the only work of its kind to cover world literature of the last thirty years - does just that: in twenty-eight lively and trenchant chapters it assesses the most important and interesting literary developments in all five continents.Taking 1960 as its starting-point, and coming right up to date, the book explores the recent writing of cultures as various as Australian and Spanish-American, French, Japanese, and Czech, Indian and New Zealand - and of course American, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. Each chapter discusses the literary and cultural contexts for authorship in its particular area, throwing light on a great number of significant writers - including household names such as Mishima, Toni Morrison, Derek Walcott, Patrick White, and Günter Grass, but setting alongside them many others who may be less familiar but whose work is often just as well worth reading. Combining hard information with intelligent opinion, the Guide offers a discriminating - and sometimes controversial - view of a broad range of contemporary literatures. Anyone interested in the state of world literature today will find the Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing a fascinating and essential reference book.Contributors...African Countries (Jeremy Harding); Arab Countries (Robert Irwin); Australia (Peter Craven); Brazil (John Gledson); Canada (Sandra Djwa); China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Alison Bailey); Czech Republic and Slovakia (Igor Hájek); England (James Wood); France (John Taylor); German-speaking countries (Rhys Williams); Greece (Peter Mackridge); Hungary (Richard Aczel); India (Richard Cronin); Ireland (Patricia Craig); Israel (Bryan Cheyette); Italy (Peter Hainsworth); Japan (Mark Morris); New Zealand (Iain Sharp); Poland (George Hyde with Wieslaw Powaga); Portugal (Maria Guterres); Russia (Robert Porter); Scandinavia (Janet Garton); Scotland (Kasia Boddy); Spain (Abigail Lee Six); Spanish America (Michael Wood); United States (Wendy Lesser); Wales (Ned Thomas); West Indies (Al Creighton)

The urge to autobiography reveals itself every day, in the stories we tell about ourselves. Literary autobiography is the most highly developed form of this universal activity of self-promotion, a kind of writing practised in the west over many centuries. In this major study of the western tradition, John Sturrock analyses the means by which more than twenty of the greatest literary autobiographers have gone about their task. The book concentrates on the productive tension between the writer's will to singularity and the autobiographical act itself, which restores by conventional and rhetorical means the harmony between the writer and a community of readers. By attending closely and sceptically to the truth-claims made by autobiographers from Augustine through Rousseau and Darwin to Sartre and Michel Leiris, Sturrock establishes some of the deep, hidden continuities of autobiographical writing, and shows how artful and self-conscious this supposedly most sincere of literary genres can be.

This textbook series is ambitious in scope. It provides concise and lucid introductions to major works of world literature from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. It is not confined to any single literary tradition or genre, and will cumulatively form a substantial library of textbooks on some of the most important and widely read literary masterpieces. Each book is devoted to a single work and provides a close reading of that text, as well as a full account of its historical, cultural, and intellectual background, a discussion of its influence, and a guide to further reading. The contributors to the series, are given complete freedom in the choice of their critical method. Where the text is written in a language other than English, full account is taken of readers studying the text in English translation. While critical jargon is avoided, important technical terminology is fully explained, and thus this series will be genuinely accessible to students at all levels and to general readers. Journey to the End of the Night is a novel of savage, exultant misanthropy, full of cynical humour and of the blackest pessimism in respect of humanity. Its millions of readers across the world have admired it uneasily, dismayed by Celine's morbidity, yet fascinated by his virtuosity as a writer. In this detailed study, John Sturrock shows why that admiration is absolutely in order, and why this extraordinary work should be acknowledged as one of the chief literary landmarks of the twentieth century.

John Sturrock's classic explication of Structuralism represents the most succinct and balanced survey available of a major critical movement associated with the thought of such key figures as Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Barthes, Lacan and Althusser theory. A classic work in literary and cultural theory.Reissued to coincide with calls for a return to structuralism.Includes a new introduction by Jean-Michel Rabaté, which explores developments in the reception of structuralist theory in the past five to ten years.

John Sturrock's classic explication of Structuralism represents the most succinct and balanced survey available of a major critical movement associated with the thought of such key figures as Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, Barthes, Lacan and Althusser theory. A classic work in literary and cultural theory.Reissued to coincide with calls for a return to structuralism.Includes a new introduction by Jean-Michel Rabaté, which explores developments in the reception of structuralist theory in the past five to ten years.