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This book is an early novel by Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee. An old white girl living with her father in South Africa discovers something she hates - her father is having an inappropriate relationship with a young woman of color. She kept constructing fantasies in her mind that included getting rid of both of them, but in reality, everything revealed that the old girl herself wanted to have an affair with the family servant. This book is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, and the story it tells has no clear ending. Readers can only look for clues from the heroine's notes. The inner monologue of women blends harmoniously with the natural environment of the African land, making people extremely entangled but unable to stop.

Provocative and extraordinarily forward-looking, this book explores the changing role of marriage and sexual ethics and boldly proposes a new morality shaped by the dramatic social changes of the early 20th century.

In this collection of essays, Russell explores the social and political impact of his beliefs with characteristic clarity and humor. In Praise of Idleness is a masterpiece that only Bertrand Russell could have done.

This book mainly briefly describes a large lake called Liuhu near Ailao Mountain on the lower reaches of Panjiang River in southern Yunnan. Here, Zhao Lin and Long Qiaogu, who were anonymous, came out of the world for various reasons. Later, they returned to Liuhu and got married. They went to the mountains to practice with Wang Jin, and all three of them became Sanxian.

This book is the representative work of the owner of Huanzhu Tower, and is as famous as "The Legend of Shushan Swordsman". It focuses on describing the martial arts stories of Luo Lu, Qiu Yuan, Yu Nanqi, Di Shengnan, Di Wubao, Ji Yi, Lu Linggu, Yang Yong, Yang Yingxue, Ji Deng, Tao Jun, Yang Yi, Chen Taizhen, Hu Yanxian, You Huang, Fang Huan, Siming, Tu Lei, Yan Hu and other nineteen disciples of Qingcheng Sword Immortal in the early Qing Dynasty.

At this time, in the early years of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, the Yellow River was full of rapids, turbulent waves, and overwhelming water power, and the bottom layer was full of floating sand, making it impossible to build a bridge. Only during the consecration period of the tower top and the two major floods a year did the local gentry and merchants raise funds to hire seven large wooden rafts, linked with iron chains, to build a temporary pontoon bridge to ferry people. On weekdays, we rely on flat-bottomed square-headed ferries unique to the Yellow River. The river is wide and the waves are strong, and the boat is crossing diagonally. It takes at least more than an hour to cross the river. When the wind is not favorable, it may even flow diagonally for twenty or thirty miles, and it takes half a day to reach the shore. Another misfortune happened when a sudden arch of silt at the bottom of the river blocked the boat, making it impossible to come or go, sometimes delaying it for several days. The river is difficult to cross, and there are many supernatural sights in the Yellow River. Originally, everyone on the boat was superstitious, and the ferry was opposite the White Pagoda, so the legends became more and more popular.

"Millions of Pounds" helps you establish a correct view of money: make money steadily and spend money generously! In the history of human literature, Mark Twain is the leader of critical realism. He uses humor to gain insight into the nature of the world, uses satire to analyze complex human nature, and uses sharp writing as a weapon to criticize various phenomena in material society. "Millions of Pounds" exaggerates the different attitudes of different characters when facing money and reflects the true human nature in the face of money. It is considered to be the masterpiece of Mark Twain's short story collection. "Millions of Pounds" was selected as the recommended reading book for the new curriculum standard! Selected into the recommended reading list of "Chinese Language" compiled by the Ministry of Education! Mark Twain created truly native American literature and is known as the "Father of American Literature." A selection of 16 masterpieces of Mark Twain's short stories! Including the popular "Million Pounds" and "Running for Governor"! The New York Times praised Mark Twain as America's leading humor novelist! Brand new translation, not a word has been deleted! How can a pauper with a million-pound check live in London for a month? Is this check a piece of waste paper, or is it the fulcrum that can move everything forward?

"My Purple Scented Novel" tells the story of two writers, Jocelyn Tabet and Parker Sparrow, and reveals some of the dark sides of the literary world and the publishing world. From the first-person perspective of Parker Sparrow, the novel tells the story of two good friends who are obsessed with literature and started their careers at the same time, but their development trajectories are completely different: after Tabat accidentally became famous by writing scripts, his literary path became smoother and smoother, and he became a national writer in his middle age. Sparrow, who had published works in magazines before him, published several novels but was always depressed, until one time Sparrow accidentally read the first draft of a novel at Tabat's house. Under an uncontrollable impulse, Sparrow made a move that changed the fate of the two of them.

"Son of God" is Cormac McCarthy's third novel. It writes about murders and mysterious nature in a calm and everyday style, with concise and rough short sentences interlaced with long and weird sentences. It has a strong "Southern Gothic" atmosphere and dark romanticism. Under McCarthy's God-like indifferent yet compassionate gaze, the lonely life of young Ballard is like a cruel and moving wilderness epic, which the exiles sing silently over and over again. In 2013, the film of the same name adapted and directed by James Franco was released in Italy and was nominated for the Golden Lion Award at the 70th Venice Film Festival.

This book selects 21 representative short stories and short stories by Mark Twain, including "One Million Pounds", "The Cannibalism on the Train", "A Dog's Story", "The Famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and other classic humor novels. Open this book and let you see the essence of human nature clearly while laughing!

"Shadows on Distant Mountains" is Kazuo Ishiguro's debut novel, a masterpiece that is still being reprinted more than 30 years after its publication. The fusion and balance of "sentimentality and irony" are still memorable. The novel tells a memory full of mist, both real and illusory. After the war, a suffering mother and daughter in Nagasaki yearned for stability and rebirth, but they could never escape the shadows and inner demons brought about by the war. In the end, the mother and daughter successfully immigrated, and the daughter committed suicide as a tragic ending. At the end of the play, the remembrancer peels off his disguise, and the story is full of tragedy. The bilingual version of "Shadows of Distant Mountains" comes with the original text of the work, allowing readers to appreciate Ishiguro's exquisite and beautiful original English text at the same time, and enjoy double beauty.

"The Rachel Papers" is Amis's famous work. After the novel was published, it won the Maugham Literary Award in one fell swoop, making the novelist who was only 24 years old a blockbuster. In this novel, the protagonist Charles Heway, like young Amis, is a smart and sensitive literary youth. He is full of great literary ambitions and tries to record the "bad" years that have just passed away - his seduction of the girl Rachel - through memories and imagination. This literary youth image is not only the predecessor of many "bad boy" images in Amis's works, but also a seminal figure in the history of British literature. "The Rachel Files" is a youthful rhapsody full of humor and banter, and it is also a gloomy and surly youth "sacrifice song". Once published, it caused great concern and sensation.

The story of "Saturday" takes place on Saturday, February 15, 2003. The protagonist of the story, Henri Perroin, is a successful man - a famous neurosurgeon, happily married to a newspaper lawyer, and has a harmonious relationship with his grown-up children. However, the situation in the world he lives in makes him worried - the war in Iraq is approaching, and the general gloom and pessimism are spreading from New York and Washington... On Saturday morning, Perroian passed through the thousands of anti-war demonstrations that filled the streets of London and rushed to play squash with the anesthesiologist. In a minor incident, he had a minor run-in with a thug named Baxter. Perroian relied on his professional sensitivity to see that this guy had a brain malfunction - he had encountered a mental patient. He wanted to get rid of Baxter as soon as possible, but he didn't know that Saturday's troubles would start from here and get out of control...

How many bodies does a person have? Perhaps we have all heard, and many people believe, that people have more than one body. People can be separated, resurrected, and reincarnated. In addition to the flesh and blood body, humans also have a spiritual body, which is called a "spiritual body" in the Bible. Pavich tells us at the beginning of the novel that he has passed away. After his death, he (his second body) told us a story of a double body.

"Everything That Rises Must Converge" is a representative collection of short stories by the famous American female writer Flannery O'Connor. In the last ten years of O'Connor's life, she used her pen as a torch to write this short story collection "All Things Rise Must Converge", illuminating those weird but real corners of the American South. O'Connor used her unique black humor and strong satire to create eccentric, paranoid, selfish or hypocritical characters on the stage of the American South, a land full of contradictions, and directed scenes of absurd and bizarre dramas. In the end, all the stories came to an abrupt end in a strong emotional impact.

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" tells the story of Francie, a slum girl who, amidst poverty and suffering, uses her vitality as tough as a tree, draws strength from books and family ties, and grows towards the sun.

This set of books is a collection of representative works created by the Russian writer Dostoevsky. It's in English, so English lovers shouldn't miss it. Take "Crime and Punishment" as an example. The novel describes Raskolnikov, a poor college student, who is poisoned by anarchist ideas and believes that he can do whatever he wants. Forced to make a living, he killed the old loan shark Alyona and her innocent sister Lizaveta, creating a murder that shocked the whole of Russia. After experiencing a painful confession, he finally surrendered under the persuasion of Sonia and was sentenced to exile in Siberia. The work focuses on depicting the protagonist's psychological changes after committing a crime and reveals the miserable life of the Russian lower class people. Lu Xun once commented: "If you compare the current Chinese things with foreign things, like Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", it is really beyond comparison.

"Half of a Yellow Sun" is a lament written by the Nigerian female writer Adichie about the Nigerian Civil War in the 1960s (1967-1970). With an epic structure, the novel uses the changes experienced by several pairs of ordinary men and women in the Nigerian Civil War to interrogate how solid concepts such as identity, national boundaries, love, and friendship survived in the face of the absurd and brutal war... 13-Year-old Ugu comes from a poor family and works as a valet in the house of Odenigbo, a professor at the University of Nsukka. The learning opportunities given to him by his master gradually help him get rid of ignorance and superstition; Olanna, the daughter of the Igbo chieftain She is the girlfriend of Odenigbo. Her family had great reputation and wealth before the civil war. Olanna, who advocates freedom, has always kept a distance from her snobbish and opportunistic family. Olanna's twin sister Kenene has been taking care of the family business. She fell in love with Richard, a British journalist living in Nigeria. Richard, who hates the hypocrisy of post-colonialism, has always tried to record everything that this country has experienced fairly and objectively. When that extremely brutal war broke out, and when northern and southern Nigeria were driven by the curse of post-colonialism and headed towards the end of cannibalism, the fate of these protagonists suddenly changed, and their loyalty to self, friendship and love also faced severe tests...

What this book records is not the big events, but the small things I experienced during the fifteen months after the war began. Up to now, the European powers have been locked in this terrifying battle for more than two years. Many small countries were invaded; France was conquered. These major events have been reported in newspapers and will also be recorded in history. Life goes on. People still eat three meals a day, still fall in love, get married, and die of old age. Yet it seems to me that this natural disaster affected everyone in a thousand subtle ways, at least in Europe. These little things were insignificant to the tide of upheaval, but they were not unimportant to the people affected by them, and no one I know of thought them worthy of attention. So I thought it might be interesting if I could record those trivial things that seemed to have changed the course of my entire life before I forgot them. What this book describes is purely personal and private, and would be meaningless otherwise. But I still want to ask readers to believe that at this moment when the future of the entire world hangs on a thread, no one knows better than me how insignificant I am personally. --Maugham

Theo met Noah in South America and returned to Israel with her, settling in the desert town of Telkoda. As a town planner, Theo participated in the planning of the small town, which was very desolate because the nearby oil wells were not very productive. Theo and Noah, a couple with a fifteen-year age difference, are also increasingly estranged. Noah's student suffered a drug addiction and fell off a cliff to his death. The boy's father wanted to build a rehabilitation center in the desert town in memory of his son. Noah was obliged to participate in the preparation plan, but she did not expect how big the resistance would be. Can the two finally understand each other? Can the remaining tenderness in my heart withstand the harsh reality?

The great detective Sherlock Holmes encountered an unprecedented problem - a hundred years ago, the Baskerville family had a vicious ancestor. His sins brought about a curse, and the ghost hound from hell ended his life. Since then, the shadow of misfortune has enveloped the entire family, and many descendants have not had a happy ending. Now, the mysterious ghost hound is wandering the wasteland again. Sir Charles Baskerville died mysteriously in the night, and his heir Sir Henry is about to come to the wasteland and inherit the cursed manor. This time, will Holmes face an opponent from hell?

This book is Mark Twain's famous work. When it was published in the "Saturday News" on November 18, 1865, it made "all New York laugh." This book is in English and is suitable for English lovers to read. The basic subject matter of the novel comes from the western frontier of the United States. Originally, these gambler anecdotes were only circulated in the frontier. However, after being processed and transformed by Mark Twain, the "Leap Frog" story quickly spread throughout the United States and became a well-known classic joke. Although the work is not long, it has important significance in the history of literature and is one of the representative works of American frontier literature. The novel first writes about Leap Frog's conceit, and then its stupidity, and the cynicism becomes completely interesting. Through the images of fighting dogs and leaping frogs, Mark Twain made fun of the conceit and stupidity of the upper class rulers, which was humorous and vivid yet profound.

"Eugénie Grandet" tells a story about money destroying humanity and causing family tragedy. Centering around the central event of Eugenie's love tragedy, the novel is connected by three intertwined plot threads: the waves caused by the autocracy within the Grandet family, the open and secret fights between the bankers and notaries outside the family, and Eugenie's love for Charles Grandet, and the painful human experience of Charles' betrayal.

This book is a representative masterpiece of Akutagawa Ryunosuke, a giant of Japanese short stories in the Taisho era. It contains nineteen representative short stories such as "Rashomon", "In the Bamboo Forest", "Hell Transformation", "The Nose", "Kappa" and "The Life of a Certain Idiot". The author examines evil with a cold eye, reveals the truth with sharp writing, and launches a series of human dialogues between good and evil, fiction and reality. Although each story is short in length, it is well-conceived and the plot is bizarre yet profound. The film "Rashomon" adapted from the two novels "Rashomon" and "In the Bamboo Grove" by Japanese film master Akira Kurosawa won the Golden Lion Award at the 16th Venice International Film Festival and the Best Foreign Language Film Award at the 24th Academy Awards.

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This is a book about "strength", telling how "reading" makes life come alive, how "knowledge" changes people's destiny, and how "the power of family" supports children to realize their dreams. France likes reading, and she goes to the library every Saturday to borrow two books to take home and read; she also likes to observe the lives of her neighbors, watching their every move is like watching a play on the stage; she also likes to listen to the adults around her narrate their own lives: life is rich and colorful Aunt Sissy, who was married three times and gave birth to ten children but all died in infancy, and each of her lovers was called John; Grandma Mary, although illiterate, remembered more than a thousand stories and legends; Uncle Freetman's only topic at home was his horse Drummer. How to tease him... Although France has a lively heart, life in Brooklyn is difficult after all: her mother is beautiful, petite and has an iron will, but she prefers her younger brother; her father is warm and charming, but has no fixed job and is addicted to alcohol; the child earns money by picking up rags. With a few meager pennies, she could only spend half herself and take the other half home to her parents who could barely afford the rent and could only afford expired bread... Frances' mother hoped to help her children escape the bottom through education. However, the drastic changes and hardships in life made everything out of reach. Facing the ups and downs of life, France is as tough as the tree of heaven in the yard, always maintaining dignity and faith, dreaming of a future that is different from the past and present. Finally, another door of life opened for her...

"The Bell Jar" is the representative work of the famous American female writer Sylvia Plath. The novel chronicles the breakdown of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, endowed, and successful, but slowly heading towards collapse-perhaps her final collapse. Sylvia Plath deftly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown, making Esther's insanity completely real, even plausible, and as easy to stomach as watching a movie. To reveal the dark corners of the psyche so deeply is a remarkable achievement, and one that has made the novel a classic of American literature.

Eddie and Susanna, who fell in love, followed Roland on the road to the Dark Tower. Roland is determined to quickly train them into real gunslingers, but at the same time, he himself is troubled by double memories because he saved Jack behind the third door and changed history, and is about to collapse. And Jack also almost went crazy because he had an extra set of memories of his death and running to a different world. The hope of uniting everything that was divided into one rests on the mysterious fate between Eddie and Jack. Finally, after experiencing the breathless mysterious ritual, Jack re-entered the middle world and reunited with Roland and his party...

The novel begins with the protagonist "Yuan" suddenly encountering his younger brother who has not heard from him for four years. The younger brother moved into the house rented by his older sister and started keeping a "sister's observation diary" every day. After reading it, my sister realized how boring her daily life was, purely "copying and pasting". So she decided to try to change the situation, fell in love with a friend of her younger brother, accepted an invitation from her colleagues to attend the New Year's Eve party, and slowly got out of the trouble of social phobia. Unfortunately, her boyfriend suddenly terminated their relationship at this time, which made her once again face the choice of whether to open her heart.

Ken Follett, author of "Fall of Giants" and master of all-night novels, has a new work! At the end of the 18th century, the British Industrial Revolution was quietly rewriting the world structure. Machines replaced manual work, factories swallowed up villages, and war spread across Europe. Technology is running wild, beliefs are being torn apart, old systems are collapsing, and a new era has yet to come. In such great changes of the times, a tenacious female textile worker, a small workshop owner who sympathizes with the workers, and a cloth merchant who survives in the cracks - they come from the bottom of society, but they struggle, fight, fall in love, and betray each other, looking for value and dignity under the rolling wheel of history. They failed to change history, but with the power of fighting against fate, they jointly wrote an epic that belongs to mortals. Ken Follett, with his usual profound writing power, outlines the pain and hope of social transformation, and tells how ordinary people struggling in the center of the storm become the masters of their destiny.

A tear-jerking work comparable to "Coco", it is written for all of you and me who were once children, to understand the life that our mother has never told; the famous writer Bi Shumin wrote a loving preface, and was recommended by the queen of talk show Oprah in her special episode. "Almost everyone, no matter how happy they may appear on the outside, has a small place deep inside them where they hold a loved one who has passed away and longs to be reunited one day." - Mitch Albom. Let a long-dead relative spend another day with you. Only one day. If you can do it, do you need such an opportunity? The opportunity, at an awkward moment, fell to Charles Bennett. The retired baseball player could no longer find any reason to live amidst the frustration and alcohol consumption - his career was on the wall, his marriage was broken, he was addicted to alcohol, and his family was betrayed and separated. Even his daughter's wedding was unwilling to let him show up... Charles had the idea of ​​​​suicide. He thought that as long as a high-speed car and a selfless run, he could wave goodbye without taking away a single cloud. However, in the flash of lightning, his physical body wandered between this place and the other side; when he suddenly woke up, he actually saw his mother who died unexpectedly many years ago. Mitch Albom's perception of life is like an ever-growing seed. It sprouted in "Tuesday", drew a long arc in "Five People You Meet in Heaven", and firmly took root in "Reborn in a Day". The soil is the state of the world and the human heart, and the root is love.

From 1843 to 1848, Dickens published a holiday-related novella almost every Christmas. Among them, "A Christmas Carol" has a very special status: the plot and characters in the book are well-known in the West, and the "popularity" accumulated over more than 100 years has made it the most deeply rooted among Dickens's novels. Literary critics believe that the publication of "A Christmas Carol" was a major turning point in Dickens's creative career; while sociologists believe that this work profoundly changed the status and value of modern Christmas in the Western world, and Dickens himself is called the person who "invented Christmas."

The set includes: "A Girl's Fear", "Before I Leave", "Beartown", "Beartown 2", "A Man Called Ove", "A Man Called Ove Decided to Die" and "The Long Way Home".

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The death of any one leaves me somewhat deficient, for I am inseparable from mankind; so never ask for whom the bell tolls; for you the bell tolls. --John Donne (British poet) "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is one of Hemingway's major works. Robert Jordan, an American young man, volunteered to join the Spanish government army and engage in blasting activities behind enemy lines. In order to cooperate with the counterattack, he was ordered to contact local guerrillas to complete the task of blowing up the bridge. In the midst of the raging war, he fell in love with Maria, a little girl who had been raped by the enemy, thereby smoothing out the trauma in Maria's soul. In three days, Robert experienced the conflict between love and duty and the test of life and death, and his humanity continued to sublimate. On the way to retreat after the bridge was blown up, he gave up his hope of survival to others, but his thigh was broken by a cannonball. He stayed alone to stop the enemy, and finally gave his young life for the Spanish people.

A masterpiece by "Master of Storytelling" Somerset Maugham, a classic translation by famous translator Fu Weici, and highly recommended as "a good book". The British painter in the novel is based on the French post-Impressionist master Paul Gauguin. The protagonist was originally a successful securities broker, but became obsessed with painting after reaching middle age. He suddenly abandoned his home and went to Paris to pursue the ideal of painting. He finally chose to abandon the civilized world and fled to the isolated island of Tahiti in the South Pacific. There he finally found the tranquility of his soul and the atmosphere suitable for his artistic temperament, and created one artistic masterpiece after another that shocked later generations. Through the life experiences of such a geek who devoted himself to the pursuit of art and was ignorant of the world, Maugham deeply explored the origin and essence of art, the relationship between personality and genius, as well as the contradictions and interactions between artists and society, art and life, and other thought-provoking issues.

"The Plague" is based on the outbreak of plague in the Algerian city of Oran, and uses the fight against the epidemic by doctor Rieux and other citizens to explore the perseverance, absurdity and meaning of existence of human nature under disaster.

"The Hobbit" is a prequel to "The Lord of the Rings". It tells the story of a kind of hobbit who lived in a hole in the ground. Hobbits are people smaller than dwarves, kind, shrewd and law-abiding. Baggins is one of them. That day he was smoking at the entrance of the cave. The famous warlock Gandalf arrived and brought a group of strange guests to Baggins...

As the 11th generation descendant, Hatoko Amamiya inherited the Shancha Stationery Store and conveyed the unspeakable words hidden in the heart to customers. Letters written by an invisible boy to his mother, letters written by a deceased husband to his wife, letters written by parents who lost their young son to relatives and friends... Hatoko always uses the most complicated but also most sincere way to help guests solve their doubts. Everyone has a different story in their life, and everyone is trying to make the story complete.

This book contains a total of thirteen short stories and short stories by Akutagawa. "Rashomon" uses a weather-proof layout to push people to the limit of life and death choices, thus showing the inescapability of "evil" and conveying for the first time the author's understanding of people, his helplessness and despair. There is a mountain of books and a sea of ​​barnyards, and a garden of literature and history. I sink and play in it, and the hook is not hidden, and it is written in a day. It comes naturally at random, randomly, vertically and horizontally, and cannot be suppressed. From the high-ranking officials in the temple to the ordinary people in the city, from the depths of Zichen to the fate of the rivers and lakes, everything he writes about comes immediately and leaps onto the page. Akutagawa is sensitive by nature. Generally speaking, he does not focus on description but focuses on exploration. He pays little attention to narration and focuses on enlightenment. He is less light and unrestrained and more depressed and desolate. This is easily evident from his works.

2017 new best-selling translation! Exclusive unabridged illustrated version! No. 1 On readers' word-of-mouth recommendation list! Poet Xu Chungang, who won the Bobby Fiction Award, translated from the authoritative final version of British VintageBooks! Maugham's masterpiece with sales exceeding 1 million copies! Bai Yansong, Yu Hua, and Gao Xiaosong are highly recommended by word of mouth! "The world is so long that it passes quickly. Some people see dust, while others see stars. You only have one real choice in your life. Should you be illuminated by dreams or money?"

This novel is first of all a satirical work, a "slander", and its object of ridicule is the various evil habits in the British literary world at that time represented by Driffield (alluding to Hardy - although Maugham once publicly denied it) and Arroy Gere (alluding to Hugh Walpole) in the book, just like a British "The Scholars". "Bi Hua Chai Video" is also a hymn, praising Driffield's ex-wife and the heroine Lucy in the book: this image of the charming Earth Mother can be called the most charming female character in Maugham's works. This image has been haunting the author for decades. In his mind, he had long thought about writing it into his own works but struggled with the opportunity. It was not until the writing of "Bi Huachai Video Recording" that this long-awaited opportunity finally came into being; Maugham himself also frankly admitted that this was the most touching female image he had ever created.

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Peri Medea, also known as the Triple City, is the bride of the sea and the mistress of the civilized world. It is a country of its own and has stood for thousands of years. Bardas Loredan lives in an inconspicuous corner of the Lower Town slums. His background is not difficult to find out, and no one cares about his past; his profession is a bit special, as he is a court swordsman who relies on his excellent swordsmanship to help clients litigate cases, but he can be considered quiet and low-key. No one knows what kind of destructive power all these things put together contain. The way of heaven is unpredictable. When the wheel of history begins to turn, some people are mercilessly run over, some take chestnuts from the fire, and some try to stop them, but inadvertently add force...

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Mark Twain wrote a large number of works throughout his life, covering novels, plays, essays, poetry and other aspects. In terms of content, his works criticize irrational phenomena or the ugliness of human nature, and express the strong sense of justice and concern for ordinary people of this writer who worked as a typesetter and sailor; in terms of style, both experts and general readers believe that humor and satire are the characteristics of his writing. This anthology of short and medium stories includes thirteen stories by the author, arranged in the order of the year in which the original works were published; these stories may be well-known (such as "One Million Pounds", "Running for Governor"), or less familiar (such as "Goldsmith's Friends Go Abroad Again", "Cannibalism on the Train"), but they are all lively, interesting and enlightening.

The novel tells the story of a young couple, Frank and Amber Wheeler, who lived in the suburbs of Connecticut on a road called "Revolutionary Road" in the 1950s. Many middle-class families similar to them lived in the nearby community. Frank (also meaning "frank") is a down-to-earth corporate white-collar worker, while April (also meaning "April"), a housewife, is lively, romantic and full of fantasy. The gap between ideal and reality put their relationship into trouble, and the increasingly frequent quarrels almost suffocated the two. Epper's plan to move to Europe to find himself once saved the crisis and gave them a brief hope of changing their lives. However, the plan was ultimately shattered and their fate was irreversible. It slides into tragedy... As Yates himself said: "The characters in my novels are all within the limitations of their known and unknown. They want to be the best and do what they can't help but do, but in the end they inevitably fail because they can't help but go back to their original appearance."

After burying his father, Nathan Zuckerman, who was in his late teens, suddenly suffered from an undiagnosable pain that spread from his shoulders and neck to his torso, and even his mind was occupied by this pain. No doctor knew where his ailment came from. He had to rely on painkillers to survive, could not continue writing, and even his movements were hampered by pain. Bored, he began to let his mind wander, recalling his failed marriage and family relationships. Outbursts of extreme nostalgia and ambition to conquer his illness, Zuckerman determined to return to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, where he would study medicine... Rashness and meticulousness, lyricism and irony blended together, admonitions and confessions running through it, with a knowing, benevolent authority. Featuring some of the funniest and most brutal scenes in Philip Roth's novels, this is a grand comedy about illness.