An ​Appeal to the Toiling, Oppressed and Exhausted Peoples of Europe

In The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism, Tariq Ramadan embarks on a journey to uncover the profound truths that bind us together. In a world so full of different beliefs and viewpoints, how can we find peace in our shared humanity? Acclaimed thinker and philosopher Tariq Ramadan explores universal ideas such as love, respect, truth, and tolerance, and examines questions such as how can men and women relate to each other? What is the true nature of equality? What does “civilization” really mean? In doing so, he opens our minds to a new view of humanity. Whether we are Christian or Buddhist, Jewish or Muslim, secularist or believer, he reveals that all traditions of thought spring from the same place, and guides us to see past what divides us and discover the beauty of what we have in common. This book has resonance for all of us, showing why, eventually, all different spiritual paths lead to the human heart.

The ten stories collected in this volume demonstrate Tolstoy’s artistic prowess displayed over five decades – experimenting with prose styles and drawing on his own experiences with humour, realism and compassion. Inspired by his experiences in the army, ‘The Two Hussars’ contrasts a dashing father and his mean-spirited son. Illustrating Tolstoy’s belief that art must serve a moral purpose, ‘What Men Live By’ portrays an angel sent to earth to learn three existential rules of life, and ‘Two Old Men’ shows a peasant abandoning his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to help his neighbours. And in the highly moving ‘Master and Man’, Tolstoy depicts a mercenary merchant travelling with his unprotesting servant through a blizzard to close a business deal – little realizing he may soon have to settle accounts with his maker. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

For over three thousand years, the Mediterranean Sea has been one of the great centres of civilization. David Abulafia’s The Great Sea is the first complete history of the Mediterranean, from the erection of temples on Malta around 3500 BC to modern tourism. Ranging across time and the whole extraordinary space of the Mediterranean from Gibraltar to Jaffa, Genoa to Tunis, and bringing to life pilgrims, pirates, sultans and naval commanders, this is the story of the sea that has shaped much of world history.

‘Sentimental Education’ has been described both as the first modern novel and as a novel to end all novels. Weaving a poignant love story into his account of the 1848 revolution, Flaubert shows a society in the grip of stereotypes, on every level. There is something farcical in his depiction of characters who aspire to act but are dogged by cliche at every turn. To a greater extent even than Madame Bovary, ‘Sentimental Education’ is an indictment of modern consumerism, contrasting the hollowness of material achievement with the lasting beauty of the ideal. Flaubert’s study of success and failure offers us a terrible sadness in a terrible beauty, yet is one of the world’s great comic masterpieces. AUTHOR: Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) achieved instant success and fame, indeed notoriety, with his first novel, ‘Madam Bovary’, published in 1857. He was prosecuted on the basis that the novel was ‘offensive to public morality and religion’. Although found not guilty, Flaubert earned a lecture from the judge on the dangers of ‘realism’. The book was a huge success, and Flaubert came to be considered one of the great novelists of Western literature.

This ​omnibus contains three full-length novels: “Psmith in the City”, “Psmith Journalist” and “Leave it to Psmith”.