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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

This book—an ethnography of inequality—addresses these questions. Formed by a series of essays, they are written to be read individually, but have been arranged to be read as a totality and in sequence. Each aims to accomplish two things: first, to introduce a key aspect of the experience of being low-income in contemporary Singapore. Second, to illustrate how people’s experiences are linked to structural conditions of inequality.

A pilot stranded in the desert awakes one morning to see, standing before him, the most extraordinary little fellow. "Please," asks the stranger, "draw me a sheep." And the pilot realizes that when life's events are too difficult to understand, there is no choice but to succumb to their mysteries. He pulls out pencil and paper... And thus begins this wise and enchanting fable that, in teaching the secret of what is really important in life, has changed forever the world for its readers.

Harry Potter's life is miserable. His parents are dead and he's stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he's a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The way in which Shakespeare's plays are studied has undergone considerable change in recent years. The new edition of this bestselling guide, aimed quarely at the student new to Shakespeare, is based on the exciting new approaches shaping Shakespeare studies. This volume provides a thorough general introduction to the plays and a refreshingly clear guide to:

• Shakespeare's language
• The plays as performance texts
• The cultural and political contexts of the plays
• Early modern theatre practice
• New understandings of the major genres

 

Winner of Academy Award for Best Screenplay and the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Connes Film Festival, Pulp Fiction exploded on to the screen in 1994 and transformed the direction of contemporary cinema. This trio and masterfully interwoven crime stories is witty, gritty and shamelessly violent, displaying Tarantino's visceral approach to character and plot. Tarantino has spawned a whole host of wannabes in the wake of this, the defining movie of the decade. But none has demonstrated the elegant style of compassion that make his scripts so compellingly readable.

The plays in this volume, which compliments Selected Plays 1963-1983, are Largo Desolato, Temptation and Redevelopment in versions by Tom Stoppard, George Theiner and James Saunders respectively. Their themes are freedom of thought, Faustian opportunism and town planning as metaphors of life in Eastern Europe before the collapse of Communism, all handled with their author's characteristic wit and irony, and written before he was translated from a prison to the highest office of state.

Tennessee William's sensuous, atmospheric plays transformed the American stage with their passion, exoticism and vibrant characters who rage against their personal demons and the modern world. In A Streetcar Named Desire fading southern belle Blanche Dubois finds her romantic illusions brutally shattered; The Glass Menagerie portrays an introverted girl trapped in a fantasy world; and Sweet Bird of Youth shows how we are unable to escape 'the enemy, time'.

A collection of three plays by Lanford Wilson.

38 great writers, actors, and directors on what the bard means to the - and us.

In this volume, George Watt analyses the works of Robert Yeo, a major voice in the articulation of Singaporean literature.

Lawrence Harbison has selected 100 terrific monologues for women from contemporary plays, all by characters between the ages of 18 and 35 perfect for auditions or class.