Modern fiction – Globolibri.it

Arturo’s Island

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 15:35:51 +0000

Young Arturo grows up in isolated freedom on an island in the Bay of Naples, roaming the hills with his dog, sailing and reading tales of mythical heroes.

This idyll is shattered when his father returns home with a new wife, Nunziata. Barely older than Arturo, one of the only women he has ever met, she awakens his fierce longing for tenderness, a longing which draws the family towards a painful reckoning in this powerful story of disillusionment and desire.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull : A Story

Arnaldo Ageno — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:45:30 +0000

The complete edition of a timeless classic, includes the recently rediscovered Part Four and ‘Last Words’ by Richard Bach.Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the most celebrated inspirational fable of our time, tells the story of a bird determined to be more than ordinary. ‘Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get from shore to food and back again,’ writes author Richard Bach in this allegory about a unique bird named Jonathan Livingston Seagull. ‘For most gulls it is not flying that matters, but eating.

For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.’ Flight is indeed the metaphor that makes this story soar. This bestselling modern classic is a fable about seeking a higher purpose in life, even if your flock, tribe or neighbourhood finds your ambition threatening (at one point our beloved gull is even banished from his flock). By not compromising his higher vision, Jonathan learns the meaning of love and kindness and gets the ultimate payoff – transcendence.

The dreamy illustrations by Russell Munson provide just the right illustrations for this spirituality classic that has inspired thousands of readers to follow their own path in life and so fulfill their true potential.

The Old Man and the Sea

Arnaldo Ageno — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 16:05:38 +0000

Set in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Havana, Hemingway’s magnificent fable is the story of an old man, a young boy and a giant fish. Here, in a perfectly crafted story, is a unique and timeless vision of the beauty and grief of man’s challenge to the elements in which he lives. Not a single word is superfluous in this widely admired masterpiece, which once and for all established his place as one of the giants of modern literature.

On the Road

Arnaldo Ageno — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 12:14:46 +0000

On the Road by Jack Kerouac is the exhilarating novel that defined the Beat Generation, beautifully repackaged as part of the Penguin Essentials range. ‘What’s your road, man? – holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow.’ Sal Paradise, young and innocent, joins the slightly crazed Dean Moriarty on a breathless, exuberant ride back and forth across the United States.
Their hedonistic search for release or fulfilment through drink, sex, drugs and jazz becomes an exploration of personal freedom, a test of the limits of the American Dream. A brilliant blend of fiction and autobiography, Jack Kerouac’s exhilarating novel defined the new ‘Beat’ generation and became the bible of the counter culture. On the Road sold a trillion Levis and a million espresso machines, and also sent countless kids on the road.

The Catcher in the Rye Il giovane Holden

Arnaldo Ageno — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 13:59:24 +0000

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it’s relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the ‘phony’ aspects of society, and the ‘phonies’ themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it’s a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all).

Salinger’s style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you.Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

The First Forty-Nine Stories

Arnaldo Ageno — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 06:13:16 +0000

From Ernest Hemingway’s Preface: ‘There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like- In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining, and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.’A collection of Hemingway’s first forty-nine short stories, featuring a brief introduction by the author and lesser known as well as familiar tales, including ‘Up in Michigan’, ‘Fifty Grand’, and ‘The Light of the World’, and the Snows of Kilimanjaro, Winner Take Nothing’ and Men Without Women collections.