Showing results for "the underground library" in Literary Fiction

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans, and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

A groundbreaking new translation of Dostoyevsky's most radical work of fiction. In the depths of a cellar in St. Petersburg, a civil servant spews forth a passionate and furious note on the ills of society. The underground man's manifesto reveals his erratic, self-contradictory, and even sadistic nature. Yet in Dostoyevsky's most extreme and disturbing character, there is the uncomfortable flicker of recognition of the human condition. When the narrator ventures above ground, he attends a dinner with a group of old school friends.

Blistering, brilliant, corrosively sharp and blackly comic, Underground goes straight to the heart of the country's future - and it isn't pretty. Think ahead five or so years from now, to an Australia transformed by the never-ending war on terror. Canberra has been wiped out in a nuclear attack. There is a permanent state of emergency. Security checkpoints, citizenship tests, identity cards and detention without trial have all become the norm. Suspect minorities have been locked away into ghettos. And worse - no one wants to play cricket with us anymore.