Full catalogue

Frederick Douglass is born a slave on a plantation in Maryland, separated from his mother at birth. As a child he secretly learns to read, although it is forbidden, and understands that knowledge is the path to freedom. He tells of the beatings, the hunger, the resistance, and his escape to the North. A deeply moving account, written by a man who became one of the great voices against slavery. Its simple, powerful sentences make it easy to read in the language you are learning.

Harriet Jacobs is born a slave in North Carolina. As a teenager, she is pursued by her master's advances. To escape him and protect her children, she hides for seven years in a tiny attic at her grandmother's house, watching her children through a small hole, before she can flee to the North. It is one of the few slave narratives written by a woman. In it she says what others kept silent: what slavery did to women and mothers. She tells her life simply, like a confidence, and her story is a moving read in the language you are learning.

As a young boy, Larry Livingston starts out in a brokerage house, chalking up stock prices on a board. He becomes one of the greatest speculators on Wall Street, and tells of his strokes of genius, his bankruptcies, and everything his mistakes taught him about the markets and about himself. A cult book among traders and investors, still read for its lessons on risk, patience and keeping your emotions in check. Told in the first person, like a long conversation, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This little collection brings together Zhu Ziqing's most famous prose pieces. In “The Sight of Father's Back”, a clumsy father crosses the tracks at a station to buy oranges for his son. Elsewhere, the author walks at night around a lotus pond under the moon, or glides in a boat along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing. Studied in every school in China, these texts have made this father seen from behind one of the most moving memories in Chinese literature. Short, tender and very musical, they can be read one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

Lu Xun remembers his childhood and youth: the Hundred-Plant Garden where he used to play, his old nurse and the book of monsters she gave him, the temple fair he could only see after reciting his lesson. Then come his father's illness, and his student years in Japan with his teacher, Fujino. Ten bittersweet memories, in which we discover the childhood of the greatest modern Chinese writer, and the China of the past. This short book can be read memory by memory, in the language you are learning.

In these texts gathered for the schoolchildren of the Philippines, José Rizal tells his own life: his childhood in Calamba, on the shore of a large lake, his mother teaching him to read in the evenings, the strict school in Biñan, then his success at college in Manila. Other pages tell of his travels, from Japan to England, and of his exile in Dapitan. We get to know the national hero of the Philippines from the inside, with proverbs, riddles and a legend from his country as well. Written in simple sentences, this little book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

This fourth volume of the Memoirs from Beyond the Grave covers the years 1815 to 1828. Chateaubriand tells of the Hundred Days, which he spends in Ghent with King Louis XVIII, and of the Battle of Waterloo, which he hears thundering in the distance. Then come Napoleon's exile and death on Saint Helena. Chateaubriand also tells of his own career: ambassador in Berlin and London, then Minister of Foreign Affairs. A witness at the heart of events tells from the inside the fall of Napoleon and the return of the kings, and paints a portrait of his friend Madame Récamier. With the translation always in front of you, you can read these famous memoirs in the language you are learning.

The book opens with Mark Antony, who abandons his troops at Actium to chase after Cleopatra. Then, chapter after chapter, Lyndon Orr tells of other famous couples in history, some of whom were led to their ruin by passion. Each chapter reads like a short true story, in which we discover how love could change the fate of the great. You can read these stories one by one, at your own pace, in the language you are learning.

Benjamin Franklin tells the story of his life to his son, starting from his years as an apprentice in his brother's printing shop in Boston. At seventeen he runs away and arrives in Philadelphia almost penniless, with three large loaves under his arm. There he becomes a printer, publishes a newspaper, founds a library, and sets himself thirteen virtues that he checks every day in a little notebook. It is one of the first stories of success through hard work, and many readers still find in it common-sense advice on getting organised and persuading others. Franklin writes with humour and simplicity, and his book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Harriet Martineau is born in 1802 in Norwich and loses her hearing in her teens. Yet she becomes a writer, and enjoys enormous success with stories that explain economics to everyone. She travels to the United States, where she speaks out against slavery, then goes through five years of illness. She also writes for a major London newspaper. In this biography, Florence Fenwick Miller paints a portrait of a free and tireless woman who made herself heard at a time when women were rarely listened to. With the translation always in front of you, this extraordinary life is easy to read in the language you are learning.