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The secret son of King Uther, young Arthur is brought up by the knight Ector without knowing anything of his birth. At fifteen, he pulls from a stone the sword that no lord had been able to move, and becomes king. Around the Round Table, Lancelot, Tristram and Galahad set off on adventures and on the quest for the Grail. Merlin, Excalibur, Camelot: these legends, retold here from Thomas Malory, have inspired countless stories of knights. Told in a clear, lively style, they are a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

After eighteen years in the Bastille, Doctor Manette is released and reunited with his daughter Lucie, who thought he was dead. In London, Lucie meets two men who look strangely alike: Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has given up his name, and Sydney Carton, a brilliant but disillusioned barrister. Soon the Revolution breaks out and draws them all to Paris. Its opening line, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, is one of the most famous in literature, and its ending still moves readers deeply. Full of suspense and dramatic twists, the novel is a gripping read in the language you are learning.

In Rome, under the Emperor Nero, the young patrician Vinicius falls in love with Lygia, a foreign princess brought up by a Roman family. Used to getting everything he wants, he tries to take her by force, but she escapes him, and he discovers that she is a Christian. When Rome burns and Nero looks for someone to blame, the Christians are thrown to the beasts of the arena. This great novel of love and adventure made its author famous around the world, and Sienkiewicz received the Nobel Prize in 1905. Its title comes from a famous question: “Quo vadis, Domine?”, “Where are you going, Lord?” Full of action and great scenes, the novel is a gripping read in the language you are learning.

Paris, 1819. In the modest Vauquer boarding house, old Goriot, a retired vermicelli maker, goes without everything for his two daughters, who have married into high society. His young neighbour, Rastignac, a poor student from the provinces, dreams of entering that glittering world. The mysterious Vautrin, another lodger, explains its ruthless rules to him. This novel made Rastignac a common noun in French for an ambitious young man. It is one of the high points of “The Human Comedy”, about money, ambition and a father's love. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Balzac in the language you are learning.

In Paris at the end of the nineteenth century, Georges Duroy, a penniless former soldier, runs into an old comrade who has become a journalist and gets him a job on his newspaper. Handsome, with neither talent nor scruples, Duroy soon realises that women can open every door for him. Maupassant paints the portrait of a seducer who will stop at nothing to succeed, and shows plainly what goes on behind the scenes of the press, politics and money. With its lively chapters and clear style, the novel is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In the Spain of old legends, a hunter finds a woman with green eyes beside a hidden spring. A young poet runs through the night after an unknown woman who may be nothing but a moonbeam. Elsewhere, a blind organist plays music that lives on after death. This collection brings together six of these tales, somewhere between dream and shiver. Bécquer, a great poet of Spanish Romanticism, tells them as if by the fireside, in a simple, musical style. Each tale is short and can be read in one sitting in the language you are learning.

This collection brings together five English stories from the time of Queen Victoria, all about love and marriage. In Venice, a paralysed painter only sees the young woman next door through her reflection in the water of the canal. In a Devon village, Patience, the vicar's daughter, who always says what she thinks, sees a rich captain arrive from London. The other stories follow a sheep farmer, a very shy fisherman and a young poet, each in love with a woman. Five authors, including Anthony Trollope, look at love with tenderness or irony. Short stories, each of which you can read in one sitting 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.

Eleven stories about China in the 1920s. We meet a widow whom the whole village shuns at New Year, a disappointed scholar drinking alone in an inn, a young couple driven apart by poverty, and a man who wants to put out the everlasting lamp in his village temple. After “Call to Arms”, Lu Xun, the greatest modern Chinese writer, offers more intimate stories here, which show with tenderness and clarity a country in the midst of change. The stories are short and can be read one by one, in the language you are learning.

Orphaned, Denise arrives in Paris from Normandy with her two young brothers. Her uncle, a small draper, is being ruined by the department store across the road, The Ladies' Paradise. Denise starts work there as a shop assistant, mocked by the other employees, and little by little catches the eye of the owner, the ambitious Octave Mouret. Huge departments, dazzling shop windows, customers spending freely: Zola tells of the birth of the department store, and the story of an upright young woman whom money cannot buy. With the translation always in front of you, this absorbing story is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In Edinburgh in 1751, young David Balfour has just come into his inheritance. He wants to testify to save an innocent man accused of a political murder, but the men in power have already chosen their culprit, and they mean to stop David from speaking. At the same time, he meets Catriona Drummond, a strong-willed young woman from the Highlands. Plots, danger and a love story mix in the troubled Scotland of the eighteenth century, where David meets up again with Alan Breck, his rebellious, swaggering friend. Told by David himself, with plenty of dialogue, it is a pleasure to read 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.

In 1930, Jacques Bainville tells children the history of France in forty short chapters, from Vercingetorix to the Great War. We see Clovis and the Vase of Soissons, Joan of Arc before Orléans, Henri IV and his chicken in every pot, Napoleon at Austerlitz. The book tells stories rather than dates, with sixty-nine illustrations by Job, the great illustrator of his day. It is a simple and lively way into the history of France. Written for young readers, in simple sentences, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

Two stories of young love. In “First Love”, a sixteen-year-old boy on holiday in the country falls under the spell of his neighbour, a young princess surrounded by admirers, and learns what love can cost. In “Asya”, on the banks of the Rhine, a traveller meets a free, proud and unpredictable young woman, and is slow to tell her what he feels. Turgenev tells with restraint and nostalgia of these loves we never forget. Written in a clear and gentle style, these two stories are a pleasure to read in the language you are learning.

In Budapest, a gang of schoolboys defends its playground, a patch of waste ground squeezed between a timber yard and blocks of flats. The Red Shirts, a rival gang, want to take it over, and war is organised, with ranks, a flag and battle plans. Little Nemecsek, the only one in the gang with no rank at all, will show more courage than all the officers. A great novel about friendship, loyalty and courage, which you can read at any age and never forget. Simply written, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

One Sunday in November, Augustin Meaulnes, a daring teenager, arrives at the school in Sainte-Agathe and fascinates François, the schoolmaster's son. During an escapade, Meaulnes gets lost and comes to a mysterious estate where a strange celebration is being prepared. There he meets a young woman he will never stop searching for. A novel of adolescence, dreams and nostalgia, which keeps alive the memory of that moment when we believe anything is possible. François tells the story as a memory, and the novel is a pleasure 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 Trojans have reached the Greek ships, and fire threatens the fleet. Patroclus, Achilles' friend, is allowed to wear his armour to drive them back, but he falls at Hector's hands. Mad with grief, Achilles returns to battle, with armour forged by the god Hephaestus, and seeks out Hector beneath the walls of Troy. This second volume contains the most famous pages of the poem, those of mourning, of vengeance and of the pity an enemy can still inspire. Nearly three thousand years later, they have lost none of their force. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great tale in the language you are learning.

Diogenes Laertius tells the lives and ideas of the philosophers of ancient Greece, from Thales to Epicurus. We see Thales fall into a ditch while gazing at the stars, and Diogenes the Cynic looking for an honest man in broad daylight, lantern in hand, or asking Alexander the Great to stand out of his sun. Funny or surprising, these anecdotes bring the great thinkers close and make them human. We understand what each one thought by seeing how he lived: a lively way into the origins of philosophy. Each life is a story of its own, and the book can be read at your own pace in the language you are learning.

As a child, Mark Twain dreamed of piloting a steamboat on the Mississippi. As a young man, he becomes an apprentice pilot and has to learn by heart every bend in the river and every sandbank, by day and by night. Twenty years later, he returns to the river and discovers how much the world has changed. Memories, anecdotes and humorous portraits: it is in this book that he explains where his pen name, “Mark Twain”, comes from: a call used by the boatmen who sounded the river. Full of true stories, this book is easy to read in the language you are learning.

In Andalusia, a scholarly traveller meets a wanted bandit, Don José, and then, in Córdoba, a gypsy woman who tells fortunes: Carmen. Months later, he finds Don José in prison, on the eve of his execution, and listens to him tell his life story. A young soldier marked out for promotion, Don José lost everything the day he met Carmen. Free and defiant, Carmen gives in to no one: she has become one of the most famous heroines in the world, so much so that her name alone stands for passion. You can read this short story in one sitting in the language you are learning.

In the fifth century BC, Athens and Sparta, the two greatest cities of Greece, wage war on each other for almost thirty years. Thucydides, an Athenian general who lived through it, tells of the battles, the plague that strikes Athens, the speeches of Pericles and the disastrous expedition against Sicily. He tries to understand what drives men to war: fear, interest, honour. His lessons still hold: people still speak of the “Thucydides Trap” when a rising power alarms an established one. With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great classic of history in the language you are learning.

In India, two babies are mixed up: the son of a captain and the son of a sergeant. Unable to tell which one is his, Captain Clinton brings up both boys as twins, Rupert and Edgar. When Edgar is sixteen, a stranger tells him that she is his real mother, and he runs away to join the army under a false name. With him, we travel up the Nile alongside the expedition sent to relieve General Gordon, besieged in Khartoum in 1884. A story of war and brotherly friendship that closely follows a very real campaign. Full of action, it is easy to read in the language you are learning.

One August morning, whole trainloads of sick people and pilgrims leave Paris for Lourdes. On board, Marie, a young woman who can no longer walk, hopes to be cured. Travelling beside her is Abbé Pierre Froment, her childhood friend, who became a priest but has lost his faith: she also prays that he will find it again. The novel takes place over five days, among the crowds and the sick. Zola shows the immense hope of those waiting for a miracle, and asks a question that touches everyone: what should we believe in the face of suffering? With the translation always in front of you, you can read this great novel by Zola in the language you are learning.