'The most esteemed philosopher to have produced a general introduction to his discipline since Bertrand Russell' Independent In these essays, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century writes about communism and socialism, the problem of evil, Erasmus and the reform of the Church, reason and truth, and whether God is happy. Accessible and absorbing, the essays in Is God Happy? deal with some of the eternal problems of philosophy and the most vital questions of our age. Leszek Kolakowski has also written on religion, Spinoza, Bergson, Pascal and seventeenth-century thought. He left communist Poland after his expulsion from Warsaw University for anti-communist activities. From 1970 he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.'His distinctive mix of irony and moral seriousness, religious sensibility and epistemological scepticism, social engagement and political doubt was truly rare ... a true Central European intellectual-perhaps the last' Tony Judt, The New York Times Review of Books
An unsettling new collection of Henry James's best short stories exploring ghosts and the uncanny
'There had been a moment when I believed I recognised, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep'
'I see ghosts everywhere', wrote Henry James, who retained a fascination with the supernatural and sensational throughout his writing career. This new collection brings together eight of James's tales exploring the uncanny, including his infamous ghost story, 'The Turn of the Screw', a work saturated with evil, in which a fraught governess becomes convinced that malicious spirits are menacing the children in her care. The other masterly works here include 'The Jolly Corner', 'Owen Wingrave' and further tales of visitations, premonitions, madness, grief and family secrets, where the living are just as mysterious and unknowable as the dead.
With an introduction and notes by Susie Boyt
General Editor Philip Horne
