Why do we read? Why do we re-read? Why do some novels live in the imagination and summon us back time and again? How can immortal writers, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Charles Dickens, defy every rule and draw us into chaotic, unforgettable worlds of pathos, melodrama and insane comedy? Why do Wuthering Heights, The Lord of the Rings and Black Beauty continue to wield their spells? How come Waugh and Camus teach us about ourselves through dramatically contrasting approaches? These are the questions that shape the journeys undertaken in Second Readings, a collection revisiting the international literary canon.<BR><BR>Drawn from, and expanding on, Eileen Battersby's series on classic books which appeared in The Irish Times between 2008 and 2009, this collection now includes informative, at times irreverent, portraits of the men and women who wrote them. Alongside established classics such as The Great Gatsby and All Quiet on the Western Front are less widely read works including Nabokov's first novel Mary, Saul Bellow's More Die of Heartbreak, Sam Hanna Bell's December Bride and Yevgeny Zamyatin's dazzling, futuristic tour de force, We.<BR><BR>With a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford, and an essay by Eileen Battersby on why stories matter ù and why we owe so much to translators ù Second Readings pays homage to Kafka, reminds us why we admire Sartre's Nausea, and celebrates Joseph Roth's gloriously poignant elegy, The Radetzky March.